The problems seem to be related to other mods, namely Lost'ems in this case. They can't test for all mod combinations. Things do work if you start a new game apparently.

I don't have any other mods. That's the thing, I would prefer no mods at all, but ACE is kinda required.

Crashing during loading or changes of menus is a problem that does plague the base game as well and unfortunately we can't do much about. It seems to have worsened lately due to certain windows updates and especially on Windows 11, where the game won't even run for some people unless they replace some DLLs. All of these issues are, unfortunately, on a level where we can't reach/mod and therefore we cannot fix; it's unrelated to new ACE updates, which are tested although - as Ultranova says - there will always be things going through testing.

I'm sorry if, as a team of voluntary people working on a passion project for the previous 5 years, we're not testing enough to reach your higher quality standards. We appreciate the feedback and we'll try to be more careful and not "care less and less" even after all those years.

As for losing savefiles, we keep older versions of the mod available on Dropbox so you can always "not update" whenever a new update that can break savegames releases. We do warn - on the patch notes - when an update requires a new save (usually when it's a major version, like once in a year); so there's no real reason to lose saves, you just need to get a stable previous version of your liking, download it and keep it active as your default ACE version.

If you can't play the game without a mod that makes it "better", then it's not the game that is your favorite, it's the mod. But since you were so quick to jump on a train to grumpsville and make a handful of unsubstantiated and uninformed judgements, I don't think it's your favorite mod either. Why do you play a game you don't like with a mod you don't find impressive?

Originally posted by DaniAngione:

I'm sorry if, as a team of voluntary people working on a passion project for the previous 5 years, we're not testing enough to reach your higher quality standards. We appreciate the feedback and we'll try to be more careful and not "care less and less" even after all those years.

I'm sorry I vented on you. The update just happened to coincide with the worst of my issues and I could not find anythign else to blame. Maybe there was something in the update, maybe it was within Windows that something changed, or maybe I was just lucky until that day. Regardless, I should not have lashed out toward the ACE modders. I am thankful that some people care about a game I love.

Originally posted by P3rdit1ous:

If you can't play the game without a mod that makes it "better", then it's not the game that is your favorite, it's the mod. But since you were so quick to jump on a train to grumpsville and make a handful of unsubstantiated and uninformed judgements, I don't think it's your favorite mod either. Why do you play a game you don't like with a mod you don't find impressive?

To be honest, I would prefer the base game if it was more stable. ACE brings some interesting upgrades, but in my opinion they went too far with some aspects of the game (ie: Cooking and most cross-craft recipes). Without the stability fixes that the modders were able to push through ACE, the game would simply not be worth playing as far as I believe.

Originally posted by ☆Ferios☆:

I'm sorry I vented on you. The update just happened to coincide with the worst of my issues and I could not find anythign else to blame. Maybe there was something in the update, maybe it was within Windows that something changed, or maybe I was just lucky until that day. Regardless, I should not have lashed out toward the ACE modders. I am thankful that some people care about a game I love.

It's ok, it happens. And I understand it can be frustrating. Believe me, I really wish we had the possibility of going deeper into the game (as in, actually being able to modify the engine and such) to try and hunt down all the core issues of the game, the crashes, the memory leaks, the load issues... and bring it to the most stable and smooth state possible. Alas, we unfortunately can't - not legally, anyway. If one day one kind (and very skilled soul) wants to make "not so legal" DLL patches and such - yeah, that could be a way to try to improve the game, but since their trust was placed on us to represent the game after official development stopped, that's a line we'd dare not cross.

So I too share your feeling of frustration towards the stability of the engine sometimes. I'd just rather not see it channeled towards ACE; I know ACE isn't perfect, and yeah, we do add a lot of stuff which can be taxing or break things sometimes :D but our love and commitment to the game is very real, and we are always striving to improve and correct things, and proper feedback goes a long way with that. And finally, again, about the savegames - there's no savegame that is really completely lost, so if you want, join the ACE Discord (where we hang out most of the time) and we can try fixing/recovering any saves you've lost :)

Originally posted by DaniAngione:

And finally, again, about the savegames - there's no savegame that is really completely lost, so if you want, join the ACE Discord (where we hang out most of the time) and we can try fixing/recovering any saves you've lost :)

Nah, mine are gone. I had to reinstall the game after I replaced some of my storage and didn't realized that the save files where not in a "safe" location or in the cloud, which means I don't have the files at all anymore. My game was as if freshly installed after my purchase. So no hopes there, but thanks anyway.