Game Crashed - 3 Brilliant Months Lost

I sit here in state of true sadness and regret.

My FM16 crashed last night and i hadn't saved for 3 months...

The sadness is due to the unexpected great form of my Cambridge team in their first year in the Championship. With a tiny transfer/wage budget and only a couple of free agent signings, the board and i were expecting a tough but most likely inevitable battle against relegation. Instead, at the end of Jan and after 28 games i was sitting 3rd, 10 points clear of 7th (albeit 14 points of 2nd and 16 points off 1st to the far superior squads of Brentford and Southampton respectively) safe from relegation and in my eyes, almost guaranteed a playoff spot.

The regret comes from not implementing an auto save, which i have done in every FM and save i have ever had. It had just slipped my mind and not having any problems/crashing in the previous 5 seasons i guess i thought it wouldn't happen. I was flying through games/weeks with great momentum so a manual save didn't seem necessary. Additionally, my Mrs was moaning that i should come to bed 10 minutes prior...if i'd only listen to her this would have never have happened.

Making matters worse, i got up a bit earlier this morning to restart the 3 months i had lost...and have lost the first 2 games, both of which i had won previously and lost my best CM for 5 months with an injury.

I haven't saved it yet and my heart is telling me to reload until i win the games i won previously but my head is telling me it will ruin the game for me.

I do not want my success to feel hollow...yet i do not want to miss out on what i would have had.

Oh Football Manager...

Its your game, so do what you want, but learn the lesson that most of us have experienced at some time or other and save regularly.

yeh do auto saves like every month - thankfully ive not been having any issues with crashing with FM16.

As Fraz said its your game so do what you want, but in this case, i dont see any issue in reloading to get back to where you were.

I know your pain. I took auto save off to run a holiday test run for a LLM database because auto-save slowed it down. I then went back to my usual save, had a great run of sustained form, and had a crash. I didn't panic, because l auto save every fortnight, so l simply reloaded my last save. It was then l realised I'd forgotten to switch auto save back on.

Save after every big win, etc. I always have two saves, eg: Ajax (main), and Ajax (backup). It's worth it to take the time, especially once you get a few seasons in as an entire save can get corrupted if your computer gets shut off or something like that during the saving process.

Why don't you just auto save every week?

Use the rolling save system to keep 5 or 10 backups and if you tick the "manual saves use auto save system" you can also manually save as well and it will drop it into the rolling save system.

I also feel your pain. Happened to me. I normally do one mouth rolling but I'm doing a save where I move countries as soon as I've won a cup. This means I spend a lot of time unemployed. Its gets annoying it saving every month when one month may only last 5/10 minutes. So I changed it to 3 month rolling. Got a job played 12 games over the course of 2 and a half months won 10 out of 12 and it crashed.

I took a deep breath, shouted and swore and throw things around. Then sat back down got right back on the horse again. The longer you wait the more you will stew and it will get harder and harder to return to the save.

If I lost a game in which I dominated the first time around I reset. If I only just nicked a win and lost it the second time I just accepted it and moved on.

I haven't had any time over the weekend to get back on it...but will have some time this week so will get back to business.

My only worry is i also previously managed to keep hold to 2/3 players a lot of top clubs are after in the Jan window without destroying their moral...watch me struggle this time around.

Have you got the in game editor? If you want to get back to how you were before it will be very useful.

This is why i set the auto save to weekly and try to save before and after every game. Every couple of days IRL I back up my save to my Dropbox and to my portable hard drive.

I have a rolling auto save set up on mine, this version of FM (or at least Steam) seems to crash a lot more than I'm used to, so I have it saving every week.

I learnt myself to save before each game and after everything important like youth intake and change between 4 files which of one is in the cloud. I really don't want to lose anything.

Why not auto-save every week? Weell, because saving takes time ... and specially now that we have the forced compression of saves, it gets a bit annoying if it saves too often. Those with weaker processors will be particularly annoyed. I have a fast one, but I still do not auto-save more than once a month. No wait ... I don't auto-save, I save manually, but keeping the 3 rolling saves method.

Doesn't the game default you to the 3 file rolling autosave?

I don't mind if it takes a long time to save, it will take a lot longer to replace 3 months of game time.

Doesn't the game default you to the 3 file rolling autosave?

I don't mind if it takes a long time to save, it will take a lot longer to replace 3 months of game time.

I'm sure they changed it so it was the default with this version, there were a few threads about it. Right idea too, as for those that don't really notice it, it could be an absolute godsend in the case of crashes. Sounds harsh, but if you turn it off knowingly, there really isn't any sympathy to be had when something like this happens. Happened to me several times when I switched it off due to running an editor test, and that's my own fault.

Oh well, it's easy enough to remember to make a save on the 1.st of each month. I perform a lot of training/scouting/management supervision on that date anyway, it's part of the drill.

But crashes, people ... do they happen often to you? Because I can't remember the last time it happened to me. And I'm quite sure I haven't crashed more than a handful of times in all my years of playing, ever since the CM2. One would think that it's part of life with FM for some of you - but I can't say, honestly, that I have crashed a lot with FM. Certainly a lot less than with nearly every other game I have ever played.

Oh well, it's easy enough to remember to make a save on the 1.st of each month. I perform a lot of training/scouting/management supervision on that date anyway, it's part of the drill.

But crashes, people ... do they happen often to you? Because I can't remember the last time it happened to me. And I'm quite sure I haven't crashed more than a handful of times in all my years of playing, ever since the CM2. One would think that it's part of life with FM for some of you - but I can't say, honestly, that I have crashed a lot with FM. Certainly a lot less than with nearly every other game I have ever played.

First crash i have experienced on this FM.

Oh well, it's easy enough to remember to make a save on the 1.st of each month. I perform a lot of training/scouting/management supervision on that date anyway, it's part of the drill.

But crashes, people ... do they happen often to you? Because I can't remember the last time it happened to me. And I'm quite sure I haven't crashed more than a handful of times in all my years of playing, ever since the CM2. One would think that it's part of life with FM for some of you - but I can't say, honestly, that I have crashed a lot with FM. Certainly a lot less than with nearly every other game I have ever played.

I had a lot of blue screens on my laptop in general, rather than FM crashing, so lost a few that way. Don't know how many crashes I've had on FM itself during 16...three or four maybe?

I had a lot of blue screens on my laptop in general, rather than FM crashing, so lost a few that way. Don't know how many crashes I've had on FM itself during 16...three or four maybe?

Dont ignore the blue screens as they can be an early indication of a hardware failure.

Dont ignore the blue screens as they can be an early indication of a hardware failure.

I know, it was a driver issue that's solved now.

Small update...

Got some playing time last night and got slightly ahead of where i was before crash...

With no reloads i actually think i am in a slightly better position. Whereas i was about 7/8 points ahead of 4th, i am now only 3 points ahead...however, i am now only 6 points behind 2nd and 9 behind 1st with 10 games to go.

And the board are building a new stadium!

All well that ends well!