Saves and some Progress Disappears

[Daedalus One]

I am new, so I may be missing something. I have done the basic missions and completed the orbits. A couple of thing I am confused about. There seem to be a dozen ways to save things. Saving ships is no problem, and quicksave/load  (F5 and F9) seems pretty straight forward.  However, hitting the orange  Pause arrow top right, or the esc key open what seem to be the same window, not to mention the autosave the game does on its own.  I am not sure what they do and where they put them. And then there is the one that you get when exiting a game.

Basically if I save something as orbit, I want orbit to load back up exactly as i saved it when I need it. I just looked, I saved something as orbit, and now it shows up as persistent. ???

Also, after completing the orbit mission, I noticed that hitting the SAS also brought up the Pro and Retro grade "buttons" next the the stock SAS, so Jeb could automatically follow those as well if needed. Great !, However, those " buttons" sometimes go away on future missions. What is up with that ?

 

Thanks

[HvP]

Hello @Daedalus One, welcome to the forums! There's a lot to go over in your questions, so please ask if anything I say doesn't make sense.

There are multiple different ways that the game creates save points, and they are all stored in different places so it's understandable to be a little confused. The first thing to understand is that a "quicksave" and "autosave" are not saving to the same file. The autosave is simply storing your game progress so that if the game should crash or the game is closed in a non-standard way then the game will load next time at the same point it last autosaved. This data is stored in a persistent.sfs file within the folder for each individual career or sandbox game you have created. The persistence file is what loads when you open your game, and it is considered the "current" state of your game.

Quicksaves are different. There are two different types of quicksaves -- normal, and custom. For a normal quicksave, every time you press F5 it stores the state of the game at that point in your "backup" save folder, and makes it available to load when you hold down the F9 key. This automatically loads the most recent normal quicksave. Also at the same time you load a quicksave it updates the persistent file to match the state of the game that has now reverted back to your quicksave point. This is now your current game state.

There is also a custom quicksave option. By holding the ALT key while pressing F5 a dialog box will pop up that lets you name the save file. You can create as many of these custom quicksaves as you want. You can also load whichever one you want by pressing ALT-F9 to chose from the list of previous custom save points. Also in that list will be the most recent autosave point (called "persistent") and the most recent normal quicksave point with timestamps attached that you could also load if you wish. The files for your custom named quicksaves are just stored within the "Saves" folder for each individual career, next to the persistent file. A few recent backup quicksaves and persistent autosave files are located in the "Backup" folder within the folder for you career save which you can copy into that game's "Saves" folder if you want to access them from the ALT-F9 menu.

Tip: The "Save Game" and "Load Game" buttons in the Escape menu do the exact same things that ALT-F5 and ALT-F9 do.

Every time you change scenes the game will update the current progress in the persistent file. This means that whenever you take control of a ship, switch ships, or recover a vessel for example, the game will automatically update the current save state so that it will return to that point should you close the game. Any time you exit the game in the normal way it will also update the current persistent save. It doesn't matter if you leave the game by pressing "Quit Game" in the ESC menu or by clicking the red button in the top right. This is normal operation. HOWEVER, if you shut down the KSP.exe process abnormally, whether from the Windows taskbar, task manager, or ALT-F4 then the game does not have the ability to update the save state. Then it will revert back to the last time the persistent file was updated, either because the game autosaved or the point when you loaded a quicksave or the last time you changed ships.

As for the SAS controls, in a career play through the experience of your pilot or the technical details of your probe core will have an effect on what auto-SAS abilities are available. Unless you are playing sandbox then engineers and scientists don't have SAS abilities, and pilots need more experience to unlock more abilities. When you hover over their picture in the Astronaut Complex and I believe in the character portrait it should show you what abilities they have earned. Some probe cores are more limited than others. Only the most expensive probe cores will have all of the SAS options available. You can check the details of the probe cores by right clicking the picture of the part in the VAB/SPH parts list and seeing what is says in the extra-info panel that pops up.

I hope this info answers your questions in a not too confusing way. Have fun!

Edited July 29, 2017 by HvP

[HvP]

1 hour ago, Daedalus One said:

I saved something as orbit, and now it shows up as persistent.

You mean that you made a custom save and called it "Orbit" but it isn't showing up in the load game menu? Let's test and see if it's saving your custom saves properly.

Bring up the same game dialog by pressing ESC and then "Save Game" or press ALT-F5. Give it a unique name and then press Enter. Now go back and check and see if your save is there when you call up "Load Game" or ALT-F9. Is it there? If not try the same thing again but this time instead of pressing Enter after typing the name of the file press the "Save" button. I believe there was a bug at one time where the Enter key defaulted to select "Cancel" instead of "Save" which could mean that the dialog box was closing without being saved.

Edited July 28, 2017 by HvP

[Daedalus One]

Thanks, that does help explain some things. There is just so much to learn on this, not to mention learning how to enter orbit. I also play Elite Dangerous, and what you have to learn for yourself, that is not really in any manual is crazy.

Thanks again

Hate to bother you with this, but you seem to have a handle on this game. What are the best game settings and mods for the best graphics, that do not bump heads or ruin game play. Also, I built a monster computer that can handle anything I throw at it.

Thanks

Edited July 29, 2017 by Daedalus One

[technicalfool]

1 hour ago, Daedalus One said:

Thanks, that does help explain some things. There is just so much to learn on this, not to mention learning how to enter orbit. I also play Elite Dangerous, and what you have to learn for yourself, that is not really in any manual is crazy.

Thanks again

Hate to bother you with this, but you seem to have a handle on this game. What are the best game settings and mods for the best graphics, that do not bump heads or ruin game play. Also, I built a monster computer that can handle anything I throw at it.

Thanks

A lot of people recommend mods like PlanetShine and Scatterer for graphics. As for a mod that doesn't ruin gameplay but provides useful info, Kerbal Engineer is pretty good. Mechjeb is a full-on autopilot (you can literally "press button to go to space"), so whether that ruins your gameplay or not is up to you.

I'm sure someone will mention FAR and RSS/RO plus texturepacks, but that's a heck of a change from the base game. Try that mod-set with caution.

Mostly, do make copies of the game in different locations on your computer. Especially if you play via Steam. The last thing you need is an update coming out, Steam automatically updating it and everything breaking due to mods not being compatible. Plus it means you can keep a stock copy, a pretty-modded copy, a super-realism-Orbiter-2 copy, a "oh stuff it, let's include warp drives for the sake of it" copy... whatever you can find a mod for really.

 

RSS with KSP Interstellar beamed-power relays, just because.

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by technicalfool

[Spricigo]

5 hours ago, Daedalus One said:

What are the best game settings and mods for the best graphics, that do not bump heads and ruin game play. 

Well,  you need to decide yourself what ruin gameplay and what improves it.  But a good place to start looking is this: 

My personal highlights: Kerbal Alarm Clock, Editor Extensions,  RCS Build Aid, Kerbal Engineer, EVA Resource Transfer, Better Crew Assignment, Better Burn Time, Navball Docking Alignment Indicator and Contract Window Plus

[HvP]

12 hours ago, Daedalus One said:

What are the best game settings and mods for the best graphics, that do not bump heads or ruin game play

I second the suggestions by both @technicalfool and @Spricigo if you want some nice mods to improve graphics and utility in the game. If you've got heavy computing power and a good graphics card I'd certainly recommend the EVE (Environmental Visual Enhancements) mod which incorporates a few visual upgrades into the game (including the aforementioned Scatterer and Planetshine) to give beautiful atmospheric effects. Go ahead and turn on "Ground Scatter" from the stock game's main settings menu, too. It populates certain areas of the surfaces of planets with trees and rocks.

Another big shout-out for both  Kerbal Alarm Clock and Kerbal Engineer Redux. KAC will set up alarms for future mission nodes and transfer windows so that you can do other things without worrying about forgetting about a ship with an upcoming maneuver. Kerbal Engineer gives you tons of information readouts that you can customize into displays in your flight scene, such as Delta-V remaining in each stage, height and time to your apoapsis/periapsis which can be viewed without needing to switch to the map view, countdowns to suicide burns, time to impact, what biome you are in or will be when you land, etc. It can even show you your predicted delta-V and thrust-to-weight ratio in the VAB/SPH.

If you want to give your Kerbals something to do on EVA a hugely popular series of mods are the Kerbal Inventory System and Kerbal Attachment System which allows your Kerbals to carry around parts that they can attach/detach to ships while on EVA for repair, construction or linking up vessels for fuel transfer.

You might also check out CKAN which is a stand-alone program to help you automatically install compatible mods. I would also recommend following technicalfool's advice and copy your entire KSP folder to a second location. You can run multiple copies of KSP for yourself from different copies, there's no DRM or copy protection. This way you can keep one stock and one modded.

Also, even though you didn't ask I would highly recommend that you look over the Key Bindings chart. Even a lot of advanced users aren't aware of all of the keyboard shortcuts in the game.

I know there's a bit of a learning curve, and being such a customizable game it does mean it takes a while to come to grips with all the options, but I hope you're having fun with it.

Edited July 29, 2017 by HvP