Hi - just bought Eclipse Phase recently and so far am loving it.
Quick question I hope someone on here can answer:
How do people keep time in the Eclipse Phase universe? Does every world have its own system? Is Earth time still used as a 'standard unit' for hours, minutes and seconds?
Thanks!
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
Timekeeping
Mon, 2012-04-30 09:22
#1
Timekeeping
Mon, 2012-04-30 09:48
#2
Re: Timekeeping
It varies depending on the world and habitat.
Yes. Some have their own natural length that works, eg Mars days are 'close enough' in duration to Earth that they use the Martian day, whereas others need to artificially determine and regulate, eg on Venus the natural day is so long that aerostats can decide on any length cycle they choose. Same goes for deep space habs.
I haven't seen anything in the books that suggests otherwise, but as always it depends on the hab (and GM). Some more anarchic habs may have decided to adopt decimal time, or something, if they wanted. Presumably muses can rather simply convert units as required when dealing between different systems.
Mon, 2012-04-30 10:26
#3
Re: Timekeeping
I don't think there's any canonical mention of it, but here's how I see it:
Years, hours, minutes, seconds, the old standards from Earth are used.
Days vary a bit, but almost always something close to an Earth day, and the local "daylight" settings and work schedules will match the day length used.
On Mars they use Mars days (37 minutes longer than an Earth day), as do most habs in orbit around Mars.
As far as I know, there are no other places where local conditions warrant a local day - Mercury, Venus and Luna have too long days, further out sunlight is too faint it, and mostly people are not living on the surface of something where the direction to the sun matters anyway, so the majority will have to pick something.
Where they have free choice, some places have stuck to Earth days, others use Mars days (encouraged by the Planetary Consortium this is spreading). A few places use some multiple or integer fraction of a local system feature, or maybe a pet theory about optimal sleep cycles, but mostly it is Earth or Mars days.
Mon, 2012-04-30 14:57
#4
Re: Timekeeping
We cheat.
We acknowledge, that the habitats we use and live in may not adopt something akin to an "Standard Earth Day" Model.
But we, as players and in character still use SEDs and assume that our characters use the appropriate units of time according to what would make sense for them or what their Muse translates for them.
Mon, 2012-04-30 17:44
#5
Re: Timekeeping
Most habitats have a revolution so slow (if at all, if the concept even applies), that the idea of hosting a local version of a 'day' (and thusly, hours, minutes and seconds) have no useful meaning. The only real exception would be Mars. Combine that with the fact that everyone does come from the common cultural basis of Earth, it's pretty much expected that everyone standardizes on Earth as GMT. If your local habitat has a different day-length, your muse will happily swap back and forth between local time and Earth-standard as appropriate, without lag. As a GM, feel free to stick to Earth time unless it's convenient to do otherwise.
Mon, 2012-04-30 18:05
#6
Re: Timekeeping
Timekeeping normally doesn't cause any problem because the muse helpfully fixes things. But if anything confuses it weird things can happen (this is a bit on my mind, since this week I am jumping between three timezones in a very irregular way), like actually missing appointments. Many secure protocols rely on exact timestamps for validity checking. And for spacecraft high precision timekeeping is absolutely essential to calculate when and where they are - a tiny error and they will miss their target badly (KingShere once ran a memorable game where the big disaster turned out to be a faulty spacecraft clock).
Most likely the Argonauts and others run timekeeping coordination systems like the Network Time Protocol, Barycentric Coordinate Time and International Atomic Time: central high quality sources of timekeeping, and distribution systems for them. Lots of cross-checking and precision measurements. But should somebody manage to mess with part of the system they can cause plenty of subtle trouble.
—

Fri, 2012-05-04 04:49
#7
Re: Timekeeping
Hi,
Thanks for all the excellent replies to my question about timekeeping - all are very helpful. I like the idea of 'local time' coupled with some form of standard time, based on GMT probably as suggested (as a familiar reference for me and the players, not just for in-game). Solar System Time perhaps.
Thanks again for helping me with this. I'm loving Eclipse Phase so far and have had to order Sunward and Gatecrashing, not just for the content but also because the quality of the books is so high and being a designer I'm a big fan of nicely designed print books. :-)
:-)