Autosave when in.

[Agis Silverfish]

Well, veteran pilots don't need autosave, but it has saved my newbie guts many a time!

• Maybe just make it an option as to whether it saves on dock or launch, in the F2 screen?

I was going to suggest that. There would be three options:
Autosave: off
Autosave: on dock
Autosave: on launch

[Capt. Murphy]

Depending at what point in the dock procedure it kicks in, and the suggestion implies before arrival reports and missionscreens, a fair few OXPs may need an update. Before arrival reports might be a Trumble cheat?

[Gimi]

Two thoughts -

• Maybe just make it an option as to whether it saves on dock or launch, in the F2 screen?
• Have it save to a special separate "autosave.oolite-save" file rather than the players currently loaded save file?

It would end up being a split-save of course, but would solve the unwanted save issue without losing the "safety net" usage.[/color]

First point, good idea.
Second point brilliant idea.

[Capt. Murphy]

Second point brilliant idea.

So brilliant, that as Eric has already mentioned the game already does that...

To be honest I don't see any advantage to having it on dock or on launch from a player point of view. If the player relies on it totally and never or rarely manually saves either way there will be occasions when they will regret not having a manual save from a jump or two back. If the player uses both autosave and manual save in combo then they have always got the option to go back to a previous manual save.

Accidentally buying Narcotics?? You need to concentrate more... ... or lay of your sampling your Cargo....
Buying a ship - always manual save just before a ship purchase.

[Switeck]

The most logical time to save would be upon entry before any mission scripts etc. are triggered.

I'm not too sure about that, Gimi. I have a feeling (nothing concrete) that it may not be suitable (or wise) for some missions.

I can imagine a lot of technical issues why this might be problematic, but I can't see this interrupting the flow of the missions in any way.

I think we need technicians in here who can see the consequences.

I've got one: passenger and cargo contracts! If the autosave "fires" before they can be removed from your holds, you'd reload from a savegame having NOT completed these contracts if they were for the station you're currently at. This would mean you'd need to launch and redock with the same station, taking at least 10 mins + however long it takes you to redock.

An incremental autosave might be helpful to avoid overwrites, always adding +1 to the version number -- unless that number exists...in which case it keeps skipping upwards till it hits an empty number.

But perhaps this is what we're trying to avoid?:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaveScumming

[Gimi]

Second point brilliant idea.

So brilliant, that as Eric has already mentioned the game already does that...

To be honest I don't see any advantage to having it on dock or on launch from a player point of view. If the player relies on it totally and never or rarely manually saves either way there will be occasions when they will regret not having a manual save from a jump or two back. If the player uses both autosave and manual save in combo then they have always got the option to go back to a previous manual save.

Accidentally buying Narcotics?? You need to concentrate more... ... or lay of your sampling your Cargo....
Buying a ship - always manual save just before a ship purchase.

Well, that is what I get from commenting on things which which I don't use myself. Dug in and checked a little. I think the autosave feature should stay as is. If there were to be made changes, having it operate like the log (latest and previous) might be useful, but then again, that is what manual saves are for.

[Eric Walch]

An incremental autosave might be helpful to avoid overwrites

depending on your system, your system can do that for you

Synolygy has developed a cloud station for their nas with mac and windows clients. When saving your games in the local cloud folder on your computer, you always have a copy on the nas. And the nas keeps old versions after saving a new version. (Up to 32 historical versions of a file) So you always can return to some older auto-saves. Same is of cause the case for normal saves with the same name.