[Virtual1ty]

I suggest making a global timer for the one reason you mentioned - less total of timers. Server doesn't have to struggle to keep 100+ (assuming 100 players connected) timers in a queue and you have shorter function(s) execution time, leaving you with enough "processing power" to make some heavy calculations, if you must.
As for the "conversion" I think you're covered here, just make sure not to define variables in a loop.