All Previous Ship Costumes Missing

michael0525

All customized ship costumes for all characters on my account created since 2010 disappeared and I was unable to create new ones. GM told me that the file that housed them went missing from my computer. Sure enough, when I looked, I found no such file. Since I don't engage in file alteration, I have no idea where the file went or why. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon? If so, please post here to raise GM awareness. I lost hundreds of ship costumes created over thousands of hours. I think it's worth a look, especially if others have experienced this loss as well.

legendarylycan

All saved character uniforms and appearances are stored in the game's screenshots folder...presumably, ship costumes are as well - if that folder was moved or deleted, that would be why you lost the old ones, though you should be able to create new ones; THAT issue sounds like the folder can't be accessed, like it was somehow set to Read-only.​​

baddmoonrizin

/moved thread

inferiority

THAT issue sounds like the folder can't be accessed, like it was somehow set to Read-only.​​

Windows can be somewhat territorial over the "Program Files" folders and not allow *you* to save files there.
A nice workaround is to make a "STO Screenshots" folder somewhere and make a symbolic link from where STO expects the "screenshots" folder to be, and point it to your preferred location.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

        /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
                symbolic link.
        /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
        /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
        Link    Specifies the new symbolic link name.
        Target  Specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
                refers to.

So, opening the Command Line with Administrator privileges, and navigating to the STO folder that should have a "screenshots" folder, we use the following command:

mklink /j screenshots "PATH_TO_DESTINATION_FOLDER"

Keep the quote marks or you'll fall foul of long/short path name errors.

Of course, the easier option would be to just move the STO install folder somewhere you have full control over, such as somewhere inside your "My Documents" or another hard disk entirely. And don't forget to make a new game shortcut to the "StarTrekOnline.exe".

michael0525

Thanks. I created the screenshots folder in accordance with guidance provided by ARC so I can now save new costumes but it of course did nothing to retrieve any of the hundreds lost nor does it explai why they were lost or give me any assurance that they wont be again.

inferiority

michael0525 wrote: »

...did nothing to retrieve any of the hundreds lost nor does it explai why they were lost...

The only thing I can think of would be uninstalling the game. Sometimes, games clear out their entire folder and delete everything; other games leave behind everything that wasn't there when it was installed.
Other than that, I have no idea what could have happened.

michael0525

No, I didn’t uninstall it It has been on this computer since I first installed it on this machine when I bought it in 2016. I try not to open or edit game files for this very reason…

michael0525

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the game in accordance with ARC Support. Not only did it NOT retrieve my old ship costumes that had been lost, but this also deleted all that I had saved since... Bad...