What will happen after official launch.

[Zen]

Hi guys,
I can't help myself but say:
I found about this game from Day[9] let's play and bought it 10 minutes later. Its pure awesomness... And after searching and reading about the devs...Good Work guys...that's how games must be made
After this is out of my system I want to ask what will happen to my saved factory after the game officially launches. I know its a question, possibly without an answer, but I have to ask.
Is it in any way safe to say that pre-release saves will work just fine or its the other way around?
I'm asking because as I write this I'm finishing a quite long play and I want to start over. Now when I know how I want to build my base, but only so If I can continue it FOREVER
Should I wait for official release ?

Thanks !

[SWSe]

Hi,
you can usually open older saves on a new version without any problems, so you can still play on the map.
But you won't be able to watch a replay of your save if it has more than one version (this is also the case with bugfix releases, you might have noticed it).

Also, if an update changes behaviour of some machines, or even their size, you might have to adjust your factory accordingly. As this is in development, everything could be changed. But updates rarely have changes that force you to rebuild things.
An example would be when updates altered the turrets' size from 1x1 to 2x2. All the turrets were still there, but they were overlapping, which didn't really look too nice. They still worked though.
A while ago, items were essentially "falling" from the end of a row of transport belts, so inserters could pick them up from one tile after the last belt. After an update, everyone had to add that additional belt when the behaviour was altered. That was a small fix though, and barely a problem most of the time.

Who knows what'll happen in the next updates exactly? Maybe your save will work just fine, but it's not entirely save to say. As the official launch is not going to happen until at least the end of this year, you got plenty of time to spend in one factory though.
The devs have always cared about backwards compatibility, so it's likely you'll be able to open and play the save.

Have fun

[Koub]

There have already been updates that changed inner game mechanics, building sizes, ... In this case, You may be able to load the game, but some things may not work anymore in your factory.

Devs have also stated they try to keep backwards compatibility with 3 major versions (source). And when you load a game, and save it, you save it in the current version of your game client.

[Zen]

That's more than excellent news. I know in such development stage nothing is certain, but that is enough for me.
Thank you and have a nice factory = )