Saves Not Loading? Possible Solution

[not_adruglord]

So, when I played the Epic Games Store version of this game my saves didn't load if I just started the game.
Why is this happening? I have no idea.
The solution I found out that you can try is go to your Epic Games Store library and find the game in there and press the options button on the game icon and bring up the settings, there you press on Manage, and on Create Desktop Shortcut press Create.
This should create a shortcut for the game on your desktop that will open the Paradox Launcher and you can start the game from there and the save files will load doing this.
This only allows you to circumvent opening the Epic Games Launcher every single time to start the game since I was doing that for a while but it kinda adds up and is a quality of life little thing to make getting to the game a bit more streamlined.
Try it out if you are running into the same issue.

 

[weedsfishbladerunner]

Thanks for the breadcrumbs, but unfortunately for me, my save games were not there.
Interestingly enough, it seems that I have some old saves in the c:\users\username\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Surviving the Aftermath\SaveGames folder that the game recognizes, but my autosaves are gone. I don't know if they've been moved to a different folder (?), but I know I didn't delete them. Searched hard drives too for .save files, but no luck.
Weird.
Edit: if it helps, I'm running v1.25.0.2775. Also from the Epic Launcher.
Thanks all

 

[AndrewT]

Autosaves are kept in the same folder as manual saves, I see some there in my case.

Neither the game nor Epic deliberately delete them, so I can't understand how they could have been there once but now not.

If you make new autosaves do they appear there?

 

[weedsfishbladerunner]

Autosaves are kept in the same folder as manual saves, I see some there in my case.

Neither the game nor Epic deliberately delete them, so I can't understand how they could have been there once but now not.

If you make new autosaves do they appear there?

Good morning. yeah. I ran it this morning and yes, new autosaves are being saved to the to the proper location and loading properly. I know I didn't delete them or move them (I'm the only user on this device). What's weird about this situation is that *only* the autosaves are gone (autosave-colonyname.save), as I had multiple colonies at different difficulty levels. So only autosaves are missing, but the manual saves are still there?
I don't know.
If anything, it probably gives me an opportunity to place that hospital in a different area
If your team hears anything, please keep us up to date.
It is a fun sim btw.
Thanks!

 

[not_adruglord]

Good morning. yeah. I ran it this morning and yes, new autosaves are being saved to the to the proper location and loading properly. I know I didn't delete them or move them (I'm the only user on this device). What's weird about this situation is that *only* the autosaves are gone (autosave-colonyname.save), as I had multiple colonies at different difficulty levels. So only autosaves are missing, but the manual saves are still there?
I don't know.
If anything, it probably gives me an opportunity to place that hospital in a different area
If your team hears anything, please keep us up to date.
It is a fun sim btw.
Thanks!

So, I did a little bit of investigating and honestly didn't expect what I found.
C:\Users\username\OneDrive\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Surviving the Aftermath\SaveGames
That is the path where my saves are, not the one that you have shared. If you are on Windows and have OneDrive running in the background maybe that's where the files were forced to go. Worth a shot, but this explains why my mods weren't working for me since the file path was wrong all along and now I can manually test my mods quicker.
PS. If you didn't read the file path, it's slightly different from the one you shared so it's still worth checking. Hope you figure it out.

 

[AndrewT]

Windows 11 by default puts your Windows User Documents folder on OneDrive, ie the MS Cloud. That ought to work in the same way as having them local (C:\Users\username\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Surviving the Aftermath\SaveGames) but does depend on OD syncing perfectly, you being online etc.

This can happen on Win10 also, it happened twice to me against my will.

To see whether this have been done on any Windows installation, Right click on Documents in the left column of File Explorer, just under This PC there. Go to properties, location. That dialog can be used to change it between local and OD if you wish.

However none of that explains the loss of autosaves only.

 

[not_adruglord]

Windows 11 by default puts your Windows User Documents folder on OneDrive, ie the MS Cloud. That ought to work in the same way as having them local (C:\Users\username\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Surviving the Aftermath\SaveGames) but does depend on OD syncing perfectly, you being online etc.

This can happen on Win10 also, it happened twice to me against my will.

To see whether this have been done on any Windows installation, Right click on Documents in the left column of File Explorer, just under This PC there. Go to properties, location. That dialog can be used to change it between local and OD if you wish.

However none of that explains the loss of autosaves only.

It doesn't but we can offer this advice to them to see if maybe the game was storing them there first before and they can check. If not then I really don't know what could be happening.