power Describe power production and capacity in terms of Joules, heat production and thermals in terms of Watts

[The Plum Gate]

My suggestion is simple: get rid of watts in terms of energy production and consumption - switch over to joules on the power grid. Describe heat production by machines in terms of watts, specific heat and thermal conductivity in terms of watts (although this is just an additional corollary, changing the specific heat over to watts would unify the material properties into one unit scale). This would create a better correlation between all things regarding energy production and use while separating thermals to correlate with heat energy transfer using two separate unit scales via the user interface. This type of separation would form a better correlation between producers and consumers while cutting them out of the thermal properties of materials.

Yes, this initially looks complicated and completely different however it clearly separates energy produced and consumed from that of thermal transfer and specific heat capacity in when it comes to what is displayed to the player.

Evergything on the circuit would be expressed in joules:
The algae dexoidizer would consume 120 J/s, and produce 7.5 watts of local heat.
A Coal generator would produce 600 J/s, and produce 45 watts of local heat. (apologies in advance for bad numbers, these are just examples)

Standard and heavi-watt wires would have a maximum load, not a maximum wattage. I'm not suggesting that the standard wire would get overloaded if you put a 40Kj battery on it, the wires would simply have a maximum load of 1000 or 20,000 joules/s respectively.

Specific heat capacity would be in displayed in terms of (W/g)/K - a display conversion and not an underlying change in physics.
Thermal conductivity in terms (W/m)/K ( this is already a thing )

Currently we have machines and generators that are consumers or producers in terms of Watts. Battery storage is done in terms of Joules as a measure of capacity. Naturally, batteries turn into producers on demand, and since they're variable producers, the source/storage capacity can't be described in terms of watts until a load is applied - one is essentially left doing the math to try to figure out how long a battery will last or how much power it is producing. However, not everyone knows the math, it's not directly expressed nor is it explained very well in the game itself.

The idea is to compartmentalize player created energy to a single scale and separate user generated electricity variables from those of material properties.

None of the above would change the underlying math, only what is being displayed to the end user. This is essentially a UI mod for energy in terms of joules, thermals in terms of watts.

[Fernir]

Just use watts and Joules when applicable.
So battery storage in joules.
Power consumption, emission etc. in watts.
And so on.
Using joules/second is not more readable than watts/second.

[Ciderblock]

There's no reason for "work" and heat to be in different units. It should either be J and J/s, or J and W. IMO W is more readable, but I wouldn't object to J/s. There are also only a couple places where this is mixed up in the game at present.

The more serious issue is this hidden factor of 200 in the heat production of buildings, which is still in the game for some reason.

[Michi01]

If anything, the game should explain that W = J/s

[Botaxalim]

i think its common basic high school stuff, where W = joules/second
even if people dont know, 5 sec google to find the answer and formula

[brummbar7]

2 hours ago, Botaxalim said:

i think its common basic high school stuff, where W = joules/second
even if people dont know, 5 sec google to find the answer and formula

You over estimate the average high schooler.  Never mind that probably a lot of much younger kids play the game as well. 

[The Plum Gate]

1 hour ago, brummbar7 said:

You over estimate the average high schooler.  Never mind that probably a lot of much younger kids play the game as well. 

Indeed. There's really no numerical correlation between power generated and power stored in game - this is not explained ( from what I can tell ). It would make more sense to actually have battery storage denoted in 'Watt Seconds' for the sake of consistency in energy providers. I would be totally on board for that since a watt second ( and a joule are the same thing), this would be an ah ha moment knowing how long it would take to charge up a battery using the simplest of mathematical principles ( and this presents an obvious correlation between storage and generation for newbies and youngsters alike ).

14 hours ago, Fernir said:

Just use watts and Joules when applicable.
So battery storage in joules.
Power consumption, emission etc. in watts.
And so on.
Using joules/second is not more readable than watts/second.

I've got mixed feelings about mixed notations - that's all. Consistency makes for consistency - no math or guesswork involved trying to figure out how long a 10 Watt light bulb will last on a 10KJ battery when some people don't know that: it's storing 10,000 joules, the light bulb is using 10 joules per second so the battery will provide 1,000 seconds of energy to the light bulb  - not only this, but i'm pretty sure it's not explained that a cycle is 600 seconds - I had to look this up when I first started playing, so ~1.67 cycles. So trying to figure out how many batteries I needed fill up to keep things running over a set course of time in cycles without any additional energy input was a nice exercise in math.  ...just to note, a coal generator produces 300,000 joules over the course of burning a full load - that's 300,000 Watts, it fills 7.5 batteries. Knowing how many batteries you need before power is wasted is a fairly substantial piece of information - as it stands, Watts is more readable. In its current state, the battery storage in joules makes no sense. Other than to distinguish it as a variable producer on the circuit, the purpose is rather lost on me, it's a strictly conventional measure of energy.

13 hours ago, Ciderblock said:

There's no reason for "work" and heat to be in different units. It should either be J and J/s, or J and W. IMO W is more readable, but I wouldn't object to J/s. There are also only a couple places where this is mixed up in the game at present.

There reason is all in the details. Every machine we have has a side effect of producing heat - which is conveyed to us in Watts, while the material details convey to us specific heat in terms of joules per gram, Kelvin and thermal conductivity in terms of Watts per meter, Kelvin.

Specific heat here being a sore spot in joules - I mean this is what it is in real life in since in the metric system there's a 1:1 correlation in specific heat in terms of joules per kilogram kelvin and celsius. However, the imperial system is completely screwed in this regard since such measures are done in BTUs - which isn't in the game at all. There's essentially zero correlation between those properties given in degrees Kelvin while using the imperial system of temperature in degrees fahrenheit. And I wouldn't be surprised if the item details makes no calculations to tell you the amount of heat in joules or watts required to raise that particular material one degree your chosen temperature units and instead shows it in terms of celsius or kelvin. ( In fact they don't - just checked - the tooltip only references Kelvin - which favors the metric system by the very same 1:1 conversion that's present for watts and joules )

This is why I would rather see all heat described in watts, throw joules under the buss - the specific heat detail item being the only real offender in this regard, everything else is already described this way.