A possible approach for frustrated console players...

[Justin_Kerbal]

I have had a couple of very nice people on here help me out recently, so I wanted to post my own hopefully promising experience.

I play on PS4.  I lost three saves through the corrupted data issue after making (in my mind) fairly lengthy runs at science mode.  In retrospect, I realize now that as a brand new player to the game I had learned a great deal but actual progress was very minimal.  I became frustrated and almost gave up on everything except scenarios and messing around in sandbox mode.

I created a new science mode game and upped the science reward percentage (whatever that's called) so that when I get science it's worth a lot of science points.  That allowed me to catch up on what 'progress' I felt I had lost very quickly.  I started using a flash drive to save my game each time before booting up KSP.  When I had a corrupted data prompt, I just reloaded data from my flash drive. 

Knocking on wood as I write this, I'm about a week in without any corrupted game files and almost no crashing.  I continue to make progress and save it on a flash drive.  I believe (in my case at least) the corrupt game file can be attributed to one thing - unlocking certain parts.  In my first couple of play thrus that became corrupted, the common denominator was unlocking and using the parts to scan for ore.  On my most recent play thru, I have intentionally avoided unlocking the tiers that allow for scanning.  As I said, I'm at an astonishing almost week of play in without a data corruption and hardly any crashing.

I do need to give the caveat that I did have one game save where I saved the game to my flash drive, only to find out the game immediately corrupted afterwards and my save was corrupted as well.  My theory is that the corruption happened just before I saved the game to the flash drive.  I believe this because my corruptions mostly happened after completing space flights and returning to Kerbin.  That is exactly what I did when I then rushed to save the game, only to realize I saved a corruption.  I now only save to the flash drive before I boot the game.  I also backup the save to PC just in case I again save a corrupted save.

In my opinion and because of my experience, I believe the corrupt game files are a result of certain parts either being unlocked or used.  At this point I have ceased unlocking new parts until a patch is released.  I am enjoying the game far too much to go back to being frustrated.  Besides, I have lots to do and learn with the parts I have available.

On a different note, there’s so much bashing of the console port on this forum.  I get the frustrations with bugs, crashing, and especially corrupted data.  Believe me, I get it!  But I also want to share that this is my first experience with KSP which is not possible on my old piece of junk PC.  I downloaded the demo on it and it ran like dog crap.  Also, the control scheme seemed absurd to me on PC!  I imagine that’s what PC veterans experience even watching someone try to manipulate the game on PS4.  Yes, they need to let us invert controls.  Hitting L2 for thrust up and R2 for thrust down… hitting left to go right when I’m docking and vice versa… it’s ridiculous, but I like the game enough that I’ve adjusted.  The learning curve on the controller is steep but it’s completely doable, and will get even better after the bugs get squashed.

So far I have: Orbited, done several back and forth missions to the Mun and Minmus, made a failed but close attempt at Duna, built a flyable space plane, and rendezvoused and docked several ships.  I am HOOKED.  I cannot wait for a patch so I can start mining and colonizing. 

Sorry for the long post.  So sorry that I will now summarize:

1. Save game to a flash drive before each play.

2. Periodically backup your flash drive save to a PC / external device.

3. Be wary of downloading or unlocking too many parts.

4. KSP is like crack but with worse withdrawal.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Justin_Kerbal