The first few hundred cycles are definitely slowest for me, I think that’s down to constantly pausing and planning while trying to make the base stable and livable. I only keep an eye on the timer for the first hundred or so cycles anyway to see if I can get the carnivor achievement that run.

When everything just works by itself you won’t need to pause as much to keep an eye on everything, the more you automate any one system the less worried you’ll be about that system breaking.

I also have a low dupe count on any planetoids I colonise. When there’s only 2 dupes on a planet it takes an eternity for anything to get done even at 3x speed, not much need to pause.

I also play slow, but I play slow the other way. Relatively few dupes, tons of automation, an a lot of letting the game run while they get stuff done.

My current colony is over 2500 cycles old and I’m still not working toward any of the game goals. I hadn’t built my first rocket until close to cycle 400 now I’m running all but one of the planetoids with a total of 22 dupes. All but 3 bases are completely automated. Each of the bases (other than my main one) was build by 3 dupes (Otis, Bubbles, and Nikola specifically) traveling the solar system in a rocket called “the bus” that has enough life support for about 20 cycles… and that takes a while.

I have a mod so the fast speed is faster, but I’m currently on cycle 304 in my current packed snacks playthrough, and the game registered more or less 18 hours. I know that at least 2 of them may be that i left the game paused but running. But i usually play in default speed, so I can control what is happening ( and sometimes saving some dupe from death). Only in the first like 30 cycles and when i have like a lot of errands planned and need them to be done asap i increase speed