What is the Time?

[Exhaust Port]

Just curious what "time" is used in the SW Universe. When you're blasting around the galaxy you don't have to adhere to any 1 time method, you can operate on your own completely independent time. You can pick how long a second is, minute, hour, day, etc. Perhaps through testing the Empire figured out that it's military operated better (more rested) with a 20 hour day with each hour being less than the "standard" hour.

I would think that what your time standard is and what time it is would be a huge secret. Obviously a military would most likely attack during their "Day" period so it would help to know when is "day" for your enemy or "night" if you want to attack them. A military could stagger their sleep periods to maximize their coverage during any given time but during a battle you'd want to have most of your military awake during the big push so you'd still end up with a sleep period where you'd have reduced strength.

So syncing up all your units to the same time would be a huge task. Perhaps an enemy could interfer with the time signal and you'd throw a whole unit, ship or other completely out of sync with the rest of their allies. A unit out of sync wouldn't be rested or ready when expected.

Rather than attack the DS in mass the Rebels could have fooled the DS into Sleep mode and attack with most of the Empire sleeping.

[Mr. JabbaJohnL]

Everybody uses uniform time measurements based on Coruscant's rotation. That just makes it easier for story purposes, for one thing. It's the same deal with it seemingly always being the same time of day simultaneously on various planets despite that being a huge coincidence. :p

[bigbarada]

Actually, the best tactics when planning an attack is to catch the enemy at dawn or dusk. This is when the body is the most disoriented because, at dawn, the brain is just waking up from a few hours of sleep and, at dusk, the brain is preparing for sleep.

So, if the Rebel's were leaving Yavin at that planet's equivalent of 12 noon and attacking the Death Star at the space station's equivalent of 4 AM, then the Rebels would have a huge advantage in that battle (assuming all of the Rebels in that battle were acclimatized to Yavin's time).

[JediTricks]

Coruscant rotation shouldn't matter that much to Imperial time either though, most of the planet is a city under the surface of the sprawling mega-metropolis so it doesn't get light at different times of day, and probably doesn't have oceans with tide shifts. But my guess is the Emperor is such a selfish sort that time is based on whatever time it is where his home is, his castle or temple is the hub of that universe. Then again, you have the outer rim planets being fairly disconnected from the government that they may be totally independent and simply adopt a simple "stardate" style calendar.

[El Chuxter]

It's time to get ill!!