Hard Save vs Overwrite Save [FO4]

[rubber_duck]

Hi there!

 

I'm assuming majority of registered users here on LL use adult-oriented mods. The question I'm asking you all is, how do you save?

 

Ever since I returned to Fallout 4 (about year and a half ago) I've been constantly hard saving the game. It never caused me any problems as (despite running heavy load order with all sorts of stuff installed) my game is surprisingly stable - only generic crashes happen from time to time but even those are very rare.

 

I'm asking this as I was doing some disk cleanup and I noticed that my Fallout 4 Saves directory contains about 60 GB of saves. There are plenty saves for dozen characters I created over the past few months (just for my current character alone I have over 580 saves). As far as I can tell, this doesn't affect my game performance whatsoever; though it does take up space.

 

That got me thinking, do hard saves (Pause Menu -> Save -> [NEW SAVE]) have any major advantages over overwrite saves (Pause Menu -> Save -> ExistingSave -> Overwrite ExistingSave)? If so, which ones?

 

I'm asking this partly because I'm curious to hear your thoughts, but mostly because I like to keep things tidy - why have nearly 600 saves that take up around 60 GB of disk space when I can have 5-20 saves per character; keeping the Saves directory tidy and having more space on my disk.

 

Waiting for your replies! Take care!

Edited December 19, 2022 by rubber_duck

[LenAnderson]

I usually at least make a new save before exiting, so that I have basically a backup for the exit save. In case the game crashes right after loading the exit save, or for experimenting with mods without using the exit save, or if something gets irreversible messed up and I may want to use an older save...

Occasionally I just delete all old saves with Windows File Explorer, just keep the last 5 or so.

 

Don't know why it would make any difference whether you overwrite or create a new save. Creating a new save is just quicker than looking through the list of saves, autosaves, quicksaves to find the one you'd want to overwrite.

[Miauzi]

I use Vortex to manage my mods - I can also use it to manage my saves and delete them if necessary.

it has long been recommended to "HART" save regularly - since "quick save" and "save&quit" can create buggy saves.

[Slorm]

I just keep 6 hard saves and then overwrite them cyclically both for FO4 and Skyrim. Been doing this for years without any problems, ever.

 

I wouldn't personally trust to using autosaves or quick saves, they don't seem to be particularly safe judging from various comments I've read