Time measurement (Immersion)

[aitaituo]

It would be cool to use a system where the game measured time in arbitrary "Time Units" and then had a collection of Calenders configured which allowed it to convert those units into local time units on the fly. Using a system like that you could even list of comparative times and adjust the "Turn Length" for local calenders.

It wouldn't be hard I just programed such a system for one of my random projects it took me maybe 2 hours?

But I doubt Paradox will do it for Stellaris or any other game they make.

The game has to have a standard time for ticks, regardless of what's displayed. So a day is an eisae is a jaj, even though they're 24, 25.25, and 30.95 human hours. Having different day lengths, in human hours, for each species is just going to cause needless confusion in the displayed length of months or weeks to complete something, especially given the logical implementation of such a system is to have a different day length for every species.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

What programming time? Plan minimum can probably take like an afternoon for, You know... A person who does these sort of tasks for a living.
How much time do You guys think, setting a simple calculating algorythm (Well, depends on how much randomization it would do.) with end result being a display of a number, can take? (Plan minimum. Changing/writing events is what would take time.)
Well, i'm probably undervaluing the work required a little, (Or overvaluing Paradox employees!) but i seriously doubt any schedules will be ruined because of that.

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And sell really weak DLC tasers, that You plug to the PC and it zaps You every time You lose a spaceship.

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From the screenshots and videos You can clearly see in the upper right corner, that They use the Gregorian Calendar, just like in Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis.
(Incoming nitpicker in the next few posts who brings up possibility of Julianic/Arabic/Chinese/etc. calendar, just to be a smartass... I actually don't remember if They divide months like They should in Clausewitz or just into 30day months, so not sure if i should brace myself for that nitpick too.)

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But that's exactly the sort of thing that system could portray! I just went a little bit further with my imagination. Plus You're thinking from a "Human in Sol system" start perspective, which is only one of the hundreds _____ of possible options for a race and homeworld. (I'm leaving space for a Paradox employee to come in and say "More like thousands". Flamboyant Schemer me)

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I think You misunderstood me.
When i wrote

I meant... Well... Exactly what i wrote there. All the ship movements, turn ticks, science point generation etc. according to the Gregorian Calendar, that the internal game clock is using. While the Funky Squid Calendar of Your Jazzy Squid People being pure fluff.

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You really think Paradox would be that silly to throw such an unfamiliar (Even confusing, for some people.) idea at You without giving You an option to turn it off or ignore it? Give Them some credit. Take the cultural renaming of provinces option in Europa Universalis as an example. Woosh!

The Ideas are not set in stone (... tablets... anymore), we can change them to suit our needs and goals, discuss and think about the possibilities. Expand, refine and transform them first. Then be a sceptic.
(A rant a day, keeps the voices in Your head away.)

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But that's actually a very good idea! Expansion, refining and transformation of ideas in action. We should hug!

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Oh yeah, i also hate those suckers who want to have some fun playing the game. I bet They will even have some playthroughs where They don't blob ad infinitum. (!!!) What a bunch of scrublords. By the way, i think the game should be stripped of all graphics so it has more space for numbers. Just vast sheets of raw data passing on the screen like in the Matrix. I'm a dreamer!

what people are saying is, 'It's just a clock.' it has no impact on gameplay whatsoever. i'm sure the devs have better things to think about.

 

[dullman]

what people are saying is, 'It's just a clock.' it has no impact on gameplay whatsoever. i'm sure the devs have better things to think about.

I'm mean it just a clock? Or it's a clock, if it would designed for more hardcore players, it could be make to start attack when on enemies ships are night shifts (or any other when they rest - by that i mean minimal crew are awake) which could begin with gathering information about this other civilization especially such common thing when they rest but to be truthfully they don't plan to add resources (by that i mean we have only three resources which is kinda lacking for a game about managing empire (galactic)) so to add something like is less probably than that the russian soldiers retreat from donieck or crimea.

 

[Teleros]

But that is an Earth centric way of measuring time, which for an alien civilization living in a different star system on a planet where a day might last 8 or 230 hours and a year for them being 3 weeks or 670 months, seems like an arbitrary way of measuring time, imposed on them by pickled herring eating, blonde platypi beings of unlimited power they've never heard about.

It is however less likely to confuse the humans playing the game. I can certainly see an LP using a modded game to do something like this, but for the core game I don't think you want to confuse players too much.

 

[grandad1982]

No no no no no no no no.....

Keep the time/date consistent across the board. These games have things happen at certain tick intervals so if everyone had different tick rates and periods the game would be a bug ridden, confusing mess. Also as someone playing the game I want consistent standards so I can grasp what the hell is happening!

 

[Crzyvy]

The game has to have a standard time for ticks, regardless of what's displayed. So a day is an eisae is a jaj, even though they're 24, 25.25, and 30.95 human hours. Having different day lengths, in human hours, for each species is just going to cause needless confusion in the displayed length of months or weeks to complete something, especially given the logical implementation of such a system is to have a different day length for every species.

It is however less likely to confuse the humans playing the game. I can certainly see an LP using a modded game to do something like this, but for the core game I don't think you want to confuse players too much.

No no no no no no no no.....

Keep the time/date consistent across the board. These games have things happen at certain tick intervals so if everyone had different tick rates and periods the game would be a bug ridden, confusing mess. Also as someone playing the game I want consistent standards so I can grasp what the hell is happening!

It's probably my fault for adressing the post to someone who knows how to deal with UI wizardry and can fill in the blanks, but seriously guys, what's so difficult about imagining this:

I hope i didn't burn anyones' eyes with my god awful MSPaint-fu skills.

How is that confusing? You can put that little white bar with fantasy calendar in the place where "Paused" is at the moment, since there's a big "II" sign right next door serving the same function and being quite clear as to what it represents. You can have it smaller than the Standard Game Time or with a different coloration or whatever.
Or imagine the fantasy calendar being a pop up window, that displays when You hover the mouse over the Standard calendar. Or put a button there, that brings the window up or makes it disappear. Whatever magic is deemed appropriate.
Now imagine a similar functionality in event windows.

Most important: WHAT'S STOPPING ANYONE FROM MAKING IT OPTIONAL?

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what people are saying is, 'It's just a clock.' it has no impact on gameplay whatsoever. i'm sure the devs have better things to think about.

Here's a thought and an exercise:
Open up EU4, CK2, Vic2 or HoI3 (Or any previous version of those. Or any other Paradox game, but the point might shine a little too bright if You take a look at something like Pillars of Eternity, it being a different genre and yadda yadda etc.) and try to count the number of things, that You can describe as "A feature with no impact on gameplay whatsoever.". If You want to be really thorough, try to run a 1.0 version of the game before any patches and expansions, to get an experience of how They looked when They first launched. Now imagine how the game would look and play if all of those features were taken away.

 

[Amightypie]

just stick to the current calendar so that us human players don't get confused about lengths of years, months etc. if you really want this changed I'm sure there will be mods for it.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

They should use standard popular human time just because only humans are playing this game (at least for what we know, and Paradox should really be cracking down on piracy committed by aliens on their products).

However, realistically, wouldn't there be a universal time measurement based on, say, the orbit of the galaxy (of course, more likely something more advanced and efficient that I cannot comprehend as of now).

 

[Teleros]

It's probably my fault for adressing the post to someone who knows how to deal with UI wizardry and can fill in the blanks, but seriously guys, what's so difficult about imagining this

For starters, what about years etc in events or decisions? "Does this mean a human year or a year for my race?" could be awkward. Then there'll be people who see they start in 2200 AD vs those who start in 350 XYZ and wonder if they screwed up the settings or did something else they shouldn't have.

 

[Cuthuthulu]

How would you make something like a Venusian Calendar work?

 

[Rubidium]

So, we have a big unit, medium unit, small unit date format. Note that they are all numbers; I highly doubt that there will ever be an event saying "On April 1 in the Year of Our Lord 2340."

How do you know they are the Gregorian calendar, or that they smallest unit represents 24 earth hours? You can make these numbers mean whatever you want for your own playthrough, without having to have any sort of conversion, or separate calendar, just by choosing to interpret these numbers to yourself differently.

If your immersion is deeply hurt, assume that the smallest unit represents the length of a day of your species' home planet (that will have such a fundamental effect on life in every planet that I can't imagine it wouldn't be a basic unit of measure for any conceivable species) and that the rest of the numbers represent larger units of time as appropriate. Yes, that means that they will likely be 30 days to medium unit, and 12 medium units per big unit, but you can rationalize that fairly easily.

As for the fact that this will mean that different playthroughs will have different in-universe lengths for things to happen, how fast would a warp drive travel anyway? No one knows, since they don't exist.

Congratulations, by using this system, you can have your bizarre alien calendars, and the devs don't have to change a thing (or waste any development or computer time, much less UI space, on a calendar that 99.9% of players will ignore).

 

[Safehold]

Half Life of Thorium 234 for my potential meritocratic civ of super geniuses.

So Thorium x 10 ^1 is all the days of a month

Thorium x 10^2 would be the months in a year.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I'm mean it just a clock? Or it's a clock, if it would designed for more hardcore players, it could be make to start attack when on enemies ships are night shifts (or any other when they rest - by that i mean minimal crew are awake) which could begin with gathering information about this other civilization especially such common thing when they rest but to be truthfully they don't plan to add resources (by that i mean we have only three resources which is kinda lacking for a game about managing empire (galactic)) so to add something like is less probably than that the russian soldiers retreat from donieck or crimea.

what you're talking about is fair enough for a different game and genre. but Stellaris is Grand Strategy, not microtactics

 

[Strager]

I just came here to dislike the OP

 

[bz249]

Half Life of Thorium 234 for my potential meritocratic civ of super geniuses.

So Thorium x 10 ^1 is all the days of a month

Thorium x 10^2 would be the months in a year.

Why 10? Because some furless monkeys at Sol III have 10 fingers? That destroys immersion

 

[dullman]

what you're talking about is fair enough for a different game and genre. but Stellaris is Grand Strategy, not microtactics

While to be truth if we talk about creating galactic empires it's something that add playability, but i what i said is something that i don't expect to see in Stellaris although i prognoses that in future some 4x (or maybe it will evolved in new genre, and all simple galactic conquest game remain 4x) will have it (but in more complicated form since in here comes also espionage and hidden movement of our fleets), and the second i don't see where you see any tactics here since it's obviously a strategy to strike when enemy is weakened, and tactics is something that many 4x strategies employ (by having battle screens) which for me is killing a strategy, since i don't want to lead fleet in battle but i want to order where (or when) my fleet have to fight.

ps. To be truthful before creating something like that first we would need a real crew on spaceships who can rebel or join other faction (or many other thing like wear with war if don't give them enough breaks) so i believe it's long time before we come to my dreamy 4x game.

 

[Sinister2202]

Threads on Stellaris forum have been stagnating... because it's getting blown out of proportion from feasible reality of how this game will turn out to be in the end. The design choices of this game are far from the 'immersive' stance. Let simulations be simulations and games be games.

 

[Crzyvy]

just stick to the current calendar so that us human players don't get confused about lengths of years, months etc. if you really want this changed I'm sure there will be mods for it.

They should use standard popular human time just because only humans are playing this game (at least for what we know, and Paradox should really be cracking down on piracy committed by aliens on their products).

For starters, what about years etc in events or decisions? "Does this mean a human year or a year for my race?" could be awkward. Then there'll be people who see they start in 2200 AD vs those who start in 350 XYZ and wonder if they screwed up the settings or did something else they shouldn't have.

1.

Most important: WHAT'S STOPPING ANYONE FROM MAKING IT OPTIONAL?

2. Features like this are usually placed in the options menu and disabled by default. (*cough cough* Cultural renaming of provinces *cough cough*) Why do You think Paradox will make it the other way around?

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How would you make something like a Venusian Calendar work?

Good point. It doesn't have to be Days/Months/Years. Might include some exceptions with Time of Day (Or however You should put it.)/Day/Month. Or the other extremum with Month/Year/Some arbitrary number set by Your civilization. Easiest way would probably be to ignore those circumstances, since You're mostly splitting hair at this point and might be annoying to write events for that. Nitpick heaven

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So, we have a big unit, medium unit, small unit date format. Note that they are all numbers; I highly doubt that there will ever be an event saying "On April 1 in the Year of Our Lord 2340."

How do you know they are the Gregorian calendar, or that they smallest unit represents 24 earth hours? You can make these numbers mean whatever you want for your own playthrough, without having to have any sort of conversion, or separate calendar, just by choosing to interpret these numbers to yourself differently.

If your immersion is deeply hurt, assume that the smallest unit represents the length of a day of your species' home planet (that will have such a fundamental effect on life in every planet that I can't imagine it wouldn't be a basic unit of measure for any conceivable species) and that the rest of the numbers represent larger units of time as appropriate. Yes, that means that they will likely be 30 days to medium unit, and 12 medium units per big unit, but you can rationalize that fairly easily.

As for the fact that this will mean that different playthroughs will have different in-universe lengths for things to happen, how fast would a warp drive travel anyway? No one knows, since they don't exist.

Congratulations, by using this system, you can have your bizarre alien calendars, and the devs don't have to change a thing (or waste any development or computer time, much less UI space, on a calendar that 99.9% of players will ignore).

I've looked through all the Dev Diary screens (Couldn't bother with other sources.) and all of the dates are formatted in the way, which assumes a Gregorian Calendar. (Well, technically it could be the Russian one, but Paradox are Swedes and that's the one They use. In fact it could theoretically be most of the calendars used in different parts of Earth, but the usage of year 2200 as the start (Again assumption based on the screens, many of them are taken in 1.1.2200.) allows us to narrow it to Gregorian/Russian ones.) Middle unit doesn't go above 12 and Small unit doesn't go above 30. Add the fact, that this is Clausewitz engine and all the previous games using it, were using this calendar system, it's a pretty safe bet. In fact i wouldn't be suprised if this calendar was hardcoded into the engine. By the way, i'm happy to be corrected by Paradox if i'm wrong on this, but most of the evidence points to a Gregorian Calendar. (Or Russian, but that's because They're almost identical.)

The first paragraph of Your post is precisely the reason why it's silly to use the same calendar we use on Earth. (And why should even 23rd century humans use Gregorian calendar? Chinese don't give a toss about the birth of Jesus and most of us in so called Western Hemisphere don't even know who the hell was Huang Di. Similar thing with Indians, Muslims, Russians and probably a lot more obscure ones, that i don't even want to wiki.) Why is the fantasy civilization of sentient fungoids on a planet whose day take 700 Earth hours to complete and year take 100 Earth days, use a calendar so similar to the one we use on Earth? In the case of some highly religious aliens, why shouldn't They use a nomenclature similar to "In the Year of Our Lord xxxx" in the events? Wth a fantasy calendar You can use such language and make it not completely out of whack, adding character to the civilization, making them this tiny bit more unique.

As for the rest of the post, there's been quite a bit of jokes in my country during communism period, in the vein of "Why do You want to eat anything more than bread and onion all year? If You make believe, You can imagine them as the finest caviar and meat You've ever eaten!". I'm sorry to use such an example, but it describes quite well the spirit of Your argument, i believe.

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I just came here to dislike the OP

Seems like it's the trendy thing to do. Take a number.

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Threads on Stellaris forum have been stagnating... because it's getting blown out of proportion from feasible reality of how this game will turn out to be in the end. The design choices of this game are far from the 'immersive' stance. Let simulations be simulations and games be games.

I'm sorry for being rude, but man, this is like the essence of shadowboxing.

...Actually, is this what this whole thing is about? Is there some trench war in this forum between "Immersionists" and "Calculatrons"? And everyone assumed i picked a side, because i put "Immersion" in the title of the thread? Holy shit, i put it there to help people not make the mistake of assuming i wanted to mess with the ingame calculations. Which there were quite a few posts with exactly that mistake by the way...
Like... What is going on? Are all these responses from people who believe, that a tiny feature, that:
A. Is trivial to implement
B. Is trivial to ignore if You want to play Spreadsheets in Spaaaaaaaace!
C. Would take pretty much no computing power to run
D. Is consistent with the setting and features from previous games in the genre by the developer (Victoria 2 Newspaper; Europa Universalis 4 Cultural Renaming of Provinces; All those end screens after a campaign generating a few sentences about the rule of each of Your leaders in Crusader Kings 2 and EU4; The massive amount of event flavor text in all of the above examples (Haven't touched Hearts of Iron, i can only assume it's the same there.))
Would in some magical way turn the game from "Uber Mega Hardcore Simulation For The Ultimate Badasses" into "Wishy Washy Adventure in the Land of Pretty Sceneries and Occasional Micromanagement Nuisance"?
I'm honestly lost. I don't even read this forum other than Dev Diaries, just posted my idea, which i thought fitted well with the game. Did i make some horrible faux pas?

Can some kind soul explain it to me? Am i just being stupid with all the assumptions and people really just can't throw Their head around the proposition?
Utter Flabbergast

 

[Safehold]

..Actually, is this what this whole thing is about? Is there some trench war in this forum between "Immersionists" and "Calculatrons"?

Not that I have noticed.

But there's only so much speculation people can do on the given data before it begins to be recycled. Usually at that point, you start hearing people talk about... oh that communism thread or that other thing on that other thread about modern day politics. That usually means people are out of imagination energy and will maybe recharge in a month.

Paradox generally produces game elements and mechanics, including the UI, that has some direct connection with player input and user impact. So they could do something with the time stamp, but it's not necessary. It's not going to figure much into scripted events or various other game mechanics. And might really mess up multi player.

They could do it for flavor of course, just like the Ck2 chronicles.

 

[Sinister2202]

I didn't mean to offend you, OP. It's just that threads like this tend to steer from game topic pretty fast. So I'm saying to keep the content within the confines of the game's feasibility. I mean, if you followed the developer diary, you can see the design choices they made on the game (looks incredibly fun). It doesn't seem like a highly complex game to be immersive. That's not saying that the game sucks btw. What's time measurement have to do with anything in gameplay? Think about it, what has time measurement done for you in previous paradox titles, as you played the game? It did one very crucial thing for me in EU4, like comparing enemy troop's ETA to mine, but the rest were just checking time and waiting for truce to be over. If time has a huge impact on Stellaris' gameplay, then I could be convinced to agree with you. But so far, it doesn't seem like it. If you want immersion, I'd try HOI4. No time measurement idea, but it certainly got day and night cycles.