Pathfinder, Atlas Rises, and NEXT are all quite a bit different from eachother and I'd like to have all three installed at the same time, however they all seem to be using the same save folder.

Can I get them to user *different* save folders?

The easiest way would be to have three folders, one for each version which you rename to the expected name when you're ready to play that version. That is ...\DefaultUser_Pathfinder ...\DefaultUser_AtlasRises and ...\DefaultUser_NEXT but drop the suffix when you're ready to use that directory.

Probably safest to gen up a BAT file for each version that handles the renaming and then launches the targeted release. That way you won't forget and accidentally get the versions crossed. Not that I'd ever make that mistake (I can totally see myself making that mistake.)

ETA: I just had a problem sync'ing NMS with GOG due to excessive storage (greater than 200 MB) for the saved games. That was due to having made pre-1.5 zip'd backups that were left in the DefaultUser and the NMS directory above that.

Apparently the sync function mirrors everything at least in ...\NMS and below (and possibily a level above that) and the zip files were being included in the sync. Thus blowing up the storage quota.

Deleting the zip files while NMS wasn't running didn't help ... the GOG server just recreated them from its storage. I had to Win-D back to the desktop while the game was running and move those files to another location. After that, the sync completed properly and the zip files aren't recreated.

Aaaaanyway, based on that experience the multiple directory scheme up above might not play nicely with the GOG sync servers.

Try creating another couple of Windows user accounts and using those for the different versions. The game states are saved under the user's APPDATA folder, so that may be a cleaner approach.

I always start this kind of post by saying i HATE IT when a dev puts the save path in a specific place without users able to choose where it will be. On these games it is aways one some kind of C:/Users path and is just lazy.

A game does it RIGHT when you get a choice of place to install and it makes sure ALL game files install and are called from that path. Game files, save files etc.

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So what i do for games like NMS is constantly make back-ups and keep those in clearly labelled folders relevant to the specific game version i'm playing (Vanilla Saves, Foundation Saves etc).

It's a manual process but fairly easy to get into once you've done it a few times. You them copy/paste the relevant save back into NMS default save slots as you play the respective version of the game.

It's also a game that is basically a buggy mess, and no, it's not an alpha or beta, it was released 2yrs ago.

Probably in part due to the dev model that Sean Murray and Hello Games have always stated they intend to follow. They always said they saw NMS as a game they wanted to spend the rest of their careers working on. Anyone in a programming job will understand that means lots of bugs.

The good thing about HG is that they do (mostly) get around to fixing them, and pretty quickly compared to many other bigger devs.

I still have not started NEXT, having played the game from the start i just know what to expect and for such a big update i'd still be thinking it will need two or three more patches to get most of the worst bugs under control. Luckily i have lots of other games to play while that happens :)