Is there any sort of workaround to maintain some level of persistence without a dedicated server? Possibly saving the server state in the same way you save as a player?
My group wants to do something that will really be pointless without persistence and we unfortunately can't afford to get a dedicated server with enough power yet.
Using a local server will work (and will often boost your performance as opposed to dropping it). As for lowering the amount of data saved, only enabling some persistence options on some modules but not others should help a bit.
The way I (and many others) do it is by running a dedicated server from the same computer we play on, saving it when the missions over, then shutting the server down when everyone is done playing. Persistence works fine for this mehod. The only downsides being it isn't online 24/7.
