# What does a time warp actually calculate?
Community Knowledge Most players who answered describe a warp as nothing more than an hour of time passing at once, calculated with the same rules the game uses when you come back after the app was closed or your phone was asleep[1][2][3]. Those offline rules differ from live play in three ways players point to:
- No surges or specialist doubles. Abandoned Smelter surges and the 10% Smelting/Crafting Specialist double chance are left out, or applied only after the main calculation, so the warp follows the alloy and item rates on the resource detail panel rather than the rate you see while playing[4][2].
- Reduced mining. Mining is reported to drop to roughly 22% of planet production while offline, and asteroid and debris spawns are reported to be halved[1][2].
- Slot order. Smelters and crafters are processed in the order of their slots (the order you unlocked them), not from the lowest-tier item up to the highest[2][3].
Community Knowledge Why mining is cut: the explanation players offer is balance. If a production boost plus an hour skip ran mining at full speed, it would chew through far more stored material than the game is tuned for[1]. The reduced mining rate is also why a warp can pay out much less cash than the live per-second figure multiplied by an hour[1]. A warp can also barely move your total when most of your galaxy value comes from something other than what you are currently mining or crafting, or when a bottleneck somewhere is holding income down[3].
# Why do smelters and crafters come out at zero?
Community Knowledge Surges: while lead is on the Abandoned Smelter surge, you can skip smelting lead bars and put your smelters on iron and steel, because the surge covers the lead that steel uses. A warp ignores the surge, so no lead bars are made and steel output ends up at about zero[4].
Community Knowledge Specialist doubles: if a bar is only creeping upward because of the extra 10% double procs, the warp drops those procs; the plain smelter rate is then below what the next recipe consumes, and the bar sits at zero after the warp[4].
Community Knowledge Order and surplus: because smelters and crafters are processed slot by slot, an item placed ahead of the inputs it needs can sit idle, and players link this to many of the stalled-crafter questions on the subreddit[2][3]. A chain that runs short partway through the hour also gives reduced returns: wire for profit only works if copper bar output can keep wire production going for the whole hour[3].
# How do players avoid stalls before a warp?
Recommendation The common advice from these threads:
- Order smelters and crafters along the recipe chain, so each input is made before the item that consumes it. One crafter order players use is Wires, Glass, Circuit Boards, Lenses, Computers, Advanced Computers, Telescopes[3]. Players report that with the order right, smelters and crafters keep working through a warp[1].
- Give every step of the chain a surplus that lasts an hour, not just the final item you sell[3].
- Do not count surges or double procs when checking whether a chain is in surplus. If a bar only stays positive because of them, a warp can leave it, and everything made from it, at zero[4][2].
- Clear bottlenecks before boosting and warping, since a warp only runs your galaxy's existing production forward[3].
Recommendation The other approach: a smaller group uses slot order on purpose in some higher-tier chains, placing a consumer ahead of its input to limit how much of an intermediate item gets used up. They point out that this makes a simple lowest-to-highest order less useful for those chains; others in the same discussion would give that control up in exchange for fewer stalled crafters[2]. For general progression, see the Idle Planet Miner beginner hub.
# Where do reports differ, and is this still current?
Community Knowledge Is smelting reduced too? In the January 2025 thread, players agreed that offline mining is cut, and one reply said only mining is reduced while smelting and crafting run normally[1]. The September 2026 reports agree mining is cut but add that surges and specialist doubles do not apply to smelting and crafting during a warp[4][2]. The two may fit together if the older reply meant only the base smelt and craft rate, but no thread confirms that reading.
Community Knowledge The 22% and 50% figures come from players, and the 2025 reply gives 22% only as an approximate figure. They are player-reported figures, not official data, and have not been independently verified[1][2]. Whether surges and doubles are skipped entirely or applied after the main calculation is also left open[2].
Version-sensitive The threads run from January 2025 to September 2026, and the September 2026 threads are requests to change the warp logic or to show the full rate from all sources on the resource detail panel[4][2]. If the developers act on that, the behaviour described here may change, so check your own numbers after an update.
← Back to Idle Planet Miner beginner hub · Related: Credit Spending & Mothership Rooms · Pink Asteroids Math
u/Famous-Comb-6667: “I used a 1 hour time warp while my Diamond says I'm getting $80k per second.” — original post
1huivggu/Famous-Comb-6667: “But I didn't even get close to that, I only got about $20m.” — original post
1huivggu/DionFW: “When you have the app closed it gives you something like 22% of mining. The time warp is like you closed the app for an hour.” — comment
m5lhgk1u/sebkraj: “Because if you did a production boost at the same time at normal speed it would process too much material.” — comment
m5lui07u/Taker083004: “Only mining goes down to 22% during idle, smelting and crafting is unaffected” — comment
m5m6od3u/Taker083004: “As long as you have the order of your smelters and crafters they will work.” — comment
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