Welp, it happened didn't it?
Be it game issues, mod problems, or the world decided you've crashed one too many asteroids, your save file is broken, and is failing to load or work properly.
Sure, you could restart. but you've poured hundreds of hours into that world. You like what you built, and you're not about to step back to an older save or restart entirely.
You've tried everything you can think of to recover your game, but still keep running into problems.
And so, you've come to your final option. The "break in case all hope is lost" option.
Climb aboard captain, it's time to save your world
The RECO Contingency
Reactive
Emergency
Cataclysmic
Option
Uses: To repair save games. To remove mods when all else fails. To recover world structures and layouts.
! WARNING !
This is the ABSOLUTE last option, and not everything can be recovered. Please proceed with caution.
Upon completion of the contingency, the following things about your world will be changed:
- All machine processes will be reset to idle
- All vehicle jobs will be cleared
- Trains will be cleared from the tracks and shoved into a depo
- Tracks will be changed into the elevated variant, regardless of elevation
- Products in connectors, balancers, and lifts will be erased from existence
- Ships will be respawned
- All enemies on the world map will be annihilated
- Goals and messages will be cleared
- Per-machine stats will be cleared
- Partially harvested trees, stumps, and custom placed rocks and decorations will be removed, and replaced with stock generation
- Tree harvesting designations will be cleared
- Any camera dolly data will be destroyed
- Any in progress world map repairs or upgrades will be swept away by the water
- All port configurations will be cleared
- Regular storage will be maintained, but steam buffers will be cleared.
- Any blueprinted buildings, paused or not, will immediately be built
- Upgrades will be cleared from any buildings waiting for materials, leaving them as is
- The research queue will be emptied out, and any partial research will be lost
- Terrain designations will be kept, but surface plans will be cleared
- Pinned resources and ordering will be reset back to stock
- Any building not placed down will gain the "new unlock" dot in the build menu
- Ports will be emptied of fuel, but ships will re spawn with a full tank. Same for the shipyard
- All reserves will be refilled to max, regardless of game settings (possibly world mines too, but unconfirmed), but stored product will be emptied
- Ore sorters will be completely emptied, voiding any resources inside
- Health, population, workers, unity, pollution, fuel, maintenance, and electricity data will be wiped clean
- Maintenance will be reset to 100% for everything, regardless of condition
- Your office will be destroyed
- (if applicable) all mod configs will be reset
There is a reason this is an option of last resort. You will effectively be causing a momentary planetwide apocalypse to ensure your island continues to exist. But the almighty admirals are merciful, you will be granted 30 minutes of infinite power and infinite computing to repair any damages caused by the RECO contingency. This will persist through saves, but use it wisely, for it is limited with time.
The RECO contingency is powerful, able to preserve your island's layout perfectly and override any loading errors that normally arise. While this will not solve the underlying problem, this will allow you to preserve what you have and get to work fixing it.
I am going to presume that you are here because a mod is the cause of your problems. It isn't surprising, trying to remove some mods normally is a nightmare, if not impossible. Such is the power of the RECO contingency that it will grant you the power to remove those mods you otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Now then captain, you have been briefed. You still wish to proceed i presume?
Excellent, let's begin.
RECO STAGE 1: CREATING A RECOVERY FILE
I'll be honest captain, i am not aware of how one would create a file from outside of the game. as such, you will have to load into your island to proceed. I understand this may pose a challenge, but there are a few things you can do, or may have already done, to make it so:
- Verifying game files - sometimes things just get corrupted, couldn't hurt to make sure the ship is in working order with all hands and parts accounted for
- pre-loading mods - modloading can cause problems, as you are probably aware of. There is a way to have them cause less problems, see the workarounds section of this bug report: https://coigame.com/Topic/1642/Loading-saved-game-with-mods-causes-mods-and-game-to-load-at
- turn the settings down - if performance is your problem, cranking the settings down to the lowest possible settings may grant you enough overhead to make it in. Might not do anything, but it couldn't hurt
Now then, hopefully you've made it into your office. Best not to touch anything, especially if your problem is with performance, or some core part of the game not loading. keep time paused, and don't. touch. anything. Now, you'll need to access the console. Its keybind is not listed in the controls menu, but on QWERTY keyboards at least it defaults to the ` or ~ key.
Enter the following command: export_recovery_save InsertNameHere
replace InsertNameHere with the name you wish to name the save, for example:
"export_recovery_save RECO" would create a recovery save with the name "RECO"
Let it process, and soon, you will have a .recovery version of your world. congratulations captain, you have created a snapshot of your world that's ready for stage 2 of the RECO contingency
RECO STAGE 2: RESTORING THE WORLD'S STABILITY
Close the game, especially if you have mods. you'll need to wipe the slate clean for this to ensure your problematic mods are destroyed. It is time to witness the power of the RECO contingency. return to the main menu, and enter the load menu. You will find a special save file waiting at the top of your saves list, do you see the tow truck it rode in on? It carries all the tools you need. Enter the mod loader menu if you need to, and remove all the mods you wish to destroy. The menu will let you, it does not care. Remove as many as you like, remove them all if you wish to. I would recommend keeping any building mods that you wish to retain enabled. else those structures will be removed with no refund.
You ready captain? take a breath, and push the load button.
Loading will take longer then normal, this is to be expected. The world is recovering itself after all. You may be worried about that dreaded error screen popping up, but fear not. No matter what you removed from that mod list, the game will load. The RECO contingency is resilient, built to survive not only mod changes, but game changes as well. Trust the process, it will load.
Once it does, be gentle. Depending on what you changed the game may still be in an unstable state. Not only that, you have a few things to do.
- you will be greeted with a popup, it will tell you what (if anything) was removed from your world. Things like modded buildings can be deleted from existence. take note if there's anything here as you will need to reconfigure, rebuild, or replace your setups
- take it slow, let the world catch up to you, especially if your issue was with game functions breaking.
- create a regular save ASAP, so that you won't need to use RECO stage 2 again to return to this state.
- Take stock of what has changed around your island. You'll need to utilize the most of your 30 minutes to ensure your island can return to full operations.
Take a breath captain, you've got a long road to recovery ahead of you. It's a marathon of debugging, reconfiguring, putting out fires, and staving off the death spiral for 1 more day. But, your island is no longer lost to the tides. It has been recovered and restored. All your progress has been retained. So best to make sure you save on your way out, wouldn't want to lose it again after all.