I don't like the way the experience system assigns levels to Kerbals, but I do like the level system and don't want everyone to be level 5 from the start. Ideally, I want to disable the vanilla experience gain system entirely and instead assign XP manually based on my own rules. Is it possible to disable the vanilla xp gain system?
The only thing related to experience I could find in the game files is opening my save file with a text editor, where there is:
extraXP = 0
CAREER_LOG
{
flight = 15
[...]
3 = Land,Mun
3 = PlantFlag,Mun
3 = Flyby,Kerbin
3 = Land,Kerbin
etc.
So my guess is that XP is determined by these things in the save file (e.g. 3=PlantFlag,Mun - kerbal has planted a flag on Mun and gets 5 XP), so it could be edited by removing those lines (taking away XP) and adding new ones (e.g. writing in 4=PlantFlag,Duna would add 12.5 XP to the kerbal). And I guess extraXP increases XP by whatever number you type in.
So my questions are: are those guesses correct? Can the stock XP gain system be disabled/edited, or do I have to edit my savefile and change extraXP/CAREER_LOG?