I have 64GB (computer strong) and I can make the images quite small, the important thing is for them to convey meaning and not necessarily be pretty.
I am just curious at which tile count does the software slow down? How many tiles can I move at once without significant slowdowns? I want to make sure that its still somewhat usable even if I have to make large edits to the map. Would be very thankful if you could try out some crazy manipulations like this and come up with functional limits to multi-tile editing
I did some stress tests by repeatedly copy pasting smaller hexagon shapes into bigger ones. Here are some numbers:
Selection:
FPS became sluggish at around 15000 selected tiles, but still very much usable.
At 90000 selected tiles I was down to about 4-5 FPS. Considering I would rarely need to move that many at once, I would say this is completely adequate.
Pasting:
Pasting 90000 tiles takes about 3-4 seconds. I did this 5 times and then selected what was now nearly half a million tiles and pasted them on another layer, I had to do this because FPS had become seconds per frame, and It would take forever to move far enough away. Pasting took multiple tens of seconds, but it actually managed to do it, which is quite something.
I did have to mash the left mouse button quite a lot to actually place the tiles which means input during these rendering tasks is not registered/cached, so that is a suggestion for big map QoL.
Usability with high tile counts:
The map with nearly a million tiles opens and is usable within 10-15 seconds.
As long as you don't have crazy amount of tiles selected, the FPS is actually great even with a million tiles, and tile painting is buttery smooth.
One issue with a map this big is that it becomes difficult to find things, something like a "frame/focus" function is quite needed to teleport the view to your selection.
Overall I am very impressed and happy with the results!