saved game overwrite

[HoH_Antihuman]

did a search, found a post March 2020 about what just happened to me. An entire day of mining, upgrading my base, upgrading my SV, and completing a few missions vanished because I saved the game before the fire fight at the end of a mission, died, loaded said save, but died again; and now my saved game is gone and I'm not even playing on Ironman mode.

After it happened i did the search and found the 4 year old post. Would have changed the name of the saved game if i'd known, but I didn't.

It's Christmas, and I'm spending it alone. Can't afford to buy anything for the only person I want to spend Christmas with because then I can't afford to pay the electric tomorrow. And all i wanted for Christmas to distract myself from how much I suck at life and an entire days worth of distraction is just gone. for what? whats it solve? yesterdays manual save is still there.

It actively makes me want to not play this game.

Like, at least give people a warning about it. Let me know you're going to overwrite my manual save so i have time to put on makeup and dress so i can feel pretty before you #### me.

[ravien_ff]

Your save isn't gone, you just died. Respawn, get your stuff back, and continue playing.

[HurtfulPlayer97]

When you load a save game immediately make another manual save. You don't even need to give it a unique name. The game will based on time. Also make manual saves before you do anything risky. The game will never overwrite any old saves. It only updates the one you are currently playing. It is a little hard to get used to at first, but it's really not that complicated once you understand what is happening.

[japp_02]

" Would have changed the name of the saved game if i'd known, but I didn't."

Yes, unfortunately that was the error, but that's not exact either...
You must make a backup during game and continue playing, so that if you want to revert you still have your backup...which if you use it you must again make another backup etc.
You must remember that every save you are using is going to CHANGE as you play.

There are many ways to repair what you did wrong, but it involve doing some console commands, or you do as said in the first response above.

[HoH_Antihuman]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Your save isn't gone, you just died. Respawn, get your stuff back, and continue playing.

Different planet, that was my only ship and only gear.

EDIT: and yes, the save i made was over written by a save i never made moments after i died. the save is "gone" as in i no longer have access to it.

[HoH_Antihuman]

Originally posted by japp_02:

There are many ways to repair what you did wrong, but it involve doing some console commands, or you do as said in the first response above.

Would you mind telling me what I should search for to find the commands? is it still possible after closing the game?

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by HoH_Antihuman:

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Your save isn't gone, you just died. Respawn, get your stuff back, and continue playing.

Different planet, that was my only ship and only gear.

EDIT: and yes, the save i made was over written by a save i never made moments after i died. the save is "gone" as in i no longer have access to it.

No, the save isn't "gone". You just loaded it and continued to play it.
The game is always saving and there is no manual "save" button. What there is is a "backup" button that will copy your entire save folder to a new folder that you can then load later in case you encounter a problem with your save game, like corruption.
When you load a save game, that game is what you are actively playing and saving to.

What it's really not meant to be is as a do-over for mistakes, though it can certainly be used as such.

I am not sure why so many people have trouble figuring out the save system as it works like almost every other similar game and it's been rehashed here on the Steam discussions repeatedly.

[HoH_Antihuman]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

I am not sure why so many people have trouble figuring out the save system as it works like almost every other similar game and it's been rehashed here on the Steam discussions repeatedly.

Been 30 years playing games and outside of Ironman mode in some games, I've never seen a save game feature that creates a one time use save. or a backup system that creates a one time use back up. whats the point? why even have it? It's only marginally more useful than "level code" system we had in the late 80's/early 90's where we had to write the code in notebooks at the end of each level, and next time we wanted to play we had to find the notebook, find the page, find the code, and enter it into the game to go to that level again instead of starting all over from the beginning.

"so many people", "rehashed repeatedly" because it is a uniquely near worthless system that NO GAME should use. And again, it would be fine if the game gave new players some warning about it.

As it is the game just drives would-be new players away. I might play games to waste time but I don't like having my wasted time wasted. An entire days progress is gone, despite my efforts and my believe that I, for perhaps the first time this year, remembered to save the game before a fight. Because the saved game can only be loaded once.

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by HoH_Antihuman:

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

I am not sure why so many people have trouble figuring out the save system as it works like almost every other similar game and it's been rehashed here on the Steam discussions repeatedly.

Been 30 years playing games and outside of Ironman mode in some games, I've never seen a save game feature that creates a one time use save. or a backup system that creates a one time use back up. whats the point? why even have it? It's only marginally more useful than "level code" system we had in the late 80's/early 90's where we had to write the code in notebooks at the end of each level, and next time we wanted to play we had to find the notebook, find the page, find the code, and enter it into the game to go to that level again instead of starting all over from the beginning.

"so many people", "rehashed repeatedly" because it is a uniquely near worthless system that NO GAME should use. And again, it would be fine if the game gave new players some warning about it.

As it is the game just drives would-be new players away. I might play games to waste time but I don't like having my wasted time wasted. An entire days progress is gone, despite my efforts and my believe that I, for perhaps the first time this year, remembered to save the game before a fight. Because the saved game can only be loaded once.

Space Engineers, 7 days 2 die, Avorion, no man's sky, Minecraft, enshrouded, valheim are the games I've played that use a similar save system. While each can have a few differences, in general they all run on the same principal in that they are either always saving or frequently automatically saving and there's no opportunity to load an older version of the save unless you specifically made a backup or setup automatic backups which some of those games do offer.

This isn't Skyrim. And I would flat out refuse to play Empyrion if it used the same save system as it. It would be really annoying to play. Would have meant a 5+ minute loading time just to load any save game on my older PC (which was no slouch and ran empyrion at a steady 60fps mind you).

So yeah. I'm sure you'd be fine with having to wait a super long time whenever you load your save game and having it eat up all your drive space just so it could use a save system that isn't really meant for this type of game, but I'd rather not. No thank you. I want to actually play the game, not spend hours of my life a week waiting on the save system.

[japp_02]

Originally posted by HoH_Antihuman:

Originally posted by japp_02:

There are many ways to repair what you did wrong, but it involve doing some console commands, or you do as said in the first response above.

Would you mind telling me what I should search for to find the commands? is it still possible after closing the game?

When typing 'help' in the console this gives you the complete list of commands, if you type 'help [command]' it will give you more details about that command.
You will never lose anything important in a game if you save your constructions into a blueprint with ALT-O everytime you do important modifications. In case of vessels don't forget to also save the Repair Blueprint in the main page of the P menu.
What you will lose is your container contents, but these can be retrieved.

Here the useful commands to use during a survival game, to get things back:
These commands are only necessary in Survival, in Creative these features can all be used without console commands.
The console is accessible only during game with a special key defined in the Controls menu, the default one is the tilde key.

sbp
This allows you to spawn a blueprint in Survival bypassing the factory;

im
This allows you to get any item from a list by hitting H after the command (like in Creative);

destroy [ID]
Will remove a structure or vessel from your game world.

gm
God mode. Will allow you to walk through walls and terrain, this may be necessary to correct some game errors, or during constructions to access blocks behind blocks etc.

gm -iv
Same as god mode but enemies cannot see you.

Retype the same commands to deactivate them. Commands will only stay active during a game session.

[ravien_ff]

Also about console commands: don't use the cm or changemode command. It can corrupt your save. Be responsible.

[cwsumner]

The reason this type of save system is used, is for the occasions when you lose power or have a computer crash. This way, almost all of what you were doing is already in the current save file and is not lost. Unless, the save file is damaged and corrupted, which is a lot less likely.

Something did happen to you and I had something like that happen to me last year. But I had a backup from that morning, so I did not lose everything. 8-)

Just don't go "hog-wild" with the backups, because they do take a lot of space.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Think of it as ironman mode where you can't die, but you can lose material progress. Managing risk is part of the game's skill set. You're allowed to carry as many eggs in whatever baskets you like, but whatever happens to them is on you.

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by cwsumner:

The reason this type of save system is used, is for the occasions when you lose power or have a computer crash. This way, almost all of what you were doing is already in the current save file and is not lost. Unless, the save file is damaged and corrupted, which is a lot less likely.

Something did happen to you and I had something like that happen to me last year. But I had a backup from that morning, so I did not lose everything. 8-)

Just don't go "hog-wild" with the backups, because they do take a lot of space.

Well not so much that, but rather so people don't need to wait 5-30 minutes whenever they quit and/or load the game, and/or so they don't need a PC with 64+gb of memory and a massive hard drive.
The save files in games like this can get absurdly large and complex.

As an example, my Skyrim Special Edition saves folder has 183 saves totaling 788 mb.
This was accumulated over 75 hours of play time of multiple play throughs with never having to delete a save.

My Empyrion saves folder currently has 4 save games with 113mb for the games and 233mb for the cache, a combined total size of 346mb.
This was accumulated over at most probably an hour or two of light creative mode and survival testing. Mostly untouched, brand new saves where I didn't build or explore much. (Again, less than 2 hours of play time combined).

So yeah, people get mad at Empyrion for using a similar save system to most other similar games, but they always ignore that little fact.
If Empyrion used the same system as single player games such as Skyrim it would be literally unplayable.

It sucks that people lose their ships, the game can be quite punishing for mistakes but that has nothing to do with the save system being used.

TLDR: You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you get a fully transformable, buildable universe or you get the save system you want.

[krashd]

Heh, and I thought my week was bad after I gambled whether the wall would hold my fridge up if I removed the floor beneath it and I lost a few week's worth of scouring the whole quad-moon area for edible goodies to keep in it. You live and you learn.

I think it was Confucius who said "One must not be disheartened when misfortune presents, just find a way to savescum around it."

[cwsumner]

By the way, there is a separate way to save your ships. Point at the ship and hit Alt-O and save the blueprint. It saves to a different folder so it is safe from crashes.