I listed my game setup to illustrate that it's not just the galaxy's size but also the complexity of it. I have over 500 mini-carriers in my game, so over 4000 fighters in my empire; all of which need saving.
AHA! There's your problem, different from me since I build few carriers. I've never had a save take more than two minutes as a consequence. But you can't do much about the carriers of AI empires, so you still need a memory buffered hard drive to reduce save time.
Lonnie Courtney Clay

