Why no autosave?

[Icehawk78]

Maybe I used an unfair expression (work with me a bit, my english is kind of rusty), I'm not talking about multiples saves in a traditional way: You said yourself "When you die", not "when you're about to die". Anyone can pause the game when the ship has 2 HP left and close the FTL process in an abnormal way (or just press the reset button in an attack of pure frustration), "simulating" a crash. An autosave must be carefully implemented. If the autosave is based on the beacon you're jumping from (Example: You're at beacon A, and you can jump to beacons B or C, but if I jump to B and things go bad, my autosave is still based on beacon A, so I can kill the process, reload that autosave and jump to C instead), it opens a cheating vector and we don't want that. Now, if the autosave is written when you enter a new beacon it would be kind of "safer", but it will force the player to "replay" that beacon again after reloading (in case if the computer crashes after combat, but before jumping). Another option that could help is to purge the autosave immediately after it's used, just like the "Continue" is purged when your ship explodes and start cursing again.

In short, I still believe it defeats the purpose, but I'm not saying no either. I assume it will require some planning, or it could be exploited.

Anything can be exploited, though. Having save&quit can allow you to save/quit after every node, copy a backup of the save, and replace that every time. Just because someone can go out of their way to exploit something made for convenience for players who don't want to cheat the system (ie to prevent loss in the case of crash, or what seems much more likely to me, a situation like "shit, my laptop battery just died") doesn't mean it harms the game.

Anyone can use external means to exploit the system - I don't honestly consider those to be something that the developer needs to spend an excessive amount of time/effort to subverting (same reason DRM seems a bit pointless to me); someone will always find a way around it, and in the case of a single-player game, anti-cheat mechanisms provide no benefit to anyone.

Now, adding in-game means to subvert the underlying goal, is an entirely different situation - if they made save archives where you could unwind every jump and replay any node from every jump, then that'd break what they're going for. But from an in-game perspective, deletion-upon-death autosaves don't affect the gameplay whatsoever. All they do is allow you to continue playing the game as you already would have, without being negatively impacted by external events.

Obviously, I highly support this, and hope that in the next new version or two, they're added. Since it's not been addressed by the devs yet, similar to the connection maps before the most recent update, I remain hopeful that it's under consideration.

Game can't win with save and restore in any other way than prevent saving. Which is pretty much what's done in FTL.

You're responding to a different topic. This is not about save and restore. This is about autosaves which otherwise work the same way as the save and quit currently does, except replacing it after each node jump (or possibly sector, but I'd personally prefer nodes, as sectors would allow much more unintentional scummery if the autosaves are needed), solely for use in the case of things such as game crash or system failure (such as power loss).

[Agent_L]

You're responding to a different topic. This is not about save and restore. This is about autosaves which otherwise work the same way as the save and quit currently does, except replacing it after each node jump (or possibly sector, but I'd personally prefer nodes, as sectors would allow much more unintentional scummery if the autosaves are needed), solely for use in the case of things such as game crash or system failure (such as power loss).

No, I'm responding to previous post (surreally's)

Restoring is not a problem with save&restore. Saving is.
Currently save&restore is seriously limited in FTL because of huge time investment required to save. You have to quit and relaunch the game to save. It's simply not viable thing to do every node.
Autosave would lift that limitation, thus enabling easier s&r. S&R would be achieved by simply killing FTL process. One would only need to determine the "I'm doomed, need to restore" (hull critical) moment - the save would be already there.

[Icehawk78]

No, I'm responding to previous post (surreally's)

Restoring is not a problem with save&restore. Saving is.
Currently save&restore is seriously limited in FTL because of huge time investment required to save. You have to quit and relaunch the game to save. It's simply not viable thing to do every node.
Autosave would lift that limitation, thus enabling easier s&r. S&R would be achieved by simply killing FTL process. One would only need to determine the "I'm doomed, need to restore" (hull critical) moment - the save would be already there.

Oh, okay. Sorry, I missed that last post. My apologies.

I assumed that the "autosave" mechanism would merely be identical to the save and quit, just automatically done. Yes, the external investment to cheat currently is much higher than if autosave was implemented, but as previously mentioned, as long as it's not possible to exploit in-game, I don't really see why the developers should be trying to prevent external manipulation in a single-player game in any manner.

Roguelikes are the inspiration with the permadeath, and a majority of those have autosave between levels as well. They're not being harmed, and neither would FTL.

[Agent_L]

Roguelikes are the inspiration with the permadeath, and a majority of those have autosave between levels as well. They're not being harmed, and neither would FTL.

You're more experienced than me, I've never played any except FTL.
Knowing that ctlr-shif-esc gives me another chance, I'd not be bothered with copying saves. This is a thought from a cheater's mind: how FTL saves atm has not stopped me from cheating with s&r.

[LeetMiniWheat]

If your computer is crashing within a 1-2 hour game, you seriously need to have it looked at because that is NOT normal. And if your power is being interrupted frequently, call your power company and/or invest in a UPS (uninterpretable power supply). Autosave is not needed in a roguelike.

[Icehawk78]

Roguelikes are the inspiration with the permadeath, and a majority of those have autosave between levels as well. They're not being harmed, and neither would FTL.

You're more experienced than me, I've never played any except FTL.
Knowing that ctlr-shif-esc gives me another chance, I'd not be bothered with copying saves. This is a thought from a cheater's mind: how FTL saves atm has not stopped me from cheating with s&r.

Oh, I'm well aware of the multitude of ways that people can and will cheat at games - I have a long and storied history at hacking/cheating/etc at games, all the way back to the original Gameboy games with my trusty Game Genie, lol.

I don't disagree with you whatsoever that an autosave will make savescumming (the practice of externally copying a save or otherwise abusing the existence of any form of saving to circumvent the permadeath in the game) easier.

What I disagree with is the design decision to punish players who won't use something to cheat (such as myself, since I like to play on a laptop - I've lost a few ships mid-run to the fickle battery gods; not the game's fault too much, other than that the increased CPU load caused it to drain faster, but still nothing I did in-game) in order to attempt to punish (by adding inconvenience) to those who will use it to cheat. That isn't to say that the developers here have permanently made that decision (after all, they changed their minds on Save & Quit after first deciding on wanting no form of saving whatsoever), but if they have/do, I think it's a poor choice, for the very same reasons I think inconveniencing players with DRM to stop piracy is silly.

If your computer is crashing within a 1-2 hour game, you seriously need to have it looked at because that is NOT normal. And if your power is being interrupted frequently, call your power company and/or invest in a UPS (uninterpretable power supply). Autosave is not needed in a roguelike.

That's nice of you to say so, but doesn't address anything previously said. Specifically, I gave one very common and not at all unusual situation explaining where this would be useful for many people (playing on a laptop which isn't currently plugged in).

Your "solution", really, isn't. "Get a better computer and/or just don't do what you're doing." Thanks, but having the games I want to play dictate how to use my computer isn't helpful. Ultimately, all you're really saying is "I don't have a problem with this. If you do, I don't give a shit."

[LeetMiniWheat]

If your computer is crashing within a 1-2 hour game, you seriously need to have it looked at because that is NOT normal. And if your power is being interrupted frequently, call your power company and/or invest in a UPS (uninterpretable power supply). Autosave is not needed in a roguelike.

That's nice of you to say so, but doesn't address anything previously said. Specifically, I gave one very common and not at all unusual situation explaining where this would be useful for many people (playing on a laptop which isn't currently plugged in).

Your "solution", really, isn't. "Get a better computer and/or just don't do what you're doing." Thanks, but having the games I want to play dictate how to use my computer isn't helpful. Ultimately, all you're really saying is "I don't have a problem with this. If you do, I don't give a shit."

Play with the laptop plugged in? Put the laptop to sleep and charge it before it dies? Get a better battery?

This is more an issue with your computer or playstyle, not the game. It's not good to let your computer shut off without a clean shutdown (hard drive corruption, etc), so you should be looking for ways to prevent this instead of blaming a game for not saving while you neglect your computers health. I don't see how the developers need to cater to this very unusual circumstance. (Yes I said unusual, not common, because I can't imagine most people wanting to intentionally damage their computers just to get an extra 5 minutes of gameplay)

[Agent_L]

Hmm, very aggressive autosaving would remove most benefits from terminating the process.

If autosaving would be done after every user action (like choosing dialog option) and every 5 secs in battle, terminating the game would give very little to zero benefit.

[Agent_L]

If your computer is crashing within a 1-2 hour game, you seriously need to have it looked at because that is NOT normal.

Welcome to the world of PCs.
There will always be some systems so exotic that particular program will crash often.

(Not even mentioning that playing on systems with screen smaller than required had to be done with sophisticated and potentially unstable screen emulators. It's IMHO a bad decision to lock a product with so small HW requirements to just one, fairly high resolution.)

[Icehawk78]

Play with the laptop plugged in? Put the laptop to sleep and charge it before it dies? Get a better battery?

This is more an issue with your computer or playstyle, not the game. It's not good to let your computer shut off without a clean shutdown (hard drive corruption, etc), so you should be looking for ways to prevent this instead of blaming a game for not saving while you neglect your computers health. I don't see how the developers need to cater to this very unusual circumstance. (Yes I said unusual, not common, because I can't imagine most people wanting to intentionally damage their computers just to get an extra 5 minutes of gameplay)

Again, I repeat myself:

Your "solution", really, isn't. "Get a better computer and/or just don't do what you're doing." Thanks, but having the games I want to play dictate how to use my computer isn't helpful. Ultimately, all you're really saying is "I don't have a problem with this. If you do, I don't give a shit."

Obviously, I do often play with my computer plugged in. Not always. If you don't know people who have/use laptops as their primary computers, this may explain your lack of understanding (or it may simply be willful ignorance). Yes, it 100% is an issue of "how I use my computer" and "how I choose to play" and the like. Additionally, you misunderstand - I didn't "blame" FTL for any of my issues or in any way indicate that the game was at fault.

There are several other incorrect pieces of information in your comment, as well:

1) On most modern computers, allowing a computer to lose power or otherwise shut off mid-use is highly unlikely to damage your system (the "hard drive corruption" you claim is only likely if you're in the process of writing a file, using a partition formatting which is susceptible to that, and not using an operating system which has safeguards in place to prevent that). Is it especially good to power cycle your computer? No. Is it in any way realistically likely to cause damage? No.

2) Most people who use laptops as their primary computers have, at some point in time, run out of battery and had their computer shut down on them mid-use. Almost all of these same people will have turned their computer back on afterwards and noticed that it was exactly the same as if they'd shut down their computer properly without saving anything they were in the middle of (with the exception of applications with auto-save). Thus, your claim that "I can't imagine most people wanting to intentionally damage their computer just to get an extra 5 minutes of gameplay" is true, but only because there's also no conceivable manner in which someone would actually damage their computer in order to get more gameplay.

However, they most certainly will and do play right until the battery dies (especially if, say, you're playing FTL and the "I'm going to shut off in 5 minutes" warning pops up while you're in the middle of a fight which you can't easily escape from or something similar).

Realistically, my question is a simple one of cost/benefit:

What does implementing an autosave feature, which several players have said they would personally benefit from, cost you, a player who would not benefit from it? I understand that you think it's silly or wrong or in some other way "bad" that anyone's experience with the game ever has been different from your own, but I don't understand how this being implemented, if the developers so choose to do, would in any way negatively impact you. There's a difference between seeing a requested feature and saying "I wouldn't benefit from this" and saying "I wouldn't benefit from this, and nobody else should either."

Your same arguments could just as easily have been applied to the initial discussion surrounding the Save & Quit as it occurred; people claiming that anyone who didn't have the time to sit and play a whole game of FTL should just not play it, as they clearly are stupid and games require you to sit and play for a while, and if you allow the outside world to intrude on the game, then you're just pissing on the empty graves of Roguelikes not-really-even-past (many of which have both S&Q and autosaves), and besides, you can just pause the game and put your computer into hibernate if you really feel the need to stop playing ever.

The developers in that case realised that in-game, there was no added harm to including a Save and Quit, and further, there was a benefit to players who, for whatever personal reasons, wanted to be able to suspend the game without losing their current progress and also without leaving the game running in the background. Were they wrong to do so? Not at all. Adding autosave functionality, purely as a backup (either for application crashes, system crashes, or even ordinary (yes, ordinary - they really do happen often, regardless of your claims that anyone who allows that to happen is stupid and a bad person) power losses) likewise doesn't hurt any players, but does help those who have had issues with it.