Paths-to-gamefiles should ever come up a single time, when you first don't have openxcom directory on the sdcard. Maybe you're moving it around or something?
This also happens when you try to start a game with a mod that contains errors. For example, I tried to run the X-Piratez J10, once downloaded, but not tested then. But there were a mistake in the ruleset files. Instead of STR_SCOUT_OUTFIT_UC, STR_STR_SCOUT_OUTFIT_UC was written. Then the game interrupted the download and demanded to re-specify the data folder. But when I found this error and fixed it, everything worked fine. In the X-Piratez J10, this was fixed a long time ago, but I had an outdated version.
More similar happens when trying to simultaneously run two incompatible mods between themselves, there is some kind of conflict of rules.
Well, with some very outdated mods, if they do not meet modern standards.
I had reports of people being stuck there... don't know the reason.
Uninstalling/deleting everything and starting fresh usually helped.
When choosing which mods you need to restart OXC, this data is saved in the options.cfg file. If the mods cause a crash, then for any attempt to restart, the same conflicting modes will again be taken from the options.cfg file and start loading again, which again causes a conflict. There is a vicious circle - the mods can not be disabled, because the settings are not available.
There are two options. Either delete the mod that you tried to run from the mods folder, or delete the options.cfg file (you can still edit it). In either case, the conflicting mode stops loading and crash does not occur. Reinstalling the application on OXCE for Android does not help in this case, since the openxcom folder and the options.cfg file in it are not deleted from the device’s memory. And the launch of the newly installed OXCE leads to the same results.