Accidentally killed Jeb and Val for good. How to edit persistance file?

[airelibre]

I think I killed Jeb and Val for good. On the missing kerbals page I clicked the x by their names, not knowing what that would do. I didn't click it for the other kerbals that were lost, and eventually they came back, but Jeb and Val have been missing for a very long time and I think I basically said that I don't want those Kerbals to come back. Although, I would have thought that the main 4 kerbals would always come back sooner or later on normal difficulty mode in career...

Anyway, I looked at the persistance file, but it doesn't seem as simple as changing "Dead" to "available", because they also have flight records and their last flight obviously says killed. I don't want to change anything unless I can be sure that I'm changing everything I need to and won't be damaging the save file.

Thanks!

Edited June 1, 2015 by airelibre

[TheMoonRover]

If you wait long enough, they will respawn without you having to do anything, assuming you have the "Missing Kerbals Respawn" (or something like that) option checked in difficulty settings. If it's not checked, you can probably change it from the settings screen at the space centre (or possibly in flight). That way you don't even have to touch the save file.

EDIT: Apparently I was mistaken. I could've sworn that's how it worked. Anyway Claw is more likely to be right than me.

Edited May 30, 2015 by TheMoonRover

[Claw]

If your save file actually says "Dead" then they are indeed gone and won't come back.

I haven't manually resurrected a kerbal since kerbal exp was implemented, but I have a feeling that their log file will not prevent them from resurrecting when the rest if manually edited. They are supposed to take an exp hit when there's a death in the log (though I haven't actually confirmed it). So you should be able to change them to "Available" and make sure "idx = -1". If it's not -1, then it can cause problems.

I would also recommend keeping a copy of the save game somewhere safe before editing it.

Cheers,

~Claw

[Lithocirkus]

With the way exp works if you just change them to available after a registered death on flight then it will give you the xp hit.

However if you also edit the flight record as well as changing from "Dead" to "Available" then you can keep the xp level. You need to add 2 lines to your last flight. Delete the line that says "died" then look at a previous flight. The last two lines should say something like "landed Kerbin" and "recovered Kerbin". Put both of these on the end of your last flight and they should both appear with previous xp values

[airelibre]

If your save file actually says "Dead" then they are indeed gone and won't come back.

I haven't manually resurrected a kerbal since kerbal exp was implemented, but I have a feeling that their log file will not prevent them from resurrecting when the rest if manually edited. They are supposed to take an exp hit when there's a death in the log (though I haven't actually confirmed it). So you should be able to change them to "Available" and make sure "idx = -1". If it's not -1, then it can cause problems.

I would also recommend keeping a copy of the save game somewhere safe before editing it.

Cheers,

~Claw

Thanks Claw, I just changed it to Available and everything was fine. They lost all their XP but I'm happy with that, I would feel like I was cheating if they came back as if nothing at all had happened.