Tick

From VoidWiki

Voidwars is not exactly realtime. The server updates the game every 3 minutes, which is one tick.

It's simple: Instead of a second or so, the smallest time unit is a tick. A Probe might be reaching an adjacent sector in 6 minutes and 30 seconds, which equals to 3 ticks (two full ticks and a third one which is currently running at 30 seconds left). A Probe needs 3 ticks to reach an adjacent square, so if you have another Probe in the same sector and order it to fly into the same direction, it will reach the next sector together with the first Probe. However, if you are really slow with issuing your orders to the second Probe and need more than 30 seconds for it, a tick will have passed, and it might look like this: Probe 1 will reach the next sector in 5 minutes and 50 seconds (2 ticks), whereas Probe 2 will need 8 minutes and 50 seconds (3 ticks).