How does time work in this game?

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

I have heard murmurs of time limits - that there is a campaign timer which causes some kind of "morale penalty" if you wait too long, and that certain acts or missions have rewards diminishing with time.

My question is how does time move in this game? Through camping, travelling on some sort conceptual map (e.g. Battle Brothers, Expeditions: Vikings), or does just standing or running around in a location pass in-game time as well?

[AlexMBrennan]

or does just standing or running around in a location pass in-game time as well

I very much doubt that it matters - game events take place over a number of a number of days and weeks (e.g. you need to wait 30 days for the queen to show up at the end of act 3) so it doesn't really matter if you spend an hour or two playing missions.

[Cyrus]

Soft timer, taking forts + enemies gives you moral. BORED troops loose loyalty, and leave if stats are to low AKA game over. In practice it's almost impossible to loose due to.

[Star Sage]

There is an early timer in Act 1 after which your main base is attacked and some sidequests insta-fail, so be sure to explore ALL of the Market Square, and do the Library and Scouting quests before that point.

After that, there's no direct timers, just quests that will fail if you go to the next act before finishing them, the Journal will tell you, and the game warns you before doing the action that moves you to the next act.

Beyond that, there's one condition for a secret that requires a particular week of the year during the tail end of act five, but it can be any year, and if you need to, just fast forward the days to get to the next year, but the quest is entirely optional, so don't feel like you need to do it.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

Thank you for your responses, but to be honest I have already read all that in previous threads.

Hence my question is specifically how exactly does time progress in the game? Does time progress just by standing around? It will be really silly if quests fail simply because someone left their PC without pausing for an extended period in a game like this.

[ajfusch]

Yes, standing around passes time. Or walking, around, or fighting ... A minute outside of a fight is a minute irl, in turnbased fights it's ugh ... 10 turns, I think. Basically if you stay on a map it's real time.
Travelling costs more time than spending it on a single map.
Resting takes 8 hours, if Im not mistaken.
In the crusade management you can skip whole days.

Caveat: I'm not totally sure if stayingf on a map awake counts toward timers, as you have very few of these. It does count for buffs/debuffs, and there it's real time out of fight.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

Originally posted by ajfusch:

Yes, standing around passes time. Or walking, around, or fighting ... A minute outside of a fight is a minute irl, in turnbased fights it's ugh ... 10 turns, I think.
Travelling costs more time than spending it on a single map.
Resting takes 8 hours, if Im not mistaken.
In the crusade management you can skip whole days.

Thank you.

And ouch. Very silly design choice to penalize players for taking their time exploring or engaging the gameworld... and even for doing nothing lol.

IMO if it really does not matter, timer should just be removed from the game. In-game events should trigger based on campaign progression (completing missions and activities, discovering specific locations etc) instead of real world time, like it does in almost every beloved RPG.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply. Hope the developers remove such idiotic mechanics.

[ajfusch]

Except for the one in Act I, where I came too late to save someone because I rested instead of reaching the npcs in question before my rest, the timer is very forgiving. Timers start with a point in the story, not just xy time from beginning of the story. So if you dawdled earlier it shouldn't make a difference later. Unless I completley missed something.

Also, there is a reason you can simply skip time, because there will be times when you just want the next troops for your army or just start the next part of the story and have no other way to pass the time that makes sense.