Mod portal exclusion filtering not excluding SA (reliably)

[Fletch]

When enabling the mod portal's "Space Age exclusion filter", it returns mods that declare a hard dependency on space-age.
This option should work reliably for people who don't own the DLC, but want that vanilla modded playthrough.

What did you do?
1) go here: https://mods.factorio.com/
2) click on the option to exclude Space Age (the circle with line through it) -- the generated URL is: https://mods.factorio.com/browse?exclud ... =space-age

What happened?
A lot of mods got filtered out (good), but there are still mods that have a hard-dependency being returned in the list.

Here's some examples space-age dependent mods that are making it past the filter exclusion (there are many more):

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/eatable-eggs
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/moon-eneas
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/terraria
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/100k-shattered

What did you expect to happen instead?
When excluding Space Age, it should not return mods that require space-age as a hard dependency.
Optional space-age dependency would be OK to return though.

Does it happen always, once, or sometimes?
Always, for the same mods. The filter seems to work for some but not all of the mods, and unknown whether this is impacting other filter exclusion options, but excluding the DLC would be the primary use case I think.

[eugenekay]

129881 and 132244

The "Space Age Mod" tag is en/disabled based upon the value of the expansion flags (eg, space_travel_required) in the uploaded mod's info.json file; not using the Dependencies.

Null Mod

07-09-2026, 13-02-22.png (134.82 KiB) Viewed 291 times

The linked mods have incorrect metadata:

Code: Select all

{
    "name": "moon-eneas",
    "version": "0.6.11",
    "title": "Eneas",
    "author": "Amelie",
    "dependencies": [
        "base >= 2.0",
        "space-age",
        "quality",
        "PlanetsLib",
        "spidertron-unit-07",
        "assets-eneas",
        "mferrari_lib",
        "informatron",
        "? RPGsystem",
        "? Construction_Drones_Forked",
        "? spiderbots"
    ],
    "description": "Above the clouds of Nauvis lies the ancient moon Eneas. Not only does it hold secrets concerning the history of this star system, it is also home to an enigmatic machine called unit-05. \n\n Eneas does not modify vanilla content, only adds new items and recipes. It also contains improvements to early game progression and a database for factorio lore enthusiasts.",
    "factorio_version": "2.0",
    "homepage": "https://foundrygg.com"
}

Good Luck!

[Fletch]

Thanks, that explains the behavior @eugenekay!

Perhaps a cheap solution would be for the mod portal to treat any mod with the hard dependency on space-age to default to:

Code: Select all

"space_travel_required": true

...and have the other set of mods go out of their way to set that to false (for whatever that is actually controlling)?

I don't know what it means for a mod to both declare space-age as a required hard dependency, while also having space_travel_required set to "false" (the current default)... I think that cross-config situation would be the very rare exception, while most (all?) of the SA mods would want that default to be "true" so the filtering just works.

[robot256]

This has come up before but I can't find the thread. Basically, unless every mod author who depends on space-age also sets a random feature flag for no reason, they will not be filtered out (or included).

Having a way for Vanilla players to filter out things they can't use would be great. Unfortunately this checkbox is not it, and the displayed name is deceptive.

[eugenekay]

Perhaps a cheap solution would be for the mod portal to treat any mod with the hard dependency on space-age to default to:

Code: Select all

"space_travel_required": true

...and have the other set of mods go out of their way to set that to false (for whatever that is actually controlling)?

I don't know what it means for a mod to both declare space-age as a required hard dependency, while also having space_travel_required set to "false" (the current default)... I think that cross-config situation would be the very rare exception, while most (all?) of the SA mods would want that default to be "true" so the filtering just works.

Yes, that is what 129881 Give any mod that depends on space-age the space age category proposes.

The different feature flags are used differently by each of the Space Age Sub-Mods depending upon what content they include. This seems like a relic of the "Quality" mod's history - it reportedly pre-dates the Factorio 1.0 release, at which time these feature flags would also have been used internally to dis/able parts of the Engine at compile-time. Currently, they seem to be all-or-nothing: the Quality mod does not work with a "base game" binary. In theory, mods which only affect Quality do not need to set space_travel_required; only quality_required.

It may be helpful if the Mod Structure Documentation more explicitly stated that "the Mod Portal recognizes this flag".