[2.0.60] Softlock when loading mods with improper dependancies.

[somepersondontask]

08-11-2025, 22-49-41.png (20.06 KiB) Viewed 148 times

(Migrating this from technical help)

When attempting to launch Factorio with the base mod and the Science Group mod (already reported the issue to the mod author and fixed) the game tweaks out and softlocks, leading to this screen that closes the game. Since you aren't able to access the mod menu, the only way to fix this is to either wipe the mod folder or manually edit the mod-list JSON to disable the offending mod.

This happens because despite listing Space Age as an optional dependency, the mod had the "space-travel-required" feature flag enabled, causing the engine to assume the Space Age feature suite. This causes the issue when attempting to load the mod without Space Age enabled, since the dependency is listed as optional and thus not enforced by the game.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report however in this case there is no clear answer what should be done. If base mod is not enabled, "disable all mods" won't re-enable it. Additionally when base mod is disabled the "minimal mode" (mod startup error GUI) is not guaranteed to be usable.

There are several other cases like this when disabling base mod that mod authors have to contend with if that's what they want to do. The answer is what you've already mentioned: delete the mods and or edit the mod-list.json file. In the past that was the only way to resolve these kinds of errors and is still the only way to resolve some of them.

[somepersondontask]

Is the base mod being disabled when this screen comes up? I was under the assumption that only the offending mod needed to be disabled to return the game to a playable state.

[Rseding91]

Is the base mod being disabled when this screen comes up? I was under the assumption that only the offending mod needed to be disabled to return the game to a playable state.

It's either a mod has explicitly *removed* the base prototypes, or base mod is disabled and a mod failed to replace the required prototypes that base normally provides.

[somepersondontask]

So if I understand correctly: in this case since the "space-travel-required" feature flag is enabled by the mod, the base game is expecting the "empty-space" tile prototype from the Space Age mod. And since Space Age isn't enabled and there's no check to enforce the dependency since it's listed as optional, the base mod disables itself as it can't access the requisite prototype.

[Rseding91]

Actually I made a small mistake. In this specific error it's that a space-age related feature flag has been enabled but the required prototypes for space-age feature flags to be enabled were not defined. Again, either because space-age was not enabled, a mod specifically removed the prototypes, or they were never defined.

It might be possible through some series of disabling/enabling mods/space-age that the game could get back to working but there isn't a clear path towards that with this specific error.