Though im sure someone can come up with a better name for it, I would suggest this game has a "Universal Galactic Time" - on earth we use a 24hour clock, but that's only measured by the time it takes the earth to fully rorate one time. When you are out exploring other planets, using a 24h clock wouldnt fit well, seeing as it is based on how we calculate time on earth, I doubt aliens from far far away does it the same way. The game should have an independent Galactic time, some ancient alien race has come up with. Even when you are logged out, offline, not playing singleplayer, the clock still ticks, game goes on (At least, the rotation of planets does, thus the "time of day" alters when you play again.) , planets rotate, to make it feel like you have been gone, not just magically stopped time for a while, until you "logon" again. Edith: Added stuff from later posts for easy readin' It would be a major mess if every evolved race that has discovered galactic travel, to still keep their own sense of time, as on their homeworld, it would be a.. well, galactic mess sure, each planet still has their day/night cycle, but its not necessarily tied to the Galactic Time. Galactic Time could easily be "our" time scale, though thousands of years in the future - to make it easier for the players to adjust to it, synced with the timezone of choice for the game, GMT, Pacific/Central/Eastern Time. Any kind of device that tells the Galactic Time, could also show you the current time on the planet you are on, though a 24 hour clock wouldn't make much sense, seeing as planets have different/no rotation, it could just as well be shown by an icon of the planet, your location on the planet and suns rotating around it (if the planet is indeed rotating, and so on)
Well, the name for it is meh, but the overall idea is good. Of course, im supposed to say that, when I posted it
SGC or GSC ,SST respectively, Standard Galactic Cycle, Galaxy Standard Cycle, and Space Standard Time or it could simply be referred to as Universal Time, UT, like in Gundam.
I completely agree. maybe they could base it on how long it takes a certain star system to rotate around the galaxy (or a certain distance). Why not? Greenwich main time (GMT) is based in London, and the world works on that as a basis.
Nice idea! There could be also the Local Planetary Time (LPT) that shows in a 24 hour clock what time is it in the planet.
Sweet. It would also be great if it could be synchronized so that every multiplayer server plays on the same exact date and time of the UGT, though I'm not even sure if that's possible. But imagine, the world of Starbound would be continually growing, with its own time!
And events in each server could be automically stored in a historical log: "In the Year 100 of the Starbound Era, Knight Xion exploded the star Nautil, destroying the whole solar system surrounding it." And sure, reporters could also add their own news to the log: "THAT'S A LIE! Xion was with me in the other side of the galaxy!" And so we could have charts showing how much certain events happen in each server...
Actually this could lead to random generation of events based on the UGT, so that in every server a random event would be generated at the same galactic time (although not the same event), like parallel universes ^^
If the Universal Galactic Time is linked to real-time, it wouldnt be an issue to link it, since every server is already online, it simply needs to check what time it is. UGT shouldnt be a 24h clock, but if it was, say 8 hours, you would just divide it in 3 and do the math from there. And yeah, the idea about timelines would fit very well too, being able to "mark" when something major happened.
the problem is, that if a server is based in another country from where you connect, it would cause problems for users.......
Not if it uses a set timezone, Like, if it was synced to US East time, it would always be the same time, no matter where you logged in from, and since planets have different rotations you're not going to experience constant day/nighttime when you play. For the sake of gameplay, day/night cycles should mostly be alot shorter than on earth (look Minecraft and its 20min cycle), though I would love to see planets that did have slow or even no rotation.
Of course, I totally agree that the name for it is... well, bad. Was simply to better explain the idea
I don't wanna be a killjoy, but time is basically just an arbitrary value that we've invented anyway. Therefore Universal Time may as well just be a 24 hour clock seeing as everyone already knows how to read it. It would make the most sense in space to just use the same time scale as your home world. There could be another time shown on the surface of planets for that planet in particular too, as the devs have stated that different planets will have different day/night cycles. It would still make the most sense to use the same time scale on the surface of other planets anyway and just adjust the number of hours in a day rather than inventing an entirely new system. EDIT: Changed by point on different day/night cycles on planets as it seems that it has been confirmed!
I would love to see giant space battles fought fighting over changing Galactic time and how it's measured, me sitting back eating popcorn as it plays out...
The only problem with this is that it would become like some pokemon games, "you can only catch certain monsters at morning, midday, dusk, or night." I'd rather not limit myself that way. also if I only play the game when i get off from work at 6pm, I would ONLY experience the game at night. I'm sure you see the serious drawbacks to this system now. Only my opinion though.
