A Tutorial About Time Zones
Hello.
This thread is designed solely as a point of reference for the hundreds of players who seem to have a false understanding of timezones and their relation to the Planetarion game. I hope after reading this you will never again have confusion over PATeam's advertised times for tick start, shuffling, round end, etc.
So... the Planetarion server, which dictate the time shown in the game, all run on the time zone known as GMT (also known as Coordinated Universal Time or UTC or Zulu/Z). All times given by PATeam will be stated in GMT.
GMT, like every other time zone does not change. It is constant throughout the year. Every country bases it's time on GMT plus or minus a certain period of time (not necessarily whole hours).
However some countries, like the UK and most of mainland Europe switch to an alternative time zone during the Summer months to give more light during the working day. Taking the UK for example, this alternative timezone is called British Summer Time (BST) which is one hour ahead of GMT.
BST again, like all time zones, never changes. It is always one hour ahead of GMT. During the designated daylight savings months, the UK uses the BST timezone instead of GMT. Thus, it is incorrect to say that during daylight savings that the current time is in GMT, it is not.
The same happenes across most of mainland Europe. During the winter months, most of these countries use a timezone called Central European Time (CET). CET is always one hour ahead of GMT. It is the same time, all year round, in BST and CET.
During daylight savings, these countries adopt the time zone Central European Summer Time (CEST). CEST is always one hour ahead of CET, which is of course one hour ahead of GMT. Thus we say CEST is GMT+2.
So... make sure you remember, timezone never fluctuate in telling the time, countries just switch between alternative time zones for their daylight savings months! Please never again say that during the Summer that the UK is on GMT or that Norway is on CET. You would be wrong and you would make a fool of yourself.
To summarise:
Winter
UK is on GMT.
Central Europe is on CET (GMT+1).
Summer
UK is on BST (GMT+1).
Central Europe is on CEST (GMT+2).
Thank you.
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