Missing saved file

I think this isn't a bug, but standard behavior. If you open up the save_files directory it immediately gets clear what's going on here.

(save_files directory may be found at C:\Users\<USER_NAME>\Documents\Klei\OxygenNotIncluded\save_files on Win7)

You see an auto save folder with up to 10 auto save files and one user save file for any created colony or named save (save as...).

Any of the files can be deleted manually from the load game dialog. The whole thing works like a very primitive revision control system.

 

If you open the load game dialog box it shows a slightly different picture. You see save directories, which represent trunks of

progress of a single colony. Each trunk contains one user save file and 0 to 10 auto save files.

 

1) If you create a new colony, the game will create a new trunk (directory) , that initially contains the user save file and no auto saves.

    The directory as well as the user save file get the name of the new colony.

     From now on that directory is the active game trunk and the user save file is the active save file. Pressing resume will

     load the latest save from the active trunk. Pressing load from the in game dialog will load the latest save from the running trunk.

1.1) If you play for some cycles the game creates an auto save at the beginning of any new auto save interval (default is 1 cycle,

       but may be changed from game settings) and will make it the active file for load. When all 10 auto save slots are used up

       the game starts to overwrite auto saves beginnig from the oldest file.

1.2) If you press 'save' at any time the user save file of the active trunk will be overwritten. There is only ONE user save file per trunk.

1.3) If you press 'save as...' at any time the game will create a new trunk and a new user save file assumed you select a name

       not already in use. It's important, that both are made active. 'Save' will now overwrite the new user save file within the

       new trunk.

2) Until now we had to do with a single trunk (save file directory). If we have two or more it gets a bit confusing the first time.

    The reason is the 10 auto save slots are shared between all trunks.

     Let's assume we have a colony C1 at cycle 60, that was manuallly saved at cycle 45 and decide to create a new one. The

     C1 directory contains auto saves for cycle 51 to 60 and a user save for cycle 45. We now create a colony named C2 and

     start to play it (The following is also valid if C2 already existed). As described in 1) the C2 trunk gets active and 'C2.sav'

     gets the active user save file. On the beginning of cycle two of C2 the game wants to auto save, but all auto save slots

     are currently in use by C1. What happens is the oldest auto save from C1 is deleted and used to save cycle 2 of C2.

     This also works if auto save slot usage is spreaded over several trunks. Once C2 has aquired all 10 slots  it starts to

      overwrite the oldest as described in 1.1). Under some certain save file directory you will always only see auto saves

      created for the related trunk.

3) If you load an older autosave from some certain trunk, let's say it has auto saves for cycle 210 to 214 and you load

    cycle 212 and play onward, the next auto save will create an additional cycle 212 auto save file, For colony  C1

    this would be 'C1 Cycle 4.sav (1).sav' instead of 'C1 Cycle 4.sav', which appears as 'C1 Cycle 4 sav [1]' in the

    loading dialog box.

4) Save strategy:

     I'm sure everybody has his/her own habits to save the game, so this is just my personal favorit. Most of the time i just

     want to conserve some certain game state permanently, especially when experimenting with new machinery.

     After creating colony C1 i create two trunks, C1-Start and C1-Game. C1-Game is active and C1-Start is the backup

     in case i want to restart an asteroid from scratch without going through the dupe creation process.

     To test several versions of some machinery M:

• Load 'C1-Game' desired save file if not active
• Save as 'C1-M-01' and play
• Load 'C1-Game' desired save file
• Save as 'C1-M-02' and play
• If 'C1-M-01' successful -> Load 'C1-M-01' last save -> delete 'C1-Game' (whole directory) -> save as 'C1-Game' (now active)
• Optionally delete 'C1-M-01' and 'C1-M-02' (whole directories)
• play onward with 'C1-Game'

For  'C1-M-01' and 'C1-M-02' sandbox mode could get enabled, but then step 5 will bring it to the main trunk.

Only way to prevent, is to load 'C1-Game' with step 5 and build everything from scratch with dupes.

 

 

 

The exact same thing happened to me!! I appreciate the explanation but "Standard behavior" or not this is not acceptable! How is anyone supposed to know that this would happen? I just lost hours and hours of gameplay because of this! :((

 

Please fix this! I would definitely consider this to be a bug as even thought this is how it was made there needs to be a far better solution to this.