So, my Hexa Trains indie game features some outlandish planets with freaky colours. Obviously, they cannot represent Earth, as the continents are all wrong too. So, railroad building on Alien Worlds, it is then.
So, when the time came to implement loan interest for the game, it made me realize I need some time-accounting for my game. An extra-solar planet will still have years (as it orbits a star) and days (as it will likely spin as it orbits.) So years, and days. But what about monthly interest payments?
Well... there it breaks down. A random alien planet does not have months, and even if it does, there wouldn't be 12 of them. For starters, a random planet may or may not have moons. And if it does, the moon orbit will not be an integral number of times faster than the planet's orbit.
So no moon then. But what about seasons? Yes... our Alien Planet will most likely have seasons, because the spin axis is probably not aligned with the orbit axis. This means that there will be a spring, summer, autumn and winter. Nice!
And because our Alien Planet has four seasons, which are perfectly in sync with the orbit (exactly 4 seasons per year) we can reasonably assume that our aliens are familiar with dividing their year into four equal parts.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen... Our Aliens will probably track corporate performance on a quarterly basis. And hence, will have fiscal quarters.
So, this means that I will implement my economic simulation in such a way that interest on debts is charged four times a year, and revenue/investments/operational-costs/assets are tracked on a quarterly basis.