Recently I got the game for free and have really enjoyed it. Over the past few days I have been experimenting with downloading mods from nexus and using them. At first there wasn't any problems but soon I was unable to make a galaxy no matter what the settings were as it would get stuck on the Loading screen indefinitely. After doing some research it seems that this has been a problem for a while and didn't necessarily have to do with mods. I went through all the fixes and the one which worked was excluding the game files from Windows Defender and/or any other anti virus software. After I decided to work on my own mods since it was relatively simple compared to other games I've played. I got them to work pretty well as they are super simple; all they do is simply add a racetrait and a starting fleet. However recently the same problem happened again with a basically frozen loading screen even though it had worked beforehand with the no changes. Reinstalling, verifying files, redownloading mods (and removing my own), anti virus have all failed. 

I narrowed the problem down to mods, if I untick the "Enable Mods" and restart the game I can build a galaxy perfectly fine. With mods enabled I am able to load into previous games but unable to create a new galaxy without getting stuck. Therefore I would like to ask those of you who have had experience making mods for this games and developers if you know or have an idea of what exactly can cause this problem and hopefully any solutions. 

I saw a couple post on the forums with the same issue so for those of you here is what I have found fixes the problem:

1.  In the "Windows security" section of settings scroll down to "Virus and Threat Protection Settings" and hit manage settings. Scroll down until you see "Exclusions" under you will see an option to add files to exclude. Adding the game directory should fix the problem.

2. Disabling mods and restarting the game if you have them enabled can also fix it. 

3. If all else fails verifying the game files or reinstalling is your best bet. If you are on Epic disabling cloud sync may work as well. 

Hope this helps, and if anyone has any solutions or ideas please let us all know!

-Rooney