[7B4HF1] Station Construction Plans saved location?

[alt3rn1ty]

I think there is a bug with Construction Plans, and where they are being saved.

I cant find them.

Screenshot 2024-05-04 011421.png

.

In the screenshot thats the usual place in Documents\Egosoft\X4\Constructionplans\

But note the date modified on "Boron Headquarters"

Also it should not be titled "Boron Headquarters" anymore. Today in the Station planner I used the drop down "Load Plan", and deleted the "Boron Headquarters" construction plan.
Then I saved the current plan as "Boron PHQ" ..

.. As you can see in the screenshot there is no "Boron PHQ", just the old (and not updated according to its modified date) "Boron Headquarters"

So something funky is going on.
Either 7B4HF1 is not saving out Construction plans
Or its saving them somewhere unusual - I cant find it anywhere. Looked in the games installation folder instead (and all sub-folders), looked through my C: drive user folder and all the usual local storage for apps .. Nada, nothing new there.

As far as I know they should still save into my Documents\Egosoft\X4\Constructionplans\

Cant offer you a save in this case, it wouldn't help.

[alt3rn1ty]

Somehow adding the attachment screenshot didn't work, so heres a more reliable link

[adeine]

This is normal behaviour (if a little convoluted). Construction plans are saved in Documents\Egosoft\X4\constructionplans.xml, all concatenated together into one file.

It's only when you export plans that they end up in the constructionplan folder. Likewise, the game does not do anything with plans in that folder. It's only when you use the import function that the game scans that folder, and selecting a plan will add it to the concatenated constructionplans.xml.

I don't know why the game does it this way (it seems needlessly complicated), but this is how it works.

[alt3rn1ty]

Oh godz, nevermind, I just realised I need to Export the plan to Constructionplans, and not just save it.
Self solved, demented user

[alt3rn1ty]

This is normal behaviour (if a little convoluted). Construction plans are saved in Documents\Egosoft\X4\constructionplans.xml, all concatenated together into one file.

It's only when you export plans that they end up in the constructionplan folder. Likewise, the game does not do anything with plans in that folder. It's only when you use the import function that the game scans that folder, and selecting a plan will add it to the concatenated constructionplans.xml.

I don't know why the game does it this way (it seems needlessly complicated), but this is how it works.

Thanks for the reminder adeine, I dont do station editing too often these days so my old brain had farted this out

[CBJ]

I don't know why the game does it this way...

It's done this way to allow people to export plans to share with one another, rather than having to manually extract individual plans from the main library file. The main library file is there both for performance reasons, and so that players can organise the plans they actually want to use without losing others that they might be in interested later.

[adeine]

I don't know why the game does it this way...

It's done this way to allow people to export plans to share with one another, rather than having to manually extract individual plans from the main library file. The main library file is there both for performance reasons, and so that players can organise the plans they actually want to use without losing others that they might be in interested later.

I've seen (and experienced) a fair bit of confusion around this feature.

It would be a lot simpler if the game just autogenerated the combined xml on the fly, and/or saved to both places in the editor. Having the extra step of importing/exporting doesn't really add anything from a user perspective and leads to doubled up build plans that sometimes aren't the same. Having to remember and retype the exact same name when exporting so it doesn't happen is rather awkward.

If you just had the constructionplan folder and the game generated the internal file from it as required, there'd be no need for even having the explicit export/import interface in the first place. It'd be as simple as copying the relevant files from/to the folder.