Will my .crafts be lost in 1.0.5

[Mr. Me]

Hello. Nik Kruger Sciences CEO Mr. Me here, and I have a question to ask on behalf of my company. You see, all our .crafts are from 1.0.4. But in order to reach a larger crowd and boost downloads, we want to move to 1.0.5. However, the fear of making all our .craft invalid is blocking us from doing so. Will our .craft remain usable if we were to move? Can we safely expand NKS's business?

 

[ForScience6686]

I had broken ships.  Anything on structural pylons vanished, which was my entire duna fleet.  New career was started 

[Pecan]

Why can't it be both?

Keep your 1.0.4 install, or at least the craft files.  Re-build everything for 1.0.5.
Next year (which is 4 days away) you can do it for 1.1 too.

[Snark]

So the short answer is "it depends."  For the most part I expect ships to be okay, though there might be some pieces with problems.

Fortunately, it's easy to test.  KSP doesn't come with any DRM of any kind, it's easy to copy.  So just make a backup copy of your entire 1.0.4 directory tree, with KSP.EXE and everything, then install the 1.0.5 upgrade so that you have the two versions of KSP.EXE side-by-side.  Then try it out.  If you're good, you're good.    If it turns out to have problems, then you can play your old career in your 1.0.4 folder, and if you start any new career games, you can start them in 1.0.5.

It's also worth bearing in mind that 1.1 will be coming out in the not too distant future, and is likely to be a significantly more disruptive change than the move from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5.  I have no idea how backwards-compatible it would be, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it breaks pretty much all old saves.  So it's all gonna be moot relatively soon, I expect.

[Mr. Me]

The FightOrFlights (My most prized series) have Mk1 cockpits. Will the model change destroy all with Mk1 parts?

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Mr. Me said:

The FightOrFlights (My most prized series) have Mk1 cockpits. Will the model change destroy all with Mk1 parts?

It depends.  The new Mk1 nosecone cockpit has a different shape which will affect radially mounted parts like ladders, etc.

Basically, KSP updates have a long, long history of breaking existing ships.  I've had to start over pretty much every update ever since way back in 0.20.  Sometimes old parts simply go away.  Sometimes old parts are drastically redesigned so no longer fit where the old version was.  MANY tmes engine stats get changed so that old design simply can no longer perform their missions due to insufficient thrust or fuel.  And since 1.0, on top of all that we've had MAJOR and fundamental changes to aerodynamics and heat every update, which invalidate all old designs.

And it's even worse if you use mods.  First off, many modders need a couple weeks after KSP updates to get their mods working in the new version.  And every update, some modders just give up or move on to other things in life, so their mods never get updated and anything that used them is hopelessly ruined.

So the bottom line is, in KSP it doesn't pay to be materialistic or proud of your designs.  All is dust in the wind.  Don't get attached to any of your stuff.  If you really like something, take some screenshots so you'll have something to remember it by, because its time is short