Factorio Forums

Running this on [18.0] on Windows 10, try the following:

1. Remove the Mods Folder
2. Load a save
3. Click 'Sync mods to Save' with the option to start the game after sync is complete
4. The game then appears to download all the mods one-by-one
5. Afterward, the game loads the save but only with the 'base' mod.

It appears the game does the sequence like this:

1. Download all mods
2. Then, create the mod folder with only the 'base' mod
3. Load the game with only the 'base' mod

I would expect the game to invert steps (1) and (2) so that the downloaded mods are correctly stored in the mods folder.

This is definitely a very minor issue as most people probably will create a new 'empty' mods folder each time. But I think the intended behavior of the game is to create the mod folder if it isn't present. In this case, it appears you have a situation where players on slower downloads links may spend several minutes downloading mods that ultimately aren't stored in the mods folder. So, it might be worthwhile to investigate. Thanks!

Thanks for the report however I don't understand why you would ever manually delete the mods folder while the game is running.

It has no benefit and as you can see potentially breaks stuff.

There are probably a decent amount of places where stuff breaks if you delete folders that are supposed to exist for the runtime of the game while the game is running.

I don't consider it worth going over every one of those places and checking that folders exist before the logic continues - since they should always exist unless something is being malicious about it.

Maybe that will change one day - but for now i'm going to say won't fix.

Just don't delete the folder. There's no reason to.

Hmm... I don't think the game was running when I deleted the mods folder. Sorry, I wasn't more clear. I was fairly certain the exact sequence was:

1. Rename or delete the mods folder
2. Start the game
3. Load a game and Sync Mods to Save
4. Game appears to be downloading the mods
5. Game loads with just the 'Base' mod.

Trying to reproduce that now, I cannot. So, maybe I did have the game running. Though, if I try to delete the mods folder while the game is running, I see a message:

"The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program...."

I really thought I'd found a reproducible bug or I wouldn't have hassled with resetting my forum password to make the bug report. I can't reproduce it now.

I apologize for wasting your time!!

The mods folder should always be re-created on startup if it doesn't exist. If it isn't; that's a bug in the game logic. But from what you describe and what I test; it always is.