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Posted by: sublight
« on: December 22, 2015, 09:02:22 PM »

Movement phase does not included system body motion. System bodies move as part of the construction cycle update.

The way I understand it the game save update and a few elapsed-time dependent events such as damage control checks are only performed at the end of a time increment. Sub-pulses are a movement-phase/order-completion/detection-change check step that may trigger an interrupt for a shorter than planned time increment.

If so the only difference between running a long interval with 5-second sub-pulses vs 5-second increment is that 5-second increment offers the player a little extra fine control in issuing orders but runs a tiny bit slower from the extra database write cycles.

I assume that "within each time increment" is correct. I know sub-pulses are always used for everything other than 5-second increments when the auto-sub-pulse interval is set, but I don't know what happens when a time interval equal to or shorter than the selected sub-pulse is used.

Weapon firing events cause interrupts independent of the sub-pulse. A long time interval with a long sub-pulse will not cause friendly or opposing weapons to delay firing.
Posted by: Mor
« on: December 22, 2015, 05:12:15 PM »

Now I am confused. The label says that sub-pulses effect movement phase "within each time increment", while the almighty tooltip says "If a sub-pulse is set". So which is it always or sometimes, and if the later then when?

Also I assume that "movement phase" means movement of all objects in game i.e. fleets, rockets and whatever else is there, but probably not system bodies. Why sub-pulses effect only movements, what about other time sensitive tasks like firing? and what other phases are there for each pulse\increment? (e.g. when the orbital movements are calculated) Also I understand that there is the "construction phase", but that it isn't specific to pulse\TI.

Edited.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: December 22, 2015, 04:08:14 PM »

I believe that sub-pulses only come into effect with auto-turns.

If you are manually progressing time, then sub-pulses have no effect.
Posted by: Mor
« on: December 22, 2015, 03:24:48 PM »

If sub-pulses handle everything and time increment affect for how long you want to run them, than it would seem that  auto-turns makes the later redundant. Unless there is something else that happen only during time-increments? What about interrupt do they stop the turn after the last pulse or increment?

Edit: or orbital motion calculations?
Posted by: 83athom
« on: December 22, 2015, 09:46:06 AM »

The sub-pulses check for interrupts, interceptions, weapons hits, etc. Time increments are how long you wish to advance time.
Posted by: Mor
« on: December 21, 2015, 11:52:27 PM »

How sub-pulse are distinguished from time increments? For example, I suspect that program will ignore any sub-pulse setting higher than the time increment, but is there any difference between setting 30sec time increment and 5sec sub-pulse and 5sec time increment and 5sec-sub-pulse?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: January 26, 2010, 12:49:46 PM »

The Time Increment System
This a a very short tutorial section that provides a brief overview of how advancing time is handled in Aurora. Aurora doesn't easily fit into a description of turn-based or real-time as it is a little of both. Aurora has a choice of time increments ranging from 5 seconds to 30 days and you choose which increment to use, usually by selecting from the top row of time buttons on the System Map. Once you select an increment, events in the game will advance by that amount of time, unless there is an interrupt (which I will cover in a moment). Early in a campaign when not much is happening you may be using 5-day or even 30-day increments. During the approach phase of a battle you might select 1 hour or 20 minute increments and when you are under missile attack you will probably select 5 second increments to give your point defence systems the best chance of detecting and engaging incoming missiles.

As an increment play out, various events may occur. These are divided into two types:

1) Interrupt Events. These are the events to which you might want to react, such as detecting a new ship from an alien race, having one of your task groups finish its orders or detecting a missile coming at you :). However, you do have an option called Automated Turns. If you click the automated turns checkbox before clicking an increment size, the program will keep running increments of that size until an interrupt event affecting you. So if two NPRs decide to have a long battle, set automated turns and go and have a cup of tea :)

The 5-Day Construction Cycle
You get to build a lot of things in different things in Aurora and the actual construction takes place in what is commonly referred to as the 5-day increment, or 5-day construction cycle. It would affect performance if Aurora updated construction times in every 5 second increment or sub-pulse so instead the game waits until an number of increments have passed that add up to about five days and then runs all the construction code after the normal movement/detection/combat phases for that increment. Because Aurora increments rarely add up to exactly five days between construction cycles, the program uses the actual amount of time that has passed, whether it is 5 days, 12 days or 6 days, 14 hours, 12 minutes and 45 seconds. This means that the amount of 'construction' carried out in each construction cycle may vary a little between cycles. You can choose to change the trigger time for a construction cycle from the standard 400,000 seconds in the game setup if you want it to happen more or less often.

Steve