Is there for way to calculate accurate stardates?

ussvinovia · June 28

I'm a role-player and really like to know the launch date of my ships. Occasionally it comes up on the fleet log but that hardly ever seems to happen anymore.

I know there used to be a tool to calculate the STO stardate vases on current time but that is no longer up and running.

The STO stardate I'm looking for is 28th June 2024 (GMT +1 DST) 22:43:00.

Note, the in-game current stardate for that time not the actual stardate for 2024.

Hope someone can help!

duncanidaho11 · June 29

Here's an example I found on a Bing search. What's to recommend is that it uses LCARs.

https://stardatecalculator.com/

As far as I'm aware and have read, no official way to calculate stardate as show's didn't use a codified stardate calculator, setting episodes in precise chronological order mapped out to calendar days. What folks have done is backsolve likely conversion rates from date landmarks (ex. holidays). Results will vary as different landmark dates will provide different stardate conversion rates (each pair encompasses a different span of time and different rate of stardates) and the only thing that can be done to reconcile those differences is take an average, minimum, or maximum which will all depend on how many landmarks are chosen from across the IP. And even if you create a grand unified Star Trek Stardate calculator, it's utility for a given setting depends on how it's date scheme relates to patterns of tendency. A stardate calculator that includes TOS for example won't be as accurate for STO as one just based on Voyager. The extra information biases results away from what's more likely to be more diligently set by a neighboring era.

What matters for any story teller though is that you use a single source consistently for your own stuff. There is no official date calculation that can be given for Star Trek. It's just a loose way of marking the relative progression of time that generations of writers slapped around for general feel.

Explanation here:
https://trekguide.com/Stardates.htm

foxman00 · June 29

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

Here's an example I found on a Bing search. What's to recommend is that it uses LCARs.

https://stardatecalculator.com/

As far as I'm aware and have read, no official way to calculate stardate as show's didn't use a codified stardate calculator, setting episodes in precise chronological order mapped out to calendar days. What folks have done is backsolve likely conversion rates from date landmarks (ex. holidays). Results will vary as different landmark dates will provide different stardate conversion rates (each pair encompasses a different span of time and different rate of stardates) and the only thing that can be done to reconcile those differences is take an average, minimum, or maximum which will all depend on how many landmarks are chosen from across the IP. And even if you create a grand unified Star Trek Stardate calculator, it's utility for a given setting depends on how it's date scheme relates to patterns of tendency. A stardate calculator that includes TOS for example won't be as accurate for STO as one just based on Voyager. The extra information biases results away from what's more likely to be more diligently set by a neighboring era.

What matters for any story teller though is that you use a single source consistently for your own stuff. There is no official date calculation that can be given for Star Trek. It's just a loose way of marking the relative progression of time that generations of writers slapped around for general feel.

Explanation here:
https://trekguide.com/Stardates.htm

Thank you for providing this. It doesn't match STOs one, but I have been hoping to find a good Stardate calculator that is pretty adaptable. As im trying to get into Fan stories that are in STOs time period (my own head canon is that it is now 2423)

Thank you, Captain.

phoenixc · June 29

The funny part is what it turns out the TOS stardates really were: the workorder numbers of the episodes. The gaps are from other shows and whatnot the studio was doing taking up numbers (which also included a lot of projects that never reached the point of actually filming anything), and the reason they were not always in order was the fact that NBC insisted on getting the films in batches so they could pick which ones to show each week themselves.

Also, TOS was more realistic with time than later shows and they took whatever amount of time they needed for the stories, so they don't actually fit the one season equals one year thing that is so popular nowadays. For example, if you listen to the dialog in Where No Man Has Gone Before carefully it takes place over the course of about three or four weeks from the viewpoint of the crew, but some of the dialog that was in the script, but cut for time (part of Kirk's final log entry for the episode), reveals that time dilation from limping along on impulse for those two weeks (their time) took about a year Earthside time.

Various Trekkies good at math have calculated the speed they would have had to be going for that to happen, and it looks like the science advisor used an average speed of between 99.8 and 99.9 the speed of light as the top impulse drive speed for that run.

Another one where the episode takes longer than it looks is Shore Leave. While there is nothing like time dilation going on, the first captain's log reveals that they have been doing a mind-numbingly boring stellar cartography grid for over three months without going anywhere near a planet the whole time and the crew was going stir crazy and needed a break. Nothing like that is seen on camera in any other episode so there is no overlap with any other episode, which means that one episode would block out a quarter of a year all on its own.

duncanidaho11 · June 29

foxman00 wrote: »

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

Here's an example I found on a Bing search. What's to recommend is that it uses LCARs.

https://stardatecalculator.com/

As far as I'm aware and have read, no official way to calculate stardate as show's didn't use a codified stardate calculator, setting episodes in precise chronological order mapped out to calendar days. What folks have done is backsolve likely conversion rates from date landmarks (ex. holidays). Results will vary as different landmark dates will provide different stardate conversion rates (each pair encompasses a different span of time and different rate of stardates) and the only thing that can be done to reconcile those differences is take an average, minimum, or maximum which will all depend on how many landmarks are chosen from across the IP. And even if you create a grand unified Star Trek Stardate calculator, it's utility for a given setting depends on how it's date scheme relates to patterns of tendency. A stardate calculator that includes TOS for example won't be as accurate for STO as one just based on Voyager. The extra information biases results away from what's more likely to be more diligently set by a neighboring era.

What matters for any story teller though is that you use a single source consistently for your own stuff. There is no official date calculation that can be given for Star Trek. It's just a loose way of marking the relative progression of time that generations of writers slapped around for general feel.

Explanation here:
https://trekguide.com/Stardates.htm

Thank you for providing this. It doesn't match STOs one, but I have been hoping to find a good Stardate calculator that is pretty adaptable. As im trying to get into Fan stories that are in STOs time period (my own head canon is that it is now 2423)

Thank you, Captain.

If you have a range of STO stardates what you could do is extrapolate around those (doing what others have done for the other series) and create your own relative dating system. Take a few landmarks, decide exactly what date they fall on, then make a rate calculation of days to stardates to place your adventures with.

jonsills · June 29

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

The funny part is what it turns out the TOS stardates really were: the workorder numbers of the episodes. The gaps are from other shows and whatnot the studio was doing taking up numbers (which also included a lot of projects that never reached the point of actually filming anything), and the reason they were not always in order was the fact that NBC insisted on getting the films in batches so they could pick which ones to show each week themselves.

Also, TOS was more realistic with time than later shows and they took whatever amount of time they needed for the stories, so they don't actually fit the one season equals one year thing that is so popular nowadays. For example, if you listen to the dialog in Where No Man Has Gone Before carefully it takes place over the course of about three or four weeks from the viewpoint of the crew, but some of the dialog that was in the script, but cut for time (part of Kirk's final log entry for the episode), reveals that time dilation from limping along on impulse for those two weeks (their time) took about a year Earthside time.

Various Trekkies good at math have calculated the speed they would have had to be going for that to happen, and it looks like the science advisor used an average speed of between 99.8 and 99.9 the speed of light as the top impulse drive speed for that run.

Another one where the episode takes longer than it looks is Shore Leave. While there is nothing like time dilation going on, the first captain's log reveals that they have been doing a mind-numbingly boring stellar cartography grid for over three months without going anywhere near a planet the whole time and the crew was going stir crazy and needed a break. Nothing like that is seen on camera in any other episode so there is no overlap with any other episode, which means that one episode would block out a quarter of a year all on its own.

Yeah, all of this is why in the stories I wrote, I never put a stardate into my log entries. Closest I came was dating one lecture as being to "the Academy graduating class of 2405".

ussvinovia · June 29

Interesting stuff everyone, thanks.

Is there for way to calculate accurate stardates?

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