the stated solution is to "load the file contents into RAM at system bootup"
Wait, so you want games on your hard drive because SSD space is too expensive (~55€/TB), so then you permanently occupy some RAM instead (at ~6500€/TB)?
Have you tried doing a linear read from disk instead, like to use zstd for good compression and fast decompression of the Factorio data folder and then make a Factorio shortcut that does like:
$ cat run-factorio.sh
mkdir /dev/shm/factorio
cd /dev/shm/factorio
tar xf ~/games/factorio.tar.zstd
/dev/shm/factorio/bin/x64/factorio
# the above line will block so long as the game runs
tar c . | zstd -T0 -19 > ~/games/factorio.tar.zstd
echo Finished saving Factorio data back to disk
such that all reads on startup (and beyond) will be from RAM but only while you are actually running the game?
Wait, so you want games on your hard drive because SSD space is too expensive (~55€/TB), so then you permanently occupy some RAM instead (at ~6500€/TB)?
Have you tried doing a linear read from disk instead, like to use zstd for good compression and fast decompression of the Factorio data folder and then make a Factorio shortcut that does like:
such that all reads on startup (and beyond) will be from RAM but only while you are actually running the game?