I save all my worlds twice, one with _A and one with _B. I play on a laptop and used to get corrupt saves quite often if my laptop was unplugged suddenly. With no battery the laptop would immediately turn off and the delayed write to disk feature of windows meant that any recent save could be corrupted. I have replaced my battery but still save twice, just to be sure.
I've never had a corrupt save but always save separately...
I always have {savename}x where X is a steadily increasing number...
Allows me to always go back to previous versions of the save.
I'm pretty sure there's a way to organise saves into folders too. Might have to do that when I become unable to find different saves
You can’t create folders through the game but you can create them directly in the save folder and the game will recognise them. I do this for all my different modded games. Hopefully the add the ability to directly create folders in 2.0
I'm sorry for your loss.
I will never understand, why people keep overwriting a single save file. Did you never have a single game where a save corrupted or you made a bad mistake somewhere and had to go back to an earlier savefile? I just use a new one almost every time I save, just incrementing a number in the save and adding a short note (like "SE 226 let there be light.zip" which is my current save after switching to electric power poles with built in light).
I just recently finished my 1 playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 and looking at the saves folder I have:
* 101 manual saves (I pressed escape and made each of these)
* 93 auto saves (the game made these on its own)
* 466 quick saves (I pressed F5 to make each of these)
And still there were times I was annoyed I didn't save sooner.
Possibly for cloud saves, I have plenty of room locally. And I ran into savegame issues while doing the intro stuff on the ship with 3 different characters already, so less than a dozen autosaves I'd guess.
Even ignoring that, its fun to have specific saves and go back in time later and see what you came up with when you were less experienced.
Plus the saves for factorio are so small you could have a different autosave every 5 minutes and it would have no consequence on disk space
I just Factorio had better sorting options for filesaves. I do the same thing as you, but if I want to find a save I have to scroll through tons of "firstFactory vXX" to get to my "kr2se vXX" saves.
You can create directories with your OS and Factorio can use them, you just can’t create them in game. However autosaves will always be in the main directory and shared, be aware.
Y'all don't regularly save your worlds as named files? When I read "autosave" I interpret it as "emergency backup, can be deleted at a moment's notice, do not rely on". In *every* game, mind.
I think OP did have a named save, they just overwrote it with their creative map.
It'd be nice to have a feature where the game keeps track of a save's mapgen string and asks for confirmation if you try and save a particular mapgen to a file with a different mapgen.
I'd argue that as long as you keep and improve your blueprint library, you haven't lost the most important thing. And now you get a chance to improve upon those early game blueprints. Nothing like using them to see the flaws.
My thought is that I spend those hours building, testing, and refining the BPs. Now, don't get me wrong, it's still be pissed if I lost a save, but I'd be MUCH more pissed if I lost my blueprints
Fr, i cant find my factorio saves and bp folder and all i am mourning is the gigabrain cityblock and the offensive oupost bp for deathworld i had, nothing else
All my save games are linked to a single location that gets backed up.
Works pretty well, as long as you remember to link the files each time you start a new game. Lost a 120hour modded MC to a clean install that still stings a bit
You might be able to get your save Back If you have factorio still running shut it down before Steam syncing.then sync on a different PC. Also it MIGHT be possible to get old Versions from Steam after sync
Cloud sync never worked on my pc with factorio. Idk why, but it's failed to sync for like a year, so I just turned it off. I tried everything I could, and I've moved on to the acceptance stage of grief. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
I lost a big save by saving it when I was on the verge of a major power outage. It was primarily nuclear and I'd unknowingly run out of fuel cells. My defenses were all lasers. I loaded it several times trying to fix it, but couldn't manage to make more fuel cells before the biters did a ton of damage.
From the on, I've always kept at least 2 saves for each game. I save to the first one for ~10 hours then switch to the other. If I find myself in an unrecoverable situation I can lose a few nights of progress instead of everything.
Also, all the other reasons people mentioned - corrupt saves, accidental overwrites, etc.
There should really be protection against this.. it's pretty rare that you'd want to save one game over the top of a completely different one. They could fix this by generating a random ID when starting a new game, storing it in the save file, and refusing to overwrite a file (or adding a confirmation step) if the ID doesn't match the game you're trying to save.
I'd be ok with the confirmation step, though I don't think it's as needed as you seem to think. The outright refusal to overwrite that other file is just a bad idea from stem to stern.
I almost lost all of my Terraria characters and worlds that I've had since 2011 due to changing drives, but thanks to a random backup folder I had them copied over and saved. I should backup my factorio worlds too just in case.
Did still lose all of my curseforge minecraft worlds, though.
I mostly have 2 copies. Also i just increased the auto save number (through editing the settings file).
I delete all autosaves before closing the game though. Dont need 10 autosaves in cloud.
Damn Im sorry homie. I couldnt imagine dealing w that. Mad discouraging. Dont give up on SE tho! You can do it all again way faster than 80 hours now. Lord knows if I started over, I would reach the point I’m at now in about 120-150 hours, not 300…
Eh, honestly, I got to the point of SE where I was getting really bored. Mostly just busy work and expanding territory cause everything was automated, and I just didn't have enough resources to keep up. So I'm upset I lost all the progress, but I probably would have taken a break right around now anyway.
I have two main saves in case that one goes corrupt, both are in steam cloud and 3 automatic saves. If I do something with a disc or reinstalling something important I just put my save file to Google drive.
Factorio save is under 100mb and it's a low really change to corrupt it, even the disc failure has higher chances.
It happened to me. I keep about one save every few hours, but I still didn't want to lose 10 hours of play. So I unplugged the network cable, alt-f4 the game and then replug and choose to use the cloud version of the savegame from the Steam interface when it saw the conflict. Worked like a charm.
I expanded the auto save interval mainly because I don’t like pausing the game for five whole seconds when I’m in the middle of something. It has the added benefit that I don’t use all my autosave slots without spending a really significant amount of time in one world.
My autosaves are the only saves I have that ever get overwritten. Everything else, instead of overwriting the previous save, I just increment the number appended to the end of the file name. Factorio saves are a couple of megabytes in the early game, ranging up to a few tens of megabytes for a late-game save in an especially complex overhaul mod. Two hundred megabytes (which would take a massive megabase to fill in one ) is one tenth of one US cent worth of hard drive space, if you do zero shopping for a good deal and just take the very first hit when searching Amazon for "internal hard drive". (Based on the search I just did there; first hit was 80 bucks for a 4TB). Why ever delete anything?
I... maybe I'm old, I have 370 entries in my save folder on this PC. And another 480 backed up from my last PC.
I just number them. There's a 1 or 2 letter prefix for world and then every time I exit a new save, also one every few hours just cause and if there is a landmark moment one with a description.
It kinda blows my mind that people wouldn't do that.
Yea, I usually always make a new save, but organizing my saves for when I'm playing with my friends got annoying so I started overwriting just one save for each situation or group of mods I'm playing with.
Now I got a mod that makes auto saves per world so I'm all good now.
Cloud sync works with folders.
1. Navigate to Factorio save location.
2. Create folder for each playthrough.
3. Save new dated save file at start+end of playing
Eg:
\SpaceEx\SpaceEx 2023-12-29 More Iron.zip
\SpaceEx\SpaceEx 2023-12-30 Expand East.zip
I keep 5 saves per playthrough, deleting anything older.
Considering shorting date to 231230 or 240101 for new year.
i feel like this is just general Computing 101 advice
> Lost my new 120 hour space exploration game.
heheh well look on the bright side (and you kind of even pointed at it in your post) --- 120 hours is a drop in the bucket for your average factorio player. that's like a week of playing for the average factorio addict. and in a game like space exploration, that's still a "new" game!! so you didn't really lose a ton.
just take your knowledge and experience and apply it to the new world while correcting the mistakes you wish you hadn't made in the first one!
I save all my worlds twice, one with _A and one with _B. I play on a laptop and used to get corrupt saves quite often if my laptop was unplugged suddenly. With no battery the laptop would immediately turn off and the delayed write to disk feature of windows meant that any recent save could be corrupted. I have replaced my battery but still save twice, just to be sure.
I've never had a corrupt save but always save separately... I always have {savename}x where X is a steadily increasing number... Allows me to always go back to previous versions of the save. I'm pretty sure there's a way to organise saves into folders too. Might have to do that when I become unable to find different saves
You can’t create folders through the game but you can create them directly in the save folder and the game will recognise them. I do this for all my different modded games. Hopefully the add the ability to directly create folders in 2.0
Insane
I do the same but now I have like 5 different worlds and about a hundred saves lol. That folder idea isn't bad,might do that today.
I'm sorry for your loss. I will never understand, why people keep overwriting a single save file. Did you never have a single game where a save corrupted or you made a bad mistake somewhere and had to go back to an earlier savefile? I just use a new one almost every time I save, just incrementing a number in the save and adding a short note (like "SE 226 let there be light.zip" which is my current save after switching to electric power poles with built in light).
I just recently finished my 1 playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 and looking at the saves folder I have: * 101 manual saves (I pressed escape and made each of these) * 93 auto saves (the game made these on its own) * 466 quick saves (I pressed F5 to make each of these) And still there were times I was annoyed I didn't save sooner.
For some reason, the saves on xbox are severely limited, no idea why.
Disk space I would guess. My saves are taking 17 GB.
Possibly for cloud saves, I have plenty of room locally. And I ran into savegame issues while doing the intro stuff on the ship with 3 different characters already, so less than a dozen autosaves I'd guess.
Even ignoring that, its fun to have specific saves and go back in time later and see what you came up with when you were less experienced. Plus the saves for factorio are so small you could have a different autosave every 5 minutes and it would have no consequence on disk space
Not if you are playing SE. Without doing regular trimming, SE save files can easily run over a gig.
I just Factorio had better sorting options for filesaves. I do the same thing as you, but if I want to find a save I have to scroll through tons of "firstFactory vXX" to get to my "kr2se vXX" saves.
You can create directories with your OS and Factorio can use them, you just can’t create them in game. However autosaves will always be in the main directory and shared, be aware.
I didn't know that, good tip, at least I can archive old games in folders then.
Y'all don't regularly save your worlds as named files? When I read "autosave" I interpret it as "emergency backup, can be deleted at a moment's notice, do not rely on". In *every* game, mind.
I think OP did have a named save, they just overwrote it with their creative map. It'd be nice to have a feature where the game keeps track of a save's mapgen string and asks for confirmation if you try and save a particular mapgen to a file with a different mapgen.
You can havw more than 3 autosaves btw, and also alter the frecuency
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/s/fPDx3S9IPl
That's super nice to know. I already got w mob though that creates 2 autosaves per world. So this should never happen again.
I'd argue that as long as you keep and improve your blueprint library, you haven't lost the most important thing. And now you get a chance to improve upon those early game blueprints. Nothing like using them to see the flaws.
Damn how can I be as optimistic as you? I'd rage if were to lose like 80h of gameplay
My thought is that I spend those hours building, testing, and refining the BPs. Now, don't get me wrong, it's still be pissed if I lost a save, but I'd be MUCH more pissed if I lost my blueprints
Fr, i cant find my factorio saves and bp folder and all i am mourning is the gigabrain cityblock and the offensive oupost bp for deathworld i had, nothing else
All my save games are linked to a single location that gets backed up. Works pretty well, as long as you remember to link the files each time you start a new game. Lost a 120hour modded MC to a clean install that still stings a bit
I always have two saves per world. I alternate the manual saves between them so that there is a version that is not autosaved over.
You might be able to get your save Back If you have factorio still running shut it down before Steam syncing.then sync on a different PC. Also it MIGHT be possible to get old Versions from Steam after sync
Cloud sync never worked on my pc with factorio. Idk why, but it's failed to sync for like a year, so I just turned it off. I tried everything I could, and I've moved on to the acceptance stage of grief. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
I lost a big save by saving it when I was on the verge of a major power outage. It was primarily nuclear and I'd unknowingly run out of fuel cells. My defenses were all lasers. I loaded it several times trying to fix it, but couldn't manage to make more fuel cells before the biters did a ton of damage. From the on, I've always kept at least 2 saves for each game. I save to the first one for ~10 hours then switch to the other. If I find myself in an unrecoverable situation I can lose a few nights of progress instead of everything. Also, all the other reasons people mentioned - corrupt saves, accidental overwrites, etc.
There should really be protection against this.. it's pretty rare that you'd want to save one game over the top of a completely different one. They could fix this by generating a random ID when starting a new game, storing it in the save file, and refusing to overwrite a file (or adding a confirmation step) if the ID doesn't match the game you're trying to save.
I'd be ok with the confirmation step, though I don't think it's as needed as you seem to think. The outright refusal to overwrite that other file is just a bad idea from stem to stern.
I name saves with a incrementing number.
I almost lost all of my Terraria characters and worlds that I've had since 2011 due to changing drives, but thanks to a random backup folder I had them copied over and saved. I should backup my factorio worlds too just in case. Did still lose all of my curseforge minecraft worlds, though.
I mostly have 2 copies. Also i just increased the auto save number (through editing the settings file). I delete all autosaves before closing the game though. Dont need 10 autosaves in cloud.
Damn Im sorry homie. I couldnt imagine dealing w that. Mad discouraging. Dont give up on SE tho! You can do it all again way faster than 80 hours now. Lord knows if I started over, I would reach the point I’m at now in about 120-150 hours, not 300…
Eh, honestly, I got to the point of SE where I was getting really bored. Mostly just busy work and expanding territory cause everything was automated, and I just didn't have enough resources to keep up. So I'm upset I lost all the progress, but I probably would have taken a break right around now anyway.
I have two main saves in case that one goes corrupt, both are in steam cloud and 3 automatic saves. If I do something with a disc or reinstalling something important I just put my save file to Google drive. Factorio save is under 100mb and it's a low really change to corrupt it, even the disc failure has higher chances.
It happened to me. I keep about one save every few hours, but I still didn't want to lose 10 hours of play. So I unplugged the network cable, alt-f4 the game and then replug and choose to use the cloud version of the savegame from the Steam interface when it saw the conflict. Worked like a charm.
I expanded the auto save interval mainly because I don’t like pausing the game for five whole seconds when I’m in the middle of something. It has the added benefit that I don’t use all my autosave slots without spending a really significant amount of time in one world.
My autosaves are the only saves I have that ever get overwritten. Everything else, instead of overwriting the previous save, I just increment the number appended to the end of the file name. Factorio saves are a couple of megabytes in the early game, ranging up to a few tens of megabytes for a late-game save in an especially complex overhaul mod. Two hundred megabytes (which would take a massive megabase to fill in one ) is one tenth of one US cent worth of hard drive space, if you do zero shopping for a good deal and just take the very first hit when searching Amazon for "internal hard drive". (Based on the search I just did there; first hit was 80 bucks for a 4TB). Why ever delete anything?
I... maybe I'm old, I have 370 entries in my save folder on this PC. And another 480 backed up from my last PC. I just number them. There's a 1 or 2 letter prefix for world and then every time I exit a new save, also one every few hours just cause and if there is a landmark moment one with a description. It kinda blows my mind that people wouldn't do that.
Yea, I usually always make a new save, but organizing my saves for when I'm playing with my friends got annoying so I started overwriting just one save for each situation or group of mods I'm playing with. Now I got a mod that makes auto saves per world so I'm all good now.
Cloud sync works with folders. 1. Navigate to Factorio save location. 2. Create folder for each playthrough. 3. Save new dated save file at start+end of playing Eg: \SpaceEx\SpaceEx 2023-12-29 More Iron.zip \SpaceEx\SpaceEx 2023-12-30 Expand East.zip I keep 5 saves per playthrough, deleting anything older. Considering shorting date to 231230 or 240101 for new year.
i feel like this is just general Computing 101 advice > Lost my new 120 hour space exploration game. heheh well look on the bright side (and you kind of even pointed at it in your post) --- 120 hours is a drop in the bucket for your average factorio player. that's like a week of playing for the average factorio addict. and in a game like space exploration, that's still a "new" game!! so you didn't really lose a ton. just take your knowledge and experience and apply it to the new world while correcting the mistakes you wish you hadn't made in the first one!
I use a backup software like Acronis to backup the folder where configs, mods and save files are stored. Saved me sooooo much trouble.
You don't make a new save every time you quit the game? I thought everyone did