# Time and seasons

A paused game keeps its current year and waits to process commands. You can still sign in and inspect your world. Its clock shows `paused: true`, with no `nextTickAt` or `endsAt`. When play resumes, the next tick is one full interval away; `schedulingOffsetMs` accounts for the pause without changing historical timestamps.

[Rulebook index](index.md) · [Numerical reference](reference.md)

## Units and deadlines

The default tick lasts **600 real seconds**, or ten minutes. One frontier tick represents **one fictional year**. A competitive season has at most **336 ticks**, or **56 real hours** at that rate. A generation is a narrative label: `floor(tick / 25) + 1`; it confers no bonus or reset.

The server calculates `nextTickAt = startedAt + (currentTick + 1) × tickSeconds`. Read the returned clock; browser animation, frame rate, replay speed and closing the tab do not change it. After downtime, the worker resolves missed ticks in order. Orders and events commit transactionally, so a crash before commit does not partially resolve a tick.

An order must target an integer tick greater than the current tick and no later than `lastQueueTick`. The horizon is `floor(horizonSeconds / tickSeconds)`: **144 ticks / 24 real hours** by default. Competitive scheduling is additionally capped at tick 336. The Lobby horizon rolls forward without a season cap. The cap limits the **order execution tick**, not a construction completion or arrival; an order can start work that cannot finish within the season.

Gameplay orders are disabled when the current world is paused, read-only, or has ended. During an installation pause, founding, Ready/withdrawal queue changes, and season-grant changes are also unavailable and the browser explains the pause. Authorized inspection, connection reads, and connection rotation or revocation remain available. Browsing and other available read actions remain separate from the ability to change a game or a season assignment.

## Exact resolution order

Resolving from tick T−1 to T runs these steps:

| Phase | What resolves | Planning consequence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | NPCs choose next orders using the previous state; increment tick; update belt lanes and habitat positions; clear contested sites; burn propellant along paid journeys | NPCs cannot react to a human order's outcome in the same tick; journeys can exhaust fuel before orders |
| 2 | Record alliance size; resolve all departures and betrayals against a shared pre-diplomacy roster | A later-submitted departure still runs before an earlier-submitted donation |
| 3 | All other diplomacy-domain orders, in queue submission order; refresh membership history | Offers, acceptances, embargoes, donations and accession happen before production |
| 4 | Produce national resources and apply alliance penalties; pay fleet, defense and material maintenance; replenish private stores and produce merchant cargo; remove destroyed hulls | New income can fund later economy or military orders, but not an earlier diplomacy order |
| 5 | Complete capital selections, ordinary construction and research, then victory assets | A newly completed ship can receive a queued move this tick; new research can satisfy an order later this tick |
| 6 | Execute recruitment orders, then transfers, then remaining orders in submission order | Construction starts, movement departs, shipments launch, repairs and acceleration execute |
| 7 | Progress task forces; dispatch sorties, merchants and mining freight; burn journey fuel; resolve arrivals, one simultaneous orbital/ground combat round, conquest and scouting | A force arriving now participates in this year's battle; orders and maintenance have already resolved |
| 8 | Apply raid damage; progress mining and frontier claims/construction; resolve convoy arrivals/interceptions; recover sorties and task forces; update warnings; consolidate occupation | Cargo may arrive after combat; captured ports need three later clear, supplied consolidation checks |
| 9 | Habitat survival and growth; ship, marine and passenger provisions; extinction and peace bookkeeping | Delivery can avert this year's shortage; new settlements enter survival immediately |
| 10 | Competitive achievements and endings; tick event; persist public snapshot | All earlier changes count toward end-of-tick qualification |

The Lobby skips phase 10's competitive claim and ending evaluation, but still records the tick and snapshot.

Within a phase, orders follow their append-only **submission order**, across all nations. They are not sorted alphabetically by ID and there is no simultaneous reservation of resources. Each order executes on an isolated candidate state: success commits all its changes; a rules failure discards all of them and records a private reason. A two-leg trade therefore launches both legs or neither.

## Duration boundaries

An order executing at T with construction duration D finishes in phase 5 of **T+D**. It does not receive a construction tick on its starting tick. An asset completing at T can start a countdown at T; a 24-tick countdown matures at **T+24** if qualification is continuous.

A fleet departing at T for a two-year hop arrives at **T+2**. Fuel and quoted provisions are charged at departure. It consumes provisions during the departure year's survival phase. Each later hop starts when the previous one arrives and lasts at least one year. During flybys the stored site remains the last docked habitat while transit records the actual position. Denied arrivals physically return or wait off port, and foreign-colony approaches use the two-tick response floor described in navigation. Spent fuel and provisions are not refunded.

| Timer | Last included or first allowed tick |
| --- | --- |
| Exile protection ending at `protectedUntil` | Protected while `tick < protectedUntil`; restrictions lift at equality |
| Ordinary offer created at T | May be accepted through T+24 inclusive by default |
| Exact-roster alliance proposal at T | Expires at the start of T+24; approve earlier |
| Rejoin cooldown set at T | Former members may reunite at T+12 |
| Qualified betrayal surprise | T through T+5 |
| Qualified betrayal first-conquest loot | T through T+11 |
| Captured-port consolidation beginning after capture at T | Capture tick does not count; three clear, supplied checks at T+1, T+2 and T+3 secure the port |

## Lobby and competitive rosters

The **Lobby** is a shared, continuously playable scrimmage. Founding stays open, it has no competitive player cap or automatic ending, and defeat can be followed by `practice_restart`. Restart creates fresh starting assets, clears readiness and discards the defeated practice nation's assets. It is not a recovery mechanic inside a competitive season.

Only a verified human player can mark Ready or withdraw. An agent with setup permission can found a clan but cannot opt the player into a season. When **100 eligible Ready humans** are available, the oldest entries form a fresh competitive roster. Queue position persists while offline. Starting-position assignment is deterministically shuffled; all human clans get the same starting assets. Vacancies are never refilled.

New competitive seasons use the alpha-9 preset with ten-minute ticks and 100 seats. Existing Lobby and competitive seasons keep their saved settings. Several competitive shards can run while the Lobby continues. The engine itself supports frontier founding before year 24; the live service deliberately restricts player founding to the Lobby and creates competitive nations at roster launch. The 24-year engine limit is not an invitation to join a running competitive shard.

Faction name, color and published lore persist across assignment. Gameplay assets, research, queue and private strategy do not carry into a fresh season. Agent authority carries only through the human's explicit approved intersection of existing grants and delegation. Permanent extinction or season completion returns the player to the Lobby with readiness off. **Exile with survivors does not return them.**

Lobby geography expands in blocks of 420 sites when capacity or available founding locations require it. Existing sites keep their IDs and orbits; new frontier blocks add 25 AU to semimajor axes and twelve region IDs per block. Expansion creates no additional NPC clans. Leaving practice clears the departing nation's sites and assets; affected queued orders are cancelled. Incoming government practice cargo is returned to its sender's treasury; passengers return if the origin still belongs to the sender. Independent merchant cargo instead physically returns to its civilian warehouse and cannot fund a treasury. Charter fees are not refunded. This is a Lobby lifecycle rule, not a competitive recall order.

## Replay and records

Public snapshots are recorded after each committed tick. Competitive archives persist; the Lobby keeps the latest **144 snapshots**. Replay windows contain at most **24 consecutive tick positions**. Playback interpolates the recorded journey and orbits between snapshots; it does not resolve additional battles or orders. Replay speed changes viewing speed only. Archived browsing uses public views even for a participant; authorized private history remains available separately.

**Cinematic** starts a public Archive tour at the current playhead. It advances every recorded snapshot at **30 seconds per year/tick**, loops the selected season from its recorded end to its first retained snapshot, and holds both camera and replay while paused, hidden or loading. Failed loads pause with Retry. Exiting restores the previous normal playback settings at the current tick without seeking backward. Captions and shot selection use the displayed snapshot, never future events or private history. See [Cinematic observer](map-and-visibility.md#cinematic-observer) for controls and reduced-motion behavior.

`/?preview=1` is a separate browser simulation with manual year advancement and local history. It uses the same engine but no live server state. Reset cancels pending preview advances and queued preview orders, then clears the recorded preview history; reload also discards the preview. It is different from the shared Lobby.

Sources: `packages/engine/src/engine.ts`, `world.ts`, `scrimmage.ts`; `apps/server/src/store.ts`, `shards.ts`, `service.ts`, `worker.ts`; `apps/web/src/Preview.tsx`, `Archive.tsx`.

## Marine and ground combat timing

Recruitment and garrison orders execute before transfers and other ordinary phase-6 commands. In phase 7 each site's orbital damage resolves before automatic marine landings, simultaneous ground damage and troop-required conquest. Scouts observe afterward. Marine survival joins phase 9 before extinction. All damage remains at tick boundaries; between-tick battle animation adds no combat substeps.

## Blockade, economy and NPC timing

Blockade control is derived from current legal orbital presence: diplomacy changes affect production immediately, while combat and arrivals later in the tick affect survival and subsequent production. Ship matchups modify the orbital damage split in phase 7. Recruitment in phase 6 checks for a hostile ground assault already present. Qualifying phase-8 deliveries refresh port commerce through T+8, benefiting production from T+1 through T+8. Blockade suppresses that benefit without pausing expiry; ownership changes clear it.

## Merchant, raid and patrol timing

Private warehouses and preparation replenish during production. Refits complete in the construction phase. Sortie/redirect orders run with the ordinary military phase; automated sorties dispatch after those orders, and merchants launch before arrivals. Observe the current approach before any contact and whenever a waypoint or redirect establishes a new leg. Orbital combat runs once, then eligible raids disrupt markets, convoys resolve with capacity-limited boarding, survivors return/refit, and grouped warnings update. Warning records, events, notifications and the public snapshot share the tick transaction. Repeating assignment authority is rechecked each dispatch; connection expiry/revocation is applied before advancing the tick.

## Capital and task-force timing

The shared NPC scheduler queues orders before the tick increments. Capital establishment completes after that tick's production and before ordinary project completion, rechecking ownership, habitation, power, security and authority. A `capital` order executed at T therefore establishes at T+2; its economic bonus first affects production at T+3. Its eligible installed defenses gain their bonus for combat at T+2. Capture later in a tick removes the designation immediately and cannot undo production that already occurred.

Task forces first assemble and dispatch after ordinary military orders. After arrivals, orbital and ground combat, raids and traffic resolution, they evaluate contact, loot, damage, supplies and physical withdrawal again. A final combat round counts as contact even when the last attacker dies; defenders must then remain for three quiet ticks. Occupation consolidation is the last frontier-control step before survival consumes provisions. Capture itself does not count toward the three clear, supplied consolidation ticks. A newly secured port resumes economic production and merchant departures on the following tick. Recent public outcomes are recorded after combat and retained for three ticks; private objectives and budgets do not enter public replay.

## Current system timing

Onboard propellant burns during pre-order preparation and again along journeys before arrivals; exhaustion stops the hull at its actual position. NPC scheduling precedes ordinary queued execution. The current lane graph refreshes for new travel; paid journeys retain their existing legs. Production settles national income, private stores and the complete credit/material maintenance bill. Authorized mining freight dispatches before arrivals; after combat, mining progress and claims resolve against surviving forces. Temporary workers consume local provisions rather than receiving ordinary settlement growth. Occupation consolidation is the final frontier-control step before survival. Completed in-memory orders and task forces retain a rolling 24-tick window; recent resolved convoys retain the battle display window. Stored events and public archive snapshots remain durable.