The session change timer is a safety mechanic that prevents player characters from moving between locations too frequently. Without such a timer player characters could become stuck.
When a player performs an action that relocates their character, such as jumping through a stargate, the session change timer starts. It lasts 10 seconds and while active will prevent the player from performing some actions such as; changing ships, jumping through gates, docking in stations, and joining or leaving a fleet to name but a few.
Only one session change timer can be active at once. If a player has a session change timer and attempts to perform another action, then they will see a message displayed indicating that they need to wait for their current session change timer to end.
Players can tell if they have a session change timer as an icon is displayed in the top left of the screen. Hovering over the icon will show player how long their session change has left.
It is important for players to know when they have a session change active as this would prevent them from performing actions which could lead to loss of ships or assets.
For instance, if a player is located next to a gate and their ship is destroyed then their character would move location to a capsule prompting a session change timer. Until this session change timer expires the player would not be able to jump through the gate and thus escape further loss.
It's therefore important for players to understand the effect a session change timer can have on their characters.
A session change timer will commence when a player does any of the following:
- Jumps through a stargate, wormhole or moves between systems.
- Changes position in a fleet or joins/leaves a fleet
- Docks or undocks
- Boarding, leaving or changing ships (including capsules) while in space
- Changes to or from a capsule
- Jump Clones