Easy to Use Stardates

[Stan]

What methods do you use to track Stardates. I'd like to use some sort of Stardate naming convention that is easy to calculate and has an easy conversion to an actual Earth conventional timeline (being able to tell that a Stardate maps to May 3rd, 2266 for example). I know I could hand-wave the date, but I like being able to track to a realistic calendar.

(FASA had their Reference Stardate method, but I didn't like how they might have zeros on the front and a slash in the middle.)

A couple of ways I was thinking of using:

Method 1

Stardate = use the current year, drop the millenium digit, add a three digit number mapping to the day in the year, add a decimal two digits from the right

Examples:
The 1st day of 2264 would be 2640.01.
The 301st day of 2264 would be 2643.01.

Pros: short, TOS style stardates. Cons: Don't work well if you wanted to go back to the stone age or millennia into the future.

Method 2

Stardate = use the current year, add a three digit number mapping to the day in the year, add a decimal two digits from the right. An '0' prefix means the date occurred BCE.

Examples:
The 1st day of 2264 would be 22640.01.
The 301st day of 2264 would be 22643.01.
The 301st day of 12 BCE would be 0123.01.
The 301st day of 5112 would be 51123.01.


Pros: works with any date. Cons: longer, TNG style stardates.

[Falconer]

When is your campaign set vis-a-vis TOS?

[Stan]

Oct 4, 2020 16:54:32 GMT -5 Falconer said:

When is your campaign set vis-a-vis TOS?

In the TOS era. :-)

[Falconer]

Well, there are critical incidents you will want to know whether they are in the past or not, and how long it has been. The biggest is Errand of Mercy. But there are many contacts. Many discoveries. Ships destroyed. These will be your points of reference if you ever run into Gorns, or encounter the interphase effect, or want to know if it is possible to rendezvous with the Constellation or the Defiant, or whether it is possible for two characters to have served together aboard it in the past.

[ThrorII]

I posted this elsewhere, but you can also use a Julian Day Calculator ( planetcalc.com/503/ ) for a Modified Julian Day, and drop the first 2 digits and only count to one decimal point.

Where No Man Has Gone Before has a stardate of 1313.1 Using a Modified Julian Day, January 8, 2191 at 2am is 121313.1

Since The first two digits ("12") only change every 27 years, you can call it 1313.1

May 27, 2218 at 2am would be 131313.1

October 12, 2245 at 2am would be 141313.1

February 27, 2273 at 2am would be 151313.1

etc.