Auto save system lock ups

[chemie]

The lock-up that occurs every cycle due to the autosave has become very harsh.  My current game QOL2 at 250 cycles has as long a lock-up as QOL1 did at 1200 cycles.
This has been discussed before and appears to be due to compression, saving, and ever increasing cycle reports being added.

I would suggest the following changes
* Allow user to select "1,2,3,5,never" as options for autosave
- I would not use "never" because of the idea of losing hours of game due to a crash and this is why I have not used the mod that does this. I would use "2" to cut the aggravation in half.
* Allow user to select "only save 10 cycle reports" or "never save"
- I never look at these.  I did try the mod to do this, and while it helped, it was not the primary issue.
* Allow user to select "do not compress".  
- I would be happy to have my SSD save a 50MB file instead of sufferring lock-ups for a 5 MB file.  Those with HDD can select compression if they wish
* Change the code to prevent a hard lock-up.  I mean, having the user feel like their system has crashed for 10-15 seconds once per cycle is not good game design.  Allow moving around the screen and making build orders while the simulation is locked for the compression/save
* The best solution would be to change the code.  Save the snap shot to memory, then have another thread compress and save while the simulation continues running.

I find this lock-up causing me to want to stop playing later cycle games.  It is not good game design.  It is getting worse.  It is a major QOL issue. Thoughts?

[Yhtr]

I would love to get rid of old reports!

[eXponentia]

Not that this isn't important for the base game, because it is, and should be optimised before full release, but there are two mods that basically fix this when combined. No Auto Save does exactly what it says on the tin. Remove Daily Reports removes older daily reports to reduce your save size. EDIT: Just noticed you said you'd not use a mod that does this because you're worried about a crash losing you hours of game time. Understandable. I personally just manually save every time printables become available again. It's a perfect reminder and a short enough time period that I've never lost too much progress when I screw up or I get a crash.

Anyone who isn't playing with mods should really look into it. There are a bucketload of really great quality of life mods that preserve balance while fixing things that you personally don't like. And the modding community is great and chances are even if you can't make a mod yourself, if you have a good idea that other people are looking for too, some modder out there might agree and make just the mod you were looking for.

Again, mods are not replacements for fixes by the devs, and yes I believe this should be looked into for full release, but in the mean time mods are a great tool to use while you wait.

[Heremeus]

I'm currently working on a mod to speed up the save process (by moving the compression and write to file to a different thread). That will hopefully reduce the lockup by quite a bit.

[chemie]

22 hours ago, Heremeus said:

I'm currently working on a mod to speed up the save process (by moving the compression and write to file to a different thread). That will hopefully reduce the lockup by quite a bit.

that would be outstanding.  I assume this would fix the issue completely.  add in option for no reports and winner winner chicken dinner.  let us know when you have something

23 hours ago, eXponentia said:

Not that this isn't important for the base game, because it is, and should be optimised before full release, but there are two mods that basically fix this when combined. No Auto Save does exactly what it says on the tin. Remove Daily Reports removes older daily reports to reduce your save size. EDIT: Just noticed you said you'd not use a mod that does this because you're worried about a crash losing you hours of game time. Understandable. I personally just manually save every time printables become available again. It's a perfect reminder and a short enough time period that I've never lost too much progress when I screw up or I get a crash.

....

Again, mods are not replacements for fixes by the devs, and yes I believe this should be looked into for full release, but in the mean time mods are a great tool to use while you wait.

having to manually save every 4 cycles would be annoying for me.  I don't like the distraction....and that delay would be as bad as the lock up to game play.  So would the mod gods be able to change the no save to save every x?