Heavier Expansions And Dilations And Abstractions Of Time Space, or: Why I Should Not Write Things at 3 AM

[rrrrrr]

Make time advance faster

Roughly to 1 hour = 1 day

This makes having things like a fully staffed diner make sense, as well as the existence of dorms and the holodeck (i.e to provide entertainment to a crew staying for several days time)

[Zundy]

Characters would age around 23 years an IRL year.

I'm actually OK with this. +1

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

1) Currently we have to gloss over the fact that we have ~40 people board a shuttle and transported to the edge of a star system and put in an advanced, state of the art research facility for 2 hours to 4 hours. This is inconsistent with the importance and location of the Exodus.

2) SSD would be easier to explain as work fatigue if we're working for 'days' at a time instead of glossing over the fact eveyone drops unconscious within 4 hours of arriving.

3) Theoretically we might subconsciously care about the station more if we're like "oh we're going to be here for a few days might as well invest in its well-being for a few nanoseconds before going back to suicidebombing medical"

4) Some jobs would benefit.

So basically:

Immersions, consistency and future gameplay shenanigan

[Zundy]

I'd add that this means lab-interns, nursing interns, cadets, engineering apprentices and the gang can actually rank up within a resonable amount of IRL time.

It'll now be possible for you 18 year old Intern to be CMO one day without playing this server for literally 30 IRL years.

Around 15 IRL days would be an IG year for the record.

[Fire and Glory]

Although it's a bit weird it WOULD make a fair few things make sense, like why infections and disease and the like are so fast and such.

Although it could be a bit awkward like how we're working for 3 days straight or the like, but I'm sure something could be worked out.

Looking forward to complaining to someone for making me wait on something for hours on end.

[Zundy]

Further for the record, this would mean:

1 IG day = 1 IRL hour

1 IG hour = 2.5 IRL minutes

1 IG min = 2.5 IRL seconds

I'd recommend that the time on PDA's is pulled from a constantly running clock server side that runs at this speed oh which people can check up on via the wiki and or the forums to see the current date.

You'll have to rev up those news articles though guis.

[Skull132]

There are a few ways to manage this, and I have some concerns.

How would we manage any sort of timer? For example, the brig timer. Would it be IC, or OOC? Because, let's say we book someone up for 20 minutes. This would be, 20 hours? Which timer would we show, to ensure that the players don't get confused. Basically: what would be the standard approach for things like that, where either or could be used.

Another thing to think about is, this will effectively force default character development speed. At the moment, the speed of canon is slow by default, as it seems to be more intuitive with the way most things are set up. People seem to, by default, play slowly aging characters, and speed up time/leap a few years at specific points of their development. Though, I suppose this would just flip the exception on the other way, so the question is really preference.

If the first issue I noted above gets bashed out, then I'd be up for putting this onto public vote. As we are primarily dealing with a preference on how the players manage their characters. Mechanical and lore concerns are kind of secondary here, I feel.

[Zundy]

There are a few ways to manage this, and I have some concerns.

How would we manage any sort of timer? For example, the brig timer. Would it be IC, or OOC? Because, let's say we book someone up for 20 minutes. This would be, 20 hours? Which timer would we show, to ensure that the players don't get confused. Basically: what would be the standard approach for things like that, where either or could be used.

-snibbet>

If the first issue I noted above gets bashed out, then I'd be up for putting this onto public vote. As we are primarily dealing with a preference on how the players manage their characters. Mechanical and lore concerns are kind of secondary here, I feel.

 

The OOC IRL time would be 20 minutes but the IG time would be 8 hours. The timer would show the OOC time in my opinion to avoid confusion, likewise the crew transfer/escape shuttle and any OOC cool downs. Might also be worth having a tool in OOC or something which allows the player to convert IRL time to Aurora time and visa versa.

But that's like, my opinion man.

[LordFowl]

To be fair, an 8 hour brig sentences makes more sense than a 20 minute brig sentence. Its yet another thing that just makes sense when you dilate the timewaves.

[Guest Complete Garbage]

I like this idea. Personally, I'd rather make one hour into four hours, as that would make standard two-your shifts into standard 8-hour shifts, with overtime (i.e. transfer was voted against) in intervals of 2 hours (30 minute timer between votes)

I understand if this is more complex than the 1-hour=1 day, though.

[Zundy]

I like this idea. Personally, I'd rather make one hour into four hours, as that would make standard two-your shifts into standard 8-hour shifts, with overtime (i.e. transfer was voted against) in intervals of 2 hours (30 minute timer between votes)

I understand if this is more complex than the 1-hour=1 day, though.

 

Though I totes get where you're coming from I prefer the 1 hour = 1 day as it allows good character and round progression speed and I don't think a stint on the aurora is supposed to be a 9-5. I'd assume it be more like a navy boat in regards to work and down time.

[Lucychan42]

I honestly like this idea. I've always taken SSD as work fatigue and this would reinforce a lot of IC concepts.

Food, holo deck, SSD, medical procedures not taking four minutes but hours instead.

I thought I wouldn't like the idea when I started reading it but now that I think about it so much stuff would make much more sense. People needing sleep might catch a wink or two in downtime, et cet era.

[Nanako]

The simple fact is, either method has a lot of problems. The choice between realtime or sped up time is not an easy one, there's no clear answer.

Personally, i wish to stay firmly out of this. Whatever is decided, i don't want to be involved, this subject is too much of a headache. Just posting to say that i have no opinion. Good luck with whatever is chosen

[Lucychan42]

I disagree with your lack of an opinion! Your indifference proposes a point that I must refute in that this matter is exponentially more important and if a consensus is not reached by Friday, cataclysmic effects will result.

[Mofo1995]

Personally, I prefer the sluggish pace of correlating go real time. That isn't to say that the alternative is inherently bad, but here are the issues which make me want to stick with our current time passage:

1. A minor thing, but dating paperwork and events. It's really convenient that IRs and paperwork are rooted in real time, because it makes it very easy to point to the days they're signed. There's probably a work around for this, honestly.

2. Holidays. There's something awfully novel about getting on during a holiday and it being that holiday in game. The experience would be a bit cheapened by accelerating the passage of time, since it's be Christmas every so many days, etc. Maybe I'm the only one who cares about this, though, I'm a festive guy.

3. Birthdays. Aging a year every few days would be kind of annoying, and I think it gets in the way of the personal Canon of characters. Sure, people manipulate their ages rather arbitrarily as it stands, but typically just to scale them forward. Scaling backward would be a bit unnatural, as you would have to keep changing the dates in your records to keep yourself young if you wanted a persistent character. Again, maybe everyone else is fine with this/maybe potential workarounds, but I like aging along with my character's in real time, makes their birthdays really special to me.

Again, these points don't make it empirically bad to accelerate time until we reach a comfortable velocity, it would make lore progression happen more quickly and give the lore tram more to work with, but I'm pretty fond of how slow-paced our lore progression is, it makes big events feel really impactful to me. These are just the reasons why this noob would prefer not to play with the time, feel free to call me out on my bad opinions.

[Lucychan42]

Every two weeks (15 days) would be a year for the game.

Arguably, what could be done for ease of understanding time is create a command like "calendar" and it pips back the date in dd//mm//yyyy : hh//mm//ss

And it's tied into a server side clock that updates on its own like the one already in place. It'd just have a command to spit out the date and time, or even having that already accessible in the Stats tab.

[Skull132]

A thing I would suggest, however, is to slow down the proposed progression. Things might be moving too slow at this moment, but accelerating them too rapidly will cut out the ability for meaningful development as well. I think two weeks per year would be slightly too fast, no?

As an example: let's say the lore team kicks off some revolution somewhere. These events tend to cool down after a year or so, so after 2 weeks, it'd be done and settled. Would this be enough time to develop the story involved?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

There are different solutions to the increased time speed impacting lore and characters.

1) We just hold hands and play pretend. We can have each round start on "monday" at 9am and just roll down the week until the round ends, and any events that blast on the news just happen to happen on the IRL day. So if a murder happens on a an in-game "tuesday" and it's wednesday IRL, then we just handwave 'timezone conversions' between "Galactic Standard Time" and "Tau Ceti time". (We already do this, kind of; GST is servertime.)

2) We just fully commit to the increase in speed. Aurora would become unhinged and sprint forward and advance at its own pace separate from IRL. Every 2 weeks is a year, so every month is about 2 years. This means that we actually have elections for Tau Ceti and the Sol Alliance and the like more often than 4 IRL years. This is the most ambitious because it requires the fullest commitment, and the lore team would need to start drinking more caffeine, haha

I prefer the first one, it allows more freedom to handwave. Player progression might get a bit weird as people stay perpetually young while all their colleagues begin aging, but that's something that already happens so it's just another side of the coin.

[Zundy]

There are different solutions to the increased time speed impacting lore and characters.

1) We just hold hands and play pretend. We can have each round start on "monday" at 9am and just roll down the week until the round ends, and any events that blast on the news just happen to happen on the IRL day. So if a murder happens on a an in-game "tuesday" and it's wednesday IRL, then we just handwave 'timezone conversions' between "Galactic Standard Time" and "Tau Ceti time". (We already do this, kind of; GST is servertime.)

2) We just fully commit to the increase in speed. Aurora would become unhinged and sprint forward and advance at its own pace separate from IRL. Every 2 weeks is a year, so every month is about 2 years. This means that we actually have elections for Tau Ceti and the Sol Alliance and the like more often than 4 IRL years. This is the most ambitious because it requires the fullest commitment, and the lore team would need to start drinking more caffeine, haha

I prefer the first one, it allows more freedom to handwave. Player progression might get a bit weird as people stay perpetually young while all their colleagues begin aging, but that's something that already happens so it's just another side of the coin.

 

I like the latter because in my mind it's less complicated and I GOTTA GO FAST. The lore team can throw in fluff as and when they so wish really, after all this is a game not an actual job. You're supposed to be having fun too kekboot. Elections once every 2 IRL months seems cool. Wars tend to last longer then a year, even small ones let alone planetary wide rebellions. Technology can advance at whatever pace the lore team set. Any news reports can happen as often as if comfortable, after all IRL we get the news everyday, not a few times a week/month like on the Aurora. The gaps can be filled by the player bases own '''top quality''' 100% legit head canon (as it already is).

At the end of the day, if a player wants their character to be

and self insert be too attached then fair enough, they can just pretend it isn't happening as they likely already do with death.

[Killerhurtz]

I absolutely love this for even more reasons:

-With an average lobby time of 5-15 minutes I think, it means there's 2-6 hours between shifts - as it should, and it also gives an easy explanation on how the clean-up crew works.

-Missing a shift means missing several days - which IS legitimate grounds for concerns. It turns "Where were you last shift?" into "Holy shit are you okay? Where were you in the past three days?"

-Personally, it would make me accept slightly better that rounds are short. Sure, I don't get to do as much stuff - but IC, no one but maybe some IPCs would work for four days straight.

-It also allows implementing a tiredness mechanic - you would not outright sleep at work, but every hour you would need to take a 2.5 minutes powernap (in-game a 1-hour nap) to feel refreshed or your condition slowly degrades (at the point where, 2 hours in, you would get random "Falling asleep" verbs that you could fight with a verb/coffee and tea, at hour 3 without a power nap you might start to slur and be drowsy, at hour 4 if the round even gets there you start hallucinating, and if for some wonderful reason we get to hour 5 people start passing out), making dorms useful for more than the OOC "this guy left, let's see if he comes back", and make more IC sense (Poor guy fell asleep at his desk...). And if that's in, there could also be "alertness" medicine dispensed to people from chemistry (like - if there's an emergency and an engineer needs to stay away for two "days" straight fixing shit). Sleep toxin would no longer outright knock you out at low doses - it would just severely increase that counter to the pass-out.

-It explains why characters get hungry every hour or two

-It allows faster deployments of character lore to make sense

-It allows me to have a headcanon where deadhour is the pay period at the end of the month where people go "Fuck this shit I gots money!"

-Makes cloning make SO much more sense (takes an hour or two instead of literally almost instant)

-Adds to the dimension of distance (cargo shuttle takes four hours to arrive; and you go home in twenty hours or so, at FTL speeds)

-Makes for some interesting RP (that guy who slipped and who's been floating out in space for an hour? He's been gone for a day.)

-Makes antag implications even more interesting (Dealing with changeling for DAYS)

So on, so on.

Plus it gives a lot of lore opportunities I'd like to explore with Boots.

Overall I absolutely LOVE this idea.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

The "tiredness" mechanic is already explained by SSD, which people already to pretty consistently. The naps should be determined by the player not the character, otherwise your support is super good

[SirStem]

+1 this whole idea. Nothing breaks my immersion more than seeing the dormitories and thinking, 'huh, guess I don't ever sleep'. This makes a lot of sense.

[Zundy]

Skull baby we putting this to vote yet?

[Zundy]

Remembered this today, I'm putting Andrew Grimes on trial for this (1 day=24 days IG) in regards to aging to see how it flows, even made some funky excel spread sheetsfor myself and everything. If any one wants to join me with this please feel free.

[The Stryker]

I prefer the 4 hours to an IRL hour idea so that progressions isn't too fast, if you want to speed it up, make it eight hours.

Personally, hour to a day seems a bit overkill.