How do you tell time?

[[ﻩﺩﻨﺸﻜ] Union Made]

Been playing the game for a few years and I have no idea how to tell time in the game. I think the 212.30AE is a date somehow, I assume the first three numbers are the year and AE is after exodus, no idea about the two last numbers. I couldn't find a wiki page that explained it.

For those who have played for a while have noticed time management is important for play styles that don't pump the crew full of experience quickly. You either have skip off the void or more likely then not that first Xeno ship will kill you.



This became important in my last play through as I was consistently late/cutting it close with missions as I intended to explore and salvage in between jumps. One stop I had a year to complete the mission according to the mission description and explored a planet until it was depleted. I finished the mission with "past due" as time remaining, to add insult to injury the message at the bottom of the mission completion said the mission took 1 week 5 days. That cannot be true obviously given that I explored for a year (apparently) and didn't notice. Then when I left the planet I encountered a random Xeno ship and my highest level hyperwarp navigator wasn't close to skip off the void.

[wilky]

212 is the year. 30 is the week #. 30 is about halfway through the year. So you are about 2.5 years into the game, because the game began at year 210. (The game narrative lasts like 60 years for a full playthrough, btw.)

I think weeks might also have ten days instead of seven. I can't remember. Check the wiki.

[Gilmoy]

See the Game Turn[startraders.gamepedia.com] wiki page.
Alas, it's not linked from the main page's table of contents. You can get to it by clicking on any "Game turn" hyperlink embedded in the text, for example on the Game Difficulty wiki page.

Briefly:
- 212 is the year.
- yyy.30 is the week number. There are 52 weeks in a year.
- yyy.ww.5 is the day number. There are 7 days in a week.

- A game turn is 1/10 of a week. There are 10 turns in 1 week.

- All actions (that take time) actually take an integer k number of turns. This number is truncated(?) to "days" for display. An action that takes 1 turn (i.e. less than 1 full day), such as refueling or tiny repairs, says that it takes "hours", instead of saying "0 days". So whenever you see an action choice that says it will take "hours", that's what it means.

- Every hyperwarp jump, card game outcome, mission step, ship repair/crew heal, and landing in a zone, tells you how many weeks/days/turns it took. Flying within a quadrant also consumes time. All of it adds to your ticking global clock. That's how your clock advances.

- Every game begins on 210.03.3, i.e. Wednesday of week 3 in the year 210.
- You can also click your Ship at any time, even during a ship or crew combat. In the top left corner of your Ship View, it will say "Captain for 2 years 27 weeks 5 days", or similar. Since you never change captains in one playthrough, this is always accurate. It's like `ruptime` in Unix :)

Originally posted by P.o.B.:

One stop I had a year to complete the mission according to the mission description and explored a planet until it was depleted. I finished the mission with "past due" as time remaining, to add insult to injury the message at the bottom of the mission completion said the mission took 1 week 5 days. That cannot be true obviously given that I explored for a year (apparently) and didn't notice.

So the mission had >1.0 years remaining, but you first explored the planet instead of doing the mission? Each iteration of the Explore card game takes about 1.0 week, on average, so you would have needed ~60 consecutive explorations to consume 1 full year. Did you leave the planet to repair and heal, then come back?

The "1 week 5 days" message is correct. That means that this 1 mission step just advanced your clock by +1 week 5 days. It's consistent with every other mission step and card game's time duration message. It has nothing to do with the total elapsed time for the mission itself.

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ST:F measures a mission's total elapsed time as follows.

- A mission's clock starts when the mission is first created, even if you don't accept it. This is your clock date at the instant you click a Contact's Court Mission box to generate a mission for you. For vignette missions, it's your clock date at the instant you exit out of the cutscene.

- The mission's clock stops on your clock date at the instant you click its final step's mission box (in the lower left corner of the planetary zone UI). Note that this happens at the beginning of the mission step's own brief duration, not at the end of the step. So your duration such as "1 week 5 days" doesn't matter for purpose of being on-time for this mission.

This also affects Steam achievements. If you must finish a 10-year unlock by 220.10.3, and you arrive on the planet on exactly 220.10.2, then you're just in time, and you'll get the achievement, even if the step itself takes "2 weeks 3 days".

Also, any talents that fire during the step do so at the beginning of the duration, so they automatically count the step's duration toward their cooldown. For example, if you choose a mission step's Negotiate option for 2 weeks 4 days, and you fail and trigger a Negotiate skill save talent, then you complete the mission successfully, your clock advances by 2 weeks 4 days, and your Negotiate skill save has only 3 days left in its 3 week cooldown.

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More deeply, you are correct that time matters The global clock ticks remorselessly. Explore here, fly there, do some trading, run a few missions, and it all adds up to months, or even years. I chunk ST:F into mission tours, where 1 tour is a single loop, out-and-back, stacking 4-12 missions along that loop (and none anywhere else). Then 1 good mission tour is 2-3 years, or 4-5 years if you go deep down a dead-end spiral arm and back.