Issue with time

[Serratus]

I haven't really noticed this until I installed Kerbal alarm clock, but the way KSP counts time seems way of. For example a Kerbin day is only 6h long*. However the MET timer doesn't reflect that at all - You can go ahead and check that, just start a mission without leaving launchpad, and time warp. You'll see 4 sun rises before the timer shows a day has passed. Now, it isn't a huge problem - obviously we've played for so long and no-one mentioned it. But it does seem odd enough.

So dear SQUAD would You mind changing that if You've got some spare time? (also the Kerbin Year is not 365/6 days so that should be changed too - I've made an experiment myself** and it seems that 1 Kerbin year ~= 164/6 Kerbin days but that's just an approximation by eye).

* Used this as reference: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Calendar

** Basically launched a mission that stayed on launchpad, switched to the map mode, centered on Kerbol, marked where Kerbin was***, time warp until it was roughly back in the same spot.

*** Still have few smudges on my monitor from that marker.

Ps. It just occurred to me that there might be a logical reason why it was done that way, like engine limitations, or something. If so, I'd love to know them.

[stupid_chris]

It was done that way for simplicity probably. Time intervals are constants. When saying "a day" you normally mean a sidreal earth day. If you mean otherwise, you need to specify. If we were to speak in sidreal kerbin days, they would indeed be about 6h. And the same goes for years. "A year" is really just ~365.25 (sidreal) earth days. When you speak about synodic years, or years on another body, precision is necessary.

It saves both having to precise and hacing to learn the values. It's just far more intuitive to have it this way, I don't think it should change.

[regex]

It's just far more intuitive to have it this way, I don't think it should change.

Completely agree with this. There's no real reason to move over to Kerbal days, it would simply get confusing.

[Kasuha]

Honestly, I was naturally expecting the timer in tracking station to be in Kerbal days and years, so the fact that an alien race counts in Earth days and years is both confusing and counter-intuitive to me.

[FEichinger]

This is actually the reason why I installed [thread=68270]Kerbin Date Calendar[/thread]. I much prefer calculating in Kerbin time than Earth time. (Although that mod, too, could use some improvements - such as the year not lining up, and a few interface issues).

[Serratus]

Ha! Thanks FEichinger. I didn't even know about that mod. I'll check it out

[Dunbaratu]

The stock game really should agree with itself about what the word "day" actually means in the game. It shouldn't require a mod to get the term to mean the same thing everywhere. That's just basic functionality. Either a Kerbin day should be lengthened to an Earth day, OR the game clock should be telling you Kerbin days not Earth days.

It's just a matter of consistency - the game should agree with *itself*. I think it would be far less confusing to have to think in Kerbin 6 hour days than to have to switch modes between thinking in earth days and thinking in kerbin days.

As non-intuitve as it may be to think of a "day" as 6 hours, it's even more non-intuitive to think that the word "day" means two different things in the same game.

There's plenty of precedent for players being used to the idea that a game day is shorter than an Earth day in a video game. It's a very common practice. Heck, a Minecraft day is only 20 minutes and people deal with understanding that just fine.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Steven Mading

[rkman]

When saying "a day" you normally mean a sidreal earth day. And the same goes for years.

Makes sense when living on Earth, but in KSP we don't.