The best way to make a new player confused is: Everyone talks about ticks and production cycles as if everyone knew =) AND no explenation about what it is in niehter faq or forum -
Well I guess its a cycle - What I wonder is how long it is. If its difrent to difrent gamesettings? Well then Im curious about where I find gamesettings =) At this point there is alot of “trigger”/production cycle - it makes difrent if its 12h or 12 weeks? =)
Guess what! I have already found out how long the production cycle is =) I guess its 24h in the game I play - There is a “production” within 22h. Still no info in the tutorial so my question was atleast a little motivated. What about the ticks? What is a tick and how many per cycle? Techs level up first after next tick?
As an adup question: How on earth do I delete my own topic in this forum =)
I can change but not delete topic?
BR Deadrbridge
You should leave your question up so other people who have the same question can read it.
The status bar will always show countdown to current production tick or cycle end. You can see how long a cycle is on the leaderboard under the title. Custom games can have different cycle lengths.
Every cycle, on the production tick, you get income. In a standard game 1 tick = 1 hour and the terms can be used interchangeably.
Continuing in more detail than you probably want:
The time system is one of the things which could really be improved. Right now there’s 3 or 4 different ways of talking about time.
In normal speed real time games 1, 2 and 3 are kind of the same. In turn based games 2 and 3 are the same with people generally talking about things happening in “hours” to mean “virtual hours” or ticks. In double speed real time games 1 and 2 are the same.
In turn based games, using the normal setup, “in 2 turns” means after 16 “virtual hours” and 16 ticks, but real world time of probably several days.
If you play a double speed real time game, in “8 real world hours” is 16 ticks, so 16 “virtual hours” pass? No, the timers are in real world time. A fleet arriving in “8 hours” arrives in 16 ticks. The same event in a turn based game would be “in 16 hours”.
The events screen is one of the places which shows an entirely consistent time. It will always show the tick something happened. So if you are in your third day of a standard real time game you are likely to see events with numbers near 60 meaning they happened 60 ticks after the start of the game.
Solution: Replace everything with ticks.
In real time games have a “Next tick in X minutes” in turn based games have a “turn deadline at X”.
Real time is the hours & minutes that you live IRL outside the game. Everyone lives in their own local time zone around the world.
NP2 games run in “ticks” of in-game time, and 1 tick is comparable to one hour IRL. There are no partial fractional ticks. During a tick, the server makes all calculations of movement & combat & research & etc. . . , then pauses to wait for the next tick transition. During the pause wait, you can give orders to carriers, make ship transfers, buy infrastructure, trade tech or cash, send diplomatic emails, etc. . . Ticks are useful to plan & predict when to expect completions of tech research, or expected carrier arrivals and combat.
Click to read this older thread which explains the sequence of events during 1 tick.
NP2 games run in their own time zone. There are two major types of NP2 games.
Turn Based NP2 games can be slower than real time NP2 games, so this can allow gamers to have some reasonable break time IRL away from the game.
Turn Based NP2 games have two parameters.
Turn wait can be as short as 1 hour, and up to 48 hours. Turn wait is the number of RL hours of pause wait before the server makes transition & calculations to next pause Turn wait. Players are only allowed to give orders & send diplomatic emails during turn waits. The game will either pause Turn wait the specified number of hours, or turn jump earlier when all players have submitted orders. In turn based games, you should hit key “ESC” several times to clear all displays, and near the button “Submit turn” you will see when the turn wait timer runs out. If you missed clicking button “Submit turn” several times, the game will make you AFK, and your empire becomes AI.
Turn jump can be as short as 1 tick, and up to 24 ticks. Turn jumps is the number of ticks of in-game progress & calculations that will be made during the transition between pause turn waits. Players are not allowed to give orders & send diplomatic emails during the number of ticks of the turn jump.
Real Time NP2 games are not actually real time, but behave more like turn base games. Real Time NP2 games do not have button “Submit turn”. There are four types of Real Time NP2 games.
A galactic cycle production can be anywhere from 16 ticks, and up to 36 ticks. This is the number of ticks between production when your empire receives cash from ECON & cash bonus from Banking tech & RP bonus from Experimentation tech. At the top status bar, there is the readout of $ credit available & countdown timer to next galactic cycle production. You can left click this status bar to refresh update in-game data in your browser. Shortcut key “L” shows the Leaderboard where you can read the current ticks & galactic cycles. On the Leaderboard, you can click to read the custom game settings to find the settings for turn based, or real time, or production cycles.
EDIT