Time is important in the Combine. We used to refer to Combine Galactic Time Year 0 Day 1, 00.00 am (GMT) as the date of the public release of the SW Combine, December 3, 1998 at 00.00 am GMT (or December 2, 1998 at 12.00 pm). At some point this has changed and Year 0 Day 1, 00.00 CGT is the same as December 3, 1998 at 07.00AM GMT. One standard Combine Galactic Year will last 365 days, one day will last 24 hours.
Some veteran members have created their character before the creation of the Combine, if they want to refer to events happening before, they may still use the following reference: Year 1 BCGT (Before the Combine Galactic Time).
The SW Combine is played in "delayed real time". This means each action consumes some time. When you decide to travel in space, the Darkness Space Travel option will tell you how many days and hours the journey will last. These are real days and real hours. This is what is meant by real time.
In order to solve the problem of time differences between different players around the world, a time delay is added so some actions will last longer in the SW Combine (a few hours) than in real life (a few seconds). This will allow the other players to react to events happening to them while they are not connected.