How achievements really work

[zOldBulldog]

We all heard that:

- If you use a console command in a game (and save it) the achievements get disabled for that game.
- If you use mods the achievements get disabled, but once you turn the mods off the achievements get re-enabled.
- And we all have heard that Steam and non-Steam achievements are different, although I never saw a clear explanation of what meaning that has for the players that bought the game on Steam if any, other than getting the Steam achievements instead of the regular ones.

So I thought I understood, and stuck to vanilla being careful to never use a command until I finally completed all of the Steam achievements. At that point I felt free to use mods and my first one was a simple mod to help with screenshots.

To my surprise, although I had already done all the achievements, I started getting them all over again! Yes, with a mod enabled. Clearly there is a lot of confusing and just plain wrong information about achievements in the factorio forums, steam forums and reddit. Gaaagh!

Can someone explain what happened, and more importantly fully explain how achievements really work?

[Amarula]

From my experience, there appear to be (at least) four sets of achievements:
1 - Steam vanilla - playing the game through Steam (saves in the Steam cloud), with no mods
2 - Steam modded
3 - Local vanilla - playing the game not through Steam (saves on your local computer), with no mods
4 - Local modded
So depending on how you are playing your game, your achievements get assigned to a particular set. Change how you are playing, and the set changes, but you don't lose achievements, they just get assigned to a different set.

[zOldBulldog]

Than you Amarula. That set is much nicer than what people in the various forums say it is, since it means you will have a set of achievements to do no matter how you choose to play.

So, it seems that I now started on "Steam Modded". Do you know if there is just one Steam Modded, or does it reset every time you change your set of mods?

I ask because I plan to add RSO and several other QOL mods. My initial plan was to do it gradually, but if it resets at each addition I might bite the bullet and install them all at once.

[Zavian]

For steam and .exe installs, I think there is just one modded achievement list. (Each .zip install has its own achievement lists in achievements.dat and achievements-modded.dat, but that is a side effect of the .zip install being completely portable).

Also I don't believe that there there is really a "steam modded" list. What you are seeing is a local list of achievements analogous to achievements-modded.dat. For achievements to be pushed to Steam, you need to be playing the steam version without mods. When playing a non steam version, or when playing with mods achievements are only stored locally (ie the game will still track achievements earned, and tell you about them, but they aren't sent to steam and are only saved on your local computer).

[Jap2.0]

Yeah, modded achievements are just local.

[eradicator]

Not having personally used the steam version i still think it works like this:

1. There are two modes, vanilla and modded.
2. When you gain an achievement that achievement is saved to either achievements.dat or achievements-modded.dat.
3. When you gain an achievement while running the steam version that achievement is also pushed to the steam achievement list (not to be confused with cloud saves) in addition to be saved like in 2).
4. Steam achievements are never "pulled" back from the steam list, and local achievements are never "pushed" to the steam list except for the moment they are achieved. (I.e. if your local install has all achievements but you have none on steam then you won't automatically get all steam achievements when you first start the steam version.) [this point is speculation on my side due to not using the steam version, but i find any different behavior unlikely]

What Amarula describes as a second set of "steam" achievement i strongly suspect to be an effect of his "local" version using a different save directory than his steam version (e.g. because it's a zip install). This would be immedeatly obvious by checking if he can save a game in "local" and load it in "steam" and vice versa.

[Amarula]

My apologies, I don't use mods much, so it is likely true that your modded achievements aren't tracked separately for Steam/non-Steam.

[zOldBulldog]

Summarizing from all the responses.

If someone bought the app on Steam:

- Playing Vanilla will result in one list of achievements that show on Steam itself.
- Playing Modded will result in another list of achievements you can see in game but not on Steam.
- Switching between Vanilla and Modded shows you the corresponding list of achievements in game.
- If you use mods, it does not make a difference as you add/remove mods. The modded list of achievements remains the same.
- Some mods add their own achievements to the list of modded achievements.

Does that sound correct and does it cover all the "Steam" flavor variations?

(of course, those that use a non-Steam version of Factorio have their own Vanilla/Modded lists that have nothing to do with Steam)