built in load delay

I've not noticed that so much as I've seen load times increase dramatically as you get further in the game. I'm not sure why this is the case.... other than it seems like you're loading a replay or some such thing. It seems way out of whack to the save time (in other words saves go ALOT quicker than load times).

As you progress in the game, there are more ships, more social projects, more star systems, and more starbases to keep track of. Your computer is not infinitely fast, so naturally, each one adds a tiny bit more to the load time.

It shouldn't be that slow though. Assuming you have a 1 gigahertz processor, that means 1 billion clock cycles in a second. Your CPU can probably push about 20 to 40 MB per second at least. The save files themselves aren't nearly that big. Assuming each side has 1000 objects a piece, you're looking at maybe 10000 objects to load and place. Since all objects are essentially byte data (hence integer), CPUs are able to load and store the data fairly quickly.

I've seen roleplaying games which probably keep in track of many many more things than that take alot less time to load. Even Divine Divinity which keeps in track of the positions of every single little object in the game (which numbers in the 1000's plus as well) loads alot quicker.

That's why I wonder if there's some replay action going on where the computer is replaying moves leading up to the state the game is saved in (hence how Frogboy is able to tell what transpired during the game leading up to the save using the save game file)

SeanB

Weighing in at about 3 MB total, the save folder the game is actually quite nominal when compared to other games. (Moo3's save game sizes weigh in nearly 2 MB but take less than 30 seconds to load in general)

The further along in the game you play MOO3, the longer it takes to load, as is the case here. Some people (those on the MOO3 boards) have experienced load times up into and past 5 minutes. Somewhere areound turn 2,000 or so.