Mission Timer and Docking

[Clipperride]

Until last night I'd assumed that, when two ships dock the Mission Elapsed Time would be equal to the MET of the ship that had been flying the longest.  For example, when a landing craft leaves an orbital lab, the landers MET starts when you undock and (seems) to return to the Labs MET when it redocks.

But then I noticed that my orbital labs had produced more science points than its MET x points per day.  Which means it must have been orbiting longer than the MET suggests.

Does anyone know how the game produces the elapses time for a space station made up of multiple parts, launched over a period of days? I know it's a very minor issue, but it's bugging the heck out of me!

[WanderingKid]

The orbital lab uses a percentage of the data stored on board to produce science.  So, it'll produce more science/day when it's maxxed up on data than when it's low on data.  That's probably accounting for a lot of your MET differential.

[Clipperride]

11 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

The orbital lab uses a percentage of the data stored on board to produce science.  So, it'll produce more science/day when it's maxxed up on data than when it's low on data.  That's probably accounting for a lot of your MET differential.

Thanks for the suggestion @WanderingKid, but that doesn't seem to fit what I'm seeing.

In just over 3 days the lab has produced a little under 200 science points.  It seems the MET is a day shorter than it should be.  Obviously I'm happy about the extra points, but confused as to where that day went to!

[Clipperride]

There is something odd happening - playing a different save and noticed my Mun Rover Mission Elapsed  Time reads 62 days, but the lander stage that delivered it there has an MET of 60 days.

Could it have anything to do with the game sometimes slowing (timer going yellow) making the time spent with an active stage slightly longer than one out of physics range?

[bewing]

2 hours ago, Clipperride said:

There is something odd happening - playing a different save and noticed my Mun Rover Mission Elapsed  Time reads 62 days, but the lander stage that delivered it there has an MET of 60 days.

When you separate two vessels, usually one of them becomes a "new" vessel, and its clock starts at an MET of zero. So clearly in this case the upper stage kept the original clock date, and the lander stage became the new "probe" stage with a zeroed clock.

It's more complicated than that, I think, if you dock and then separate two vessels.

 

[Clipperride]

Ahh, thank you @bewing.  That will account for that difference as the un-crewed lander with the rover was in orbit a while as I transported the engineer and scientists in their own separate launch.  A day each to get to the Moon = the mysterious 2 day difference in MET.