Save file size

Just started playing this week and love Starbound. Quick newbie question tho.

How big does the save file get?

My save file jumped from 8 mgs at the start to now 44 megs and only about 1/6 of the main quest done, about 12 worlds partially explored. Does this get so big that I end up starting a new game? Like a gig size save file?

Just wondering . . . Thx!

 

Wait, what? Are you talking about total size of your storage folder?

 

Yes, its here: (I'm guessing this is where the save state is located)

E:\Steam\steamapps\common\Starbound\storage

right clicking the storage folder has it sitting at 45.9 mb

So, it's making me wonder if I am doing something, or it's just the nature of this kind of game?

 

Every time you visit a planet, game creates a file for it, which gets larger the more you explore and build on it. For instance, I have 139 world files and thus visited 139 planets (actually probably more since I purged my universe folder at least twice), which pads my universe folder to 460 MBs. Hell, my universe.chunks (file that tracks what parts of galaxy you visited) alone weights 77.5 MBs.

So yeah, as long as you visit new planets or build stuff on existing ones, amount and size of your files will grow, just like your save in any other sandbox. If you're really that concious about size of your saves you can try to isolate files of planets that are important for you and delete the rest, but I take no responsibility for stuff you'll lose as a result.

 

Thanks again for clearing this up I am fairly new to this, just having played Bioware games, Skyrim, 3d type stuff. I just love the heck out of this game and wanted to just make sure.

What I see you referring to is the idea I can clean out 'unwanted' planets here:
E:\Steam\steamapps\common\Starbound\storage\universe

They have titles like "-577193593_-806649652_42419951_2 . . ." and I see around 10 of these in my file, which is how many worlds I've been to. So I can actually delete these if I no longer want that planet, right?

For now I'm just loot hunting, not building, so once I leave that's all for that world (on to the next!) I don't build anything yet.

The universe.chunks is teeny at 33 kb so that's okay. I really appreciate the help here, I was bitten by the Skyrim save game bloat bug a few years ago and lost 300 hours of play and that charater, so I just wanted to be sure of what I'm seeing here. Thanks again!

 

As long as you don't touch universe.chunks (it can royally mess coordinates in your universe), .world and .clientcount files of planets you actually care about (deleting the first will delete the planet's map, deleting the second will screw up quests, crops, farm animals and tenant NPCs) and anything in /player folder (for obvious reasons) you'll be probably fine. Going to the planet you deleted previously will make game generate it anew (so anything you made there will be forfeit).