How to save a broken save? (or filtering out mods that might be breaking the game)

[PTNLemay]

I've been running a game for a few months now, a good 16 in-game years I think, and... something's gone wrong. I was performing a Mun base mission, place a base on wheels that can support 17 kerbals and also have a science lab. I sent it up in two parts, one with a huge aircraft fuselage crew compartment, and the other with the science lab. I painstakingly got them together on the munar surface, and then at the moment of connection the game crashed. I restarted the game, quickloaded, tried again... again it crashed. I thought maybe one of my mods was missbehaving (all I have is parts of the B9 mod which I haven't used yet, Kerbal Engineer Redux, and JSI to go with B9) but removing them only seemed to make it worse. I could get into the game but it would freeze and crash at the space center menu. So I put the mods back in, tried to load up the game and thought... maybe my space has gotten too loaded with junk. So I went and deleted most of the debris sitting near Kerbin and the Mun. This time the game gave me an error report when it crashed. So I figure now I can at least share this. Where do I post this report by the way?

Also, is there a way to reinstall my game to a fresh install but somehow preserve my game? I don't want to lose all of the progress I've made. The one problem might be that I have ships out in space that are using the Kerbal Engineer sensor tape thingy. If I reinstall the game and I don't have Engineer installed the game might bug out when it tries to load those parts... Is it hard to go into .craft files and remove those mod parts?

[Starwhip]

Try making a new "game" in-game. Transfer your persistent.sfs file over. See if that fixes anything.

I've never tried this before, I wouldn't know for sure.

[alexman142]

I recently had the same problem. If I am correct, the issue is that your game is running too much memory, thus crashing the game. Downgrade the graphics and the texture resolution. The game should start working correctly.

As you add more mods, you will need to lower the texture quality to save memory. On pure stock, I can easily max the graphics, but since I have so many mods running, I need to lower everything down. Once I increased the graphics, and my game crashed during the loading screen. I went back to stock, lowered the graphics, then put my mods back in, and everything worked.

[Xannari Ferrows]

So your ship spontaneously destroys itself? Here's what you can do:

Go into the quicksave file, hit Ctrl+F, and search for "Vessel". Once you come across the one you're looking for, you can do one of two things:

1. Search further down into the save for more vessels. It's very well possible your save data duplicated itself and they overlapped, cause massive strain on the physics.

2. Find the vessel you docked to your base, and completely edit it out. You can paste the data under its' own vessel section.

If this doesn't work, you may have to resort to extreme measures. If you're certain that there's nothing you can do, just delete the craft.

Open your main base up in the VAB/SPH, and launch it. When on the launchpad, quicksave, then open up the quicksave folder. The last vessel will be the one you just launched, so find it, and look for a section that looks like this:

  }        VESSEL
        {
            pid = 3860ab2628e041a686514ce0f1c347d7
            name = Vessel name
            type = Base
            sit = PRELAUNCH
            landed = KCS_LaunchPad_Platform
            landedAt = 
            splashed = False
            met = 0
            lct = 746737854.522392
            root = 0
            lat = -0.097240363899859
            lon = 285.442320652498
            alt = 75.6801681588404
            hgt = 3.177382
            nrm = 0.002713722,0.9999963,0.0001436905
            rot = -0.09840213,-0.7004071,0.7007861,-0.09298319
            CoM = 0.003319208,-1.228578,0.006591669
            stg = 3
            prst = False
            ref = 1915941509
            ctrl = True
            cPch = 0.2
            cHdg = 0.3
            cMod = 0
            ORBIT
            {
                SMA = 300815.927401234
                ECC = 0.994822736788201
                INC = 0.0972410049037575
                LPE = 89.9992535451791
                LAN = 227.049020462807
                MNA = 3.14159396014566
                EPH = 746737854.562392
                REF = 1

This tells you your current status and your current orbit. Now, to get into a Munnar orbit, replace the entire section with this:

  }		VESSEL
		{
			pid = 3860ab2628e041a686514ce0f1c347d7
			name = Vessel name
			type = Base
			sit =
			landed = False
			landedAt = 
			splashed = False
			met = 0
			lct = 746737854.522392
			root = 0
			lat = -0.097240363899859
			lon = 285.442320652498
			alt = 75.6801681588404
			hgt = 3.177382
			nrm = 0.002713722,0.9999963,0.0001436905
			rot = -0.09840213,-0.7004071,0.7007861,-0.09298319
			CoM = 0.003319208,-1.228578,0.006591669
			stg = 3
			prst = False
			ref = 1915941509
			ctrl = True
			cPch = 0.2
			cHdg = 0.3
			cMod = 0
			ORBIT
			{
				SMA = 300000
				ECC = 0.0005
				INC = 0
				LPE = 41
				LAN = 227
				MNA = 3.1415926535898
				EPH = 746737854.562392
				REF = 2

These should be the parameters for a stable Munnar orbit. You can then edit your other ship up into orbit, where you can bring them down

and try again. Be sure to quicksave before you put them together, just to have something to go back to.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Xannari Ferrows

[regex]

I had something similar happen tonight, built a crane to move stuff around on Minmus, came in for a landing and hit the stage button to release the skycrane, and the game crashed. After a few reloads and tries, I rebuilt the entire crane and launched again, landing flawlessly. In short, I suggest you try rebuilding your craft.

[PTNLemay]

@ Starwhip

It was a good idea, but upon trying the connection the game crashed again. It really does appear to be the docking that's causing the problem.

@Xannari

I don't know if the parts are destroying themselves, the game litterally just freezes then crashes.

I think at this point I will just delete the ships, dock a fresh pair of them back on Kerbin, then cheat them over to the mun. I completed the mission! The game is just being testy.