What is a Sol?

[Dralth]

I don't understand what a Sol is in terms of time.. an would like to know if anyone can tell me exactly what it is in terms of time.. what is it like, a week, a month, a day or two? Please help if able to, anybody.. thank you in advance.

[kaki_gamet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_(day_on_Mars)
But in-game it is like one year on Earth.

[Dralth]

Originally posted by kaki_gamet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_(day_on_Mars)
But in-game it is like one year on Earth.

Thank you kaki_gamet, for the link that answered my question.

[kaki_gamet]

You welcome : )

[Greenbell]

Originally posted by kaki_gamet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_(day_on_Mars)
But in-game it is like one year on Earth.

The in-game time is crazy. Are we even sure out colonists are humans, they grow up so fast.

[Dralth]

Originally posted by Greenbell7:

Originally posted by kaki_gamet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_(day_on_Mars)
But in-game it is like one year on Earth.

The in-game time is crazy. Are we even sure out colonists are humans, they grow up so fast.

To be able to make it enjoyable, is why I personally think that the babies grow up so fast.. either that, or look at it as bio-engineered humans.. which can grow up 2 to 3 times faster than normal humans can.

Also, the game has never said exactly at what time period you're in Mars.. it could be sometime in the future BEFORE humanity has been able to colonize the other planets yet.. not exactly "Star Trek period" but, somewhere in-between now and then.

[Greenbell]

Originally posted by Dralth:

Originally posted by Greenbell7:

The in-game time is crazy. Are we even sure out colonists are humans, they grow up so fast.

To be able to make it enjoyable, is why I personally think that the babies grow up so fast.. either that, or look at it as bio-engineered humans.. which can grow up 2 to 3 times faster than normal humans can.

Also, the game has never said exactly at what time period you're in Mars.. it could be sometime in the future BEFORE humanity has been able to colonize the other planets yet.. not exactly "Star Trek period" but, somewhere in-between now and then.

Bio-engineered humans is an interesting theory, but I guess the first one is the real answer (I don't want to wait for the humans to grow up realisticly). It is fun to think about these things sometimes, however.

[Dralth]

Originally posted by Greenbell7:

Originally posted by Dralth:

To be able to make it enjoyable, is why I personally think that the babies grow up so fast.. either that, or look at it as bio-engineered humans.. which can grow up 2 to 3 times faster than normal humans can.

Also, the game has never said exactly at what time period you're in Mars.. it could be sometime in the future BEFORE humanity has been able to colonize the other planets yet.. not exactly "Star Trek period" but, somewhere in-between now and then.

Bio-engineered humans is an interesting theory, but I guess the first one is the real answer (I don't want to wait for the humans to grow up realisticly). It is fun to think about these things sometimes, however.

Either they are bio-engineered, or they must have gotten into the the insta-grow plant food to be able to grow as fast as they do lol.

[Greenbell]

Originally posted by Dralth:

Originally posted by Greenbell7:

Bio-engineered humans is an interesting theory, but I guess the first one is the real answer (I don't want to wait for the humans to grow up realisticly). It is fun to think about these things sometimes, however.

Either they are bio-engineered, or they must have gotten into the the insta-grow plant food to be able to grow as fast as they do lol.

Well the game didn't say anything about bio-engineering, so, I'm going to go with the second one. Super food would also explain why they don't suffer any ill effects from the reduced gravity on mars.

[Dralth]

Actually, a mix of bio-engineering and super food would make them more capable of withstanding alot of stress that normal folk wouldn't be able to take without breaking down.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

I think for this it might help to remember that if a Sol is a Martian day and also represents a full year ingame, it likely represents a Martian year rather than an Earth year. This is a big deal because a Martian year is 687 Earth days, which is about 1.88 times longer than an Earth year. This makes some parts of the math more believable (for instance, "Youth" goes from a 6-10 year old to a 11-19 year old) while making others wildly unbelievable (namely a retirement age of about 113 years without Stem Reconstruction). When you factor this into the equation, you get this for the approximate age ranges after converting "Sols" from Martian years to Human years:
Child: 0-5 Sols = 0-9.4 Years
Youth: 6-10 Sols = 11.28-18.8 Years
Adult: 11-30 Sols = 20.68-56.4 Years
Middle Aged, no Stem Reconstruction: 31-60 Sols = 58.28-112.8 Years
Middle Aged, Stem Reconstruction: 31-80 Sols = 58.28-150.4 Years
Senior, no Stem Reconstruction: 61+ Sols = 114.68+ Years
Senior, Stem Reconstruction: 81+ Sols = 152.28+ Years
This means that if a Sol is an Earth year, people grow and mature far faster than on Earth (and if you fill a rocket with youths, you're basically sending kids that are still learning math and grammar to colonize Mars) while a Sol being a Martian year implies people live for well over a century before being too old to work. I think it'd be best to assume that the length of a Sol for colonist age is an abstraction. When they're younger, a Sol is the equivalent of 2-3 years (which would put a Youth as a teenager), but past Adult age it gets compressed so one Sol is about half a year or less.

[Alex]

Don't even try to find any sense in this "sol" unit, it's purely for game balance purposes. There are numerous examples of such simplifications in the game. I mean, how could the colonists survive on nothing but corn and apples, for example? Or that "generic" metals can be used "raw", without any ore-processing facilities?

But if you want to establish some sort of a head-canon, then simply assume that the children become "visible" when they reach their school age, maybe around 8 years old. Before that, they would live with their parents. This would bring the sol length to roughly a year for the sake of calculating their age.

[Ericus1]

Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:

I think for this it might help to remember that if a Sol is a Martian day and also represents a full year ingame, it likely represents a Martian year rather than an Earth year. This is a big deal because a Martian year is 687 Earth days, which is about 1.88 times longer than an Earth year. This makes some parts of the math more believable (for instance, "Youth" goes from a 6-10 year old to a 11-19 year old) while making others wildly unbelievable (namely a retirement age of about 113 years without Stem Reconstruction). When you factor this into the equation, you get this for the approximate age ranges after converting "Sols" from Martian years to Human years:
Child: 0-5 Sols = 0-9.4 Years
Youth: 6-10 Sols = 11.28-18.8 Years
Adult: 11-30 Sols = 20.68-56.4 Years
Middle Aged, no Stem Reconstruction: 31-60 Sols = 58.28-112.8 Years
Middle Aged, Stem Reconstruction: 31-80 Sols = 58.28-150.4 Years
Senior, no Stem Reconstruction: 61+ Sols = 114.68+ Years
Senior, Stem Reconstruction: 81+ Sols = 152.28+ Years
This means that if a Sol is an Earth year, people grow and mature far faster than on Earth (and if you fill a rocket with youths, you're basically sending kids that are still learning math and grammar to colonize Mars) while a Sol being a Martian year implies people live for well over a century before being too old to work. I think it'd be best to assume that the length of a Sol for colonist age is an abstraction. When they're younger, a Sol is the equivalent of 2-3 years (which would put a Youth as a teenager), but past Adult age it gets compressed so one Sol is about half a year or less.

It's not that unrealistic to have life expectancies in that range, give the game is set several decades from now, or possible next century. Medical science advancements are heading that direction.

[Steelairship]

A time abstraction constructed for gameplay purposes (such as maintenance cycles, aging, calculating statistics, etc) named after the unit of time for the Martian year and functioning similarly to a day since it is tied to the in-game day-night cycle and work shifts.

[Dralth]

Holy cow.. I never thought my question would draw in so much attention, but I am glad that it did. I'm just attempting to see how best to see what a Sol is in terms I myself can fully understand.. because at times I've found myself having to wait something like 3 Sols, 26 hours for a dust storm to pass, before ships can leave or even land.. ships that sometimes are in orbit, with humans aboard while the dust storm rages down below.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

All you need to know for most gameplay problems is that a Sol is very much an abstraction: for work cycles, drone activities, and rover missions, a Sol is a day. For crop growth it's about a month. For colonists aging, rocket travel, and birth rates it's about a year. Ingame a Sol is, I think, about 25-26 "hours" long, though.