¶ What is the hour limitation?
On some arenas we set an hours-online limit — you can only play X hours of real-world time within any rolling 24-hour window. The default cap is 16 hours per rolling 24h, but each arena can configure its own.
¶ Why?
Ferion can become very intense, and some players break their sleep cycles to take care of their empire. That isn't healthy. The hours cap also closes the gap between players who can pour unlimited time into the game and those with other commitments.
¶ How does it work?
Let's say the limit is 16 hours. That means across any rolling 24-hour window you can only be active for 16 of those 24 wall-clock hours. The window slides with the current moment — at 08:00 today, it covers the period from 08:00 yesterday onward.
You can see your current usage by clicking on this icon at the bottom bar:
The modal shows how many hours you have left, when you used them, and roughly when new hours will free up.
¶ What counts as "using an hour"?
Any action that changes game state marks the current hour as used — for example: moving ships, queuing buildings, changing production, giving a spy an order, accepting diplomacy, etc.
¶ What doesn't count?
Passive browsing — looking at the map, opening planet panels, reading the leaderboard — costs nothing. Chat also doesn't count.
¶ When is the hour cut-off?
Activity is bucketed by clock hour, starting on the minute :00. So if you take an action at 08:59 and another at 09:05, you've used two hours (the 08:00 hour and the 09:00 hour), even though only six minutes of real time elapsed. The same hour-bucket can only be charged once — a 1-minute session and a 60-minute session in the same clock hour both cost 1.