32 or 64 Star Cluster

[diip]

Until now I've been playing with 64 stars. In my latest play-through i changed to 32, what will be the main difference? or is there any? Are there fewer resources? Or does it simply mean, have less systems to manage with the same resources as with 64 stars.
The reason i wanted 32 stars is so i can manage stuff a little better and hopefully explore all systems.
Thank you in advance🤍

[cswiger]

The resources are not rebalanced AFAICT, so that means there will be fewer in the cluster.

The game savefiles will be a little smaller, and you might see less performance hit when you get into the late game with a 32-star cluster.

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by cswiger:

The game savefiles will be a little smaller, and you might see less performance hit when you get into the late game with a 32-star cluster.

The difference in savefile size and performance between a 32 star seed and a 64 star seed will be negligible - as the majority of filesize is player-made construction and Dyson Swarms/Spheres. 100k active buildings in a 32 star seed will still function the same as those 100k buildings in a 64 star seed.

Originally posted by Rush:

In my latest play-through i changed to 32, what will be the main difference? or is there any?

In all honesty, unless you've just been completely colonizing a vast swath of the cluster in the 64 seed, there will be little difference in the 32 version (even of the same seed!) You'll still have a Neutron Star and Black Hole (those always replace the last two stars of ANY seed).

With the current 'resource density' mechanics - the farther a planet is from the home system (center of the map) the higher the raw multiplier on its resources. So, even at extremely low resource setting, systems on the 'outer rim' will have more than enough of what you need for-basically-ever once you get decently into the Vein Utilization technology ranks, no matter the star count.

The biggest thing will simply be that rare or uncommon resources and planet types will become that much moreso. Where you would have only 3-4 water worlds in a 64 cluster (and therefore plentiful Spiniform crystals) you might end up with only 1-2 water worlds in a 32 cluster (or worse if RNG places those systems towards the end of the 'now deleted half' of the star list; though it could also swing the other way IN your favor). That might put a dampener on the 'exploration' aspect of the game. Sometimes it's just nice to fly around seeing all the different star system configs and planet types, even if one never actually gets around to colonizing/utilizing every last one of them. For performance reason, I don't really know if there anyone who's actually gotten to the point where they're utilizing every single planet in either a 32 seed OR a 64 seed - there's just too much space and not enough modern computing power to utilize it all.

Personal advice: I would just stick with the 64 star seeds. Better to have more choices in stars and planets and not need them, than to need them and not have those choices altogether.
It might feel overwhelming at first to have that much choice, but also means there's a lot more of those choices than you can write-off early as 'sub-optimal' allowing you to whittle down (and focus your attention on) your list of stellar and planetary prospects to a more refined and optimal list. Star/Planet renaming/pinning will also help remove clutter once you eliminated many of the sub-optimal choices - and also make it easier to find the more optimal ones that you've narrowed down to.

* * * tl;dr * * *
No real difference, except less options, overall - both in star type and planet type. If you're not largely utilizing a 64 star cluster (or somehow feel overwhelmed by choices), then chances are, a 32 star cluster will end up being similarly under utilized (but with fewer possibly more manageable choices, though only marginally so, it'll still be 100s of planets).

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

Originally posted by cswiger:

The game savefiles will be a little smaller, and you might see less performance hit when you get into the late game with a 32-star cluster.

The difference in savefile size and performance between a 32 star seed and a 64 star seed will be negligible - as the majority of filesize is player-made construction and Dyson Swarms/Spheres.

The difference in savefile size is likely to be minor, but not negligible.

Yes, the majority of the size is used by player buildings and Dyson swarms/sphere. Having only 32 Dyson projects rather than 64 could make a big difference, although that only would matter after you built them around more than 32 stars in the full-sized cluster.

However, another large component of the savefile size are the statistics. Those are likely to be different in size from the beginning of the game, and that difference in size will increase linearly over time based on the number of planets in the cluster.

That looks to be a difference of around 90 MB for a ~190 hour save of 475 MB total size.

---

As for performance, the overhead of logistic transports and drones moving around seems to become a limiting factor in late games. Your destinations are the ISLs (and IPLs), whose numbers will grow mostly based upon the # of planets you build them on.

A 64-star cluster will bog down more once you settle more planets than you can settle in the 32-star equivalent.

[Blaarg]

Performance is the reason to go lower. If you have skepticism on your hardware's ability to perform, having less is better. Whether that is less dark fog hives, less dyson sphere's, etc...

I've done a 32 system playthrough and the number of resources wasn't really an issue (on 0.8x resources). My biggest problem was the achievement for landing on a planet in 32 different star systems. In a larger cluster, that's not a problem. In a 32 system one, that meant I couldn't miss a single one.

[Rymorea]

Before DF I spread to 36 stars and build 32 sphere at a 64 star cluster its real pain to know which star planets do what. For the performans if you build little spheres max 35-40 GW its enough for all needings at planets, your save around 1GB+. So you need a good ssd enough ram. I cap the fps to 30 and my old pc with rx 580 is enoug to play. But After DF I start same 64 star cluster and only 4 star after my save reach half GB+ I think DF hives add so much info to the save. I finished 3th sphere now. accually its now not playable at crowded DF star hives. Can't control easly icarus at space fights. So I stop to play. Waiting new GPU, And this time want to go 32 star cluster which I want to occupy all stars and get rid of DF :)

[Bobucles]

Computer performance will break down closer to 4 industrially packed stars. The rest are mining outposts, so choose how many resources you want the map to have.