currently you can make changes in your list of applied mods and go back to the main menu without realizing you forgot to click the apply button to save the changes. this recently happened to me and it took awhile to figure out why my new game did not have the correct mod list


the simplest fix is to just prompt the user with an 'are you sure you want to leave this tab since your mod list has changed and you did not save it?'


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a more comprehensive fix available in other 4x games is to be able to save a mod list as a separately named entity. that way you just pull up whatever mod list you want for a new game without manually having to change the mods wanted


but for HK it is not just the list of mods but the MOD ORDER which needs to be saved. I just found out that a save game will not load unless the mod list is brought back to the EXACT same MOD ORDER as when the game was created. merely having the correct 24 mods will not do. they have to be in the EXACT same MOD ORDER. 


you can use filext.com (by looking at save game file sub-file 4 of 4 SaveDescriptor.bin in text form, the mod load list is at the top of this text file) to examine what the mod order was, but what a pain in the butt to have to resort to this. far better is to pick the correct separately named mod list entity and be ready to load ANY of your save game files in a few seconds any time you want (provided all the mods in the mod order list still actually work as intended -- that is a big IF since so many mods have not been updated in the last year so that they work with the current version of HK)


alternatively the game itself can create its own hidden mod list entity for each save file and prompt you 'reload the mods used for this save file in the mod order needed for the save file to load?' this 2nd method accomplishes the same thing as the 1st method but does NOT let you (using a direct simple method) take an existing mod list entity, edit it, and then create a new mod list entity. so this 2nd method is not as desirable as the 1st method but is acceptable as a fix to solve the problem