Clone saved game to sandbox, Import a save from another install

[Skorj]

In KSP1 many players (to judge by the forums) use a sandbox save as a "mission simulator" for missions.  Run a mission in the sandbox to see if the planning was right before running it in the career save, tweaking and cheating as needed to get a reasonable design, or see if a part is worth unlocking, or whatnot.  This is straightforward (if a bit tedious) as you just need to run the clock forward in the Sandbox save to run the mission.  For KSP2 it seems like there would be too much to recreate on planets and perhaps in orbit for this to be practical.  So, could we get a documented way to clone a saved game into sandbox mode?

As a similar problem, it would be nice to be able to move saved games between installs in some supported way.  I'm currently running 3 different installs of KSP1 from Steam and GOG to play with different mixes of mods and KSP versions safely, but that's awkward and it's nice to merge back into a single install once all the mods catch up.  Other use cases are to archive a save game and come back to it much later, or to "fork" a multiplayer game into diverging single-player games.

I'm not sure we'd need UI support for this, just some supported recipe for what to do after copying the folders around.  Maybe a "scan for new save games" button, at most, and some supported way to change a career game to sandbox?

 

[Caerfinon]

8 minutes ago, Skorj said:

it would be nice to be able to move saved games between installs in some supported way

I use a standalone file utility program to keep my career game and flight test sandbox saves synced.  There are many free ones available for the various operating systems. Run the sync tasks when KSP is not running. 

Whenever I want to plan out a mission, I copy career to test flight and tweak it until I'm satisfied. I use craft manager to manage ships and it allows the copying from one save to another within the same game instance in-game.

[yoarebignoob]

CRASH has a simulator but costs funds

Kerbal construction time has a free one.

[Skorj]

Yes, I do understand that there are mods for this in KSP1.  Frankly, it shouldn't need a mod.  I'm suggesting that KSP2 support this officially (whether by mod hooks or its own UI), with appropriate docs and change control.  It shouldn't take much, just something official that says "this is how the game knows what the save games are", and if a UI is left to modders, a promise not to change the technical details without warning said modders.

 

[shdwlrd]

There was talk after the announcement that an in-game simulation mode was going to be added to the career mode. That was a long time ago, who knows if it's going to happen or not.

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, Skorj said:

In KSP1 many players (to judge by the forums) use a sandbox save as a "mission simulator" for missions.  Run a mission in the sandbox to see if the planning was right before running it in the career save, tweaking and cheating as needed to get a reasonable design, or see if a part is worth unlocking, or whatnot.  This is straightforward (if a bit tedious) as you just need to run the clock forward in the Sandbox save to run the mission.  For KSP2 it seems like there would be too much to recreate on planets and perhaps in orbit for this to be practical.  So, could we get a documented way to clone a saved game into sandbox mode?

If you disabled revert flight and are now circumventing the fact it's disabled, just turn revert flight on instead of running through hoops to avoid a challenge you set yourself.

If KSP 2 saves are formatted anything like KSP 1 saves, you should just need to copy the entire thing and change the mode in the persistent.sfs header.

[Skorj]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

If KSP 2 saves are formatted anything like KSP 1 saves, you should just need to copy the entire thing and change the mode in the persistent.sfs header.

Indeed.  The people who read this forum are well-suited to reverse-engineering the game to figure things out.  Modders do a heroic job of reverse engineering KSP.  But we forum-go-ers don't represent the average player, and the world of "new release breaks all the mods" is hardly ideal.

I guess it shows how helpful the forum community is, that people are responding to a post in the "KSP2 Suggestions" forum as if it were in the "Technical Support" forum. 

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, Skorj said:

The people who read this forum are well-suited to reverse-engineering the game to figure things out.

I think that's overblowing my expertise a bit. Quicksave files are extremely simple to understand in KSP 1 (the settings are written in plain English and the file itself isn't buried deep), and I suspect that in the pursuit of efficiency KSP 2 may not go with such a format. KSP 1 saves just describe your rocket in almost plain English as a list of parts which the game parses, and I guess there are ways to format saves that wouldn't take so long to read.