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(+1)

Interesting game. I think it needs a little more hand holding at the start, just a bit - I didn't really figure it out till I read PedroFih's comment below.

Found a likely bug:

When I reach The Orb (options: 'Attempt communication with The Orb' or 'Destroy The Orb') I keep doing 'Build Keystone' and it doesn't make any significant difference to travel time. The last 3 times I've done it I've repeated my exact actions and arrive within much less than 1 second of the last time (when travel is about 48 seconds, so 10% should speed it up by about 4-5 seconds).

Process: start with Beta, Gamma, Delta, Zeta, Zeta, Zeta; put First Formation on Propulsion, then put Beta, Gamma, Delta into Propulsion, so it hits x20.83; then Propulse, Approach the Glow, then (time now 86.93/87.75) Approach The Orb, arrive 25.35/87.75.

Test: after the above, put First Formation on Ether Gathering, then click Build Keystone, then Gather Essence to get a Beta and Gamma, then Begin Again. Build a Delta with the Spinforge (so I don't boost Propulse), then Meditate until Begin Again, then follow the above process again. Propulse still starts at x20.83 (same), start final step at 86.93/87.75 (same), arrive 25.21/87.75 - change is 0.14 seconds, not the 4-5 seconds expected, and that change probably came from Ether Gathering getting polished by Build Keystone, Gather Essence, Meditate etc..

Also: I suggest an 'end run' button for when we've done what we want to get done.

I didn't quite catch that in your comment, but are you also building the second Keystone at the Orb area?

Yes, I've built every Keystone I can access, multiple times. It's only the last one (described in my comment) that's having an issue, as far as I can tell.

Thank you for playing my game, and the in-depth bug report!

The timing isn't exact, it relies on system clocks.  I'll look into moving to a tick-based system at a later point.

There is an "end run" button in the menu, which can be accessed with either the "esc" or "del" keys.

Thanks for answering, you're awesome!
Good to know re End Run, thanks!

Re the timing, my gut says this is more of a bug than an accuracy or timer/clock issue. After all, the other 'Build Keystone' buttons did their job, I can now travel in a few seconds something that was taking 40-60 seconds; this one is not making any difference at all to travel time, it's literally not reducing travel time one bit, and that's not just a clock thing, that's an issue with the travel time reduction code... a timer issue would be a problem of fractions of a second ie milliseconds... this is a problem of 4-5 seconds!

I got some unexpected free time today; I'm looking at this next.  Also: new update!  :)

Yay! Thanks!

Alright, I got to the bottom of it.  There was a bug with how very fast tasks were being timed, which is now fixed.  The issue you were seeing above wasn't related, it's a math thing.  

The speed a task is done at isn't linear, it's exponential based on the skill level.  That means that the first 10/25/50% of the task takes a lot longer than the last 10/25/50%, because your level went up while doing it.  

Taking off 10% of the work to be done can be thought of as taking it off of the end, when the task is being done the fastest.  That explains why there isn't a 1:1 conversion of work required:time taken.

Either way, it's still worth it to build keystones.  Thanks for pointing it out, I got to bust out the old Excel sheets!

Thanks for that. 

Sadly, I've tried and I've built another 5 Keystones at that point, and I'm still getting there with 25.35 seconds left, plus or minus 0.2 seconds, so the Keystone is just not cutting travel time even by 1 second. Even if I throw every rounder I have at it, I don't have enough time to do the next steps, so I'm officially stuck. I suppose I could wipe the save data and go back to the beginning, and see if that makes a difference, but... I've rebuilt my rounders so many times, I'm just... yeah. But thank you for a great game, good luck with the progress, maybe I'll come back to it some time.

Thanks for playing my little buggy alpha.  It'll be bigger and better later on, so feel free to come back a while from now!