Achievement lost

[alezarg]

After finishing the story yesterday (I just bought the game), this morning when starting the game it asked me for the license code again which I thought was strange. Anyway; I punched it in to find out that my maps in the story were un-played and achievements gone. Why?

[GoodMorning]

This sounds like an problem with the game data directory. Likely causes are a permissions issue or renaming of the data directory. What OS are you using?

[alezarg]

Windows 10. There was no files of game progress, new ships or anything in C:\Users\username\Documents\My Games\particlefleet
I´m thinking perhaps I didn't exit the game correctly. I went back to main menu but from there I just closed the window. Perhaps I should have closed the program properly...
Anyway, it seemed strange that the program asked for license code again on start up...

[knucracker]

That directory store all of you progress, your game settings, you game key, etc.  If there is nothing there, it is like the game has just been installed from scratch.  Typical reasons this directory might get delete are things involving  changing users (or user permissions),  cloud backup software, restoring from save points, restoring backups, hard drive problems... etc.  The game doesn't at any point delete that whole directory or even have all of the files in it open.  So exiting the game abruptly shouldn't have caused an issue.

[alezarg]

Correct, this seems to be what have happened. I ran an automated back up program last night (GoodSync) that replaces everything in My Documents for what's in Dropbox since that is where I work. I found all the erased files in File History on my back up drive. I copied them and pasted them in the C:\Users\username\Documents\My Games\particlefleet folder. However, when I started the program again it asked once more for my license code and did not let me keep my progress / achievements. There are many ach_stat (dates and time UTC).dat files and mcs (date and time UTC).dat files. I just pasted them all in there and when that didn't work; I choose the ones (one of each type) with the correct time and date (when all was OK) but that didn't work either. I'm a bit lost now :)

[knucracker]

The key is stored in this file:
"c:\Users\YOURUSER\Documents\My Games\particlefleet\settings\keydata.dat"

If the game asked for the key at startup, then it either couldn't find that file and or it couldn't read it.  So could be a permissions issue after the restore or the manual copy.  If you have entered the key manually again, this file will now exist since the game will have recreated it.