Clocks units and calendar display

Section titled “Clocks units and calendar display”

This page explains how the game advances simulation time, orders its movement, combat and strategic work, and refreshes the state those systems use. A selected time button is a request. Shortening, subpulse rounding and event interrupts decide the time that is actually processed. State refresh is spread across those phases and the windows that start them. No single step recalculates everything at once.

Movement and logistics owns movement and transfer formulas. Space combat resolution owns attack resolution. Ship readiness and recovery owns repair, maintenance and morale. Production mechanics owns manufacture and resource accounting. Colony and population lifecycle, ground combat and conquest and research and scientific personnel explain the local mechanics started from here. This page connects their timing and does not repeat their equations.

The game clock is a decimal count of simulation seconds. An increment is one run of the time advance that a time button starts, after any shortening. With automated turns on, one button press runs several increments in a row. A subpulse is one simulation step inside an increment. Each subpulse adds a whole number of seconds, the subpulse length, to the clock, and the increment also keeps a whole-second count of elapsed time. Each increment records its start time (GameTime in FCT_Increments) before time advances, and its Length ends up holding the seconds actually elapsed. An event instead records the game time at the moment it is logged. An event can therefore carry a later time than the start of its own increment.

Quantity Value Meaning
Year 31,536,000 seconds Fixed 365-day denominator for annual rates and ages.
Month 2,592,000 seconds Fixed 30-day denominator.
Three months and six months 7,776,000 and 15,552,000 seconds Fixed 90 and 180 days.
Five days 432,000 seconds Fixed interval used by local mechanics.
Strategic elapsed Current game time minus the last construction cycle time (LastGrowthTime) Time accumulated since the previous construction cycle.
Ground elapsed Current game time minus the last ground combat time (LastGroundCombatTime) A separate ground combat clock.

Both elapsed clocks are recomputed after the subpulses of every increment. A month is not one twelfth of the fixed year. The construction cycle converts its elapsed time to years once, as strategic elapsed seconds divided by 31,536,000. The division is done as an exact decimal, the result is held as a floating-point number, and it is converted back to an exact decimal for the steps that need one.

The displayed date is 1 January of the start year plus the game clock in seconds, on the Gregorian calendar. It uses the long date format, or the full date and time format, of the player’s Windows regional settings. A clock above 1,000 fixed years (31,536,000,000 seconds) is capped at that value for display. When the date conversion fails, the display falls back to 1 January of the start year. A date-only display hides the time of day. It does not round the stored clock to midnight. The current game year used for names and ages is the clock divided by 31,536,000, rounded down, plus the start year. Fixed-year boundaries for names and ages therefore need not match the displayed Gregorian New Year once leap days accumulate. This is display conversion and arithmetic, not a real-time scheduler.

Selected and actual increments

Section titled “Selected and actual increments”

The time increment buttons on the tactical map stand for 5, 30, 120, 300, 1200, 3600, 10800, 28800, 86400, 432000 and 2592000 seconds (5 Seconds to 30 Days). Clicking one stores its length in seconds as the selected increment length and highlights it. Each new increment copies that selection and receives a new increment ID. Later shortening does not overwrite the selected length. Automatic subpulse selection runs when the selected subpulse is the “Select Sub-Pulse Length (Auto)” button (value 0). It also runs when the increment length divided by the selected subpulse, rounded down, is above 500. Otherwise the subpulse length already in use is kept, then reduced to the increment length when it is longer. The subpulse buttons set the selected subpulse and the button colours. They do not set the subpulse length in use. The selection and the subpulse in use are separate values, so the highlighted subpulse button does not show the effective subpulse.

Automatic adjustment picks the subpulse from the table below. It then replaces the increment length with the largest whole multiple of the subpulse that fits, the length divided by the subpulse, rounded down, times the subpulse. Each bound is a strict upper limit.

Increment length in seconds Subpulse seconds
Below 61 5
61 to 200 10
201 to 400 20
401 to 1200 60
1201 to 3600 120
3601 to 10800 360
10801 to 28800 900
28801 to 86400 1800
86401 to 432000 7200
432001 or more 21600

For example, auto-adjusting 61 seconds produces six 10-second subpulses and a 60-second increment. The subpulse cycle does not trim its last subpulse to the unprocessed remainder. It runs while elapsed time is below the increment length and adds one whole subpulse each time. Auto-rounded increments normally align. The cycle itself does not prevent overshoot for other combinations of increment length and subpulse length.

When the game option One Second Sub Pulse (OneSecondSubPulse) on the Game Information window is set to 1 and the shortening steps have reached a five-second increment, the subpulse length becomes 1. The increment stays five seconds long. This gives five movement and sensor iterations, not five separate end-of-increment weapon, repair, ground or strategic phases. The check comes before the hostile encounter adjustment and is not repeated after it.

Shortening before simulation

Section titled “Shortening before simulation”

The following checks run in order. Several of these checks shorten the increment, and most of those then choose a subpulse for the shortened length.

  1. Give every fleet without a parent naval command its race’s top-level command, then refresh the systems within range of every naval command.
  2. This step does not itself run the automatic subpulse adjustment.
  3. When the length is still above 5, estimate when ships can open fire. A positive result shorter than the length replaces it, runs the automatic adjustment and logs an Increment Adjustment event to the player race with the lowest race ID: “Increment length adjusted due to imminent action. This could be due to action involving a non-player race, or due to fire controls set to open fire without active targets”.
  4. When the length is still above 5, find the distinct ships that carry boarded ground formations of another race. Compute 60 minus the largest boarding combat clock (BoardingCombatClock) among those ships, raise a result below 5 to 5, and shorten and auto-adjust when it is smaller than the length.
  5. When the length is still above 120, ask missile resolution for its next resolution time, as a prediction only, using the current length and the current game time. A positive shorter result shortens and auto-adjusts.
  6. Raise a length below 5 to 5. Apply One Second Sub Pulse as described above.
  7. Run strategic AI for each NPR , passing the current length and not forcing a strategic update. This is part of NPR AI processing, which is always on and which no window or option turns off.
  8. For a length of 3600 or more, apply the hostile encounter calculation and the repeat guard below.

The open-fire estimate considers ships that are not docked in a hangar, have a fire delay (FireDelay) of 0 and have enabled fire control assignments other than point defence. It then takes the open-fire assignments, their linked weapons and only targets within the fire control’s nonzero maximum effective range. A weapon with no recharge pending returns 5 at once, except on a ship in a standard-missile group (below). A Gauss cannon also returns 5. A missile launcher with 5 seconds or less of recharge left returns 5, unless its ship is in a standard-missile group (below). Otherwise its remaining recharge, rounded down to whole seconds, is a candidate. Other energy weapons use remaining recharge divided by the lesser of the component recharge rate (RechargeRate) and the ship’s undamaged power generation, times 5. A result of 5 or less returns 5, otherwise the result rounded down is a candidate. A ship with no power generation is skipped for that weapon. Ships of NPRs whose automated designs use standard missiles are grouped by system and position. Such a ship is left out of the estimate entirely unless it carries at least one non-decoy missile and at least as many non-decoy missiles as it has launchers above size 3. Each group takes the longest remaining launcher recharge among its members. A launcher with no recharge pending sets a group that has no value yet to 5. The shortest group value, when positive, is a candidate. The shortest candidate wins. This is a readiness estimate, not a rule that combat always uses five seconds.

The missile prediction sorts salvos into decoys, anti-missile salvos and strike salvos and refreshes which salvo systems need sensor checks before it examines them. With no salvos it returns 0. For an ordinary moving salvo with a usable target position that it can reach within the time window (speed times window at least equal to the distance), the candidate is distance divided by (speed times window), times window. The earliest candidate is returned rounded down to whole seconds. Only a result above 0 shortens the increment, so a prediction rounded down to zero is not applied by this step. Detailed target, staging and interception behaviour is in space combat resolution.

Hostile encounter guard

Section titled “Hostile encounter guard”

The encounter estimate selects fleets that have any follow order on a contact with a minimum distance below 5,000,000 km, or any order with a jump point or waypoint destination. NPR scout fleets are removed. It then looks only at the first current order of each fleet. A follow order needs a hostile ship contact in the same system, and the encounter position is that contact’s projected position. A waypoint or jump point order needs a hostile fleet of another race exactly at the waypoint or jump point coordinates. An encounter position of (0,0) is discarded. From the distance D to the encounter, subtract the lesser of 0.2 x D and 500,000 km. A remainder below 1 km becomes zero. When fleet speed times the increment length reaches that remainder, the candidate is the remainder divided by fleet speed, rounded down to whole seconds. The smallest candidate is returned, raised to at least 5. With no fleets left after the order and scout filters the result is 0. If fleets remain but no encounter shortens the increment, the result is the current increment length.

When a shorter positive candidate exists, the game normally applies it and auto-adjusts. When the repeat count from earlier increments is above 4, it instead keeps this increment’s length, stores that length as the last encounter value and resets the count to 1. Otherwise a candidate equal to the last value increases the count by one, and a changed candidate becomes the last value and resets the count to 1. A result that does not shorten also stores the current length and a count of 1. This guard limits repeated encounter shortening. It is not an event interrupt.

Increment preparation and subpulse timeline

Section titled “Increment preparation and subpulse timeline”

After shortening, conditional orders are evaluated once. Fleets with move orders are marked as not yet moved for the subpulse, and fleets without them as already moved. Every fleet records its starting coordinates and clears its joined target fleet and landing host fleet. Salvos, contacts and mass-driver packets record their coordinates at the start of the increment, and salvos clear their resolved marker. Ships reset their combat tracking. Each race stores the fire control speed rating of its most advanced researched fire control speed technology, the AdditionalInfo value of that FCT_TechSystem row as a whole number, or 1000 when it has none. Ground formations first store their own recalculated sizes as whole numbers, then their total hierarchy sizes in a second pass. Commanders of ground formations store their command capacity modifiers. Environmental contacts are cleared and the pending increment interrupt is reset immediately before the first subpulse.

Each subpulse runs in this exact order.

Order Action
1 Save the subpulse start time. Advance the game clock and the elapsed count by the full subpulse.
2 Movement, logistics and combat for the subpulse, given the subpulse start time and the increment length.
3 Refresh which systems need sensor checks, across all systems.
4 Resolve sensor checks in all systems, using the subpulse start time as the earlier contact time.
5 Count down ship fire and sensor delays by the subpulse length.
6 A negative cooldown becomes zero.

Each step sees the game clock at the end of the subpulse and, where it needs one, the saved start time. An event logged during movement generally carries the already advanced time. The subpulse cycle does not integrate event time continuously.

Inside the movement step the order is as follows.

  1. Fuel use for fleet training.
  2. Refuelling by eligible tanker fleets without move orders.
  3. Refuelling of parasites in fleets without move orders.
  4. Maintenance supply resupply of parasites in fleets without move orders.
  5. Maintenance supply resupply by supply ship fleets without move orders.
  6. Ordnance transfers by collier fleets without move orders.
  7. Parasite ordnance transfers.
  8. Clear the attack records.
  9. Fleet move orders.
  10. Anchored fleet movement.
  11. Missile movement and resolution.
  12. When attack records exist, intelligence on alien beam weapons and energy point defence, then attack aftermath.
  13. Clear the fleet movement markers.
  14. Raise every ship overhaul factor (OverhaulFactor) below 1 by the subpulse length divided by 2,592,000, capped at 1.
  15. Clear the salvo moved markers.
  16. Move mass-driver packets.
  17. Move shipyards under tow to the coordinates of the ship towing them.

The sensor pass of the subpulse follows all of this.

Fire and sensor delays count down only for ships whose delay was not assigned during this subpulse. Negative values become zero, then the assigned-this-subpulse markers clear. A delay assigned during this movement step therefore escapes subtraction at the end of the same subpulse. Fleet movement can spend the subpulse across several orders and timed actions. That local remainder is separate from the increment clock. See movement and logistics.

Interrupt boundaries and automatic continuation

Section titled “Interrupt boundaries and automatic continuation”

The subpulse cycle continues while elapsed time is below the increment length and either no increment interrupt is pending or the increment is exactly 5 seconds long. An interrupt raised inside a subpulse does not abort the rest of that subpulse. Fleet movement also checks the interrupt and sets that fleet’s remaining subpulse seconds to zero, so its order work can stop earlier. The clock already advanced is not rolled back, and the remaining missile, sensor and delay steps still run. At the next subpulse boundary the interrupt stops further subpulses unless the length is exactly 5. After the last subpulse the game writes the actual elapsed time to the increment length and still runs the end-of-increment, ground and eligible strategic work. This cycle stores no unconsumed remainder to resume later.

Logging an event first requires a known event type, then appends the event stamped with the current game time. For an NPR recipient, an event type with AIInterrupt set raises the increment interrupt, and so does an event that names an NPR as its interrupt target, although no logging rule supplies such a target in play. For a player race recipient, an event type with PlayerInterrupt set raises both the increment interrupt and the player interrupt. These interrupts are set without regard to the event category or the hidden-event and colour settings. When a race detects a jump point transit by a race it regards as hostile, the increment interrupt is also raised directly. Which event types raise these interrupts is set by the PlayerInterrupt and AIInterrupt columns of DIM_EventType, and the event type catalogue lists both flags for every type.

With automated turns off (the Automated Turns On/Off toolbar button of the tactical map), a time button advances one increment. With automated turns on, the game clears the player interrupt and runs whole increments one after another. It stops when the player interrupt is set. Otherwise it lets the windows handle pending input and continues while automated turns stay on. An interrupt raised only for an NPR can shorten one increment without stopping automated turns. Events raised after the subpulses cannot remove elapsed time, though a player interrupt can prevent the next increment. Interrupts raised during preparation are cleared by the reset just before the first subpulse. The player interrupt is not part of that reset. It is cleared when automated turns start.

End of increment and ground rounds

Section titled “End of increment and ground rounds”

After replacing the increment length with the elapsed seconds, the game runs these steps once, in order.

  1. Recharge active ship shields. Move each ship-mounted shipyard to the population its fleet is assigned to, when that has changed.
  2. Assign trade orders to idle freighters only when elapsed time is above 3600 seconds. Process fleet standing orders only when elapsed time is above 60 seconds.
  3. Advance the parasite shore leave clock, damage control repairs, decay of intelligence on alien populations, weapon and ground unit recharge timers, fleet escape timers .
  4. Resolve combat fire and its aftermath. Clear the fire control phase markers. Update which races detect STO ground units that fired. Advance ground unit fortification.
  5. Compute the ground elapsed time and run the ground block below.
  6. Ship boarding combat, , technical data downloads from ships, and removal of waypoints marked for deletion.
  7. Compute the strategic elapsed time and run the construction cycle when it is due.
  8. Consolidate the current-time mineral records. Refresh the tactical map, every open Events window, the selected race in every open Economics window and the selected fleet controls in every open Naval Organization window.

This order matters. Damage control repair comes before weapon recharge and regular combat fire, while shield recharge comes before that repair. Ground and production work come after the firing phase. Ship readiness and recovery and space combat resolution explain eligibility within those steps. Ordering alone does not guarantee that a repaired ship will fire.

Ground processing requires the ground elapsed time to be strictly greater than the minimum ground combat period (MinGroundCombatPeriod in FCT_Game, default 28,800 seconds). When ground combat contexts exist and ground combat is already active (CurrentGroundCombat), NPR populations on the bodies where NPRs fight update their formation posture and organisation. The game then computes N as the ground elapsed time divided by the period, rounded down, and attempts up to N rounds. A round that fails to resolve ends the rounds. After each successful round, player races distribute ground unit replacements. The ground clock still advances by the N periods computed at the start, even when the rounds end early. The new last ground combat time is the current time minus the ground elapsed time plus N times the period. When contexts exist but ground combat was not active, the game marks it active and sets the last ground combat time to now, without resolving accumulated rounds on that activation. With no contexts, the game marks ground combat inactive and does not reset the last ground combat time. At exact equality the whole block is skipped. See ground combat and conquest.

Strategic processing requires the current time minus the last construction cycle time to be strictly greater than the construction cycle time. That is Construction Cycle Time (MinConstructionPeriod) on the Game Information window, which shows 430000 seconds for a new game. The game runs one strategic update with the whole elapsed interval, then sets the last construction cycle time to the current time. It does not split the interval into fixed construction rounds or keep a fractional remainder. Ground rounds and strategic updates therefore catch up differently.

Strategic construction cycle order

Section titled “Strategic construction cycle order”

The construction cycle is a broad strategic update, despite its name. The numbered groups below keep the game’s order, and steps within a row run left to right. Local formulas and NPC branches are on the linked pages.

Order Steps
1 System disasters, , radiation and dust decay, orbital positions without a forced update, expired lifepods.
2 Sorium harvesting, , water vapour condensation, evaporation, colonist growth aboard ark ships, removal of empty ground formations, recalculation of the total population on each populated body.
3 Every population refreshes its environment and population state using the elapsed seconds.
4 Commander health, retirement and service medals, then commander bonus experience.
5 Every normal race (player races and ordinary NPRs, not the special races) updates research field bonuses, effective naval commands, annual wealth and its modifier, and worker tax and financial centre income (each annual amount x elapsed years). Wealth above twice annual wealth is cut to twice annual wealth. Civilian shipping is possible only for a race that has researched Nuclear Radioisotope Engine (FCT_TechSystem row 24604) and has at least two populations with people. An NPR with no research target cost gets one when its starting level is neither pre-industrial nor conventional.
6 When No Maintenance Required (NoOverhauls) is off, ship maintenance, overhauls and failures, then ground unit maintenance expenses. Otherwise every ship’s last overhaul time becomes now and its maintenance state becomes Operational.
7 Missile geological survey, ground geological survey, ground xenoarchaeology, civilian shipping and mining, , .
8 Commander crew training, fleet training, ground unit replacements for player races.
9 Each population in a list taken at the start of this row runs its production tick.
10 NPRs run banned-body updates (ordinary NPRs), system value recalculation (ordinary NPRs), the mineral transfer to the capital, .
11 Each race runs, when it is an NPR , territorial diplomacy (ordinary NPRs) and a forced strategic AI update. Automatic commander assignment follows for races with automatic assignment on (chkAutoAssign in FCT_Race), ordinary NPRs . Sector commands without an active installation are removed.
12 Ruin installation recovery, ground formation morale recovery, ship deployment and shore leave, alien communication attempts, truce countdown and fixed-relationship updates, alien diplomatic points, diplomatic threshold changes, resupply of ground formation elements with current supply below 10, low fuel warnings.
13 Append each race’s current wealth to its wealth history, decay system danger ratings, expire unused waypoints.

The increment then sets the last construction cycle time and runs the mineral consolidation and window refresh. The construction cycle does not sort populations into an economic dependency order. It works through the list of populations as captured. A population created during a production tick is not added to the list already taken. See the colony output and income cycle for the economic view of these rows.

Population dispatch and stored capacities

Section titled “Population dispatch and stored capacities”

It calculates colony costs without orbital extremes, maximum population capacity, orbital population on ark ships, infrastructure, radiation effects, annual growth and overcrowding with overcrowding unrest applied, workforce, production efficiency, unrest and stability, political progress and the available colonist pool. It then clears the record of mineral changes. Growth rate and workforce are calculated here, before the production tick applies actual surface growth. See colony and population lifecycle.

Its exact high-level order is as follows.

  1. Refresh the production, shipbuilding, mining and terraforming modifiers, the ground construction rating with fortification engineers excluded, annual capacities, mining totals, terraforming capacity, ground construction capacity, research output per facility, the genetic modification rate and mass driver capacity, which requires a destination.
  2. Copy the current minerals as this tick’s baseline. Grow the surface population to old population x (1 + annual growth rate x elapsed years).
  3. For an NPR, run its population AI and find its capital.
  4. Mining when output is positive, industrial projects when any exist, ground unit training and replacements when training is queued or replacements are enabled, terraforming when capacity is positive, mass driver launch when capacity is positive, military academy graduation.
  5. When the total population is above 0, run shipyard modifications, shipyard tasks, fuel production, research when research capacity rounded down is above 0, genetic modification when a target species is set, maintenance supply production and trade good balances. Prisoner interrogation follows. It needs a total population of at least 1. A population with naval headquarters capacity above 0 and the Imperial Population political status interrogates with that capacity. Otherwise an NPR population interrogates with a capacity of 1.
  6. Fuel and maintenance supply warnings switch on or off against the population’s warning levels.

Installed assets, stored calculated capacity and actual stocks are separate state. Earlier production can create items or consume minerals that a later step sees, while annual capacities were already computed before those projects ran. This does not mean every capacity is frozen. Some steps read live values, and completing a project can update particular state itself. See production mechanics, terraforming mechanics and research and scientific personnel for those local rules.

Snapshots caches and UI actions

Section titled “Snapshots caches and UI actions”

What matters is where each value is refreshed and which step reads it.

State Refresh boundary and consequence
Increment-start positions Copied before the subpulses. They give a baseline for the interval, distinct from current and last positions. Some transit and orbital paths reset the baseline too.
Fire control speed and formation sizes Prepared before the subpulses. Later changes do not rerun the whole preparation.
Sensor inputs Every sensor check pass clears the current active, thermal, EM and ELINT collections and rebuilds its inputs, including the restricted passes for new missile launches and transits. The ordinary pass uses ships not embarked in a hangar in systems that need checks.
Tactical effectiveness and speed A dedicated refresh writes the combat inputs. Live maximum speed and the stored commanded fleet speed are separate values.
Fleet and salvo movement markers The moved marker clears during movement processing. The fleet resolved marker and the salvo resolved marker are reset before the subpulses. That does not mean they are reset at every subpulse.
Component use counts Cleared with the weapon and ground recharge timers after the subpulses. CIWS availability subtracts the recorded uses from undamaged mounts.
Mineral baseline Copied before population growth, mining and manufacture, separate from current minerals and from the cleared change record.
History Current-time mineral records are grouped by mineral, race, population, record type and time and summed at the end of the increment. Wealth history is appended during strategic work.

These are selected boundaries that affect play, not a full list of stored values.

The sensor check refresh clears every system’s marker and selects systems where more than one race has a presence and whose NoSensorChecks value in FCT_System is 0. The sensor input rebuild then builds lists for each phase rather than live views of all ships. A ship sensor refresh recreates the active sensors and ELINT strength of the ships it is given, from their current state. Component repair removes or reduces a damaged component record but does not itself run every sensor and tactical refresh. The next live capacity calculation can see restored components before a stored sensor or tactical value has been rebuilt. Movement at maximum speed asks for the live fleet maximum before order work. This differs from changing the stored commanded fleet speed whenever a component changes. See ship power, class and detection.

A window refresh and simulation advancement are different operations. The window refresh at the end of an increment is explicit. Merely redrawing a window does not run the increment. Some window builders do recalculate game state and are not pure views. Fleet movement orders wait until movement spends simulated time, while a time or subpulse button changes its control value at once. What matters is whether an action changes state directly, runs a local recalculation, or records an order or project for a later step. Movement and logistics and production mechanics describe those queued steps. An order shown in a list does not mean its transfer or build work has already happened.

The population summary refresh of the Economics window is a concrete view that writes state. It recalculates body population, ark population, colony costs, growth rate, workforce, efficiency, capacities, signatures and research output. It considers orbital extremes in the colony cost and calculates the growth rate for one year without overcrowding unrest. The strategic environment pass ignores orbital extremes, uses the actual elapsed years and applies overcrowding unrest. The summary’s ground construction rating includes fortification engineers, while the production tick excludes them. These are overlapping recalculations with different purposes, not interchangeable snapshots. The summary refresh does not run the production tick and awards no output. The class summary refresh of the Class Design window likewise recalculates class statistics. Its structural details are in ship and station design. See view builders that write state for other windows.

Save load and creation dates

Section titled “Save load and creation dates”

The game record in FCT_Game stores the game clock (GameTime), the last construction cycle time (LastGrowthTime), the last ground combat time (LastGroundCombatTime), whether ground combat is active (CurrentGroundCombat), the minimum construction and ground combat periods (MinConstructionPeriod, MinGroundCombatPeriod), the subpulse length (SubPulseLength) and One Second Sub Pulse (OneSecondSubPulse), among other settings. Loading a game from the tactical map restores those values. The time accumulated toward the next construction cycle and the next ground round therefore survives a save. Loading does not reset both clocks to the loaded time. A save first sets LastViewed to 0 on every game row, then writes 1 for the saved game. It marks the last game played, not a simulation time.

Increment history saves IncrementID, GameID, the start GameTime and Length to FCT_Increments, and loading rebuilds those records. Loading game data starts the increment log afresh, loads the static definitions and saved collections, recalculates orbital parameters, sets up the ruin loot tables, then updates each population’s orbital count from ark fleets. This step does not advance time or run the entire strategic, production, sensor or tactical refresh pipeline. The rest of the visible load sequence can refresh selected windows. The game record does not store the elapsed count of the subpulse cycle, the player and NPR interrupts, the hostile encounter repeat guard or the selected increment and subpulse as a resumable state. Refresh at the next increment is distinct from stored simulation credit.

Creation, build, establishment and birth dates are separate facts on the same simulation clock. A new ship gets its construction date (Constructed), last overhaul (LastOverhaul) and last shore leave (LastShoreLeave) from the current time. These identical starting values then serve different rules. Loading rebuilds saved objects from the database rather than creating them again, so they are not dated again. Object identity and reload covers the details and the limits of missing dates. Neither a stored construction date nor an ID replaces a stored processing position.

Worked availability scenarios

Section titled “Worked availability scenarios”

These examples follow the phase order. Each assumes that the named local eligibility checks pass. They do not claim that arbitrary changes spread everywhere.

Scenario Result from the phase order
A 60-second actual increment starts with zero strategic elapsed time and a 60-second construction period. Equality does not trigger the construction cycle. A further five seconds gives 65 seconds of strategic credit in one cycle, then resets the last construction cycle time to now.
A 120-second request uses 10-second subpulses, and an interrupt is raised during the third. The game completes that subpulse, stops before the fourth, records a length of 30, then runs the once-per-increment steps using 30 seconds. A five-second increment ignores this stop condition.
A repair restores a reactor before regular end-of-increment combat. Weapon recharge and firing come later and may see the restored component. That increment’s earlier shield recharge and movement sensor checks already happened. Repair does not rerun them.
Industry produces a mineral-consuming item after mining, and a shipyard task later consumes resources. Later shipyard work can read the changed live stockpile. It cannot treat the mineral baseline copied before production as current stock. Capacity calculated earlier does not grow merely because an installation completed.
A new replacement is built in the production tick. Player replacement distribution earlier in the construction cycle and distribution after successful ground rounds earlier in the increment already happened. Later resupply and other local steps have their own rules.
A game is saved with 59 seconds since the last construction cycle and a 60-second period. Reload keeps the saved clocks. Advancing five seconds makes strategic elapsed time 64 and can run one cycle. Loading alone awards neither five seconds nor a full period of production.
Ground combat is already active, ground elapsed time is 2.5 periods, and contexts remain. The game attempts floor(2.5) = 2 rounds and advances the ground clock by two periods, keeping half a period. Strategic work at the same boundary instead uses its full elapsed interval once.

The next five seconds of the first example must actually be reached. Interrupts, shortening or a different subpulse in use can change the endpoint.

Concept map

Section titled “Concept map”

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

Related community documentation and developer posts. These may describe a different game version.