Where do the Autosaves go?

[kkoniar25]

Yesterday I was hosting a server for a friend and I. I was under the assumption that the auto-save would just automatically write over the previous save file. I closed the server to go get some supper. After logging back in and firing the server back up I had lost about 7 hours worth of work. Are the auto-saves going somewhere else then the regular save directory? I'm just confused whats the point of an auto-save feature if it doesn't work and the only way I know the game is saved is if I do a hard save via main menu?

[Thomasnotused]

Autosaves should be placed in the same directory as the regular saves. Are you sure that autosave is actually turned on?

[kkoniar25]

Yeah It was definitely on intervals of 5 minute saves. Only thing in my save file is a hard save that I did the previous night I guess I just bite the bullet and start over from about 8 hours ago.

Just was asking in case I missed something but I'm pretty sure its just gone.

Thanks

[daniel34]

Autosaves go into the same folder, but they have different names like _autosave1.zip, _autosave2.zip, ...

If you're running a server and load a save by filename it will load the original save, not one of the autosaves it made afterwards. You can use --start-server-load-latest instead of --start-server save.zip to have Factorio always load the most recent save.

This is also important in singleplayer: when you exit a map you played for 3 hours and didn't manually save it, then load a different map and play until all autosaves (default: 3) are overwritten then the changes you made on the first map in that 3 hours are gone.