I haven't been able to make sense of what I'm reading about the changes to the Save/Autosave system in 4.0+.

It sounds like Manual Saves, created by save points and beacons, will be overwritten with Autosaves? And that Autosaves occur at 1-minute intervals, exiting your ship, and also when various other miscellaneous events occur.

So... What is the new system?

I've been told that the save point/beacon saves now get overwritten with ship exit saves, which makes it really frustrating to test new things. You can get around it by making manual backup of your saves and then restore them after testing, but that is a lot of extra work.

But I'm glad we get to rename the saves now, I was getting to a point where I couldn't tell them apart xD

Think of it like a two slot safe system. Both are seperated.
The autosave overwrites the autosave slot based on events e.g. like leaving the ship.
The manual save overwrites the manual slot based on your control.
As far as i see now, the game start always loads the latest save.
In the option menu you can reload both slots manually.

I really like that mix. I can place the savepoint modules into my walking path like the freighter base entry door. It does remind me to save before i do some build testing that i may dislike and wish to undo.

Unfortunately this is false, and I even guess it's a bug, your manual save, I mean everything you save with the in-game devices, will ALSO be overwritten as soon as you leave your ship, making it basically useless. if this flaw was not there and the manual save would be kept 'as is' , then all would be fine and would corrispond to what the update 4.0 notes are saying, but alas this ain't so, your manual save gets constantly overwritten because you are quite always using your ship.
Also useless because of this is the renaming feature (what sense does it make to rename a save if it changes all the time?)

The system as it works now (4.05) simply has 2 save slots, the 60 seconds autosave will be in slot 1, slot 2 will contain the in-game device saves until you jump out of your ship in which case slot 1 is overwritten, what was in slot 1 before will be moved in slot 2 and what was in slot 2 before will simply vanish. For me, the in-game saving devices (beacons, save point, POI flag) suddenly become all useless - or I need not going in my ship, that's ridiculous.

In essence, you have 1 save and 1 other backup that is also very recent. IMO It's a pain compared to how it was before but convenient to base-builders and grinders who don't jump out of their ship all the time, not causing the 2nd slot to be overwritten, but else there are a lot of playing scenarios which make the new system not useful.

I expect a lot of players making feedbacks or bug reports to Hello Games which then get aware of the problem and hopefully eradicate this behavior in the next patches.

I agree with XenonS

I think saving is now bugged, because the manual saves are constantly overwritten with autosaves.

From the Waypoint release notes https://www.nomanssky.com/waypoint-update/ .. But manual saves dont remain. Unless they meant we can still make manual saves, which is true, but they only stay as manual saves for a minute until they are overwritten which is crap if you wish to go back to where you specifically wanted a manual save to undo any mistakes made after that time.

I do have to apologize, first i'm playing on a friends switch who is on holiday now and so there may be differences. Second i didn't checked the time stamps in detail. Now i did and - fasten your spaceship seatbelts - now there is only one save slot that is overwritten from autosave and manual save into the same slot. And the reason is: It depends on the game mode. In normal i have two slots, in permanent death there is only one slot that is used by both auto and manual saves. It hat case overwriting an existing slot does make sense.

Yes you are right: As far as Permadeath is concerned there is more safety now against players getting stucked or similar, the 60 second save + the ship exit will make PD a safe play - and with 1 only slot. But for normal + survival play there are no manual saves anymore, only autosaves.

That doesn't sound correct.

I'm playing almost every day, and also backup my saves. There are always two differently-named save files: One for the "autosave", and the other is the "manual" save.

"Manual" saves are via the Save Beacon and Save Point; and also, unfortunately, when you exit your starship (which used to be an "autosave").

So... the "exit the ship" save will overwrite any previous "manual" save (because its save now uses the same "manual save" slot as the two Save devices).

So, while they changed which "save file" the "exit the starship" save uses, there are still two different saves; and as long as you keep an awareness that exiting a starship will overwrite the "manual" save, you can deal with or manage around that.

You can even load either of the two different saves from within the NMS UI (although not at startup - there it will pick the most recent save, but then you can always exit back to the "main menu" ((whatever they call it)) and there are both of your two saves - you can choose which to load).

Not sure why some folks think there is only one save (the "autosave"); when there are still both "manual save" and "autosave" - even selectable from within the game.

I would agree that moving the "exit the starship" save from the "autosave" to the "manual save" may not be the best set-up - but it is a manageable thing (and maybe/hopefully they'll change that in a subsequent patch).