I recently discovered the wonderful console command to change the time scale. Now instead of thirty game hours going by (who the hell came up with that?) per real life hour, I can have it set to whatever I want with the set timescale to 8 (or whatever) command. So I set it to eight and played the game for exactly one hour, with no pauses, dialog ect. I checked the in game time and only about five hours had gone by.

So I'm just wondering why that is? Does eight (in this case) not represent eight in game hours? Am I not understanding it correctly? What do I set it to to make it eight hours per one real life hour?

What time scale do you play at?

What I find particularly good about changing this is that I use a Basic Needs mod that I love, but it was just too demanding. I was always hungry or thirsty or tired, and it was getting to be a drag and I was at the point of turning it off. But after changing the timescale it is now much more balanced. Fun and immersive but not demanding.

I wish I had known about this ages ago.

Timescale represents what fraction of a real time the days on Fallout 3 are. So with a timescale of 8 a Fallout day is exactly 1/8 of an Earth day, or about 3 hours. Likewise the standard timescale of 30 corresponds to a real life time of about 48 minutes. The same can be applied to TES.

Hmmm I haven't seriously played a Fallout game for a while so I cant remember the last timescale I used, but it was probably the standard 30.

Dear Bethesda,

Please, please give us this option in the next Fallout and TES games for console players. I also find the time elapse far too fast and I'd like to slow it down considerably.

Please and thank you.

Oh, sorry, OP, I don't play on the PC so I've no idea. I just wanted to pass along my wishes since you guys are lucky enough to have this option.

Just so you know, you can set that permanently in the editor so you won't have to keep changing it with the console every time you start a game. The value is in the Gameplay/Globals tab.

There are mods on the Nexus that change the time scale. One of the ones I like is the one that makes the nights shorter, but the days longer (or vice versa). I have also seen one that makes time go slower (or is it faster?) when your indoors. In other words, people have been messing with the time scale with mods for years.

I do caution you that changes to the time scale can have some weird consequences with some scripts, so don't go too far in any one direction. And if something is not happening in the game that should be, change the time scale back to stock and reload an earlier save.

As to why the time scale is so "quick" is the same foreshortening that the map has. Walking the real life distance between the towns would get real old real fast. Waiting 24 real hours for 24 game hours to go by would be even worse. So, in games, every thing gets smushed together a little bit in the name of game play. I do agree that the time goes a little too fast in this game, but I never try to increase the interval.