Is it time we had our own system of "stardates"?

With all these new role-players joining us, I thought this would be a good time to raise this. Would it be a good idea to introduce our own system of "stardates" for RP postings, so that there can't be muddles over what's taking place when?

For instance, you could call the "A Bad Day" thread "Stardate 1000, Serenity Station Time", and then the day the fleet set off to secure the Gate would be (if I'm reading that thread correctly) "Stardate 0997, Serenity Station Time", and the time the Gate opened would be "Stardate 0972, Serenity Station Time" or thereabouts. I know in one fleet I've come across (can't remember which), the rule is that everyone has to put the place and the stardate at the top of each post. We could do that or just put the date when there's a long gap in time between one posting and the next.

This would be our own system just for our fleet RPs, it needn't have any fixed relation to STO's system of time (in which everything so far has taken place within two years, which is ridiculous), or anything else. In fact, I think part of the idea of "stardates" is supposed to be that, what with relativity and so on, it won't necessarily be the same time across different parts of space in any logically consistent sense.

1 in stardates means 1 day, from midnight to midnight, so 2000.0 is midnight (0000 hours) on day 2000 and 2000.5 is noon the same day. I think that the 4-digit ones are actually an abbreviation, so "2000" might really mean 92000 or 32000 or whatever.


I think this would be really useful. Pyriel and others have been doing a good job of putting in things like "it is four weeks after the Gate opened", and so on. But if you had a numbering system, you wouldn't have to do that, just say what stardate it is rather than explain it relative to all the other things that are in progress. Also I still find it quite fiddly, because you have to check back through the thread and work out where "four weeks from the Gate opening" brings you to in relation to some other events that affect what you're doing and where your characters are, and when multiplied by several players, that leaves plenty of room for jumbles and one player thinking something has already arrived and posting accordingly and another thinking it hasn't and posting accordingly.

What do people think? Including the new RPers.

it would take a but of discussion how long each stardate was and what we where at but that could be a good idea

Not sure what there is to discuss, I mean a stardate is one day, isn't it? Or do you mean at what point in the story we go to the next stardate? In that case, it seems to me that we usually keep track of that already, with "it is four days later" or "The next morning..."; this'd just be another way of putting that. Or am I misunderstanding what you're getting at?

Why not just use the ingame stardates as a base point?

Thats what I already do. However it should be noted that sto stardates are based off of current time , day , month and year. so the sto stardate is "2016" not 2410 etc

anything in 2410 would start at about stardate 87031

now oddly enough stardates in startrek generally one earth year is equal to 1000 stardates

so every day is basically equal to 2.73 stardates.

Stardate 0.000 corresponds to 01 Jan 2323 00:00

so you have to multiply from that date ie

the year 2364 is 41 years from 2323. since 2323 00:00 equals stardate 0.0
and one year = 1000 stardates
41 years from stardate 0.0 = 41000 therefore 2364 jan 00:00 equals stardate 41000.

one hour is roughly = to 0.0416

so to find the hour multiply by that and round up to nearest tenth ergo

12:00 x 0.0416 =.499 or .500 which is 1/2 of 24 hours
18:00 x 0.0416 = .749  or .750
and since each day is 2.73
jan 2nd 00:00 2364, would be 41002.73
jan 3rd would be 41005.4  
jan 23 would be 41062.79


so for a monthwith 31 days add 84.63 = 31days

so you have to count the days and the hours versus months

may 24 is 144 days into the year or 144*2.73= 393.12 stardates

so may 24 2364 at 00:00 would be 41393.12
if you want to be more accurate say its 3 pm then you add 0.0416*15 (ie 1500 hours)= .625

so stardate 41939.74 would be 3pm may 24th 2364

now its important to note there is actually 365.24 SOLAR days in one orbit.

solar day is 23 h 56min 4.1 sec

calandar day is 24 with calendar year at 365

so an actual year is 364.9 days vs 365 so numbers might not be exact.

since we generally use the  Gregorian calendar, where every 400 years is identical in length, not every 100 like the  Julian calendar.

the most easy way however would to simply link a stardate calculator and everyone use it

I hate Math

I just skipped over that.

Here's some interesting reading on stardates. Apparantly, they change depending on what part of your galaxy you're in. Also, the first digit in TNG was always 4 to stand for 24th century, and the next digit was the season number.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Stardate

Hmm. I'm not sure we're talking about the same things here.

What I was talking about was a system to mark what date it is in the story. Using STO's real-time stardates wouldn't do that, as we frequently spend a week or more RPing the events of one day - and different threads don't always keep pace with each other, either, or there'd be less difficulty keeping track of when they are relative to each other in the first place.

Also it doesn't seem to be as clear how long stardates are as I thought it was! I could have sworn it was 1 day, same as the real-life Julian Date Number system which looks very like it, but evidently that's not the only point of view. Where did you find that about 1000 stardates equalling 1 year, Ryukotsu? We could do either, but the 1 date = 1 day system has the advantage that it'd be easier, since our stories are generally measured in days rather than years.

This from Kazzur's link, which I think is where I originally got my ideas of what a stardate is, too:

They concluded that the 'time continuum' would therefore vary from place to place, and that earth time may actually be lost in travel. 'So the stardate on Earth would be one thing, but the stardate on Alpha Centauri would be different,' Peeples says. 'We thought this was hilarious, because everyone would say, "How come this date is before that date when this show is after that show?" The answer was because you were in a different sector of the universe.'

The following instructions to writers were copied from the series bible Star Trek Guide; they are quoted at Star Trek Fact Check. [4] The original date of composition and the author are unclear, but the sample stardates are consistent with the range from the second pilot.

We invented "Stardate" to avoid continually mentioning Star Trek's century (actually, about two hundred years from now), and getting into arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then. Pick any combination of four numbers plus a percentage point, use it as your story's stardate. For example, 1313.5 is twelve o'clock noon of one day and 1314.5 would be noon of the next day. Each percentage point (sic) is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of one day. The progression of stardates in your script should remain constant but don't worry about whether or not there is a progression from other scripts. Stardates are a mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode.

What is called a "percentage point" is actually the tenths digit. While the daily rate of increase wasn't always adhered to within episodes, the initial four digits weren't selected quite as randomly as described here. An overall increase with time can be observed in the above table of stardates, from 1312.4 in the second pilot to 5928.5 in the final episode of the series. The Animated Series and the movies continued the general trend, despite a number of variations in the rate of change.

That sounds like a suitable balance of "useful" and "making it up as we go along" for our way of doing things, to me... (It also, as I mentioned, means that our "local time" doesn't need to correspond to anyone else's if we don't want it to.)

Kazzur i didnt realize the link you posted says this:

from memory Alpha:

"In actual fact, 1,000 stardate units elapsed in approximately one year, as demonstrated by numerous references in dialogue to events from previous seasons. The 'century' digit was elaborated upon as early as TNG: "Future Imperfect", where the imaginary Jean-Luc Riker asks the computer to display his birthday party of stardate 58416, less than sixteen years in the future of 2367. The initial digit may have been inspired by the 24th century, but in-universe it changes once a decade.

The writers of the Star Trek Chronology further developed the system by having a calendar year start at 000 and end at 999, although this does not fit all references in the show, such as a Diwali celebration around stardate 44390, too early in the year according to the simplified system. (TNG: "Data's Day") Stardate 41986.0 was in 2364 according to TNG: "The Neutral Zone", hence the simplified system assumes that stardates 41xxx.x covered the entire year 2364, stardates 42xxx.x the entire year 2365 and so forth. As stated in Star Trek Chronology (page 95):

   The year 2323 works out as the zero point for the system of stardates developed for Star Trek: The Next Generation, assuming that the beginning of year 2364 (the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation) was stardate 41000, and that stardates progress at 1000 units per year. In other words, under the Next Generation system of stardates, January 1, 2323 would seem to correspond to stardate 0. This probably shouldn't be taken too seriously, because Star Trek's stardates have never been too internally consistent, but we're mentioning it here because it's kinda fun."



which is bassically what i said lol

"Where did you find that about 1000 stardates equalling 1 year, Ryukotsu?"

from tons of research , sto chronology and other sources. Even the link Kazzur posted says the same as i quoted above.

Okay, knowing that this is old stuff, from my perspective at least, it is still rather annoying. Harebrained, I do get what you are saying and am looking into how to handle this. This is what happens when story writing, on Cryptic's part, is generalized. It leaves a huge, gaping, head scratching plate of spaghetti - grab the end of one noodle and you have no idea where it will lead.....LOL Now! I don't know about anyone else, but I prefer to eat and enjoy my spaghetti -stick my fork in, twirl and eat. Simple! Not have it creating a kerfluffle in my noggin....Which, with the explanation of how stardates is explained, leaves me wondering why Gene Roddenberry would make keeping track of time so difficult.... Ohhhh, right, rubber band science....boing, boing, boing.

Anyway, for now and/or until further notice, the timeline will be generalized. However, Harebrained, since you brought it up, I think you would be capable of developing something for us. As I recently stated on Discord, it appears the Iconian war is still a fresh wound with the Tzenkethi and the Hur'q being new.... I think https://sto.gamepedia.com/2410 (hopefully this link works, being out of the picture for over four years makes everything new and "shiny". So, for me, the reappearance of the Immortal takes place a few months before the Hur'q situation begins, so, for simplicities sake, I strongly suggest, urge, propose that we take things, RP wise from this point on.

Leave everything else as a back story and no; personally, I will not use time travel in any way shape or form unless I absolutely, as a last resort, have to. Creating stories with time travel are nothing but a huge steaming pile of stinky poo waiting for the unsuspecting individual to step in. It opens the door to too many questions, issues, problems and (as I've seen) heated debates with the worst being a lame arse excuse to explain do overs. This is just my opinion which applies to my stories.

So feel free to come up with something, Harebrained and we, along with whomever else, can take a peeky boo.

Sounds good. Sorry I haven't done anything about it myself. Been tired. Brain just refusing to do anything difficult.
But you seem to have done a great job yourselves. Anything else need doing? If so, I could have a crack at it, although you know the actual game missions better than I do, where that's involved, since I haven't been playing recently.

Copying from the discussion in Discord chat:


Seeker:

Cold Storage and Surface Tension happens in 2410. Now Surface Tension is the official formation of the alliance. As we're starting the Delta quadat stuff, the question for me is is Surface Tension end of 2410 or beginning. ill have to look at it. But that's after the gate to the 1st Dyson has been open for a while.
The last RP i did was the gate story a few months maybe before the confirmed date of 2410. From that date we have Delta stuff and near the end of that we arrest Sela, last seen a year before it say so the Hakeev mission was a year before the end of Delta.
If i remember right you wanted to put the current date at either 2413 or 2414, reading this i think is should be 2412 or just begin 2413 because you wanted to be gone 4 years and your q stuff was a bit before we did the gate stuff lest say Reanna's disappearance was mid 2410 and end of 2410 the alliance forms.
Then 2 years of Delta stuff and Iconian war put end of 2412 start of 2413 and while most the galaxy is at peace recovering from the war a few start dealing with the temporal war. Around this time we meeting the Lucari, and maybe 6 months from now (in RP) or something like that the Tzenkethi start their war on the Hurq and the Lucari gets their first interstellar ship.

Reanna Aloi:

Yep yep, I was mentioning sometime 2412 or 2413 because I could not push my character's dates beyond 2408. So that's good then! Just needed to get a starting point from which "we" could all function. Thanks for taking the time to read that..
I couldn't continue my story until a solid timeline was decided upon.. So, if everyone is okay, I say we can make the date a few days before the new year of 2413.

thats a good idea copying that stuff in form discord for the recond Reanna found that link with that info and Responding to it after reading it