Does Sandbox mode run faster than Science and Career?

[DeadJohn]

Does Sandbox mode have substantially better performance for late-game stuff?

I'm asking because I usually start new playthroughs in Science or Contract mode, but late in the game after unlocking all/most science I play more like Sandbox mode. I stop doing contracts and focus on my own goals for exploration, station/base building, etc.

KSP gets slower as a playthrough progresses. That's partly due to many craft in flight, but also because experiment-per-biome and contract history grows the size of savefiles. Ships remain responsive, there's no fps lag, but it takes too long when I switch ships or jump to the space center.

Part 2: Any suggestions for converting an existing savefile? I want to keep vessels, roster, SCANsat progress, maybe more while getting rid of experiment and contract history. I found a thread but it's 4 years old:

 

 

[Skorj]

9 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

Does Sandbox mode have substantially better performance for late-game stuff?

I'm asking because I usually start new playthroughs in Science or Contract mode, but late in the game after unlocking all/most science I play more like Sandbox mode. I stop doing contracts and focus on my own goals for exploration, station/base building, etc.

KSP gets slower as a playthrough progresses. That's partly due to many craft in flight, but also because experiment-per-biome and contract history grows the size of savefiles. Ships remain responsive, there's no fps lag, but it takes too long when I switch ships or jump to the space center.

I haven't seen any slowdown from long running careers, other than when selecting the Archives tab in Mission Control (and that only shows a maximum number of completed missions - not sure if the older ones are actually purged from the save file though). My current career has about 60 craft in flight and about 200 completed missions, and I haven't noticed a difference between sandbox and that career save.  That being said, it's not all that fast either way for me, just equally slow.  I do see everything slow down gradually over the hours of a play session (but that's just memory leaks and rebooting resets that).

[Kerbal4]

I guess it depends, theoretically it should not be noticeably faster, but some computers do not have the memory to do all of the complex calculations. If you mean loading screens then yes, they will probably take a bit longer due to funds, science, reputation, and other career stuff that sandbox doesn’t care about. but in a way it really just means you may have to wait a little longer, as i will. you could try cleaning your computer memory if you want.

[Fierce Wolf]

It should have more to to with tracked objects/vessels in space than calculating science or reputation