Titler

Hello all; this will be a basic guide as to how I managed to save my ancient Kerbals from doomed old saves, and bring them back to life again in my modern game. If I'm missing something, I hope others will add their knowledge below. I make no guarantee it will work for ALL previous saves; but this is how I managed to retrieve my own older vehicles, and I hope it will aid some of you to do the same as I wasn't able to find much information of how to do so, and had to work it out step by step myself! STEP 1: PREPARATION You will need the "persistent.sfs" file from your old save. Make a copy of this somewhere, so you don't accidentally ruin it. We will be working from the copy only. Also make sure to make up your current save file somewhere safe, so you don't lose it. They can be found at the following location; Install location\Kerbal Space Program\saves\ Copy the lot somewhere too, so you don't lose your current vehicle designs. Now, download this simple editing tool. It can be run from anywhere, so don't worry about where it goes for now. STEP 2: FIRST STEPS IN EDITING You do not need to shut KSP down, but the game can't have the save you're moving too open, so close it and go to the title screen. You can re-open it later to see if your changes stick. Run the editor. Then click "File" and select "Open". Point it at the copy of your OLD "persistent.sfs". This is where we shall be taking the data from. Then click "File" and "Open" again, and select the current saved game's " "persistent.sfs" file. You should then have two tabs open, which looks a bit like this: Notice I'm retrieving a lot of vessels and kerbals from all the way back in version 0.20.2. And it works, I promise! Expand the tab that says "FLIGHTSTATE"; most of what we need to get at is in there. Right click the line that says "UT = xxxx", then hold down SHIFT + Right Click on the very last VESSEL in the list, and select "Copy". You should have selected all your old ships, and a lot of Kerbals. Flags are classed as "VESSEL"s so these should be moved too. Now swab to the new save tab, and delete the "UT" line there. Then right click on the Flightstate line, and "Paste" to add the old values in. If you are moving to an new saved state that has other vehicles active, right click on the "activeVessel = x" in the new save, select "Edit", and change the value from to (New + Old). In my case I had none active in the new, so left "activeVessel" as 8, the old value. If you want to take things slowly, move a single "VESSEL" first that doesn't have a Kerbal in it, and is remotely controlled somehow; once done, in the editor still, make sure the New file tab is highlighted, then click "File" and then "Save". Point the editor back at the new save file and over-write it. You did back it up first though, yes? Now we can start KSP or load it from the title screen and see if our changes have stuck. There are two issues that can cause problems here. The first is that without the Universal Time matching the old save, KSP seemed to get confused as to where ships etc are supposed to be, as planets etc aren't where they should be. This I believe is what the UT line does, so I copied it across. If you have other ships active, and thus are trying to move to a save in a different time frame, this may prove an issue. Please let me know in comments. Secondly ships with multiple crew and multiple sub-components (like space stations or two docked ships) loaded, but weren't able to be Flown from the Space Centre. There are two ways to fix that. The easy way, and the hard; THE EASY WAY: Under the editor, re-copy from the old file only the Kerbals listed, and paste them into the new "ROSTER" line on the new save. This meant they were duplicated in two places in the new save, but it didn't seem to cause any trouble so I just ignored it. You should now be able to fly your old craft with the old crew back aboard. THE HARD WAY: Maybe you don't want to try and retrieve the old crew, because it means you end up with duplicate Jebs all over the place. Or maybe the above hasn't worked for you for some reason? There is a way to re-generate a fresh crew in game though. And that is... simply fly back to it and get close enough that you can swap with the [ and ] keys between your two ships, and the missing crew will be replaced with new ones. My Munbase, abandoned for nearly 3 years, was visible on radar but couldn't be accessed at first, so I sent some brave Kerbals out to see if aliens had eaten them, or they'd eaten all the snacks since I was last able to load them up and had starved to death; once within range, the lights spookily came back on and fresh faces could be seen peering out the windows... Good job Sherbald Kerman was already bald, or all his hair may have fallen out due to shock! To avoid this issue in the future, I plan to have at least one automated control system aboard my space stations. MY SHIPS WONT LOAD! IT SAYS I HAVE MISSING PARTS! One of the problems with saving old ships is that they may have parts aboard that no longer work, or aren't installed any more. They can be retrieved, but it requires much longer fiddling. Bear in mind the following condition must be met; The ship can't use the missing part as a connection between two other parts. If it does (say you have a seat stuck on top of that part) it just won't load if it's removed, as far as I can tell. Correct me in comments below if I'm wrong! On the above space station, I had some old MapSat scanners mounted radially however, and I was able to fix these. How? EDITING IN FLIGHT VEHICLES: Firstly we need to identify which vehicles might have the error; when you attempt to load the game itself, it should tell you which active vehicles have missing parts. And when we try and open them in VAB it should warn us again. Under the "FLIGHTSTATUS" lines in our New Save, find the VESSEL, in this case Munbase, and double click it. You will now get a full list of parts aboard like below; Scroll down until you find the one preventing it from loading, in this case "ISA.GPS" (which is Map Sat, but remember it tells you when it tries to load the name of the broken part) and Delete it. Save here, then resave the entire "Persistent.sfs" file again. EDITING VAB DESIGNS. In the editor, you can open the ".CRAFT" files directly, and remove the broken parts from the list, just like we did above for the station. However because the old file format might carry across, you may still get this error when you attempt to load in KSP: You can "Attempt To Load Anyway"; the vehicle should appear in the background, and even though you get the error here a second time, just click "Cancel". Now you just need to do one small edit, even just take apart and put back together the vehicle, and then re-save over the old version to correctly update it and use it from then on. If it doesn't load a second time, and only one for me did not because I made a slight error editing the CRAFT file by hand earlier, you won't be able to load it in KSP at all, and it won't appear no matter how often you click Attempt To Load. The way around this is to create a blank CRAFT file in KSP, then using the editor, copy all the parts data etc back across from the old file, then re-open in KSP and see if you can save it that way. But hopefully you won't need to try! And that is how I got all my old space stations from v0.20.2 back into the modern game! I hope you've found this guide helpful in saving your own wee green wonders.

Hi all, I've spent an evening trying to bring some very, very old vehicles from 0.21 or so into the latest KSP, and so far I've managed to work out how to remove older parts from vessels by manually editing the files in notepad, and can now reload them in the VAB. However the next step has proven trickier; I want to return some old completed vessels around the Mun etc, but copying and pasting these (also edited) into the "persistent" file leads to issues where the vehicle appears correctly on the map, but I can't Fly them, and the game seems broken because I can't launch or load anything from the VAB etc. I tried doing it manually, as well as using the Kerbal Savefile Editor to try and automate it, but neither makes any difference. It's not individual parts blocking it, does any one know if there's a more up to date vehicle-importer, or what the issue might be which is blocking me? Thanks!

Hey all, I've recently come back to KSP, and I'm finding Mechjeb simply can't fly my old, asymmetrical craft that it used to be able to put into perfect position. It's not other mod conflicts, as I've done a clean install and installed just Mechjeb. In particular it has the following problems; * Unless only 5 degrees of pitch is selected, it can't get my craft into orbit as the nose just wobbles too much and it crashes. * Once into orbit, it can't complete the circular burn because again, it tracks around too much. Enabling or disabling RCS doesn't help; it wildly overcompensates under both control systems. The only way I've been able to get it to pass each stage is disabling at each stage, using Smart ASS and killing rotation (which it often can't even do) and then restarting autopilot and hoping it'll pass the target pip and lock into place when time speeds up * I wanted to use Bobcat's Soviet Pack, but it has problems understanding to jettison the boosters on his Soyuz U and Energia models, and whilst it correctly flies that mod's Buran, it can't even get the Kliper up as it loses control of the rocket by about 3000 feet. I've tried disabling all the control surfaces and that doesn't help. So... is there some sort of setting I must be missing with the latest Mechjeb that is cocking everything up? Is it a change in KSP since I last played (which was er... 0.24 I think)? Tips welcome please!

Is that a new feature? How would I locate it if so? I'd be surprised if it meant Mechjeb doesn't actually recognise boosters any more, but I'll test it. He's having no problems throwing them off my custom crafts now, sadly though he seems unable to stabilize what he used to be able too, and he's currently out of control spinning round and round trying to line up for an orbital burn, sigh... KSP often feels like 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

I'm using stock game with most recent Mechjeb, SCANSat, Hyperedit, Soviet Pack and only the essential mods as listed in this first post, as far as I know. I have the following Gamedata folders; B9_Aerospace BahaSP BobcatInd HexCans JSI KerbalTek Mechjeb2 ModuleRCSFX NASAMission Romfarer SCANSAT SovietPack Space Factory Space Factory IND Spacefactory Squad XanderTec Most of those should be Soviet Pack or related (All of the Space Factory are the messy Vostok etc installs) but if one of them affects aerodynamics and isn't required for Soviet Pack I'm happy to delete it.

So wandering back into KSP after months away, coming back to my favourite pack and I discover that the issues I had earlier with constant crashing was from Unity 64 bit, sigh... I can run it fine now under 32bit again, but a few questions with regards to this and mechjeb; * Mechjeb can't seem to jettison the boosters on the Energia and the Soyuz U correctly; he just leaves the Energia boosters on, but if I do the Energia manually they drop away fine... but the Soyuz U boosters he also ignores, but now they don't push away from my climbing craft, and instead crash into the lower fuel tank, even when flying straight ahead... the only way I seem to be able to safely separate is by staging when they still have a little fuel so they fly up and beyond my rocket instead... Does anyone know how to tackle these? * Mechjeb can't seem to bring the Buran back down to Kerbal once it's up there; he just gets stuck on the atmosphere burn, pointing the nose down and not firing the engines... Any ideas how to force him to return? * He completely loses control of the Kliper when trying to launch it, usually around 3,000 feet. I've had this fixed in the past, but disabling all the Klipers control surfaces now doesn't work. How do we get him to properly launch it now? * I've not tried an automated space plane landing yet; because of the above! Any tips?

Craft files will help you bug locate however as you'll know people are using the correct set up... regarding the Proton, the problem in career mode seems to be a bug with the Second Stage; it is purchased (I went back and checked them all to be sure), but when building with it just generates the NaN error. The third stage also doesn't seem to have enough thrust to lift off the launch pad at all? I tried that in sandbox to be sure and it also didn't lift off there either. I'll try and fly some of the others tomorrow...

Good grief the installation for this is unbelievably messy; running from the first post trying to get it all working again, there are the following issues... * The Buran doesn't have a craft file * The N1L3 leaves it's craft file loose, and has to be manually moved into Ships after extracting to the KSP folder. * The Soyuz zip isn't sorted correctly so you have to guess where the folders go (Bobcat and SovietPack into Gamedata) * Lunokhod has multiple issues; The Luna-Lunkohhod craft file is broken; The Luna 17 works, but there is neither a craft file nor a sub-assembly for a completed Lunokhod to put on it, so you have to manually set one up; if you want the Lunokhod to be the first stage you need a Luna 17 sub-assembly too. * The MIR has no complete craft file, and no longer includes the PDF which shows how to build it. * The Proton subassembly doesn't have a cost in Career mode, probably because the Shroud doesn't seem to be unlocked at the same time as the rest of the Proton system, so it cannot be used (NaN error, you can't afford this) When combined with the Vostok crafts from Space Factory, they don't recognise the rocket parts (Soyuz, Proton) now unfortunately, but you can at least swap in the subassembly versions to use them ... but that would be a SF problem I imagine.

There's no need to be rude; the first post of this thread only links to downloads, and then says what other items each mod requires. However unless you've followed every single change minutely over KSPs entire life, even someone relatively tech aware is going to struggle with this avalanche of files, because they all unzip in different ways, and the location they need to actually be isn't always clear. Including individual Bobcat stuff; the N1 for instance leaves a craft file hanging loose when unzipped... I know where it should go, into Ships\SPH, but nowhere is that explained. Having done them all now, I find that KSP is crashing to desktop every time I try and access the assembly buildings under the x64 building. So I've just purged the entire game and am starting from a clean install and slowly adding them in one by one. But all of you in the modding community would be doing yourselves, and the wider KSP community, if you'd embrace a standard zip with installer which did the following; * Call KSP location from Registry * Install own files to correct location * Then ask for associated items, essential; User points at downloaded zip (to maintain independent download for those who don't want their things to be packaged elsewhere) * Ask for associated items, non-essential; User points at downloaded zip for them too. In fact, before I get into slowly reinstalling all the Soviet stuff (which is excellent when it is working) and restarting time and time again, I think I'll post my own thread in the Add-Ons section asking for the above...

I'm using this one, of course! That's Mir coming in on the far right, and the final stages of the Kliper approaching to dock; The Kliper doesn't have a craft file in the current release, but the video on page one shows how to build it. Just make sure to do what people are suggesting and swap to Action Groups when you place the Soyuz docking port on, and map "Decouple" to a custom key before putting the LES on... then add the LES and set it to decouple too and also fire the engines for an emergency escape system. I mounted it on a Proton rocket from the same pack as I recall, and saved it as a Sub-Assembly to quick launch other payloads. The only other things visible are Mechjeb windows, and the little ? is for a crew swapping mod which allows you to move them about without having to go for space walks. There is the Lazor system installed, and you'll need it for the Buran arm, but on this flight it didn't have the Lazor modules attached so it's windows aren't visible. I've been testing it ready to try and land on the Space Centre's runway and you can hide those modules under the Kliper and Buran's nose cone... And here's what it looks like attached to Mir, after a second flight with the correct decouple action groups set, and now acting as a lifeboat for the crew. You'll see there's also a ScanSat icon top left because one of the readers is on attached to Mir too, and the Lazor box on the right as Kliper 2 came with it.

This worked, thanks! Attempts to land with the Kliper though were not too successful, but the updated one now discards the LES correctly... Still stuck on the Buran cargo hold though; and would the docking port actually work with the Buran's own inside the hold, once the other end is attached to the Mir, as it's not from the same Bobcat pack? I tried putting another Soyuz port over the top of Buran's just in case, but it doesn't seem to have any attachments there?

Also! Whilst waiting for the Buran blueprints, the Kerbals decided to have a go with the Kliper; but oh no! They got all the way to Mir and discovered they couldn't dock. Because they couldn't jettison the LES as there was no option to do so? I've tried rebuilding it, but been unable to locate why this may be; there's a Soyuz Docking probe underneath as in the construction video, and the LES rockets work at least, but even when empty I can't remove it. I can however decouple the piece above it. Any ideas, or is it a bug?

Bit of a bump this, but I'm having difficulty with the Buran's hold too; when I load cargo in, only certain models seem to be accepted. I can get the LR RCS tanks in for instance, but fuel tanks of the same size and shape won't fit in. I'm using the Mir Drogue, but I also tried a number of others... What I really wanted to do was take up the third party Mir Docking Module inside the Buran but it just won't fit. I was also going to try and put more fuel tanks inside, to try and get it refueled at Mir and then go for a Mun shot with it, but also to no avail as they won't clip inside either. Is there any trick to loading the Buran then?

This must be it, thank you. I'll keep watching Lazor. Instead right now Lunokhod is on it's way to Mun... slight problem in that Mechjeb doesn't autostage it correctly, and without RCS it tracks slowly across to the target pip, but it's getting there! Just circularizing around Mun now ready for the drop in... Oh and the latest Kerbal version, as I use Steam and autoupdate.

Question; this keeps coming up, and I've gone back through the thread 30 pages now and not found an updated answer so... The Mir and Buran won't load again. It's probably the missing arms, but I've done a clean install of KSP, and downloaded the KAS linked on page 1, the Robotic Arms and the Soviet Pack and installed correctly. The GameData folder has "Bobcatind" "KAS" and "Romfarer" subfolders. I've started a game into Sandbox mode so it's not the tech tree locking off the parts. It just doesn't seem to want to load the arms in the latest Kerbal patch and thus blocks off the vehicles that use them. Does anyone know why please?