So wanted to mess around with in a basically free-form overpowered sandbox game, and went to create a custom faction using some of the few available workshop mods (Rich Colors and Endless Sandbox), upon finishing creating the custom race the game would not let me select it from the drop down box nor manually from the "Change" interface.

It DOES save the custom faction to the disk however, but upon restarting the game, even after re-enabling the same mods (apparently they don't stay loaded post-restart?), it does not show up under the custom factions dropdown or change interface at all, and any attempt to recreate the custom race simply overwrites the already existing XML's on the drive.

Someone else has reported it here on the steam forums as well, so possibly a new issue in 1.0.5 (I can't say to earlier versions as the last time I played ES2 was during the alpha).

General details;

Windows 7 (64-bit)

Endless Space 2 - 1.0.5

Occurs every attempt (reproduction chance for me is 100%)

Also attempted a full install integrity validation (in case of odd leftovers from alpha since my game went from a pretty old alpha release straight to 1.0.5 due to manual update settings)

Possible solution:

Looking at the XML files and tinkering with it in game, it almost looks like for some reason when using mods, the custom faction is overriding the native race of whatever affinity is chosen.

In my case, I made a race based off the Sophons, upon choosing the Sophons as an AI opponent, Registry.xml shows the GUID of my custom faction in the Slot->Faction field for the slot I chose.  If I manually set Slot0->Faction to my custom faction GUID, upon entering the game it shows me as Sophons.

Guessing something in 1.0.5 w/ mods may have changed somehow and is resulting in a bugged GUID loading?