Time Measurement Units

[jonbrave]

(As a beginner) I see that some things take multiple units/ticks of time to manufacture and some take a fraction of a unit.

I would like to know what in Factorio is the defined measurement for 1 "tick"? I would like the SI Unit name and the definition I should think of for 1 tick in-game, please.

[lightningdragon10065]

If you're referring to the number in a crafting recipe, those are seconds.

As far as ticks, 1 "tick" is 1/60th of a second.

[KatherineOfSky]

The game runs (optimally) at 60 UPS (updates per second), a tick therefore is 1/60 of a second.

The times you see on crafting recipes aren't ticks, they are cycles. 1 is one second, not 1 tick.

Remember that you need to take into account the craft speed of the machine when you calculate actual crafting times. e.g. something that takes 0.5 second to craft (like a green circuit), if made in a gray assembler (which has 0.5 crafting speed), will actually take 1 second to make.

[CrushedIce]

The crafting times are given in game seconds. When using assemblers, these numbers are divided by the crafting speed, for example an assembling machine 1 with crafting speed 0.5 will take twice the time given in the crafting recipe.

1 game second consists of 60 ticks which are the smallest time steps of the simulation. Usually the game runs at 60 ticks per (realtime) second therefore a game second is usually the same than an realtime second.

If you have an extremely large base after playing hundreds of hours it is possible that the processor can't keep up the 60 UPS (updates per second) and the game speed is then reduced which means that in this case a game second is longer than a realtime second

If you want more infomation take a look at the wiki: https://wiki.factorio.com/Time

Edit: not fast enough :)

[jonbrave]

Thanks these comments are all very interesting/useful.

However, they don't really cover what I'm trying to ask. I want to get a feeling for how to think about 1 second or 1 tick in game-terms. I want "a base unit". Like "think of 1 second as the time it takes such-and-such a miner to mine 1 coal" or "assembler 1 manufacture 1 cog" or "think of 1 tick as the time required to move 1 square on such-and-such a belt". Something fundamental in the game world that my guy & I should think of as defining these durations ?

[KatherineOfSky]

There is a very nice reference page which defines throughput of various machines, including mining drills, conveyor belts, etc.: http://referencio.info/

The most common base point is the throughput of a compressed yellow belt, which moves 13.3 items per second. (In a min-max base), this defines how many miners you put down, how many smelters, so you can provide full throughput of plates to your factory.

[CrushedIce]

Well the fundamental time unit of the game is simply the tick / game second. And as long as you have 60 UPS - a tick is 1/60 of a real second and a game second is a real second.

But if you want some numbers:
- an electric miner without modules produces 0.525 iron/copper/coal per (game) second, 0.65 stone/s and 0.2625 uranium/s
- a yellow belt moves 0.03125 tiles/tick or 1.875 tiles/s
- for the assembler you can look up all the times in the crafting menue. For example as KoS mentioned, it takes 1s to produce a green circuit in a basic assembler
- a stone furnace produces 0.28 plates/s

[Warlord]

Originally posted by jonbrave:

Thanks these comments are all very interesting/useful.

However, they don't really cover what I'm trying to ask. I want to get a feeling for how to think about 1 second or 1 tick in game-terms. I want "a base unit". Like "think of 1 second as the time it takes such-and-such a miner to mine 1 coal", or "think of 1 tick as the time required to move 1 square on such-and-such a belt". ?

So you're asking for specific numbers? We'd already said that most things in the game use seconds as their time frame, and assumed you'd be able to suss out the time units yourself. If you just want the raw numbers already theorized... I'm sure someone's got a link to better numbers than this: https://wiki.factorio.com/Units

[jonbrave]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

The most common base point is the throughput of a compressed yellow belt, which moves 13.3 items per second.

Originally posted by CrushedIce:

For example as KoS mentioned, it takes 1s to produce a green circuit in a basic assembler

Thank you! This is the sort of thing I was looking for.

I think the belt speed is probably my idea of fundamental ('coz you get them earlier). What does "compressed" mean here? And I presume the 13.3 items per second applies to each side separately?

[KatherineOfSky]

Check the reference sheet I linked -- 13.3 is the combined lanes of the belt.

Compressed means there are no spaces between items, (and therefore the most-full a belt can get.)

[CrushedIce]

13.33 items / s is the throughput of a fully compressed yellow belt (both lanes together).
Fully compressed means that there are no gaps between the items.
It is possible that there are gaps smaller than an item in which case neither an inserter nor an other belt coming from the side can fill these gaps. The only simple way to compress such a belt is using a splitter where two belts are merged on one.

However the devs are currently looking for a solution such that sideloading and / or inserters might be able to produce compressed belts in the future (again )

[jonbrave]

Thank you both --- good stuff :)

[piccolo255]

BTW, if you check the belt description in-game, the 13.33 items/s number is listed there. Also, red belts are listed as 26.67 items/s (double the yellow) and blue is 40 items/s (triple the yellow).

There's a nice quality-of-life mod, Max Rate Calculator[mods.factorio.com], where you can press ctrl+N, drag the selection box over a group of buildings, and get combined input/output for the entire group for each item they use or produce. You can switch the numbers there to different units, for example, items per second, items per minute, yellow belts needed, etc. You can build a production area, use the tool, and it will tell you exactly how many input and output belts you need to keep it running at max speed. Cuts down on a lot of manual computation :)

[jonbrave]

Sounds like cheating to me ;-)

[piccolo255]

Not to me :) After a few hundred hours of manually calculating ratios, it's time to automate that chore, in real Factorio spirit :D

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by jonbrave:

Sounds like cheating to me ;-)

Definitely not. At post-end-game, people who build megabases rely on calulators, etc. to help organize all the math. Personally, even though I I've created spreadsheets on my own, it's so much more handy to use something like the Kirk mcDonald calculator to assist with the numbers.

(I don't want to spend my precious free time mathing, especially when formulas, etc. are known). It's a tool. Designing the actual assemblies, and getting the huge throughput of materials where they need to go is the challenge that is far more interesting to me!