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Date convention


Anonymous

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For feedback and/or community/NQ endorsement.

 

Proposed terms:

 

BCE - Before (the) Collision Era

CE - (Post) Collision Era

AE - Alioth Era

 

 

Key Dates:

 

0 CE |  (-9854 AE ) -  August 8th, 2538 - The Final Collision - Earth is destroyed

 

(0 CE - 9,854 CE) - "The Long Second" - The Arkship is in transit for 9,854 years (310,968,590,400 seconds) before it enters the system containing Alioth.

 

9854 CE | 0 AE - "Year 0" - Landing on Alioth - Game "Launch" (could be Beta if that's when "Alpha Teams" enter play.) In real life terms, the year 12,392 A.D. Dates after this point will progress as a measure of seconds (Unix style) since the server goes "live".

 

Why?

  • The Gregorian calendar is based on the Earth's rotation around the sun - .
  • The sun no longer exists, making the Gregorian calendar essentially irrelevant at best, and stupidly complicated to implement on a new world at worst.
  • Astronomy (and logically by extension, the astronautical industry) uses the Julian calendar.

  • In astronomy, the Julian year is a unit of time; it is defined as 365.25 days of exactly 86400 seconds (SI base unit), totaling exactly 31557600 seconds in the Julian astronomical year.



  • As a game mechanic - using a static Julian system is a nice way to deal with the idea that Alioth may or may not rotate at game launch. It then becomes a universal reference standard, with any given planet's rotation (if rotation is implemented) being able to, depending on how the game implements objects in space, be measured in seconds and turned into a local Julian (i.e. fixed length) calendar.


Feedback welcome.

 

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I love the idea of a custom date system. This or another. Date tracking. Date stamping, would be fantastic.

 

Ship constructed on date #####.

Would game time transit with real time. Our for example 1 year game = 2 months real.

 

Really nice idea worthy of some discussion.

 

Zorodek

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Good idea :)

 

I may add that even distances will be a bit more difficult - only rp wise ofc.

There's lightyear, but that's no 'sophisticated' form of distance. Better to use parsecs here, but that is based on Earths distance from the Sun. It is a flat number (3,26lj), but would be a bit odd to use it on Alioth.

 

Julian calendar is clearly the best method here to use. Will be interesting what rotation time they implement, compared to earth (40k on equator => 1670km/h rotation speed)

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Good idea :)

 

I may add that even distances will be a bit more difficult - only rp wise ofc.

There's lightyear, but that's no 'sophisticated' form of distance. Better to use parsecs here, but that is based on Earths distance from the Sun. It is a flat number (3,26lj)

 

How about Astronomical Units?

Its also earth based but I dont see why we would throw out all of our measurement units.

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AU is also based on Earths distance to sun.

 

As said, its entirely feasible and good to use those units (parsec and AU), but only from the rp side it's...kind of meh

Yea I know.

And it might indeed be a bit lame for RP I didnt look at it that way. Though for me it would make sense to use them. We would also still use meters, kilograms and such.

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(Actually, almost all the SI base units would change. (Don't get me started :P )

 

Anything that actually uses the sun as a reference point (AU, parsecs, light year) are all derived values that are irrelevant to a degree once Sol is destroyed. FWIW - The simplest would be to use light year, based on a Julian Year measured in seconds.

 

Falstaf - yes - there is no reason we would take replicas of; or indeed, the actual, SI kilogram. The only weirdness this would result in is that an Alioth kilogram would be different to an Earth kilogram, as mass, due to gravity not being exactly that of Earth's (however close), would change. For all intents and purposes however, it would only matter when converting, and that would be easy enough once we know the gravity delta.)

 

This date idea however is one that we can implement without too much thought - the SI second will not change in nature and the year length isn't important at this time - just an agreement on the reference start date and a basic convention for referring to dates pre-Collision as humans on Alioth referring to events which really, "now" have almost no meaning, and to the dates of our own history which we will create.

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Well in fact even seconds change....

So no SI unit would remain - rp wise.

 

But for the matter of staying sane, I think a simple julien calendar and every other SI unit will be used. It will haunt American players though :P

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I was just reminded of star trek, I still don't know how stardate actually works.

 

I like the before and after collision idea. For time coordination something simple that can be translated to real-life time would be nice.

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Would game time transit with real time. Our for example 1 year game = 2 months real.

 

I don't think so - otherwise you need to start thinking about aging characters - if the game ran 10 years (which it could), any 18 year old character would be 78...

 

Julian calendar is clearly the best method here to use. Will be interesting what rotation time they implement, compared to earth (40k on equator => 1670km/h rotation speed)

 

True - that will really determine (staying on topic) the logical number of "hours" in a day once we know that measurement.

 

I didn't quiet got it. How do you exactly want to implement New time measurment?

(Sorry if its Bad english im german)

 

It's better English than a lot of native speakers on the forums ;) (Only correction I'd make - it is "get it" - not paste tense in this particular case as "get" is a synonym of "understand" - (you can test this by substitution - "I didn't quite understood (got) it" makes no sense, so we leave it as "understand (get) it". But I digress.

 

In terms of Role Play - implementation is by consensus - we use these dates in our background stories etc.

 

For visual display in game, on the forums etc - we do a simple transform using seconds.

 

All modern computing / digital systems generally use seconds, converting to different time/calendar formats (for instance, the Gregorian calendar we use, or US date format, or Japanese Imperial Calendar format, Stardates etc) as required. It's actually quite simple to customise or use these same bits of code/common functions in a range of programming languages, or write your own, to format the seconds into a date / time pattern that you like.

 

Well in fact even seconds change....

 

As an SI second is "the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 (9.192631770 x 109 ) cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium 133 atom" , and these rate of these cycles are unaffected by gravity, Earth, the Sun etc - the second is a non-derived unit measured relative to something that is unaffected by the presence of the Solar System or indeed, gravity or pyhsics on Alioth. So SI seconds are unaffected.

 

I was just reminded of star trek, I still don't know how stardate actually works.

Stardates are completely made up to suit each TV show in the franchise. There is no "standard" or consistency - it's a pure TV convention with each show in the franchise having it's own "Stardate creation rules". The MMO probably follows the rules for one of the shows.

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Which would also change....at least kilograms :)

 

Almost forgot - the prototype kilograms mass would not change, but it would not weigh "1.0 kg" by our instruments on Alioth.

 

(We really should move this part of the discussion to a different thread, but the immediately obvious solution (in-game) would be to ensure consistency between the master measures (by making sure they all measure the mass of the prototype Earth kilogram exactly the same) and then make, probably also from an iridium alloy, a new Alioth prototype that equals "1.0 kg" when measured.

 

If the measured mass of the kilo is greater than 1.0kg on Alioth, we get our handy dandy AI and Arkship tech to shave the prototype down to size.)

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The real question is... does it really matter?

 

but why would we change hours and gramms.

It doesnt matter at all, its just for RP purposes.

 

And we would still use hours and units. I think people would just like to know what the conversion rate is.

 

Thats how I understand this thread.

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Almost forgot - the prototype kilograms mass would not change, but it would not weigh "1.0 kg" by our instruments on Alioth.

 

(We really should move this part of the discussion to a different thread, but the immediately obvious solution (in-game) would be to ensure consistency between the master measures (by making sure they all measure the mass of the prototype Earth kilogram exactly the same) and then make, probably also from an iridium alloy, a new Alioth prototype that equals "1.0 kg" when measured.

 

If the measured mass of the kilo is greater than 1.0kg on Alioth, we get our handy dandy AI and Arkship tech to shave the prototype down to size.)

That's because we don't actually have any instruments capable of measuring mass directly. We have instruments capable of measuring force, and of measuring acceleration. So the prototype would still mass 1kg, it just wouldn't exert a force of 9.81N on Alioth.

 

This means that shaving the prototype down and redefining the kilogram would cause utter havoc all across the board in derived values. If you redefined the kilogram, then the Newton would no longer be the force required to accelerate 1kg by 1ms-2.

 

Redefining SI units is... not a good idea.

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I was just reminded of star trek, I still don't know how stardate actually works.

Stardates were nonsense numbers that constantly jumped around, just like warp speeds before TNG (where warp 10 was defined as infinite speed, which also messed with time and thus people's evolution, and was the subject of a Voyager episode). In the alternate movie timeline, it's Earth dates. 2135.32 is the year 2135, February 1 (the 32nd day of the year). I don't remember how/if it accommodates leap years.

 

I don't understand everyone saying that SI units would change. Six of the seven are currently based on universally demonstrable processes. The oscillations of a caesium atom (the definition of a second) doesn't change just because we spent 9000 years in cryosleep. The only unit currently dependent upon some prototype is the kilogram, and that will be redefined next year to a universal constant.

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That's because we don't actually have any instruments capable of measuring mass directly. We have instruments capable of measuring force, and of measuring acceleration. So the prototype would still mass 1kg, it just wouldn't exert a force of 9.81N on Alioth.

 

This means that shaving the prototype down and redefining the kilogram would cause utter havoc all across the board in derived values. If you redefined the kilogram, then the Newton would no longer be the force required to accelerate 1kg by 1ms-2.

 

Redefining SI units is... not a good idea.

No, but an interesting thing to discuss when considering a "world" where our reference frame is gone, many of our secondary units are derived or use an Earth based reference, and it's many months till we actually play anything. (And while people insist on going off topic from the "agree on a date format" proposal ;). Oddly couldn't get people interested in this side of things when I posted on SI units more generally. Go figure :P )

 

(I actually don't think Newtons are an issue. The kilogram is essentially an arbitary amount of mass, so a Newton can still be the force required to accelerate the agreed "thing" to 1ms-2. Not saying that it would not be messy or complicated mind you...)

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I don't understand everyone saying that SI units would change. Six of the seven are currently based on universally demonstrable processes. The oscillations of a caesium atom (the definition of a second) doesn't change just because we spent 9000 years in cryosleep. The only unit currently dependent upon some prototype is the kilogram, and that will be redefined next year to a universal constant.

Well, if we are again on the matter of SI Base Units more generally, the real thing I've avoided suggesting because I haven't really wanted to come across as arrogant/unilateral - (community and all that, and there may be a professional metrologist amongst us) is that there is currently such a proposal before the CIPM for decision possibly in 2018, maybe later. Thoughts around us preemptively adopting that proposal?

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No, but an interesting thing to discuss when considering a "world" where our reference frame is gone, many of our secondary units are derived or use an Earth based reference, and it's many months till we actually play anything. (And while people insist on going off topic from the "agree on a date format" proposal ;). Oddly couldn't get people interested in this side of things when I posted on SI units more generally. Go figure :P )

 

(I actually don't think Newtons are an issue. The kilogram is essentially an arbitary amount of mass, so a Newton can still be the force required to accelerate the agreed "thing" to 1ms-2. Not saying that it would not be messy or complicated mind you...)

All the SI units are essentially arbitrary. The thing is, though, they're arbitrary in such a way that they all interact nicely. One Newton is the force needed to accelerate one kilogram by 1ms-2. One Joule is the energy required to exert a force of one Newton on an object over the space of one metre, and is also the energy dissipated as heat when a current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second. One Pascal is the pressure generated by a force of one Newton exerted over an area of one square metre.

 

If you mess with any of the base values, you mess with every single one of the derived values that interacts with that thing in any way. And as they're all interconnected, you essentially end up having to redefine everything.

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What about a "Centralised Alioth System"

So the Time for everybody is the Time based on the SI measurment of a Second wich is: Time that light needs to Pass one Meter in a vacuum. But how do we get a Meter? (Metre?) We can edit the Planet so We choose the Square Edit and either the middle of the Squares are one Meter or we have to choose by sight. The only thing i dont know is how to measure the New SI Alioth Second.. but that might be an idea.

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What about a "Centralised Alioth System"

So the Time for everybody is the Time based on the SI measurment of a Second wich is: Time that light needs to Pass one Meter in a vacuum. But how do we get a Meter? (Metre?) We can edit the Planet so We choose the Square Edit and either the middle of the Squares are one Meter or we have to choose by sight. The only thing i dont know is how to measure the New SI Alioth Second.. but that might be an idea.

The metre is based on the speed of light and the second, which is defined by the oscillations of a certain kind of caesium atom. Neither of these things will change because the new centre of civilisation is Alioth. Other things will change (the length of a day, perhaps how it's divided up, the forces needed to escape the atmosphere, etc) but the base SI units are designed not to.

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