What?
I've an old save file that I used for testing how one of my mods interacts with other vehicle-related mods. To fix a bug in my character-selector mod, I've disabled all vehicle-related mods and enabled some character mods instead. Then I wanted to get back to work on the vehicle mod, so I loaded the old save file, making sure to sync the mods. While syncing, I explicitly enabled all mods that were in the saved game and disabled the other mods. After the game was restarted, the mod I was testing was inactive.Why?
Previous versions of my mod would just work after I synced mods with that ancient saved game. However, I've introduced a hard dependency on another mod in my WIP version. The old saved game doesn't know about this new dependency, so it will just enable my mod. On restarting, Factorio recognizes that a dependency is missing, so it silently disables the mod.Expected behaviour
If I enable a mod in the sync dialogue, I expect that it will be loaded. Ideally, the game would check for new hard dependencies and enable required additional mods on its own. However, I'd be quite content if I was told right from the start that a mod can't be activated due to missing dependencies. Let the game crash while loading, or put a message window over the main menu telling the player which mods couldn't be loaded. This way, players have a chance to check what's wrong before resuming their game with a mod missing.Silently disabling the mod is not a solution as proceeding without a hint that something went wrong would suggest that nothing has gone wrong.
