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[AcaMetis]

Excellent stuff. Don't have anything to add except:

Oh, and also – there’s now a shortcut (“Q”) to select the “Major events” tag. That’s the one for important stuff like Colony Crises, Hyperspace Topography, and TBD in the future.

When I first read that my brain thought TBD was an abbreviation for some kind of new game mechanic, leaving me wondering what Terraforming something something, Teleportation Bridge Device, or something something Death otherwise went completely unmentioned. Oops .

[Twilight Sentinel]

All wonderful additions here.

One thought for finding survey data, you could probably add planets with ruins of size 3+4 to potential discoverable data.  In addition to the high end plants, ruins, stations, and the Domain ships/motherships are the most useful/valuable breadcrumbs we could find from derelicts and Domain era objects.

[Kanil]

Being able to save as will allow me to only have one or two back up saves, instead of the whole bunch you end up with save copy, thus sparing me from having to type out "delete" over and over again to get rid of them.

[GrayingGamer]

Those intel markers are exactly what I wanted on my last playthrough.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Do you think that you could rig up the autosave to give a warning/ notification to save if autosave is turned off? I ask because I assume that autosaving still freezes the game like normal and some people, especially when heavily modded, might not want their game to freeze up for the saves "randomly" but still want the reminder to save every once in awhile.

Also, do you think you could add a way, like a keybind, to force an autosave? IE you are running with autosave off but you don't want to go through the hassle of a manual save and or you don't want to overwrite your last quicksave

[IroncladLion]

It's not just quality of life, you are going above and beyond with this stuff. It's everything we've wanted for years and MORE. Great stuff Alex.

Also, for those who are worried about Autosave, the newer Java versions really speed up save times compared to good ol' Java 7. Even Java 8 was like... x5 the speed at least. I'm sure Java 17 is even faster. So you shouldn't have to wait 30 seconds for the game to save anymore.

[Gorgonson]

Being able to save as will allow me to only have one or two back up saves, instead of the whole bunch you end up with save copy, thus sparing me from having to type out "delete" over and over again to get rid of them.

If you rack up a truly large number of save copies, navigating to Fractal Softworks/Starsector/Saves lets you delete the actual save folders in a big batch - save you from wearing out your keyboard keys : )

[Alex]

On the topic of revamping older systems, I wonder if plotting courses could use some love too. I would love to have some way to set up waypoints for the autopilot to follow, rather than just a simple straight line. A journey through the sector rarely follows a straight line, and even salvaging a single system can mean weaving between many different features and planets. Avoiding asteroid belts and the like also means that I can't just set a course and know everything will be okay.

At the same time, Being involved in piloting your own fleet has its merits. But when I'm salvaging my 100th system, it gets tiring to have to manage my route all the time. The ability to chain routes together would be such a huge convenience, and it would make me feel like I'm preparing an entire journey. Things like total fuel cost for a route and fuel cost for a single leg would also be possible.

Imagine being able to save a route and use it later. Or maybe you install an AI core and it can pilot your fleet for you? There's many possibilities.

Hmm, I get what you're saying, but at the same time, I'm not sure it's actually all that practical. The route you take in reality will often change based on what you find, what happens, and so on. And given that this would be a pain to implement and come up with a reasonable UI for - and that, in all honesty, not actually doing all that much for you - I'm not sure it's worth it.

Massive upgrade. Like, seriously huge. The map markers were all I was hoping for but Salvor’s Tally is incredible. That’s such a nice automated feature that I’ll wonder how we lived without out for so long.

I’m also liking the reduction in fleet log/exploration entries. “There is a habitable planet here” or “has ultra rich minerals” is ok but rarely made want to look there. Now, if there was intel about mining, orbital or research stations in system…heck yeah I’ll check it out. I’m also going to support the idea of not telling the player there’s a research station in a system for random core world investigation missions. Maybe “high-value derelict” but nothing specific. Could be a station, capital ship, Gate with a bunch of smaller derelicts, etc. But there should be some mystery to it.

Super happy for this one.

Ahh, thank you!

Excellent stuff. Don't have anything to add except:

Oh, and also – there’s now a shortcut (“Q”) to select the “Major events” tag. That’s the one for important stuff like Colony Crises, Hyperspace Topography, and TBD in the future.

When I first read that my brain thought TBD was an abbreviation for some kind of new game mechanic, leaving me wondering what Terraforming something something, Teleportation Bridge Device, or something something Death otherwise went completely unmentioned. Oops .

Haha, amazing!

One thought for finding survey data, you could probably add planets with ruins of size 3+4 to potential discoverable data.  In addition to the high end plants, ruins, stations, and the Domain ships/motherships are the most useful/valuable breadcrumbs we could find from derelicts and Domain era objects.

That's actually in the game - or, rather, it *would have been* if it wasn't bugged from the very start. I ran into that while implementing these changes and fixed it, so that breadcrumbs to planetary ruins (of all sizes) will actually show up now.

Do you think that you could rig up the autosave to give a warning/ notification to save if autosave is turned off? I ask because I assume that autosaving still freezes the game like normal and some people, especially when heavily modded, might not want their game to freeze up for the saves "randomly" but still want the reminder to save every once in awhile.

I actually thought about that and I'm just not a fan of the feel of it - it feels a little... unpolished? for the base game to do that.

Also, do you think you could add a way, like a keybind, to force an autosave? IE you are running with autosave off but you don't want to go through the hassle of a manual save and or you don't want to overwrite your last quicksave

I get the appeal but this amounts to basically a parallel set of quicksave slots and that feels like going off into the weeds a bit.

It's not just quality of life, you are going above and beyond with this stuff. It's everything we've wanted for years and MORE. Great stuff Alex.

Thank you!

Also, for those who are worried about Autosave, the newer Java versions really speed up save times compared to good ol' Java 7. Even Java 8 was like... x5 the speed at least. I'm sure Java 17 is even faster. So you shouldn't have to wait 30 seconds for the game to save anymore.

That's *very* intereting - for vanilla, it's definitely nowhere near that much of a speedup in save times, but I could see it being comparatively faster with a bunch of mods, especially if garbage collection is involved.

[xenapan]

All I can say is I'm very much looking forward to the next release.

[Grievous69]

I'm all for this QoL update, salivating at the sheer amount of imporevements that I've been wanting since forever basically.

But can't believe I almost forgot to ask the most important question (sorry if this was mentioned in the blog post and I missed it), with the increased amount of saves that we'll have now, will deleting them finally be quicker? 3 autosave slots on default, and I reckon people will save more often now that there's descriptions and a faster saving speed. That become a larger number and if we're stilll going to need to write manually "delete" for each single one, then I'm going to be really sad.

[CV514]

Good to see intel screen got some love. It's like official StelNet! Although I'd love to see some remote market and contact management too.

About saving games. There is option to compress them; right now it's accessible only through editing config file. Looks like good opportunity to make GUI button for it, if it's ready.

[Versil]

I hope the migration to Java 17 will finally bring performance on modern CPUs and GPUs, including with mods.

[Amoebka]

Great stuff, no doubt about it.

The text entry field is pre-selected, and you can immediately type in a description, then press Enter twice – once to finish text entry, and again to save.

Would suggest making it one enter click instead of two. That's how it works in most games, and there doesn't seem to be much of anything else to do on that screen anyway, so deselecting the text field without closing it feels very niche.

[Megas]

About leaving loot behind:
I usually leave derelict ships behind because I know some bar encounters (flashy guy, historian) use them to stuff their goodies in, and factions use them for scan missions (for rep gain).  I do not want to remove their markers or spawn points by looting and removing the non-renewable objects that have relatively common loot (because I can always make more through fighting or whatever).  I can probably see a lot of "Salvor's Tally" from all of the goodies I leave behind because they are more useful left alone as targets for missions.  I think once or twice, I might have had a mission target an object in one of my colony systems because I intentionally left salvageables behind as decoration or a piggy bank of sorts.

[prrrki]

Hmm, I get what you're saying, but at the same time, I'm not sure it's actually all that practical. The route you take in reality will often change based on what you find, what happens, and so on. And given that this would be a pain to implement and come up with a reasonable UI for - and that, in all honesty, not actually doing all that much for you - I'm not sure it's worth it.

Yeah, I understand I'm asking a lot for comparatively little... I guess it's more of a personal gripe since I had a hard time making long term plans for exploration. The new markers could be very useful for doing this, though!

If plotting a jointed course isn't super feasible, maybe something like a ruler would work a lot better. When I set a course I try and gauge how much fuel I need to get somewhere, but jumping between many different stars in a cluster takes a considerable amount of fuel to do as well. As far as I can tell, there's no way in game to guess how much fuel it would take to wind through an entire cluster of stars, so being able to make a line from one star to another is a simpler solution. That's kind of what I was going for when I talked about a waypoint system: having a way to guesstimate fuel/supply use for a complicated trip. That could help me immensely when I explore. I understand if it's too niche to pursue, though.

On the sector map, is it possible to mark entire star systems? I could cordon off a zone using the new system, and know the area I want to explore. I like that a lot.