Factorio Forums

In the attached save, I click on the power switch entity that feeds the red circuit area. Nothing happens, though it should load the switch control to enable/disable. I created two more power switches as a test, which both work fine (buggy entity is the middle one).

It must have worked at least once, because it is on, but I don't remember the specific act of creating that switch many savegames prior. I'm pretty sure that entity was among many destroyed by an enemy attack that took out most of the factory, and I'm pretty sure I didn't recreate it right away because I didn't have any switches in my inventory at the time, and besides at that time I wanted most of the factory to stay off for safety while I rebuilt.

I only noticed the problem now because I created a few switches to use elsewhere and must have accidentally let a bot repair this one. The restored power in this area caught my eye, which is when I tried to use this switch and found the bug.

I tried exit and restart, which didn't fix the problem. After writing up the bug report, I deleted the switch and created a new one in its place, which works normally. Vanilla game, no mods or console actions.

Thanks for the report. This specific entity is marked as "operable: false" which as far as I know there are only 3 ways for it to happen.

1. Use a console command to set operable = false
2. A mod sets operable = false
3. In the editor checking the operable: false setting

Other unlikely ways it could happen: hex-editing the save and doing it wrong, a random bit flip while playing that set it to false.

A bit flip is the only one of these options that should be possible. Since 2.0 released I haven't tried any mods or console commands yet. Also I'm playing on Steam for the first time; I always direct-installed the game before 2.0. One thing I noticed with Steam is that it keeps trying to sync the saves to the cloud after I manually save and exit the game. I don't use cloud saves and often don't let Steam finish the sync. Maybe Factorio is loading an unsynced save from the cloud rather than the save file on my local disk? Or is Steam allowed to overwrite the local Factorio save files from Steam's cloud version of the same save file? I wouldn't expect a clumsy behavior like that, but I could turn off the Steam cloud sync if it's not expected to play nice with Factorio.

I can reproduce this in 2.0.15, also with the expansion. If a power switch is destroyed (e.g. by an enemy or shift+space) and then rebuilt from the ghost, either by a robot or a player, the GUI cannot be opened, either in person or from the remote view.

Thanks! That helped me narrow down the issue and it's now fixed for the next release.