Hello all, it’s time to shake things up a bit!
The Different tick schedules work is complete and we’ve successfully tested an experimental 1-minute tick galaxy called Chaotica. More on that in a bit, but first I’d also like to announce a new 15-minute tick galaxy called Hypernova.
Hypernova: New Solo Galaxy @ 15-min ticks
Supernova will be closing, and those who choose to keep playing will be placed into Hypernova. As usual, they’ll have the option to leave the registration queue if they wish.
The current plan is to keep this running for 1 month, which puts this at a similar relative pacing as a “classic” round, that runs for 4 months at 60 minute ticks. Rounds used to be 3 months long, but this should be in the same general realm. Compare:
| Ticks | 1 Hour | 1 Day | 30 Days | 120 Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 1 | 24 | 720 | (2880) |
| 15 minute | 4 | 96 | (2880) | 11,520 |
This may change in the future, but for now we don’t have sub-month automated scheduling in place, so we’re going to start these galaxies on the same schedule as the others.
The longer term plan is to also consider a 15-minute galaxy only running for a week. This would somewhat match the relative pacing of existing rounds:
| Ticks | 1 Hour | 1 Day | 1 Week | 4 Weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 1 | 24 | 168 | (672) |
| 15 minute | 4 | 96 | (672) | 2880 |
Either way, upcoming Galaxy Manager work will make this very easy to change in accordance with player feedback, so we’ll be able to adjust as necessary.
Thanks btw @Vegnarok and @iWalkingCorpse for helping me test this.
Chaotica: Experimental Galaxy @ 1-min ticks
Chaotica will continue to run as an experimental galaxy, also on the 1-month schedule. That puts it at an astounding 43,200 ticks (roughly) in a round. For comparison, that’s just under 5 years worth of ticks of a classic round, that gets condensed into a single month.
If that sounds absurd, it’s because it is. However, this is incredibly useful for us to test the game’s limits to help us more quickly playtest features and iterate on game balance.
Those of you who remember #infinitum may already recognize the challenge here: after enough time, the round hits a plateau where there just isn’t much to do anymore.
Chaotica will help us reach that point extremely quickly, and test game changes to address it, that will also impact the other tick speeds and improve the game in general.
Similar to Hypernova, the longer term plan is to also support 1-min tick rounds that run very quickly, to support “sessionable” games, the type of thing you might play with a buddy after work for even just an hour or two. As I’ve stated before, my own personal want is to be able to play rounds of IC on my Twitch channel, both for fun but also as a means to promote it to a new audience.
That’s a bit farther away, but the groundwork is here and Chaotica in particular is going to be incredibly useful to help us rebalance the game going forward, despite how strange it might feel at first.
With both of these galaxies, I’ll be watching feedback closely as the game still makes a lot of assumptions that 1 tick = 1 hour. We’ve tested and fixed a lot of things while working on this, but there will inevitably be situations we didn’t consider so you’re patience is appreciated.
As always, feel free to post feedback in #support:feedback, questions in #support:questions, and bugs in #support:bugs.
Both new galaxies will be starting in a few days with the next cycle, and I hope you enjoy them.
Have fun! 