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  • 📅 February and March 2024 are YE 46.2 in the RP.

Adjusting the Length of IC Years

Introduction

Do you ever get a sense that in-character time is flying by? Do you wish you had more time to RP your character during the IC year? Sometimes RP threads can take months to complete resulting in a lot of time-skips, and our timeline pages for in-character years seem a little light on events. Star Army’s staff has noticed this too.

Current System & Issues

The current system, which has been in use since 2009, is a 1 year to 1 year system where IRL years line up with OOC years. This is nice for having holidays match up and years match up but since 2017, when we finally detailed the Yamataian Calendar, it’s now a little bit of a pain to keep track of what month it is supposed to be in the RP since the Yamataian Calendar has only 9 months, each with 35 days, due to the canonical orbit of planet Yamatai. Prior to this the IC year varied wildly, with years changing based on OOC events like getting a new forum or a big metaplot event ending.

The 1 to 1 system has resulted frequently in plots falling behind. Specifically, I remember the YSS Miharu plot was sometimes 1 or even 2 years behind the site’s IC timeline but other plots like the YSS Senbu, YSS Eucharis, and YSS Kaiyo I think were “playing catchup” too, resulting in large time-skips to get into the new year after each mission completion.

Proposed Changes

Star Army’s staff discussed the above issues and we reached a consensus on what we think is a good solution. Rather than align the years 1 to 1, we’d like to align the IC and OOC months 1 to 2. So, for example, the first IC month would occur during January and February of the OOC year. The second month would fall in March and April of the OOC year, and so on. Complete IC years would therefore last 1.5 IRL years, giving us more time to do stuff in the RP before each year is up.

There are a couple of minor downsides to this change, such as holidays not falling on their OOC dates. For that we can simply celebrate them at our preferred times on a per-plot basis. And if we can imagine our characters flying around in spaceships, surely we can imagine them being at the beach when it’s cold IRL. Another concern that was brought up was that the pace of development of IC technology might be affected. But Star Army’s technology is already very advanced (read: we’re already where we want to be) and slowing IC development of tech is probably for the best and we should be mindful that this is a character-driven RP.

How It Would Work

The way this change would be implemented is to start in YE 43/2021, change years to YE 44 in on July 1st, 2022 and continue through December 31st, 2023 when YE 44 ends. During the last part of the year we will get together as a site and decide if we want to continue using the extended 1.5 year system or if we want to adjust either back to 1 to 1 year system or perhaps even to a 2 year system if we feel we need even more IC time per OOC year.

Conclusion

We understand that any change is disruptive and that the easiest thing would be to ignore the 1 to 1 year system’s issues and keep going the way we’ve been going, but we think that the benefits of the monthly alignment (1.5 year system) will be worth it in the long run and result in richer IC years with more happening in them, and giving GMs and players the IC time they need to complete their story arcs. We will also make charts and tables available to the community so that you can easily find out what IC date it is based on the OOC date.

In the last Community Meeting, we promised to get feedback from the community as a whole before making a final decision so please give us your opinions and votes about this proposal. This poll will stay open for 3 days to allow all members adequate time to vote.
 
I worry that this is going to cause more problems than it has the potential to solve, if it solves them at all. First and foremost, this will make the site more newbie-unfriendly, as 1 YE per IRL year, while not idea, is better than 1 YE per 1.5 IRL years. This will also end up more than likely hampering the RP of anyone who is trying to RP with a character that is not presently in a plot, as the new pace seems to be set to accommodate GMs but not players RPing independently outside of plots.

Finally, I believe that this will end up creating a restriction on those who enjoy creating technology, by forcing reviewers to ask things like "Why are you making something new, your company only just released your last thing a month ago." I do not believe that this solution addresses the underlying cause of some of the GMs on the site seeing little progress in their RPs, that being lower player activity and larger plot sizes slowing down plot movement. There may be other ways to help solve the problem of plots lagging behind the timeline, but I don't think this is it.
 
irst and foremost, this will make the site more newbie-unfriendly, as 1 YE per IRL year, while not idea, is better than 1 YE per 1.5 IRL years.
"A new IC month begins every 2 months" is really straightforward. Any newbie should be able to understand that. It is more clear that the current system where the month changes on the 22nd or whatever date it happens to fall on.
This will also end up more than likely hampering the RP of anyone who is trying to RP with a character that is not presently in a plot, as the new pace seems to be set to accommodate GMs but not players RPing independently outside of plots.
Independent characters will be able to accomplish more in a year like everyone else.
Finally, I believe that this will end up creating a restriction on those who enjoy creating technology, by forcing reviewers to ask things like "Why are you making something new, your company only just released your last thing a month ago."
This would allow companies to be able to submit more items in a given IC year because you'd have more OOC time to work on them. If you're worried about releasing items too close to each other, I suggest diversifying the types of articles contributed (e.g. not submitting a new power armor or whatever every month, since that wouldn't make sense regardless of the OOC/IC time ratio adjustment).
 
I would go so far as to support a 1:2 timeline model (1 IC Year = 2 OOC Years).
We considered that but I didn't want to change things too drastically. I'd like to try this "1.5 speed" and then decide where to go next based on how it works for us. If we still think we need slower years then we could move to 1:2 years. Also keep in mind that the 1:2 year ratio has all of the drawbacks (non-matching holidays, etc) and less of the benefits (months wouldn't line up to IC months).
 
I just want to reiterate what i brought up during the meeting

having more ic time per ooc makes no difference in my view, ive often told my players I’m happy for them to create really unique characters because player characters are the 1% of SARP population, they’re the special lot.

i view the various plots the same way, sure we might have basic civilian plots but like how a tv show or movie always has strange or wacky situations for a boring premise sarp plots are an outlier within the universe because they’re directly interacted with by the 1%.

instead of slowing down time my idea always has been that if you want a plot to accomplish more, make news threads. There will still be months of gaps in slower running plots and the best way i can see to take advantage of them is with some form of summary. The threads we gms create are not always going to be a regular occurrence for a plot, they’re special, so filling in the blanks with basic or mundane stuff they would be doing day to day seems like the best option to me.
 
I just want to reiterate what i brought up during the meeting

having more ic time per ooc makes no difference in my view, ive often told my players I’m happy for them to create really unique characters because player characters are the 1% of SARP population, they’re the special lot.

i view the various plots the same way, sure we might have basic civilian plots but like how a tv show or movie always has strange or wacky situations for a boring premise sarp plots are an outlier within the universe because they’re directly interacted with by the 1%.

instead of slowing down time my idea always has been that if you want a plot to accomplish more, make news threads. There will still be months of gaps in slower running plots and the best way i can see to take advantage of them is with some form of summary. The threads we gms create are not always going to be a regular occurrence for a plot, they’re special, so filling in the blanks with basic or mundane stuff they would be doing day to day seems like the best option to me.

Only problem is continuity. Charcter doesn't have a back up and they die, then how can they work in a future set thread? What if the ship is damaged and previous thread hasn't advanced enough can spoil some of the fun. More threads don't always work and end up giving more work for a gm for continuity just making more threads one plot.
 
I dont mean run more threads, just making more news posts, but im not here to convince people my way is better because I’ve watched that happen so many times in sarp.

this is how I’ll be running my plots, time difference makes no difference to me because im not interested in “accomplishing” more ic per year, i write cause its fun
 
I voted No as I actually said yes in the meeting. Why? Because in my fair opinion it doesn’t have much of an impact as a ratio 1:2 in years. The amount of IC post is not depended on the amount of time, it is depended on the amount of time the players put into the story. So there is some significant difference between plots in regards of how fast it goes. In my fair opinion 1:2 months as no impact and in years it does.
 
I dont mean run more threads, just making more news posts, but im not here to convince people my way is better because I’ve watched that happen so many times in sarp.

this is how I’ll be running my plots, time difference makes no difference to me because im not interested in “accomplishing” more ic per year, i write cause its fun

That is part of the goal this year with more news posts but requires abit of time to do the setup as well. Since any official stuff has to be finalized and the like. May it be warlords, ships built, approved plans and the like.
 
Missions take so much longer out of character than they should in character. Having an hour mission take five months at times means that the characters then need to have five months of down time before the next mission to play catch up/slow down. Having 2:1 means that problem is cut in half.
 
I know at least from my plot, the current length of a year vs. how long it takes to run an episode/mission it feels rushed. I am all for the increase to 2:1, to be honest, I think that it technically should be more 1 YE = 2 OOC years, but I can live with the compromise that Wes came up with.
 
As long as we don’t shorten the OOC length of years it’s fine. Only thing the real time duration of an in-character year does is set when a new year is unlocked for player use. Wes could even make it so the IC years simply happen when he feels like it as long as it’s been at least one OOC year and it’d be cool.
 
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