Game stops for autosave - thoughts?

[sillyfly]

My suggestion for the autosave would be to do some serious optimization there so it doesn't take that long

Some people like massive maps with huge factories. For such cases it will always take a significant amount of time (a few seconds) to autosave...

[Nemoricus]

Does the replay recording add significantly to the save time? I'm talking about 40 hour+ games and such here.

[Turtle]

Personally, I love the new both auto-save indicators, the progress bar and the darkening of the screen. I think they're great. My system isn't that fast, so auto-saves take a few seconds and when there was no indicator, I'd have to guess, "did it crash or is it auto-saving?" But now I know!

[JackGruff]

I don't have a problem with it. Just that I wish it would decide when to save based on what's happening.

[Cougarific]

I actually preferred the no-pop-up version - Yes, the periodic lags when autosaving were distracting but you got used to them and accepted them for what they were, especially because you can tweak the frequency in Options. But personally I find the new pop-up extremely distracting and immersion-breaking. I don't want to give up my Autosaves, but I'm considering it only because the new "Autosaving..." pop-up is so annoying.

The people who are going to buy this game are not PC newbs or console kiddies. We understand what's causing the momentary lag and we're okay with that (speaking for myself personally), we're not okay with a tiny window popping up to scream "YOU'RE PLAYING A COMPUTER GAME" every time it saves.

[aRatNamedSammy]

ill never turn off my auto-save.. even if i always look far when im crossing tracks, or saving manually before going on a raid on bitters nests, diyng by a stupid move may happen anytime, or i may raid bitters for too long (like an hour or more) , and just too much into my assault, so i forgot to save again.... auto-saves "save" my ass many times

[Peter34]

I've turned off the autosave because of this. I barely noticed autosaves before, and even on large factories it was just a brief stutter, but now the darkening and progress bar are incredibly distracting. It would be great if it was possible to turn this off in options.

I tend to have autosave set to 12 or 15 minutes, maybe 20, so it's not really a problem for me. Also on my desktop computer, saving is very quick, although I imagine that might change once I've build a gigantic factory, or if playing in a low-end computer.

[orzelek]

There is only one mildly annoying thing for me - when it happens during intense combat scenario.

[Xterminator]

There is only one mildly annoying thing for me - when it happens during intense combat scenario.

Gotta agree with you there mate. Normally I don't mind it, but when it happens in the middle of a fight, it can throw your whole flow of a things off. :/
Really my only problem with it otherwise is that it scares me almost every time it pops up because I think the game is throwing up an error code and going to die. Haha

[SWSe]

It really is pretty annoying. Music fades off and in unexpectedly, screen flashes and a tiny window appears which one can't even read as the save process is pretty fast for me.
Sure, it's great to have this if saving takes longer. But at least for small factories, no system that is less than a few years old even takes close to half a second for autosaving.
This is something that definetly needs to be tweaked some more.

If you ask me: Make the music stay while autosaving, don't make the screen darker, and only show the progress bar somewhere it's less annoying when popping up -> somewhere at the bottom of the screen or in a corner.

It's not as bad if saving takes longer, so the longer I play on a map, the less annoying is autosaving. But the game just freezing for 2 seconds wasn't a problem and is imho still more pleasant. Also you'd still see what was going on and aren't thrown out of the game as much, especially in those intense combat situations mentioned

[Khyron]

I find the newer autosave to be a bit... jarring? I guess that's the best word for it. It's like a full screen popup. It takes my attention off what I was doing in the game. I appreciate the autosave, and it's nice and quick, but I want to stay focused on the game. The old way where it just paused sort of allowed my brain to stay in the moment. I like some of the other suggestions in this thread about more subtlety announcing the autosaves.

[Koub]

Every single time I'm making a blueprint, there's an autosave pause that unselects my ongoing selection, and I be like

[MeduSalem]

So after some weeks of playtesting it... I can definitely say that I find the intrusive way it is done currently absolutely annoying.

I toned down the amount of autosaving already several times because of it and still it seems like it happens in the most impractical moment. It would be nice if there'd be something like a 3 second countdown warning ahead of the autosave so one isn't broken out of a task or click performed exactly when saving. Also the screen shouldn't darken. It would be enough if there's the text in the middle of the screen (or even in the corner of the screen) because I somehow find the darkening a little bit intimidating and strange compared to how other autosave mechanisms of other programs and games work.

[Cougarific]

Can I vote again?

After playing all weekend I simply cannot get used to this new "feature". Every time it happens it breaks my immersion.

I'm a bit of a role-player and love to get really deep into my character and the situation.

I do not like the constant reminders that I'm not really stranded on an alien planet, trying to stay alive long enough to build some defenses so my rescuers can land safely.