Why a 7 minute day/night cycle?

[Drakken]

Why does Factorio have a 7 minute day/night cycle? It seems rather random.

I am sure the answer is technical from when the game was first created, or perhaps it was a certain system that determined the day length way back then. And, for the most part, the days just kind of happen in the background for me without a whole lot of notice.

However, some of the time, because I fight so aggressively, and lighting up the area with nests is not really an option, I kind of wish it was easier to predict when it will be day and when it will turn dark. It would have seemed more intuitive if the day night cycle was a number that went into 60 minutes evenly, like 5, or 6, but IMHO optimally 10 minutes. Why 10 minutes?

With a 10 minute day/night cycle it would be:
Day for 5 minutes, 300 instead of 210 seconds
Dusk for 2 minutes, 120 instead of 84 seconds
Night for 1 minute, 60 instead of 42 seconds
Dawn for 2 minutes, 120 instead of 84 seconds

If the game started with 5 minutes of daylight, then you could pin up a time achievement, and have a very good idea what time of day it is on Nauvis at a mere glance. With a seven minute day, using the elapsed time, by the time you figure it out when the sun will set, another 7 minutes will have passed.

I know the game is measured in ticks. That wouldn't change at all. It would just be how long each day lasts in ticks that would change.

I doubt the 7 minute day will ever be changed. But, dreaming of what can be, is pure Factorio juju.

I do fully understand this would be affecting the power game. Solar, accumulators, and batteries would need a balance pass, since the solar would be off for 42.86% longer each day. However, it seems that solar, accumulators, and battery numbers could be adjusted similarly so that they continue to perform relatively the same as they do now.

Just a random thought and my 2 cents...

[mmmPI]

According to the wiki https://wiki.factorio.com/Time#Days , the actual duration of a day is 25000 ticks, or 416.66 seconds, or a little less than 7 minutes] . But that 25000 is the only "round number". 25200 ! which is exactly 7 minutes

Why not 30000 ticks or 40000 ticks ? i don't know

[Drakken]

I did see that on the wiki.

I would argue the number of ticks in a day is totally unimportant because nobody (and I mean nobody) measures output, achievements, progression in game, etc. by the number of days or ticks that have passed. Everything is expressed/measured in items per/second or minute of game time.

With 10 minutes per game day, for the first time ever, it would actually be easy to tell how many days have passed and your output per/day on the planets.

IMHO, the number of ticks in a day could be literally any number at all that would make the day last exactly 10 minutes. Having that 25,000 be the "round number" seems kind of arbitrary considering all of the other precision this game has.

[mmmPI]

I would argue the number of ticks in a day is totally unimportant because nobody (and I mean nobody) measures output, achievements, progression in game, etc. by the number of days that have passed. Everything is expressed/measured in items per/second or minute of game time.

Yes but that can be used for battery monitoring or nuclear power plant activation, the fact that it's a "round number" i mean

IMHO, the number of ticks in a day could be literally any number at all that would make the day last exactly 10 minutes. Having that 25,000 be the "round number" seems kind of arbitrary considering all of the other precision this game has.

That would be 36000 ticks, ( 10min*60sec*60ticks) i agree that seem arbitrary, i think that's one of the case where it has to be arbitrary though

[Drakken]

Hmm...

I remembered exactly 25,000 ticks as well. However, the wiki now says the day night cycle is 25,200 ticks and exactly 7 minutes. Did they change this in 2.0?

A day in game lasting exactly 36,000 ticks seems to make even more sense now. That number is more round and obviously corresponds well to how many "ticks" we experience in real life. After all, there are 3,600 seconds in an hour.

As an aside, if the Egyptians didn't divide their sundials into 12 sections (12 hours) and the Babylonians didn't influence them with a hexadecimal system for calculating astrologic events (60 mins and 60 seconds), we could have a "metric clock" that would be more mathematically pleasing.

[mmmPI]

I remembered exactly 25,000 ticks as well. However, the wiki now says the day night cycle is 25,200 ticks and exactly 7 minutes. Did they change this in 2.0?

I could have swear it was 25000 when i linked just hours ago, but no, you are correct it's 25200, and when looking at the history of the page, it appears that yes, it was "rectified" from 25k to 25200 in 2.0

[eugenekay]

25200 / 60 = 420 Seconds

I’m not saying this is the official reason, but it is a reason: round numbers are like, so cool, dude.

nobody (and I mean nobody) measures output, achievements, progression in game, etc. by the number of days or ticks that have passed. Everything is expressed/measured in items per/second or minute of game time.

Well you can call me Mr Nobody! All of my clock mechanisms are based around Ticks-since-Dawn-on-Nauvis. My Promethium ships do a continuous mathematical integration of their per-Tick speed average to figure out their distance into the Asteroid field (and adjust speed accordingly). Timing of screen-printing or fluid-measure-pumping mechanisms is HIGHLY tick-sensitive. Since the launch of Space Age I have been fiddling with the new Combinators and inter-planetary signaling… it’s not much “fun” for most people, but it is an interesting exercise in working within a restricted environment. The trouble I have found is that there is really not much Use for a Combinator CPU in Factorio: you end up needing a Lua mod to emulate “command block” style behaviors, or just pass a set of items back-and-forth forever.

[eugenekay]

As an aside, if the Egyptians didn't divide their sundials into 12 sections (12 hours) and the Babylonians didn't influence them with a hexadecimal system for calculating astrologic events (60 mins and 60 seconds), we could have a "metric clock" that would be more mathematically pleasing.

Metric time was trialled during the French Revolutionary period - it turns out that the sin/cosine mathematics necessary to perform accurate Celestial Navigation (eg, for ships at sea) for factors of 100 are way harder to work out on-paper than 3x4x5x6=360; aligning with the number of Degrees of Latitude/Longitude. You can (sort of) convert to Grades, which were used for the original Geometrical definition of the kilometer (one-ten-thousandth of the Earth’s circumference from Pole to Equator); but since all the Navigational charts were marked with Degrees-to Greenwich, nobody adopted it. With modern computers and integer math we no longer need extensive lookup tables; it’s all done in Binary basically instantly. The various academies which coalesced under BIPM studied lots of different measurement systems, before settling upon the SI primitives we know today. I am glad they picked the units they did - except for the Candela - it is a pain to convert. Even the terms “minute” and “second” originate from the French phrase for “divisions of the hour”…

[coffee-factorio]

Hmm...

I remembered exactly 25,000 ticks as well. However, the wiki now says the day night cycle is 25,200 ticks and exactly 7 minutes. Did they change this in 2.0?

A day in game lasting exactly 36,000 ticks seems to make even more sense now. That number is more round and obviously corresponds well to how many "ticks" we experience in real life. After all, there are 3,600 seconds in an hour.

As an aside, if the Egyptians didn't divide their sundials into 12 sections (12 hours) and the Babylonians didn't influence them with a hexadecimal system for calculating astrologic events (60 mins and 60 seconds), we could have a "metric clock" that would be more mathematically pleasing.

It was part of the changes in 2.0 yeah.

Hexadecimal is base 16.

The Babylonians used 60, because it was a superior highly composite number. 12 is also one, it's selected over binary numbers like 8 or 16, because you can divide your day up in more ways. In 10, it's [1, 2, 5, 10] = 4 ways. 12 is [1,2,3,4,6,12]=6 ways. It's a shit show because a bigger number isn't necessarily a better one. 16 = [1,2,4,8,16] = 5 ways.

360 is also a super composite, but the earth is on an elliptical orbit, so 365 +/- a day every 4 years is used on account of two thousand years of bureaucratic inertia. It changes everyone's pay schedule if you somehow fix it 360.

You aren't exactly wrong, but you end up going down a rabbit hole with it since you could argue 8 would work (it's binary) but six would also work. I'm not going to get into English v. Metric because it's easier to make fun of people who aren't around:

Imagine an Egyptian foreman getting into with a Babylonian Merchant because "12 IS SMALL ITS EASY". "NO 60 GIVES YOU MORE NUMBERS". "NO IT LIKE 64 IT DON'T GIVE YOU MORE OF ANYTHING." "I SEE WHAT YOU DID WITH BINARY THERE."

While the architect who's building pyramids based on the length of his elbow is counting to ten again.

[Drakken]

This conversation might be nerdier than the ones I have with my LEGO friends.

Well played everyone!

[Drakken]

25200 / 60 = 420 Seconds

I’m not saying this is the official reason, but it is a reason: round numbers are like, so cool, dude.

nobody (and I mean nobody) measures output, achievements, progression in game, etc. by the number of days or ticks that have passed. Everything is expressed/measured in items per/second or minute of game time.

Well you can call me Mr Nobody! All of my clock mechanisms are based around Ticks-since-Dawn-on-Nauvis. My Promethium ships do a continuous mathematical integration of their per-Tick speed average to figure out their distance into the Asteroid field (and adjust speed accordingly). Timing of screen-printing or fluid-measure-pumping mechanisms is HIGHLY tick-sensitive. Since the launch of Space Age I have been fiddling with the new Combinators and inter-planetary signaling… it’s not much “fun” for most people, but it is an interesting exercise in working within a restricted environment. The trouble I have found is that there is really not much Use for a Combinator CPU in Factorio: you end up needing a Lua mod to emulate “command block” style behaviors, or just pass a set of items back-and-forth forever.

Yes, but just think of the joy you would have recalculating the number of ticks from dawn!