I'm worried about the time scale of Stellaris

[Jimthebob123]

Im more concerned with the game actually limiting itself to an end date, i mean in the biggest galaxy size i would hope that large events and wars would take a LONG time to resolve, like 100,200 years, a ck2 timespan seems a little to short for my liking but i guess its easily modable

 

[Velorian]

Im more concerned with the game actually limiting itself to an end date, i mean in the biggest galaxy size i would hope that large events and wars would take a LONG time to resolve, like 100,200 years, a ck2 timespan seems a little to short for my liking but i guess its easily modable

They confirmed no end date. Except if victory conditions are fulfilled.

 

[Jimthebob123]

Must have Missed that Good to know, i guess they will probably have a "sandbox" mode then

 

[Daffius]

What if we start with none humans? The day/hour would make no sense in that context, as that is optimised for earth.

A fictional 'galactic time' could overcome this problem and even be more realistic in this setting.

 

[Seblivion]

A game like Stellaris should surely allow individuals to live for decades and longer as time progresses and new technology is developed. The only reason I can see for the game to have days or hours as ticks are the combat mechanics, but I don't think it would be too much of an issue if it was overlooked like it usually is to some degree in other titles. In truth the combat could also be imagined to happen long distances between the fighting units. I think weeks, months or other measurements of time are more ideal in this setting.

 

[aitaituo]

I would really prefer a longer time scale in Stellaris. 2.4 hours per turn sounds agonizing for a galaxy spanning empire. The turns are inherently somewhat arbitrary in what they mean, so why not make the turns a day, a week, a year? It's just flavor. They could even take Civ's dynamic time-per-turn system, since everything's made up and the points don't matter.

 

[Jimthebob123]

I guess it depends on how the devs want to design the game, we dont really know how long stuff will take, how long ftl takes, invasions take etc, i mean they could be fast enough to warrant a ck2, eu4 ish time per turn

 

[*Aqua*]

Yeah, that's the true point. Sometimes you need fine time control, especially for attacks. But then you also need a possibility to get past boring times fast, like watching a colony grow (even grass grows faster than them).

 

[Captainkrunck96]

Personally I wouldn't mind weekly ticks, oonly problem would be that combat would seem a little bit slow if it took several months for it to play out

 

[Krajzen]

Personally I wouldn't mind weekly ticks, oonly problem would be that combat would seem a little bit slow if it took several months for it to play out

It would make sense in the case if planetary invasions, obviously less in the case of space battles but here is going to be an assymetry anyway... It's hard for me to imagine a space battle lasting for more than few days, and land planetary assault for less than a few weeks.

 

[Zarine]

What if we start with none humans? The day/hour would make no sense in that context, as that is optimised for earth.

A fictional 'galactic time' could overcome this problem and even be more realistic in this setting.

How so ?
The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.

It has NOTHING to do with the earth anymore.
Starting from that, we have 60 seconds = 1 minutes. The 60 being here and not a 10 because of the prime factor (60 can be divided by 2/3/4/5/6/10/...)
Then 60 minutes = 1 hour.
Then 24 hours = 1 day. 24 can be divided by 2/3/4/6/8/12...

Why would earth have anything to do with that ?
It is independent from the earth thus you could use it even if no earth existed.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

I suspect that the 10-ticks per day is just to support the battles. There's no reason it needs to update the economic or diplomatic model with that frequency. So things might zip along pretty quickly when you aren't watching a battle.

I wonder how Stellaris will display battles that are viewed at high speed? Will it be a crazy fast-forward film? Or maybe some abstract display kicks in above a certain zoom or speed level?

 

[Fintilgin]

They shouldn't even have 'days' and 'years' as they only make sense in context of a planet bound game.

Time should just be more abstract. Instead of Year/Month/Day, it should be something like Cycle/Pulse/Tick. 10 ticks is a pulse, 100 pulses is a cycle. Game starts on 1/1/1

Is a tick an hour? A day? A week? No one knows. Doesn't matter. It is an abstract measurement of game time.

 

[Daffius]

How so ?
The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.

It has NOTHING to do with the earth anymore.
Starting from that, we have 60 seconds = 1 minutes. The 60 being here and not a 10 because of the prime factor (60 can be divided by 2/3/4/5/6/10/...)
Then 60 minutes = 1 hour.
Then 24 hours = 1 day. 24 can be divided by 2/3/4/6/8/12...

Why would earth have anything to do with that ?
It is independent from the earth thus you could use it even if no earth existed.

I'm not saying 'time' itself is not a constant. But when you want to measure in days, that's no longer a constant but a build from the smallest element (seconds) and becomes an arbitrary number. Eg: Should the diameter of the earth be larger or slower to go round it's axis, the days would be 'longer' regardless of the seconds being a constant. Hence measuring in days as has been suggested, does mean that it is originated from earth.

You are building bottom up, but in fact time was measured top down. First a day was broken down into different sub components of hours and so on. On a different planet on different day scales the breakdown might have easily been different, but definately not an earth 'day' (60x24 secs).

 

[*Aqua*]

But humans will play the game and the time display must be easily comprehendible for them.

"Your fleet will arrive in 976 zsats and 22 nuks." - Wait! When?

+1 for days/months/years

 

[Krajzen]

They shouldn't even have 'days' and 'years' as they only make sense in context of a planet bound game.

Time should just be more abstract. Instead of Year/Month/Day, it should be something like Cycle/Pulse/Tick. 10 ticks is a pulse, 100 pulses is a cycle. Game starts on 1/1/1

Is a tick an hour? A day? A week? No one knows. Doesn't matter. It is an abstract measurement of game time.

I'd love that solution but screenshots depict 'earth' dates, IIRC the game starts in 2200 AD.

You know what would be epic? You setting your own calendar for your custom race in the very beginning

 

[Pugmak]

Imo, Stellaris should be played in real time. Second for real second, minute for real minute, etc. The time span should be 5 centuries.

That way, we can start our Stellaris campaign and then hand it down to our children as part of their birthright. Then they the same, etc, so on, and so forth. Then at the end of the 5 centuries, a new aristocracy can be determined by which family lines did best in their Stellaris campaign.

 

[Harle]

As long as there is a speed that allows for large amounts of time to pass relatively quickly, I am more than happy that you can achieve a good degree of granularity in the timescale when you need it.

As for the time units, I don't want to have to do the math on some made up time period. Any given measurement of time is as good as any other, so we may as well use the one that has meaning to most players.

I'm sure modders will have the ability to adjust the timescale to whatever they fancy.

 

[Krajzen]

Imo, Stellaris should be played in real time. Second for real second, minute for real minute, etc. The time span should be 5 centuries.

That way, we can start our Stellaris campaign and then hand it down to our children as part of their birthright. Then they the same, etc, so on, and so forth. Then at the end of the 5 centuries, a new aristocracy can be determined by which family lines did best in their Stellaris campaign.

I will write a short SF story based on this concept and credit you with the inspiration

 

[kreissig]

Quote from Toddd240 "ship combat would freeze time and you could view the combat in 'combat speed' which may be real time"

This makes the most sense about what the Dev's may do. Remember that SOTS II is an inspiration factor for this game, and although that was TBS, this could certainly employ a similar mechanic and achieve the same effect. So empires hum along at whatever speed the player chooses. (Single Player) Or the assigned speed for the multi-player game.....until. Loading screen.... .... ....

In the multi, it could function like this: Player 2 attacks Player 5. So players 1, 3, 4, 6, 7...would know nothing about this action, unless any/all of them had technology (as in SOTS II) that lets them spy on remote systems combat. Sensors, monitoring drones....ect...

So in such cases, those players would receive an incoming message about a remote combat event in the Kelar System, but wouldn't necessarily know by whom or the outcome. Or maybe they would, as all would be dependent on their individual tech development or exploration history. (Having visited that system before, or sent probes).