Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Ability to select/deselect mods that are or are not in a save

What ?

I suggest a/some button(s) that allow one to select or deselect mods that are or are not in the save when choosing 'sync mods with save'

Why ?

When switching from a heavly modded save to a modless save it is going to be tedious to change every checkbox that is not needed. Even more so when switching from a modded save to a different modded save is going to be even more tedious

This, coupled with viewtopic.php?f=23&t=47566 means that I am still using batch files & a redirected config file to keep my saves & mods in check.
Sync mods with save should do exactly that: Synchronise, not "enable disabled mods".

If Google drive synchronised your files by only creating new files and not deleting deleted files then it would be a bug.

The sync button was actually designed as a "enable disabled mods" button. Factorio at its core doesn't support the concept of multiple mod sets. It's built around 1 set of mods and everything you do using that 1 set of mods.

To properly "solve" that would mean to make a launcher for the game that lets you manage which sets of mods you wanted to use and then load the game with those enabled.

Rseding91 wrote:To properly "solve" that means to make a launcher for the game that lets you manage which sets of mods you wanted to use and then load the game with those enabled.

FTFY.

Seriously, all this manual mod stuff is a bad, bad wart on Factorio at the moment. I hope very much that it won't be released in this state. You load a map an Factorio cares for the mods itself... not "Always remember to sync with mods if needed" -> Click "Sync mod with map" -> "Confirm" -> Wait for restart -> "Play" -> "Load game" -> Click on correct save -> "Load". That's a UI mess if I ever saw one. We have computers to do all that footwork *for us*.

Jürgen Erhard wrote:

Rseding91 wrote:To properly "solve" that means to make a launcher for the game that lets you manage which sets of mods you wanted to use and then load the game with those enabled.

FTFY.

Seriously, all this manual mod stuff is a bad, bad wart on Factorio at the moment. I hope very much that it won't be released in this state. You load a map an Factorio cares for the mods itself... not "Always remember to sync with mods if needed" -> Click "Sync mod with map" -> "Confirm" -> Wait for restart -> "Play" -> "Load game" -> Click on correct save -> "Load". That's a UI mess if I ever saw one. We have computers to do all that footwork *for us*.

The majority use-case is you want all mods you have in the mods folder enabled when you load any given save file. What you describe would make that near impossible as it would always toggle to match what ever save you're loading.

That may be how *you* want it but that's not how most want it.

Rseding91 wrote:

Jürgen Erhard wrote:

Rseding91 wrote:To properly "solve" that means to make a launcher for the game that lets you manage which sets of mods you wanted to use and then load the game with those enabled.

FTFY.

Seriously, all this manual mod stuff is a bad, bad wart on Factorio at the moment. I hope very much that it won't be released in this state. You load a map an Factorio cares for the mods itself... not "Always remember to sync with mods if needed" -> Click "Sync mod with map" -> "Confirm" -> Wait for restart -> "Play" -> "Load game" -> Click on correct save -> "Load". That's a UI mess if I ever saw one. We have computers to do all that footwork *for us*.

The majority use-case is you want all mods you have in the mods folder enabled when you load any given save file. What you describe would make that near impossible as it would always toggle to match what ever save you're loading.

That may be how *you* want it but that's not how most want it.

I think you are mistaken here Rseding. Many people DO play different saves at a given time which contain different sets of mods. This is especially important for people actively participating in multiplayer.
For example I do play a vanilla map with my son over lan. I do play Bob's mods by myself from time to time and I do play my Marathon megabase periodically too. I also use a couple of experimental maps with Creative Mode for designing and testing stuff.

I do respect your work on this and the sync feature is a giant leap forward as it is compared to what we had before. But I encourage you to move further.
Looking at the amount of requests on the matter I would strongly suggest that you polish this until release to make it work as easy as possible. I would say that given how much mods do add to the game I would personally prioritize this feature as #1 after fixing bugs.

Rseding91 wrote: That may be how *you* want it but that's not how most want it.

How about a poll then? see how most think it should work?

I agree with the dev here that I wouldn't want to be forced to use the exact set of mods that I had installed when I started the game. (my testing ground save has probably seen more mod changes than you could possibly imagine, I started it back in 0.10.0 as a DyTech world, and slowly patched it over to bob's mods as I wrote them. and even while it has been an entirely bob mods game, it has gone through so many configuration changes. Like I said, testing ground, I'll change settings just to see what happens!)
I write new mods and edit mods and shuffle things from mod to mod all the time, as demand requires, and where it makes sense. I would want to be able to use whatever mods I have installed on whatever save I want to use them on.

having said that, the sync mods to save is still a useful option.

I suppose a reasonable middle ground might be a prompt when pressing the load game button that says something along the lines of "The current set of mods, or mod settings does not match the list in the save game you are trying to load. Would you like me to try and sync your mod list and mod settings to the save game?", and probably able to disable this prompt in the game settings.

When switching from a heavly modded save to a modless save it is going to be tedious to change every checkbox that is not needed.

The default checked state for mods "not in save" was changed to disabled, so I believe this fixes the issue because it is now "sync" and not "disable enabled mods" by default:

Kinda found an old post there Bilka