What are your experiences with loading times? As an example, when I click Training (main menu), then it takes 7 minutes or more to get to the training screen, where I can do something. And starting a new game or continuing an existing one takes even longer. During the waiting time, all I see is a black screen displaying LOADING and a dot in the bottom right corner. Similarly, switching between ship and planet, and between ship and space takes several minutes every time.
I hadn't played the game for some time, but I remember that loading times were ok in the past (on the same PC, so it's not a problem of my hardware), so something must have changed in the meantime, and I don't think it was the latest 2017 patch.
What are your experiences?

For me, from the main menu to the training screen takes about 15 seconds on the first try. It takes about half that time for subsequent loadings of the training screen. Seven minutes seem excessive. I've noticed in the past that a weak signal connection between my bluetooth controller and PC caused a lot of lag in some games. Maybe your delay is caused by a misbehaving input device(s)? Other than that, I really have no clue.

Thanks. Like I said above, I can't imagine that it's a hardware problem. I know meanwhile that the change from acceptable loading times to the 7 minutes I mentioned above must have happened in autumn / winter 2019/2020 (I noticed it for the first time in February 2020, and it was ok 6 months earlier). I can see it on two different PCs, and the hardware of both PCs didn't change in this time (including driver updates). This leaves an update of the operating system, Win10, as a potential explanation.
It's a guess only, but it has become more likely 3 weeks ago, when the loading time of the training session dropped suddenly to something in the range of two minutes, on both PCs, possibly associated with another Win10 update.
I asked the question above because I wondered if someone else noticed a similar change of the loading times. I suppose you wouldn't even notice a few seconds more or less, as your PC seems to be quite powerful.

The improved loading times are ok for me. My PCs are not the most powerful ones, and once the game is loaded, performance is totally acceptable, even on higher graphics settings.

I had forgotten how fast my PC is. It's 3 years old so I just assumed that PCs these days are much faster. Just to be clear, my intention wasn't to brag about my hardware. :) I've heard stories of Windows updates slowing down games, but I didn't realize it could be that bad. In any case, it's good to see your problem resolved itself.

... nor did I intend to hint at something like this :-)
I'm simply not interested in high-end hardware, nor in buying a new PC every 18 months or so (does anybody remember Moore's Law, that the power of PC's doubles every 18 months - used to be fairly correct in the past)?
There are some moments where I think I should have a better PC, but then I think it's not worth it - a purely personal matter. I have a desktop and a laptop PC, i5/i3, both 8 GB RAM and integrated graphics cards (630, 520). Good enough for my purposes (most of the time).

I wasn't saying that a Windows upgrade caused the increase of loading times of TLJH, nor that a Windows upgrade ever slowed my PC down (it hasn't). I'm simply running out of other explanations, why a game out of a sudden loads slower (I'm not talking about initial loading times only, it happened whenever there was something to load, all transitions between ship and planet or space included), and then, months later, returns to the earlier acceptable loading times (and maintains the good performance between two loading processes, on planets, on the ship, and in space). Watching the task manager, I can say that RAM usage was going up to 4.5 GB for the TLJH task alone during the loading processes (associated with "task doesn't respond" messages), while CPU and GPU usage remained low, disk access was varying. It looks like the program is transferring huge chunks of data between disk and RAM during loading, and it hasn't been programmed in an optimal fashion (from the perspective of a user with a weak PC). If my suspicion that Windows upgrades caused the difference is true, then something in the communication of this particular program with the operating system must have changed. As far as I can say, nothing else was affected, response times of all other systems remained the same. And the game software itself hasn't changed.
I can live with the uncertainty, and sooner or later I'll have a new PC ... :-)