Persistent File Not Found Error On Loading Custom Ships
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2026 12:25 am
Greetings! I've been merrily building ships in RTW3 for hundreds of hours, but I ran into a problem when I recently decided to return to the game again. Attempting to load any Custom ship designs using the "Load Ship Design" option on the third screen of the builder produced a "File Not Found" error screen and then no further response. While I haven't used the feature, I noticed that the "Select picture" button for the ship profile picture also produced the same kind of error. No other feature produced this error, including all the "modify AI template" stuff which I avoid futzing with. As at this point I didn't have Expanded Battles, attempting to load Stock ships also produced this error.
After some fruitless troubleshooting, I bought Expanded Battles in the hopes that there was some kind of unforeseen compatibility problem, though that would have disappointed me since then I would have "had" to buy the DLC to get a feature I was using without it. Instead the problem became more complex rather than better. With Expanded Battles I can load Stock ships just fine, of course. I can also save Custom designs just fine -- the game has no trouble finding the Custom Files folder under Documents/Mygames as the post instructed me to put things into. However, it still can't load from Custom Files! This produces the same File Not Found error as before. As a test, I transferred some of my custom SDFs to the Stock designs folder, and the game WAS able to load those just fine, though it has finally obsoleted my older designs that are in the 10D/50D/etc. format (which is entirely understandable).
My only conclusion is that the Load Custom Ship button/command specifically is bugged, unable to find the correct folder. However, I don't know how to fix this on my end (if I even can), as setting that path isn't a customizable feature as far as I'm aware. I COULD just transfer my Custom designs into the Stock Design folder in the Steam/Common directory as a workaround, but that seems like a bad habit to get into and one prone to losing a bunch of data to overwrites from downloads, so I'd rather avoid it.
After some fruitless troubleshooting, I bought Expanded Battles in the hopes that there was some kind of unforeseen compatibility problem, though that would have disappointed me since then I would have "had" to buy the DLC to get a feature I was using without it. Instead the problem became more complex rather than better. With Expanded Battles I can load Stock ships just fine, of course. I can also save Custom designs just fine -- the game has no trouble finding the Custom Files folder under Documents/Mygames as the post instructed me to put things into. However, it still can't load from Custom Files! This produces the same File Not Found error as before. As a test, I transferred some of my custom SDFs to the Stock designs folder, and the game WAS able to load those just fine, though it has finally obsoleted my older designs that are in the 10D/50D/etc. format (which is entirely understandable).
My only conclusion is that the Load Custom Ship button/command specifically is bugged, unable to find the correct folder. However, I don't know how to fix this on my end (if I even can), as setting that path isn't a customizable feature as far as I'm aware. I COULD just transfer my Custom designs into the Stock Design folder in the Steam/Common directory as a workaround, but that seems like a bad habit to get into and one prone to losing a bunch of data to overwrites from downloads, so I'd rather avoid it.