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Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy mentions the longer Martian day. The extra 39 minutes were represented by a 39 minute midnight clock freeze between 12:00:00

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy mentions the longer Martian day. The extra 39 minutes were represented by a 39 minute midnight clock freeze between 12:00:00 and 12:00:01. It was never mentioned how this worked across the entire planet. Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series (starting with Dauntless) has a lot of time involved, due to military fleets/flotillas maneuvers at light-hour distances: Fleet A jumps into a system. Fleet B is 6 light hours distant across the system. B won't see light from A's arrival for 6 hours. A won't see B's reaction for 12 hours, less any distance covered. Ships can engage in combat at up to 0.2c relative velocity, at a maximum distance of about 1 light second. Fleet A accelerates to 0.1c, Fleet B does the same and they approach. Time to contact is 30 hours, and the books discuss how difficult it is for humans to rest and focus on other things during that time. Our instinctive fight/flight/fawn/freeze reaction doesn't translate well to waiting 30 hours! Fleet A and B approach, but because the ships take a few seconds to pivot/roll/yaw to maneuver, so there's a critical time period where A or B can change position and the opposing fleet won't have time to react before the fleets clash. This is used to great effect by the skilled fleet commander of the Good Guys. The lost fleet books also discuss maneuvering fleet formations when everyone is at light-minute or multiple light second distances. There's lots of orders like "at time 15, Echo One pivot formation down 30 degrees and starboard 15 degrees". Learning to bring all your firepower to bear on the enemy at a single moment, while denying them the same opportunity, is a very difficult skill to learn in these books. Aaand I've written way too much. And probably not done the fantastic combat in the lost fleet books any justice at all.

hinkley 2y ago
In high school a significant fraction of the effort I put into doing math in my head was expended so that, when playing a game called Galactic Conquest, all of my attack fleets would show up in the same turn. Or two turns, if I was still manufacturing ships. And then I got sneakier and would send a false fleet to attack the wrong planet in turn X, and the real fleet would show up one or two turns later on the opposite side of the victim’s empire, just after they had committed every spare ship in their navy to a jump in the wrong direction, tying up their logistics until after the fight was over and I was rebuilding planetary defenses, preparing for the counterattack.
gamegoblin 2y ago
These concepts would make for a killer PVP real time strategy game, good write-up
- bloopernova 2y ago
  > These concepts would make for a killer PVP real time strategy game Yeah, I deeply hope someone can write it one day. I've tried thinking about how you'd model and calculate such behaviour, but it's mostly beyond me. Thank you for the compliment :)
- shagie 2y ago
  NEBULOUS: Fleet Command ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/887570/NEBULOUS_Fleet_Command/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/887570/NEBULOUS_Fleet_Com... - currently 35% off on the Steam sale which is ending Real Soon Now) It is a heavy game. https://youtu.be/eqn7F97M8XA https://youtu.be/eqn7F97M8XA
shagie 2y ago
> Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series (starting with Dauntless) has a lot of time involved, due to military fleets/flotillas maneuvers at light-hour distances: I'll also mention Dread Empire's Fall by Walter Jon Williams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Empire%27s_Fall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Empire%27s_Fall You again deal with long communication distances and most fleet actions are done with missiles. This then has the challenge of "how do you control the missiles / select the targets at such distances (no AIs)" and there is a class of pilots that fly a 'pinnace' which is a small, one person ship that is capable of doing high acceleration to keep up with the missiles. During peace times, the pinnace pilots tend to be more about prestige and racing. There was also an instance of moving a jump point thingy that _really_ messed up a fleet action (since the fleet, traveling at high speed to the edge of the system missed the "go here to jump to the next system" and instead had to turn around and go back ... which represented a lot of time and acceleration (not all species in the universe don't have the same tolerance for acceleration).

hinkley 2y ago

In high school a significant fraction of the effort I put into doing math in my head was expended so that, when playing a game called Galactic Conquest, all of my attack fleets would show up in the same turn. Or two turns, if I was still manufacturing ships. And then I got sneakier and would send a false fleet to attack the wrong planet in turn X, and the real fleet would show up one or two turns later on the opposite side of the victim’s empire, just after they had committed every spare ship in their navy to a jump in the wrong direction, tying up their logistics until after the fight was over and I was rebuilding planetary defenses, preparing for the counterattack.

gamegoblin 2y ago

These concepts would make for a killer PVP real time strategy game, good write-up

bloopernova 2y ago
> These concepts would make for a killer PVP real time strategy game Yeah, I deeply hope someone can write it one day. I've tried thinking about how you'd model and calculate such behaviour, but it's mostly beyond me. Thank you for the compliment :)
shagie 2y ago
NEBULOUS: Fleet Command ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/887570/NEBULOUS_Fleet_Command/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/887570/NEBULOUS_Fleet_Com... - currently 35% off on the Steam sale which is ending Real Soon Now) It is a heavy game. https://youtu.be/eqn7F97M8XA https://youtu.be/eqn7F97M8XA

shagie 2y ago

> Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series (starting with Dauntless) has a lot of time involved, due to military fleets/flotillas maneuvers at light-hour distances: I'll also mention Dread Empire's Fall by Walter Jon Williams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Empire%27s_Fall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Empire%27s_Fall You again deal with long communication distances and most fleet actions are done with missiles. This then has the challenge of "how do you control the missiles / select the targets at such distances (no AIs)" and there is a class of pilots that fly a 'pinnace' which is a small, one person ship that is capable of doing high acceleration to keep up with the missiles. During peace times, the pinnace pilots tend to be more about prestige and racing. There was also an instance of moving a jump point thingy that _really_ messed up a fleet action (since the fleet, traveling at high speed to the edge of the system missed the "go here to jump to the next system" and instead had to turn around and go back ... which represented a lot of time and acceleration (not all species in the universe don't have the same tolerance for acceleration).