In order to track your energy gain/drain you need to activate the "Room effect lens" in the top right corner:



This enables you to see both break room and workroom effect on energy.

Your breakrooms are where your workers will regain their energy.

There are two categories of breakroom items, generation and capacity:

Capacity is the maximum amount of "Break Points" your break room has. A worker will use up one break point every time they go on break. This is represented by a coffee cup in the UI.
Generation is how quickly your break points regenerate. This is represented by a coffee pot in the UI.

In the example below, I've added a "Vendotron" and a "Coffee maker". They both contribute to capacity to a max total of 7:


In the picture, a worker has just gone on break and used up a break point so right now there are only 6 Break Points currently available in the breakroom:


To increase the quality of your break rooms you can increase generation so that your Break Points generate faster. As you can see, the "Vendotron" and the "Coffee maker" also contribute to generation but there are many more items you can add to increase the generation. If you add two duplicate items in a room, the second item will have decreased values but will still contribute to the total:


You can see the total available Break Points in your factory in your toolbar. If you click the icon, you will see the statistics of all your break rooms. Make sure you always have break points available to avoid your workers from collapsing!


As your factory grows, you want to build several break rooms with a lot of break room items in each. You will also unlock more breakroom items as you level up. It's highly beneficial to build many small break rooms so that your workers doesn't have to go far to recharge their energy.
In the image below you can see how the workers always have close to coffee, also in the corridors between larger rooms:

All workbenches and machines have a negative mood effect called "noise":

When you place a workbench in a room, this affects the room status. A single assembly machine has a small negative effect:

When you start adding more and noisier machines, the mood drain will be more severe:

A negative Mood will drain more energy from your workers so you need to make sure to counter the negative effect caused by "noise" by adding decorations.

To decrease the energy drain your workers experience, you need to make sure that all rooms have a high Mood effect.

You do this by adding decorations. All decorations have a positive effect on "comfort" that helps increase the room mood.


The decoration "comfort" value minus machine "noise" value gives the room total Mood value. You want to keep the Mood high so that less energy is drained from your workers.


More decorations means a higher mood effect. If you add two duplicate items in a room, the second item will have decreased values but will still contribute to the total.

You will unlock more decoration items as you level up.


You will also receive trophies that can be used as decoration, which have a high effect on room Mood when combined with other decorative items.

Room size will affect the room negatively. Large rooms means a worse Mood effect.

I did some tests (2019-10-25) and room sizes seem to be the following:
Normal room: 110 square meters and below
Large room: Between 110 square meters and 163 square meters
Huge room: 164 square meters and above

See screenshots below and note the color differences from the "Room effect lens":

A normal room have no negative mood effects:


A large room has -25 mood effect:


A huge room has -50 mood effect:


When building, make sure to have the "Room effect lens" on (as described in the beginning of this guide). This will help you a lot! You will see by color if your room will have a negative effect.

When building new rooms:


When placing walls in an existing building:

If you want to read more about energy gain/drain, some information is listed in the game help section.


For break rooms, see sections "Factory Layout/Break Rooms":


For room effect, see section "Workers/Room effect":

This section is not related to energy gain/drain, but I just want to mention it as a reminder when you are placing items in order to increase the effectiveness of your energy management.

Remember that all items that you place have Obstruction which causes your workers to walk more slow when they are near. This can be seen using the "Obstruction lens" in the top right corner:


If you want to be as efficient as possible, think about where you place your decorations, machines, and break room items not to be too much in the way. As you can see in the example below, decorations and machines can have quite the impact on worker speed:

(Red areas is where workers will walk more slow.)

If you are like me, you will sometimes still prefer how things "look" compared to how they "work", but it is good to be aware so that you can make informed decisions.

I hope this guide was helpful to you, please rate it if you liked it so that more people find it. :)
Good luck with your factory!