(SOLVED) Can I put a craft in my savegame?

[Evanitis]

Anyone knows a way to place a craft in an existing savegame? Not as in a plan in the VAB, but like standing on the launchpad.

Didn't find a relevant mod or such to do so.

Edited February 14, 2016 by Evanitis

[Tex_NL]

I don't think this would be impossible but it will be difficult and potentially game crashing.
The easier, safer and guaranteed to work solution would be to use HyperEdit and place it where you want it to be.

[Evanitis]

I don't mind a crash or two, or even a broken savegame. Wanna' start a career with abysmal fund and sci gain, but with a reusable, high-tech plane and a clawed refuel-repair vessel.

So the problem isn't placing the crafts, but spawning them at KSC.

[Sir_Robert]

Possible, yes. Easy, no

Way easier to launch it through the game. Once you did that, it is a ship listed as existing in the safe file. At this point, you can swap it with any other ship (by editing the safe file. Find the data for the 2 ships, and swap the orbit info), or just use HyperEdit to put it where you want it

 

5 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

I don't mind a crash or two, or even a broken savegame. Wanna' start a career with abysmal fund and sci gain, but with a reusable, high-tech plane and a clawed refuel-repair vessel.

So the problem isn't placing the crafts, but spawning them at KSC.

 

Still easier to just put the craft in your VAB, and launch it in game. And use Alt+F12 (cheat menu) to give yourself the funds needed to launch it

Edited February 14, 2016 by Sir_Robert

[Tex_NL]

7 minutes ago, Sir_Robert said:

Still easier to just put the craft in your VAB, and launch it in game. And use Alt+F12 (cheat menu) to give yourself the funds needed to launch it

Exactly. Give yourself the required funds, launch and hyperedit the desired craft, remove left over funds.
It's even possible to unlock the required tech to launch the craft and then relock the tech again.

[Evanitis]

5 minutes ago, Sir_Robert said:

Still easier to just put the craft in your VAB, and launch it in game. And use Alt+F12 (cheat menu) to give yourself the funds needed to launch it

Never got into the depths of that menu. But doing so would also require temporarily unlocking the tech tree, doing entry purchases and upgrading facilities. I don't know if I could undo all those with the debugger.

[Tex_NL]

4 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

... I don't know if I could undo all those with the debugger.

Then do it by editing your persistent.sfs. You're already willing to crash your game by editing in a craft. Editing in and out some tech should be child's play.

Edited February 14, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Evanitis]

Now that I looked into an .sfs... it's actually simpler than I thought. It's still intimidating, but I guess I'll figure it out after a bit of ctrl+f/c/v and some crashes. Thanks for the hints.

[Geschosskopf]

37 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

Anyone knows a way to place a craft in an existing savegame? Not as in a plan in the VAB, but like standing on the launchpad.

Didn't find a relevant mod or such to do so.

I would talk to @Cydonian Monk for all the details and how to avoid traps for the unwary.

But basically, here's what you do.  In a completely separate game, put the ship on the launchpad.  Then exit that game, open its persistence file in a text editor, and copy the entry for that ship, which is now one of the flights in progress, not a design in the VAB.  Then open the persistence file of the game you want the ship to appear in and paste it in as another flight in progress there.

I have never done this myself so have no idea what sort of problems this might cause with the tech tree and such.  But Cydonian Monk has made a whole Mission Reports story around doing exactly this sort of thing ("The Forgotten Space Program"), so I figure he's the expert.

[Cydonian Monk]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

In a completely separate game, put the ship on the launchpad.  Then exit that game, open its persistence file in a text editor, and copy the entry for that ship, which is now one of the flights in progress, not a design in the VAB.  Then open the persistence file of the game you want the ship to appear in and paste it in as another flight in progress there.

Basically this. There are only three real pitfalls here that I've stumbled into:

1) If you copy over a craft with a kerbal in it, you have to also copy over the kerbal and their stats or remove them from the craft. Search for "crew = " in the VESSEL entry in the save file to see how they're referenced. Having unreferenced crews in ships WILL break the save. Badly.

2) If you copy a vessel over from the "future" you won't be able to use Action Groups until you're Back To The Future. Basically, every time an action group is triggered a timestamp is set for it. Best bet is to always copy craft in from a game that's still at Year 1 Day 1 Hour 0 into a game that's further down the timeline. These can be cleared by setting them to 0 otherwise. The Action Group timestamps are at the end of the VESSEL entry (I think.... or may be at the end of each part.... will need to search for that one).

3) The flight state is important. Some values aren't initialized until the vessel has "launched". In your scenario, copying direct from the launchpad or runway, you should be ok. But copying from the launchpad pre-launch and into orbit can lead to Very Bad Things.

Edited February 14, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[azander]

What I do is using 2 machines, connected via NFS (Linux), or Samba (Windows) I share the  "saves/<name>/Ships" folder.  I do similar to the mod folders in the GamaData folder (but not the GameData folder itself).  This way they have the same mods. 

I build using one machine, and fly using the other.  Once built, I save the ship, when then can be loaded using the other machines VAB "load" option.  Once it is in the VAB or hanger, I move it to the launch point normally and launch. 

 

[HebaruSan]

5 minutes ago, azander said:

What I do is using 2 machines, connected via NFS (Linux), or Samba (Windows) I share the  "saves/<name>/Ships" folder.  I do similar to the mod folders in the GamaData folder (but not the GameData folder itself).  This way they have the same mods. 

I build using one machine, and fly using the other.  Once built, I save the ship, when then can be loaded using the other machines VAB "load" option.  Once it is in the VAB or hanger, I move it to the launch point normally and launch. 

I think @Evanitis is going for something a bit more specialized here. His "target" save does not have the funds or tech unlocks to launch the craft he wants normally.

I did a slight amount of save editing once as a workaround for the bug where a craft in orbit can impact the launch pad. It worked as others have said.

[GeneralVeers]

4 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

But basically, here's what you do.  In a completely separate game, put the ship on the launchpad.  Then exit that game, open its persistence file in a text editor, and copy the entry for that ship, which is now one of the flights in progress, not a design in the VAB.  Then open the persistence file of the game you want the ship to appear in and paste it in as another flight in progress there.

I have never done this myself so have no idea what sort of problems this might cause with the tech tree and such.

My personal experience. Advance warning: bad things.

On at least two occasions I've tried to edit the persistence file in order to do seemingly innocuous stuff. One attempt was to delete a decoupler that had somehow got stuck inside my ship and was causing collision glitches. The other was to delete a ship whose fuel lines were mysteriously not working, and replace its code with a near-identical model whose fuel lines did work.

The game spazzed out big time. Various game-breaking shenanigans occurred, including ships with corrupted staging diagrams and planet surfaces not being drawn.

Editing the gamesave to change a part's state (such as resetting a comm antenna that's stuck in a "deploying" state) seems to work fine, but adding or deleting parts or entire ships can be bad. Very. Bad.

[Evanitis]

22 minutes ago, GeneralVeers said:

bad things

I was careful, nothing bad happened. Ships are in my starter career, the fun can begin.

Though I wouldn't have done that with an established save (well, not without backup at least).

 

Thanks everyone!

[Tex_NL]

21 minutes ago, GeneralVeers said:

My personal experience. Advance warning: bad things.

On at least two occasions I've tried to edit the persistence file in order to do seemingly innocuous stuff. One attempt was to delete a decoupler that had somehow got stuck inside my ship and was causing collision glitches. The other was to delete a ship whose fuel lines were mysteriously not working, and replace its code with a near-identical model whose fuel lines did work.

The game spazzed out big time. Various game-breaking shenanigans occurred, including ships with corrupted staging diagrams and planet surfaces not being drawn.

Editing the gamesave to change a part's state (such as resetting a comm antenna that's stuck in a "deploying" state) seems to work fine, but adding or deleting parts or entire ships can be bad. Very. Bad.

And that's exactly why I suggested HyperEdit. Why get in bed with the devil when you have a safe, working alternative?

[GeneralVeers]

30 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

I was careful, nothing bad happened. Ships are in my starter career, the fun can begin.

Whew! No, I'm not paranoid, this game really IS out to get me!

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Tex_NL said:

And that's exactly why I suggested HyperEdit. Why get in bed with the devil when you have a safe, working alternative?

Well, if you want to import a ship that has parts you haven't unlocked yet in a career or science game, HyperEdit alone won't do the trick