But that's not the best of ideas, because the user directory is supposed to override base game files. I know I have no files in there that override base game files, so tweaking the search order cuts IO operations to 79,570, and cuts startup time by another 11%.

The bulk of these are searching for files that are in the archives and don't exist in the user folder, since the user folder has a higher search priority. The user directory isn't too bad - with yesterdays patch, we have 174,017 IO operations. Since building the archives myself requires an installer for the patch, I've built it into a WIP save/mod editor I was working on.

That more than halves the work required to read the archive, since the local headers are scattered throughout the file, whereas the central headers are clustered at the end. That means that Stellaris never has to read the local file header at all, while the archives are still valid zip files that can be opened by a regular archiver too.

OK, one last install directory tweak: If I create the archives myself, then I can control the offset from the local file header to the file data.

Play fable 3 without windows live