Reference stardate

Reference stardate was a timekeeping system used in FASA's Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game. It was developed to express dates in a manner with the "flavor" of TOS stardates but which progressed more clearly and logically that the TOS stardates did.

The basic timeline used by the reference stardate system was that presented in the "Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology", with some modifications to suite the needs of the game.

Reference stardates were expressed in the following manner:

Stardate A/BCDE.fghi

"A" was a number, positive, negative or zero, representing the centuries before or after the 2000s. (e.g., -1 for dates in the 1900s, 0 for dates in the 2000s, 2 for dates in the 2200s, etc.)

"BC" represented a two-digit number, the decade and year of the date (e.g., the year 2007 would appear as 0/07, 1984 as -1/84, and 2217 as 2/17).
 * If greater specificity was not necessary, some reference stardates would be trunchated after these two digits.

"CD" was another two-digit number, between 01 and 12, representing the month of the date. ("01" for January, and so on.)
 * Again, if greater specificity was not necessary, reference stardates would usually be trunchated here.

"fg" was a two-digit number representing the day of the month, and "hi" was a two-digit number representing the hour (of a 24-hour day).
 * There are no specific examples, but presumably these could be followed by more two-digit numbers representing minutes and seconds.

Sample Dates
July 4, 1776: (reference) Stardate -3/7607.04 (Declaration of Independence signed)

17:40 UT, July 20, 1969: Stardate -1/6807.2017 (landing of Apollo 11)

April 4, 2217: Stardate 2/1704.04 (Enterprise encounters V'Ger, FASA dating)