Renaming Kerbals: What did I miss?

[MrOsterman]

So here's my thing: I do a lot of crew transfers and I can never remember which Kerbal is which "class". So I'll dock at my station with the intention of transfering over a scientist only to find I sent the pilot. And it seems I have to go all the way back to the Kerbalnaut center to figure out if I did it all right when I'm putting my scientists to work vs making a pilot play with test tubes.

I got the idea that I'd go into the Persistant file and change the names of all my Kerbals to reflect their roles. Pilots were "Cpt Donnie Kerman", Scientists were "Dr Leachal Kerman" etc.

Only when I loaded my game it seemed that all of my Kerbalnaut center was broken. I couldn't look at currently assigned Kerbals, and I couldn't hire any new ones.

I miss something? Edited November 25, 2015 by MrOsterman

[SchweinAero]

A kerbal's name is used as a reference in many places throughout the file. If you change some but not others, the game will lock up over missing kerbals.

[GreeningGalaxy]

[spoiler=Disregard me, I don't know what I'm talking about]I don't know why your astronaut complex is broken, but unfortunately, renaming kerbals won't work very well to help you remember their classes, because changing their names will [I]change[/I] their classes - class is not currently settable within the persistence file and is just determined by a hash of the name. You could randomly change the name until you get the class you're looking for, but that's a lot of game restarts and is probably not worth the effort.
I don't think it's known exactly [I]why[/I] Squad decided to make kerbal professions impossible to gainsay by editing the save file; to me, it seems like a shoddy anti-"cheating" mechanism that really has no good reason to be there.

In the meantime, you might try the [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107471-1-0-5-TextureReplacer-2-4-11-(17-11-2015)"]Texture Replacer[/URL] mod, which adds the ability to have different-colored suits for each class, so you can tell them apart without looking in the vessel info box in the map view. I agree that it should be easier to see a kerbal's profession while in flight, though - hopefully this will be added improved in a later version. [/spoiler]

[B]-- EDIT --[/B]

[quote name='SchweinAero']A kerbal's name is used as a reference in many places throughout the file. If you change some but not others, the game will lock up over missing kerbals.[/QUOTE]

Ah, that's it. If you change the name of kerbal assigned to a vessel, you'll also need to change the name on the vessel roster. Try using whatever text editor you're using to edit the file to search for all instances of the kerbal's old name and replace them with the new name.

[B]-- EDIT EDIT --[/B]

After opening up the persistence file from 1.0.5 and actually looking, it appears I am out of date - there's a Trait = (scientist/engineer/pilot) option for all the kerbals. So anyway, yeah, changing their names should actually work to tell them apart by profession; just make sure you catch all instances in the persistent.sfs. Edited November 25, 2015 by GreeningGalaxy

[RocketPropelledGiraffe]

[quote name='MrOsterman']So here's my thing: I do a lot of crew transfers and I can never remember which Kerbal is which "class". So I'll dock at my station with the intention of transfering over a scientist only to find I sent the pilot. And it seems I have to go all the way back to the Kerbalnaut center to figure out if I did it all right when I'm putting my scientists to work vs making a pilot play with test tubes.
[/QUOTE]

Just as a side note: You know that you can check the professions of your crew in-flight by checking the craft and crew information in map mode? No need to go back to the astronaut center to check for profession...

[Tex_NL]

Instead of messing around renaming your Kerbals (or wasting time and energy in the map screen or astronaut complex) you might be interested in DMagic's [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/120731"][B]Portrait Stats[/B][/URL].
It adds small icons to their portraits displaying their profession.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/BSYKJFn.png[/IMG]

It's yet another tiny little feature that should have been stock ever since professions were first introduced. Edited November 25, 2015 by Tex_NL

[MrOsterman]

Wow! Thanks! Forget new names, need to get the Portrait Stats. :)