Limit Theory Forums

Hey Forums

I have been thinking a lot about this idea lately and just want to bring it out there.

(Hours, years, Months, ect...)
How do we measure time? Using some old planets(earth) time to circle a sun and itself?

(Light)
Do we use something That is everywhere the same? Light years?

(Faction related)
Do we let factions choose

I would like to hear your guys ideas

Ps. In game it might be nice to have a agenda and in game clock to understand its mechanic.

Edit.1 The star date idea is great and I will add it of I can find out how.

I think a better question might be scale of time.

We already know there will be history generation and that systems may evolve as AI colonize different places. The question is, how fast will they do it?

If you have a system too slow, it becomes imperceiveable to the player, and it becomes inhibitive to watch the system develop into something useable. Same basic argument as what has been brought against terraforming here.

Second, if you have a system too fast, then your 'history generatin' may be only a couple real time months and that in another couple real time months, you've played through the same amount of generation, making any decent history generation moot.

It is a tough balance indeed.

oh god... light years is a measure of DISTANCE goddammit.

and local time would be quite unnecessary as you would have most likely your board computer translating it to your own time system.
so i would opt for "hours, minutes, seconds"

You made a slight mistake there.
Lightyears are a measurement for distance, it is the distance travelled by light (trough vacuum) in a year.

Edit: Mr. cornflakes above me beat me to point it out

Cha0zz wrote:You made a slight mistake there.
Lightyears are a measurement for distance, it is the distance travelled by light (trough vacuum) in a year.

Edit: Mr. cornflakes above me beat me to point it out

Cornflakes_91 wrote:oh god... light years is a measure of DISTANCE goddammit.

and local time would be quite unnecessary as you would have most likely your board computer translating it to your own time system.
so i would opt for "hours, minutes, seconds"

You guys are right i made explained it wrong there but then use the time it takes light to travel a million kilometers?(think thats like 1/10 of a second?(just guesing)) so yo measure time in that.

DWMagus wrote:I think a better question might be scale of time.

We already know there will be history generation and that systems may evolve as AI colonize different places. The question is, how fast will they do it?

If you have a system too slow, it becomes imperceiveable to the player, and it becomes inhibitive to watch the system develop into something useable. Same basic argument as what has been brought against terraforming here.

Second, if you have a system too fast, then your 'history generatin' may be only a couple real time months and that in another couple real time months, you've played through the same amount of generation, making any decent history generation moot.

It is a tough balance indeed.

Im sorry that is totaly not what i meant, i mean how do we 'call' measure's of time? Not the measure of a random planet right?

rens282 wrote: You guys are right i made explained it wrong there but then use the time it takes light to travel a million kilometers?(think thats like 1/10 of a second?(just guesing)) so yo measure time in that.

3 seconds and some fractions of a second
~288799km/sec

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

rens282 wrote: You guys are right i made explained it wrong there but then use the time it takes light to travel a million kilometers?(think thats like 1/10 of a second?(just guesing)) so yo measure time in that.

3 seconds and some fractions of a second
~288799km/sec

AAHHH you did beat me again

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

rens282 wrote: You guys are right i made explained it wrong there but then use the time it takes light to travel a million kilometers?(think thats like 1/10 of a second?(just guesing)) so yo measure time in that.

3 seconds and some fractions of a second
~288799km/sec

That's also a very human-centric time measurement, though. Because humans invented kilometres too - in fact the defenition of a metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Very arbitrary.

I think your best bet is just to use standard hours, days and years (probably at some accelerated "game time" scale). Everyone's familiar with it, after all, which is possibly it's most beneficial quality.

Cheers,

You could use the time the light needs to travel one hydrogen-line wavelenght.

That would be an universal time constant based on the speed of light

What about time dilation and such mind blowing concepts? I mean... if we're travelling (god-o-god-veryveryvery) long distances... Yeah, I know, we're using some fancy devices to travel almost instantaneously between systems, but...

On the other hand, those long travels could be used as a tool to made time advance faster somehow. You're getting to that system within a given timeframe in the future (3 months or equivalents).

About measuring the time, I kind of like the method used by Vinge in A Deepness in the Sky: he uses the derivates of the second KSec (Kilosecond), PSec (Petasecond), MSec (Megasecond), etc.

There was that attempt to commercialize watches with the "beat-system" (dividen 1 day in 1000 beats, 1 hour in roughly 49~ beats, 1 minute in roughly 0,69~ beats). It's kind of idiotic if you compare systems, but if a closed group, or a society as a whole use that systems, they'd always talk and measure in seconds, or beats... no more. "We'll meet here in 150 beats, see you!".

Lum wrote:What about time dilation and such mind blowing concepts? I mean... if we're travelling (god-o-god-veryveryvery) long distances... Yeah, I know, we're using some fancy devices to travel almost instantaneously between systems, but...

Please No, time dilation would make things very complicated.

Cha0zz wrote:

Lum wrote:What about time dilation and such mind blowing concepts? I mean... if we're travelling (god-o-god-veryveryvery) long distances... Yeah, I know, we're using some fancy devices to travel almost instantaneously between systems, but...

Please No, time dilation would make things very complicated.

Well... if the heisenberg drive gets onto the game (and im fairly convinced that josh is at least thinking about it) then time dilatation would be justified not to have any time dilatation, ever.
As the ship is technically not moving

Normal timekeeping, please.

The game is happening in real-time, and it would be smashing if the bloody thing could simply tell me that my order of flak ammo is ready in 5 minutes, 21 seconds instead of giving me a reading of 34 zarrixxian morbuls, which I can convert into real-time by estimating the orbital velocity of Zarixx 5 around its primary star and then feeding this information into a handy-dandy converter software that you can find only through a wiki-link.

Usability, people!

Hardenberg wrote:Normal timekeeping, please.

The game is happening in real-time, and it would be smashing if the bloody thing could simply tell me that my order of flak ammo is ready in 5 minutes, 21 seconds instead of giving me a reading of 34 zarrixxian morbuls, which I can convert into real-time by estimating the orbital velocity of Zarixx 5 around its primary star and then feeding this information into a handy-dandy converter software that you can find only through a wiki-link.

Usability, people!

+1

Yes, of course, that is the easy and usable way. Hands all the way down

But speculation and ideas are free to expose, so we do it