“Why so many saves?” Well, see, it's ike this:
1. The 1,808 hour save is my original save, from late 2016. I was not a day 1 player, but close, it was on the Foundation patch when I started this save. This is the save where I joined the Galactic hub and Citizen Science division, helped out with the BONKERS Waking Titan ARG before Atlas Rises (iykyk), did a *lot* of exploration looking for Diplos and Mushroom Beetles, and weathered multiple galaxy resets. It's still, obviously, my daily player. Currently in Sudzerbal, the 30th galaxy; I crossed the first 10 in the course of the main storyline, helped found the Galactic Hub capital in Eissentam after the Next update, reached the center of the next few galaxies “the hard way” via black hole travel, then discovered the portal glitch and made my way to the next “Lush” galaxy, which landed me in Sudzerbal. This save features a Gek main character and an all-yellow color scheme (this was *way* more work a decade ago than it is now with custom ship building). I turned off crafting costs on this one when I hit MAXINT units 🤣 (Via an absolutely massive Activated Indium farm that gave me ~250M units every couple days, before they nerfed the rewards for Activated Indium).
2. The 711 hour save is from the Atlas Rises era, I split it originally to keep a save centered in Euclid near the Galactic Hub. "Pierced Shark Face” main character, black and white color scheme (white classic ships, black corvettes). This one got a lot of hours early in the Pandemic, when I went on a bit of a Living Ship and Base Building binge. This is the save where I glitch-built the Planetary Defense HQ for the G-Hub Coastal Colony on Dorinish (second pic), using several different techniques that are now patched out 🫠 Those are land-based circular base parts glitched to “float" on the water, and I've literally never seen another base built 100% on an angle like this (on the outside anyway…interior floors just REFUSED to snap to the diagonal plane). Funny: there are ladders on the main gun, but when you climb them, you go straight up even as the structure drifts further and further away from you.
3. The 296 hour save is just silly, I made it because the prettiest little teal (turquoise?) & yellow (pale orange?) E-wing single thruster Rasamama ship landed at one of my bases in the Euclid save. No joke, I started a new game, progressed it until I had all the portal glyphs, then jumped to the right planet to nab this ship and zoom off. I finished the main storyline in this save also, and the Gek MC is now hanging out in Eissentam. An older photo of the fleet (with the original Rasa in the bottom right) for this save is in the third pic; hunting down a Living Ship that was an acceptable fit for this color scheme took as long as any other single task in a decade of playing this game, ISTG. Also in this shot: my all time favorite Explorer variant, with eye-pods and chin plates, a ship which I managed to get to 3K light year warp distance before there were any such things as X-class mods.
4. The 70 hour save is Creative mode, from back before you could disable building costs in a custom save, and its whole reason for being was to experiment with glitch techniques without costs. Almost all of the time in this save was spent building and refining the Temple of the Eye in pic 4. Again built all kinds of glitch techniques that have been patched out, so it is "done” in practice if not in theory. A shame, because those holo-door rings are siiiick and big enough to fly a ship through; I never got around to building a ship agility course making use of these.
(the 16 hour save is just the most recent expedition)
