Need information about shard's ticks please

[MoonCrystal]

Hi there,

I would like to try this awesome game but I need to choose a Shard. I see that each shard has its own ticks. How have I to understand this ? I have already read the doc about the shard system but it stays in some way "dark" for me.

Does it means that Shard2 and Shard3 have a quickly "loop" than the other ? The first shard has 5 s a tick and other an average of 3 s a tick that means that the last have a quicker loop than the other, so the game run more quickly ?

Does this "tick" system increments the difficulty of the game ? The more quicker it is, the more difficult it is too ?

Thank you in advance and please apologize for my english ;)

[Kalle]

Hey MoonCrystal,

the main difference between the shards is that shard 3 is limited to 20 CPU. So in the shards without limitation can be very big and powerful colonies.

The tick duration depends on the players codes and the number of players in a shard. So it is no fixed setting. It just "happens". This also means the tick duration can change over time. E.g. I'm in shard3 and normally it is around 3-4s/tick but right now at > 11s/tick.

[MoonCrystal]

Ok thank you, so why in the description on a Shard we have a tick duration if this value always changes ? (this is a question I try to understand the concept behind this "tick duration").

[artch]

Although tick rate can fluctuate a bit, we try to keep it in some fixed window:
* 4.5-5.5s for shard0
* 3.5-4s for shard1, shard2
* 2.5-3s for shard3

[MoonCrystal]

Thank you, I suppose to begin shard3 should the one I should choose ?