How often do you Save? «12...Next Go

cleo00

Hello!
I used to always forget to save and then would lose stuff when it inevitably crashed after playing for 6+ hours.
So I downloaded Nraas Saver, and set it to save at 4am and 4pm Sim Time.
However, that meant if it crashed I still lost half a sim day, and in my current household of 9 sims (two elders, five young adults, two teens) and 2 dogs, a LOT happens in half a sim day so I changed it to save at 4am, 10am, 4pm, and 10pm.
But now I feel like I am spending more time saving than I am playing, because that's really only like every 10ish minutes or so of Real Time, depending on lag and whatnot.
So when/how often do you save your game?

Nikkei_Simmer

A lot... But even so, sometimes I forget...get on a roll and then *CRASH*. Yep...happens all the time. I try to save every time there's an important thing that happens that is crucial to my story line. Then if something does happen...then there isn't so much to go back and re-do. But what frustrates me is when it crashes "while saving".

Emily4331

I save as every sim day at around 6 pm. If it crashes before then, I figure it is a lot easier to repeat one day than hours and hours if I don't save every sim day.

Charlottesmom

About every 15 minutes, unless I forget then every 2 hours...

igazor

I have NRaas Saver set to nag me every 30 minutes of real time (not sim time). If the game has been paused the entire time, it doesn't kick in yet. Often I don't get around to actually performing the save until it becomes 45 or 60 minutes, very rarely will I agree to do so exactly when the mod prompts.

If you have ever in your life lost days worth of work when a huge word document, spreadsheet, or similar goes corrupt on you or a drive or something else fails without it having been saved in all that time, and there is no usable recent backup to revert to, then saving and saving as very often kind of become a matter of instinct/habit.

TreyNutz

I have NRaas Saver set to remind me to save every 30 min. I usually play with NRaas Relativity at speed 19 (half of the default speed) so over 30 min not that much has happened in my game. I also tend to save at night when everyone's asleep regardless of when Saver last prompted me to save. Recently I've had a string of bad luck with toddlers and children not aging properly. I almost always cannot fix that after aging fails, so I go back to my previous save to try and fix it. Having been burned too many times I now always save before aging up any sim, just out of an abundance of caution.

edit: NRaas Saver prompts you to Save As, and appends a number after the save name, automatically incrementing it each time it reminds you. I have Saver set at the default of every 30 min and to keep 4 backup saves before starting to overwrite the oldest.

edit2: I also Save As before traveling and give the save name a few letters to indicate where my sims are going (uni, ITF, CH, FR, EG...). Then I do a whole new rotation of 4 saves while in that world. That way I always have a save in the homeworld in case something truly goes wrong in the traveled world (which I've never had to resort to). Finally I save as a new name on returning home (appending 'hm' usually). I have had trouble returning home on occasion and so this particular save can be a lifesaver for me.

I delete old saves from the Saves folder directly once settled back home and everything seems ok.

SimplyJen

Every 15-30 minutes and I use "Save as..." not "Save" so I can always have backups on hand and prevent save corruption. If I'm building it's more like every 30 minutes. I never felt the need to grab NRaas: Saver. I've made it such a habit that I save often in any game I play, not just sims. By level 10 in Skyrim I had almost a 100 saves. Saving often isn't a problem for me since I have the game installed onto an SSD and this speeds up save time among other things.

1need4kaffee

I save when I remember, which is usually once a sim week? Maybe? Or about every real hour.

Nikkei_Simmer

I just downloaded NRAAS Saver so that I could set automatic Saves. But I will utilize Save As as well for backup.

cleo00

Yeah, I use Save As too and Nraas Saver cycles through about 20 saves, so I always can go to backups. But still, redoing entire days is a pain.
I think saving 4 times a sim day might be slight overkill, but I am not sure what the right balance between sim time and real time is.
30 minutes sounds like it might be good.

Bettyboop55

If I'm building I save every hour. Playing in game I'm not so fussy. On really hot days I limit my time playing or building. Say a couple of hours then a break. Then I save and then exit each time.

Forgot to mention I copy major saves, sims and houses to an external hard drive. I live in an area prone to flooding and an external drive can be slipped into pocket if we need to evacuate. Also experienced a laptop fire and not all my sims stuff could be recovered.

Teslachick2

I have Nrass saver set to remind me every 30mins as well. Though I haven't gotten the dreaded error12 or frequent crashes since I switched from Win 8.1 to Win 7, I like to play safe. It's helped a lot especially if some sort of glitch or an unexpected and unwanted event happens, then I can confidently quit without saving and don't lose too much progress.

JoAnne65

I save every sim night. It's become a habbit, something I do automatically now as soon as my sim has stepped into bed (must say saving doesn't take that long for me, about ten seconds). And I save when something in my game happened I really don't want to lose. When I build I save after every finished room. The game, but also every now and then the building to the bin. When it's finished I delete the WIP's.

IreneSwift

I save every sim night after my sims go to bed. Once a week, I do a reset of the entire world with NRaas Master Controller, so when the time comes for that, I wait until Overwatch has done its 3 AM task, then I save for that night. I always use Save As also, in case I need to go back, though that seldom happens. I rename each save with a number for the day of the week - 1 for Sunday night, 2 for Monday, etc.

Mikezumi

I never play more than one sim day per session. It takes anywhere from 1-3 hours for one sim day depending on how many sims are in the household. I always start my sim day off by doing a save as indicating the day of my save. After that I will, for newer saves, do another save as at 3am the following morning when I close my game. For older saves, I could do as many as 3 or 4 save as saves per day. After playing a day, I close the game completely and clear my caches.

Edit to add: Like IreneSwift, I reset the town once a week.

Faerie197

I probably should save more often. I generally do so when I sign out, and every hour or two (if it occurs to me). I might save after an important event too.

stellie

I only save when I sign out. In fact, I don't even close my game very often! <3

Waterdragon

I save every night after I put my sims to bed. Also, before/after major events, like parties of any kind, after I gave a sim a make over, when I´m building, and every time I leave my pc for one reason ot the other.
I always pause the game and "save as", rotating through four saves normally. When I remember, I back up some saves on an external hard drive.

CK213

Waterdragon wrote: »

I save every night after I put my sims to bed. Also, before/after major events, like parties of any kind, after I gave a sim a make over, when I´m building, and every time I leave my pc for one reason ot the other.

Me too.

Faerie197

The idea of not saving for 8+ hours horrifies me. I tend to save and shut down the game for a moment after a couple hours of playing. And even then I've had to redo stuff after the game freezes/crashes before I could save. I'd hate risking that happening after playing for 10 or more hours.

TadOlson

I save as at least a few times each simday and have NRaas Saver set to remind me to save every 30 minutes if I'm building.I usually save more often though even in a building save.

pandabear1836

My game rarely crashes, but I still save often. I save every night at 12:00 am then again at 6:00 pm sim time, but it's usually more than two saves per day as I save before and after any major event. Births, birthdays, weddings, deaths, graduations, moving in/out Sims etc.

Astro

I 'Save As' whenever I remember, which is probably once every 2 or 3 sim days.

cwaddell

I usually rename my game before I start it up. That way if anything happens I still have everything from the last time I played. Then during play I save when I quit, periodically during building, after a session in CAS, after significant events, before I make a big decision (in case I want to back out of it) and before and after traveling I "save as". My game almost never crashes during regular play so I don't save that much. The few times it has crashed were after spending a lot of time in CAS or building so that's when I tend to save.

thevogel

I save every sim night. Once they are soundly in bed, it's time to save. I like to keep the game on slow or regular sim time while they sleep, and then I go for a virtual walk around town to see who's out and about. I like to see where the Unicorns are, and any spaceship landings... Also, as a builder, I like to see what I can improve on, while my sim family sleeps. Sometimes when i do this, I can crash the game... so saving every sim day is a must.

dreamerz13

Anytime anything relatively major happens, birthdays, weddings, whatever. Whenever I'm coming out of CAS or build/buy modes. Or if my game's performance starts dropping, more because that usually helps fix it than because I worry about losing stuff lol (that part is just a bonus). Sometimes I save every 5 minutes, sometimes it can be hours (that also usually involves thinking like "well so and so also has a birthday soon. I'll just save after that. I don't feel like it now").