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Units in The Conservatory

I love my sci-fi to be at least reasonably coherent. No sci-fi can be perfect - if it were, there would be no "fi" in the phrase. Still, people love it when it seems coherent enough and makes intuitive sense.

While the game will usually measure in your choice of Metric or Imperial units, I have also included in-universe custom units called Coalition units, based off of cosmological constants, which you can use if you are feeling particularly daring.

The Coalition Unit System

Real World Universal Constants, as seen in The Conservatory

First, some background lore from real life. In 2019, all of our standard units of measurement (SI units) were modified to be built upon Universal Constants. These are constants based on the laws of physics themselves. This boasts several real world benefits to the way we measure things!

  1. The values can never become inaccurate or change over time. They can only become more precise. The speed of light will always be exactly 299792458 meters per second in a vacuum, for instance, and this is a truth of reality that can not be changed.
  2. These values are the same everywhere in the universe1, which means if we ever encounter aliens, these units are universal. We can tell an alien that a meter is a certain amount of Planck lengths (one of these universal constants) and even if they have no clue what a meter is, they can figure that out on their own!

Turns out this is awesome for writing stories too, like The Conservatory's lore.

The Conservatory uses real world Universal Constants, however it assumes completely precise values exist2. The math is the same as the real world, with the exact values for Planck's constant and the Boltzmann constant. The Planck length is treated as exactly \(1.616255\times10^{-35}\) meters. Other universal constants (Length, Mass, Temperature, Time, G) can be calculated from all of these.

When calculating the values in-game, please impolitely discard preservation of significant figures. The game's math doesn't care about them, and since we aren't doing real physics or science here, it doesn't really matter.

What are the game units?

Don't overwhelm yourself!

There's a lot of information here, but you probably don't need it all! If you are just looking for how to use these numbers when writing stories or dialogue, skip to the next section after the data tables below.

Here's the raw units. If you want to know how to write stories using these, see the next section.

Usage Name Abbreviation Value Measurement
Length Stride \(st\) \(\ell_P\times2^{112}\) \(\text{1 st}\approx0.08392\) meters
Length Sprint \(sp\) \(\mathsf{stride}\times2^{16}\) \(\text{1 sp}\approx5499.78\) meters
Time Tempora \(tm\) \(t_P\times2^{144}\) \(\text{1 tm}\approx1.202288\) seconds
Time Hold \(hl\) \(\mathsf{tempora}\times64\) \(\text{1 hl}\approx1.28\) minutes
Time Octholds \(oct\) \(\mathsf{hold}\times64\) \(\text{1 oct}\approx1.36\) hours
Time Cycle \(cy\) \(\mathsf{tempora}\times2^{16}\)
\(\mathsf{octhold}\times16\)		 \(\text{1 cy}\approx21.887\) hours
\(\text{1 cy}=16\) octhold
Time Sequence \(se\) \(\mathsf{cycle}\times512\) \(\text{1 se}\approx1.28\) years
Temperature Thermo \(th\) \(T_P\times2^{-108}\) \(\text{1 th}\propto0.43658\) Kelvin
Temperature Plasma \(pl\) \(\mathsf{thermo}\times2^{16}\) \(\text{1 pl}\propto28611.72873\) Kelvin
Mass Fulcra \(fl\) \(m_P\times2^{24}\) \(\text{1 fc}\approx0.3651\) kilograms
Mass Cargo Fulcra \(flc\) \(\mathsf{fulcra}\times2^{16}\) \(\text{1 flc}\approx23930.149\) kilograms
- - - - -
Velocity Warp \(W\) \(c\)
\(\mathsf{strides}\times \frac{{299792458\text{ m}}}{1.202288\mathsf{\text{ s}}}\)		 \(\text{1 W} = c\)
\(\approx20925774.675254\) st/tm

Real World Units Used Above

Name Abbreviation Value Meaning
Planck length \(\ell_P\) \(=1.616255\times10^{-35}\) meters Smallest measurable length allowed by the laws of physics.
Planck time \(t_P\) \(\approx5.391246366844892\times10^{-44}\) seconds The amount of time it takes to travel \(\text{1 }\ell_P\) at the speed of light \(c\).
Planck temperature \(T_P\) \(\approx1.41678418\times10^{32}\) Kelvin Maximum allowed temperature by the laws of physics.
Planck mass \(m_P\) \(\approx2.17643437560\times10^{-8}\) kilograms Odd one out. Less of an obvious meaning than the others, with no good analogy.

Advice for Writers

Numbers are based on powers of two. Instead of numbers like 5, 10, or 100, our interstellar citizens really enjoy 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, so forth.

Time

Sorry, I lied. You'll have to look at the table above (the bigger one) to learn what these units are.

  • Try these quick substitutions for our common phrases (these are not mathematically correct!):
    • "Just a few seconds" => "Count a few tempora"
    • "Give me 5 mintues" => "Give me 4 holds"
    • "... 15 minutes" => "... 16 holds"
    • "30 minutes" => "32 holds"
    • "60 minutes" => "64 holds" (Like in person, rarely used but still valid.)
    • "An hour" => "1 octhold"
    • "12 hours" => "8 octholds"
    • "24 hours" => "16 octholds" (Like in person, rarely used but still valid.)
    • "A day" => "A cycle"
    • "A year ago" => "A sequence ago"
    • "A decade ago" => "8 sequences ago"
    • "A century ago" => "64 sequences ago" (this is 80 years, not 100, but colloquially it's used the same way)

There is an analogue to Star Trek's Stardate system used by this game. It uses a unit of time measured since the foundation of The Coalition of United Species.

Sequence . Cycle / Whole Octholds
Fewest digits (Sequence) (dot) Three digits (Cycle, 000-511) (forward slash) Four Digits (whole holds, 0000-1023)

Example: 1.442/0965 is 1 sequence + 442 cycles + 15 octholds (960 holds) + 5 holds
Could be thought of as "2 years, 100-some days, at 22:47" (n.b. this is me eyeballing it and is not accurate)

  1. Shhh.. Shhh. Yes. I know. It's more important that people understand even if some nuance is left out with respect to relativity and whatnot. ↩

  2. These values normally have some margin for error due to quantum mechanics preventing you from actually measuring something with 100% accuracy. The Universe doesn't particularly enjoy being snooped in on. The game throws this limitation away because it makes things very hard to work with! ↩