Is it possible to keep only your crew on a new career?

[XB-70A]

Hi everyone,

I am still under 1.0.5 and really want to switch to 1.2. before when passing from 0.90 to 1.0.2 then 1.0.5 I was only interested to transfert my craft then restart a new career, but here there is a dilemma for me : I really like my crew members and don't want to lose them. What can I do to keep and transfert them to a new 1.2 career? Is copy/paste the crew datas in the persistent.sfs file just be enough and will not breed conflicts in the game?

[omelaw]

You will bring everyone to kerbin because crew in nonexist vehicle will be deleted

[Superfluous J]

Copy/pasting crew between saves is a bad idea, as there are many other places in the save where those crew are referenced.

One thing you CAN do (I've done it in the past) is just copy the name, gender, and profession (all that's really important) out of one save for each Kerbal, and paste it in over the information in the new save on BRAND NEW KERBALS. And don't do it to someone you rescued, you must hire them.

You can do it to Jeb, Bill, and Bob even so long as you do it before they do anything.

You'll lose XP and history, so hopefully that's not the important part for you. If so, I'm not sure what you could do.

[RexKramer]

That is a really interesting question, unfortunately I don't have a copy of 1.0.5 to test that out on.  Here's a couple of suggestions though-

1. Make a BACKUP copy of your 1.0.5 save file, in case something goes wrong.

2. As omelaw stated, probably simplest to bring your entire roster back to Kerbin.  Not sure if this is completely necessary, as you are editing the save file anyway, but will make things easier to diagnose if you run into problems.

3. The Astronaut Complex is limited in how many Kerbals you can have, until you upgrade it.  So dumping a large roster of Kerbals into a new career could potentially have issues.  The Kerbal 'limit' in the AC can be exceeded in certain situations, and you may be able to edit your roster into a new career with no issues.  Having your original game backed up would be wise however, just in case.

4. In a previous version, there was an issue when a Kerbal was fired or otherwise removed from the roster, but had completed a milestone before being fired or killed.  I think that issue was cleared up, but another reason to have a backup of your original save file in case issues arise.

Excellent question! Please report back with information regarding how your transfer turned out, it will certainly be helpful to other players.

[bewing]

1.2 allows you (in the debug menu) to create specific Kerbals. You could pretend that you are "moving" them. You can move them a few at a time, as you upgrade your Astronaut Complex. The tool allows you to go over any limits, though -- so you can copy the entire list right from the start.

[XB-70A]

Thanks everyone.

I will try a manual re-writing of a persistent file just as a test then will report the results. If it is a failure I will apply @bewing solution.