How does time tick in Stellaris? (2024)

CK, Vic and EU go by in days.

HoI goes by in hours.

In what unit of time does Stellaris go by? Many might directly say "Weeks or even months of course! You won't manage to just get a few million people on a planet in a year or two, hah. Why even ask?"

Well, we know that we can watch our ships battle other ships, right? We cannot control the tactical battle, only send the fleet somewhere, but we can indeed watch every ship fight, instead of two sprites shooting at eachother.

If the game still goes by in weeks that would seem.. odd. "Sir, we launched our plasma torpedos at them. ETA until arrival: 2 weeks."

So, either tactical combat happens in its own screen (ala GalCiv2-3) which can just be watched like a little video, or skipped, or time flows really slow, perhaps even real time, except when we put it on a higher speed. Perhaps you can pick the speed?

1 second, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month per second, you know?

I wouldn't know how else one could watch tactical combat, while the strategic aspect in the background is still running.

negativekarz said:

0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001 miliseconds at lowest speed.

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Yes, but that would be the pause button.

negativekarz said:

20 years a second at highest.

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Is this speculation, or do you have a source? Seems plausible, but your first line keeps me sceptical...

BrotherArdis said:

It's the same with CK, EU and Vicky. Battles that in reality would be concluded in a day or two (especially in CK) go on for weeks in the game. And you can watch them too (even if the depiction is simplistic). So I don't see a big problem here.

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But in CK, EU and Vicky you do not see the soldiers fighting. You only see the battle raging on in form of information, you do not see the swordsmen fighting eachother or such. In Stellaris on the other hand you see every single ship fighting eachother. While it in't toooo bad that battles that are just a bunch of dice throws take weeks, having battles which are actually watchable (i know it's just better visualized dice throws, but still) take weeks would be very weird.

You would look at the date, watch a misssile fly and hit something and look at the date and notice that missile took two months to hit its target.

I mean, I'm all for watching the actual battle go on. Starships exploding eachother is great fun to watch.

I'm just curious how it is displayed, or rather where. Just on the map or in a special window. How time keeps going next to the battle, if it does, etc.

Look at the screens. It can't be on hours. But the order is Year.Month.Day. So it's most likely dayly.

http://i.imgur.com/uOWK0iI.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/sMAFv49.jpg

Thure said:

Look at the screens. It can't be on hours. But the order is Year.Month.Day. So it's most likely dayly.

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Would be my guess as well, since FTL is a thing there's no reason to simulate weeks or even months every tick.

LordPeter said:

Yes, but that would be the pause button.

Is this speculation, or do you have a source? Seems plausible, but your first line keeps me sceptical...

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I was jokin

Lord Finnish said:

I wonder if they will portray time dilation in this game. It would be pretty difficult though I imagine.

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I am sure it won't, and it's yet another reason I won't be buying this game.

grisamentum said:

I am sure it won't, and it's yet another reason I won't be buying this game.

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How would you even start portraying time dilation? It only matters if you track the age of your characters, and if travel takes long enough for time dilation to factor in. If FTL cheats the system with instant travel I don't think time dilation is a thing, and if it only speeds it up subjective time will only be a factor lower than objective time.

Assuming travel is at .9c, and takes 2 months, your subjective time would be 1 month. If travel uses other dimensions to travel faster than 1c they'd have to have shorter distances to cover, since the 1c limit is absolute as far as we know. Hence relative speed would "never" be faster than .99 c or so, more likely .9c or less which means at most a time dilation of 2 or less. IIRC it only becomes a thing once you pass .4c or .5c.

In the grand scheme of things that's meaningless. If on the other hand travel took centuries at close to 1c time dilation would be a thing, but then again if travel took centuries between worlds the game would be dull. My head now hurts though, so no more time dilation for today.

Zakath said:

How would you even start portraying time dilation?

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A modifier to everything that time dilation affects; anything related to effects over time, like maintenance, research, production, etc.

It only matters if you track the age of your characters, and if travel takes long enough for time dilation to factor in. If FTL cheats the system with instant travel I don't think time dilation is a thing, and if it only speeds it up subjective time will only be a factor lower than objective time.

Assuming travel is at .9c, and takes 2 months, your subjective time would be 1 month. If travel uses other dimensions to travel faster than 1c they'd have to have shorter distances to cover, since the 1c limit is absolute as far as we know.

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Doesn't matter since we're talking science fiction anyway. As far as we know there is no way to travel in other dimensions, so for the purposes of science fiction you can't discount the possibility that there is some way to travel faster than c with a mass dampening field or some other magic.

Hence relative speed would "never" be faster than .99 c or so, more likely .9c or less which means at most a time dilation of 2 or less. IIRC it only becomes a thing once you pass .4c or .5c.

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So think about what that means for people or ships travelling at significant fractions of c. Your colonists/ships/whatever need significantly less maintenance if they're travelling faster. Those are obvious cases.

But you haven't even considered the overall effect of home planets that orbit their stars at faster or slower speeds. Over a long period of time, even a tiny dilation effect adds up.

Ultimately a space game with a universal time frame is total bollox.

edit: grammar

Thure said:

Look at the screens. It can't be on hours. But the order is Year.Month.Day. So it's most likely dayly.

http://i.imgur.com/uOWK0iI.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/sMAFv49.jpg

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What is that 8 & 9 next to the date ?

Zakath said:

Assuming travel is at .9c

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FTL stands for FASTER than light !

As for time-dilation, here's the formula : t' = t*sqrt(1-[v/c]^2) - let's assume for a second that once you go faster than light, the formula remains the same but using an absolute value under the square root. t' does change significantly (let's say at least 10%) from t if and only if you go somewhere between 0.5*c and 1.5*c.

With other words, if you start the game with at least Warp 2, you could neglect time dilation.

Maarten99 said:

FTL stands for FASTER than light !

As for time-dilation, here's the formula : t' = t*sqrt(1-[v/c]^2) - let's assume for a second that once you go faster than light, the formula remains the same but using an absolute value under the square root. t' does change significantly (let's say at least 10%) from t if and only if you go somewhere between 0.5*c and 1.5*c.

With other words, if you start the game with at least Warp 2, you could neglect time dilation.

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Not without cheating physics by using alternative dimensions, wormholes or something similar. Getting up to 1.0c is impossible without infinite energy is just impossible since the mass of your ship reaches infinite as your speed approaches 1.0c.

The traditional Warp travel (Star Trek for instance) cheats the system by folding space in front of the ship, hence making the distance travelled shorter than the real world distance and hence making your speed relative to the universe less than 1c.

Stargate SG-1 / Universe uses wormhole gates to instantly travel between planets, hence you take a shortcut.

Honorverse has multiple bands of Hyperspace, higher bands having shorter distances hence speed relative to subjective space being higher without passing 1.0c.

That formula incidentally reaches infinite once v ~= c, it doesn't work at all for v == c.
It's also wrong, should be a division, not a multiplication.
t' = t / sqrt ( 1 - (v / c) ^ 2)

For v == c
t' = t / sqrt ( 1 - 1 ^2 )
t' = t / sqrt ( 0 )
t' = t / 0

Anyway, all of this is based on physics being real world. I can't imagine the laws of physics being more than superficially related to the real world. Simulating time dilation, among other things, simply doesn't add enough to the game to be worth the effort.

Goosecreature said:

Each day is divided into ten time units (ticks) at the moment, but this may be subject to change.

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So a tick is analogous to an EU4 day?

generalolaf said:

So a tick is analogous to an EU4 day?

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Or a Hearts of Iron hour.

Goosecreature said:

Or a Hearts of Iron hour.

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Okay. Got it. (I'd just wondered if there was some kind of hidden mechanic in the other games that worked towards how gamespeed worked or something...)