Anyone else find the timeframes of the game weird?

[spacedout]

So the game uses a "sol" as its main time frame which is roughly the same as an earth day and yet you have colonists born,age and die in less than 100 sol. And there is no point to bringing middle age people up on the first batch since they turn into seniors and become useless much to fast. Just find it strange and annoying.

[Bored Peon]

I used to think that and filter out the middle aged.

That is a double edged sword. By not bringing middle aged people a larger % of your of your workers hit senior at once.

[SilasOfBorg]

I brought all youths once, the demographic crash around Sol 80 was breathtaking. :D

[Bored Peon]

Yeah that age crash when so many hit senior really sucks. Simply because all of a sudden you cant keep anything running or people in the right jobs because there is so many vacancies.

[Alaskan Glitch]

Originally posted by spacedout:

So the game uses a "sol" as its main time frame which is roughly the same as an earth day and yet you have colonists born,age and die in less than 100 sol. And there is no point to bringing middle age people up on the first batch since they turn into seniors and become useless much to fast. Just find it strange and annoying.

The average length of a Martian sidereal day is 24 hours, 37 minutes, 22.663 seconds. The average length of a Martian solar day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35.244 seconds. The same corresponding values for Earth are 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.092 seconds for the sidereal day and 24 hours, zero minutes, and 0.002 seconds for the solar day. Which makes the Martian solar day 2.7% longer than Earth's solar day.

The term "sol" on Mars refers to one Martian solar day. If they are being born, aging, and then dieing within 100 Martian solar days they are not even making it one sixth of a Martian year. It takes Mars 668.423 Martian solar days (686.971 Earth solar days) to make one orbit around the sun.

[maiden4meldin]

well darn, thanks for the heads up on the bringing in youths and adults, now I hafta bring in the middle aged as well. pfft.

[Wantoomany]

Its pretty clear that although a real sol equals a single day, here in game it equals a year. Why did the devs decide to make it so confusing? Who knows. Perhaps they thought it made the game feel more sciencey or cool. I personally perfer to think of each sol as representing a single average day out of a full year.

[Blake Walsh]

This is true of nearly any simulation game with a day-night cycle (i.e. The Sims or Cities: Skylines). Let's say you made a day-night 5 minutes long in real time, that means a (earth) year would take 30 hours and it would take around 15 days of play time for a baby to grow up to a 12 year old who can be somewhat ethically used as workforce.

Alternatively, let's say that an in-game (earth) year is 5 minutes, now it takes 1 hour for the baby to grow up which, might be reasonable. However now the day-night cycle is 0.8s seconds, each day is 0.4s and each night 0.4s.

So simulation games, as opposed to hardcore simulators, tend to use "day-years".

In Surviving Mars 1 sol can represent different amounts of time:

• 1 Solar Day (24.5 hours) for the purpose of energy management and life support.
  
• 1 Month for the purpose of rocket travel times, crop growth, most construction and most economic activity.
  
• 1 Year (either Earth or Martian) for the purpose of colonist lifecycle.

Of course it is possible to make hardcore simulators too, that tends to require the use of massive time-acceleration. An example of a game which does is Kerbal Space Program which uses real time, it has 100000x time warp and it's pretty unpleasant to use that level of time warp on a planetary surface because of the days and nights that last fractions of a second.

[Alaskan Glitch]

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

This is true of nearly any simulation game with a day-night cycle (i.e. The Sims or Cities: Skylines). Let's say you made a day-night 5 minutes long in real time, that means a (earth) year would take 30 hours and it would take around 15 days of play time for a baby to grow up to a 12 year old who can be somewhat ethically used as workforce.

Alternatively, let's say that an in-game (earth) year is 5 minutes, now it takes 1 hour for the baby to grow up which, might be reasonable. However now the day-night cycle is 0.8s seconds, each day is 0.4s and each night 0.4s.

So simulation games, as opposed to hardcore simulators, tend to use "day-years".

In Surviving Mars 1 sol can represent different amounts of time:

• 1 Solar Day (24.5 hours) for the purpose of energy management and life support.
  
• 1 Month for the purpose of rocket travel times, crop growth, most construction and most economic activity.
  
• 1 Year (either Earth or Martian) for the purpose of colonist lifecycle.

Of course it is possible to make hardcore simulators too, that tends to require the use of massive time-acceleration. An example of a game which does is Kerbal Space Program which uses real time, it has 100000x time warp and it's pretty unpleasant to use that level of time warp on a planetary surface because of the days and nights that last fractions of a second.

One Martian Solar Day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35.244 seconds. That is "1 sol" in the game. It is further reinforced by displaying not only the Martian time of day, but also a little graphic showing you the position of the sun in the sky. A "sol" in this game does not vary and is always one Martian solar day.

One Martian year is also equivelent to 1.88 Earth years, or 686.971 Earth solar days.

If colonists are dieing within 100 Martian solar days, as the Op suggests, then they cannot be dieing from natural causes. Either that, or the developers really screwed up.

[Blake Walsh]

Originally posted by Alaskan Glitch:

If colonists are dieing within 100 Martian solar days, as the Op suggests, then they cannot be dieing from natural causes. Either that, or the developers really screwed up.

Children get "born" (become mobile independent colonists) in about 1 Sol (in reality about 4 years) and grow up into workers in 5 Sols (in reality 12 years). Also rockets take about 1 Sol to get from Earth (in reality 5-9 months) and 2 hours to land from orbit (in reality, actually about 2 hours), wheat is ready to harvest 2 sols after planting (in reality a few months dependent on variety), fruit 8 sols after planting (in reality 2 years assuming cuttings).


You can conclude that the developers have absolutely no idea about how much time things take and think they actually grew up in 1 week and are generally just completely clueless.
Or that the game features hyper-fast rockets (or a super tiny solar system) and organisms with life cycles measured in weeks rather than years.
Or that 1 Sol in game represents the passage of different amounts of time dependent on context. (you could take the developers at their word[forum.paradoxplaza.com] if you like)

[Alaskan Glitch]

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

Originally posted by Alaskan Glitch:

If colonists are dieing within 100 Martian solar days, as the Op suggests, then they cannot be dieing from natural causes. Either that, or the developers really screwed up.

Children get "born" (become mobile independent colonists) in about 1 Sol (in reality about 4 years) and grow up into workers in 5 Sols (in reality 12 years). Also rockets take about 1 Sol to get from Earth (in reality 5-9 months) and 2 hours to land from orbit (in reality, actually about 2 hours), wheat is ready to harvest 2 sols after planting (in reality a few months dependent on variety), fruit 8 sols after planting (in reality 2 years assuming cuttings).


You can conclude that the developers have absolutely no idea about how much time things take and think they actually grew up in 1 week and are generally just completely clueless.
Or that the game features hyper-fast rockets (or a super tiny solar system) and organisms with life cycles measured in weeks rather than years.
Or that 1 Sol in game represents the passage of different amounts of time dependent on context. (you could take the developers at their word[forum.paradoxplaza.com] if you like)

I can give them a pass on the speed of the rockets. After all, if we had the technology to continuously accelerate at one gravity we could be at Mars in just over 3 Earth days. However, I cannot fault the conclusion you have drawn concerning the developers bizzare sense of time.

The life expectancy on Earth is around 80 Earth years, which would make the life expectancy on Mars (with everything else being equal) around 42 Martian years.

Of course the first clue that the developers were completely clueless with regard to time should have been the fact that you can construct everything in under a Martian solar day (if you have the materials). It should take months just to set up a small Martian colony, before the first colonist even arrives.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

I used to think that and filter out the middle aged.

That is a double edged sword. By not bringing middle aged people a larger % of your of your workers hit senior at once.

I do the same, filter out middle aged, but try to get them to reproduce quickly to have mostly martianborn by sol 100

[Cggamer]

Originally posted by Alaskan Glitch:

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

Children get "born" (become mobile independent colonists) in about 1 Sol (in reality about 4 years) and grow up into workers in 5 Sols (in reality 12 years). Also rockets take about 1 Sol to get from Earth (in reality 5-9 months) and 2 hours to land from orbit (in reality, actually about 2 hours), wheat is ready to harvest 2 sols after planting (in reality a few months dependent on variety), fruit 8 sols after planting (in reality 2 years assuming cuttings).


You can conclude that the developers have absolutely no idea about how much time things take and think they actually grew up in 1 week and are generally just completely clueless.
Or that the game features hyper-fast rockets (or a super tiny solar system) and organisms with life cycles measured in weeks rather than years.
Or that 1 Sol in game represents the passage of different amounts of time dependent on context. (you could take the developers at their word[forum.paradoxplaza.com] if you like)

I can give them a pass on the speed of the rockets. After all, if we had the technology to continuously accelerate at one gravity we could be at Mars in just over 3 Earth days. However, I cannot fault the conclusion you have drawn concerning the developers bizzare sense of time.

The life expectancy on Earth is around 80 Earth years, which would make the life expectancy on Mars (with everything else being equal) around 42 Martian years.

Of course the first clue that the developers were completely clueless with regard to time should have been the fact that you can construct everything in under a Martian solar day (if you have the materials). It should take months just to set up a small Martian colony, before the first colonist even arrives.

I find your arguement shallow and pedantic.

Yes....shallow and pedantic.