Mmmm my favorite old game!
To put a little explanation on the save system, from what I have read over the years, is that it wasn’t designed that way by desire, but out of necessity. To create so many systems and planets, they needed to have the planet surfaces be procedurally generated. Through some coding wizardry they managed to reduce the amount of space needed by creating the save system this way. With out this save system the game would have simply been too big to fit on the disks. The game fits on one 3.5 inch floppy, and I believe the save system was so the whole game could fit on the one disk.
At least that’s what I remember reading a long time ago in Starflight fan forums.
I know it’s clunky as all hell, and I have lost many a Starflight game to it. All I can suggest is BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP. About every hour I do a full save/quit. Back up the file, then relaunch the game.
