A theory I tested recently - would consolidating all inis into a single, massive ini allow for faster loading?
The answer is yes. Definitely.

I tested this by shoving everything loaded in "Base.rte/Index.ini" and everything that was loaded using "IncludeFile" into a single ini (in correct load order) and got roughly 2-2.5 second (measured with a stopwatch :/ ) decrease in loading time.
I run Win7 x64 on i5-6600k @ 3.5GHz, 16Gb 2.4Ghz RAM on an H170 chipset motherboard.
Loading speed gains may vary depending on hardware.

The speed increase is gained by minimizing scan/read operations CC has to do while loading.
If you have a mod that has a large amount of ini files, consolidating them into a single ini once you're done with it and plan to release will speed up the loading for you and whoever downloads your mod.
Depending on the amount of inis and the amount of lines gains may not be much, but every millisecond counts.
All your original inis can be kept in their places without interference.

The consolidated ini is standalone. All you need to do it uncomment everything in Index.ini and include it, like so:


This base doesn't have any changes made except placeable crabs in build mode.
All uncommented code was removed to (very slightly) speed things up even more.
96542 lines, 2.07Mb

A tool to simplify this process to a few clicks is being worked on because doing this manually can be pretty tedious.
I'll update this thread once it's available.

Similar work done here by MLC and Duh

Welp, guess I didn't do my homework.
Guess this can be deleted then, it doesn't bring anything new to the table, and here I thought I made a breakthrough lol.

Should make that thread a sticky across all boards cause it's right there under my nose and I missed it. MLC's tool is great.
Weegee also whooped one up but I guess we won't be needing it.

The loading speed boost is entirely because CC's text drawing is very slow. If you reduce your screen size (so that less text can be printed) loading is sped up significantly, no matter how many RTEs or files you're loading.