Frontier Forums
TL;DR - Joules are a measure of energy quantity and Watts are a measure of energy transfer speed. Please, fix.
A small lesson in measurement units:
1 J = 1 Ws
One Joule is the same as 1 Watt for 1 second. This is energy quantity. For Americans, think as just gallons of fuel.
1 J/s = 1 W
One megajoule per second is the same unit as one megawatt. This is energy flow. Quantity per second. Think of flow as gallons per hour of fuel consumption.
Write it as MW or MJ and you get 1,000,000 of those. Mega = million.
Attached are some examples of ingame UI:
A small lesson in measurement units:
1 J = 1 Ws
One Joule is the same as 1 Watt for 1 second. This is energy quantity. For Americans, think as just gallons of fuel.
1 J/s = 1 W
One megajoule per second is the same unit as one megawatt. This is energy flow. Quantity per second. Think of flow as gallons per hour of fuel consumption.
Write it as MW or MJ and you get 1,000,000 of those. Mega = million.
Attached are some examples of ingame UI:
- Power Distributor shows capacity (quantity) in MW, which is wrong. It also shows recharge (flow) in MJ/s, which is correct, but also more commonly written as MW.
- Plasma Accelerator shows distributor draw in MW, which is misleading. It should show how many MJ of distributor energy it uses each shot. If it's really showing MW, then it's actually less useful because in that case the player needs to account for fire rate and reload time.
- Beam Laser shows distributor draw in MW. This is one of the rare proper uses of energy measurement uses in the game, but only because it's a continuous use weapon with no reload. Its damage is listed only as per second and so is its thermal load.
