A warning about editing the crew list in your persistent file

[Dave Kerbin]

A long time ago I asked a question about whether it was safe to delete Bill, Bob and Jeb from my save file. I wanted to have new, original crew members each time I started a new career. No one had yet encountered any issues with this and so I did it and I've run several careers without issue.

But now I've found (and was able to sort of patch back into a working state) one issue that occurs. For some reason if you delete crew from the Crew {} section after your career is already underway it causes a completely unrelated bug to occur - the R&D building is closed and you can't run experiments (you get the message you would in sandbox mode). It seems like a really weird connection and I couldn't figure it out immediately because I had made several non-science related launches between deleting those 3 and trying to do some science.

It was only because I started keeping a backup at the end of each mission to guard against the kraken that I was able to run diff on working vs not working save files. The cause of past issues was not found and in fact those sections where identical between the working and not working files. I removing differences one by one but the only difference that had an effect on the R&D facility was the crew list. By adding back the 3 deleted crew members the R&D building suddenly worked again. This did mean I had to go in and manually figure out the correct seat assignments for kerbals already in flight (since they where replaced by jeb and bill) but it finally all works.

So the warning here is, don't edit the Crew {} section after your career in underway, even if you've never used those crew members.

[problemecium]

Hmmm.

Very interesting bug you have here, but when I tried to replicate it my R&D center was still fully functional. Did you make sure that Jeb, Bill, and Bob were not in a ship when you deleted them, and that you didn't accidentally miss a bracket or something when you edited the SFS file?

Also, not that this is likely to help mods notice, but this should be in Support & Bugs.

[TMS]

A long time ago I asked a question about whether it was safe to delete Bill, Bob and Jeb from my save file. I wanted to have new, original crew members each time I started a new career. No one had yet encountered any issues with this and so I did it and I've run several careers without issue.

RandomCrew does this. Regex's notes make interesting reading.

[Kasuha]

Crew members are often referenced by their number on crew list. If you remove first three and let some numbers refer behind the end of the crew list, problems may occur. But I'd guess these problems might sort out themselves after you hire three more crew members.

[NecroBones]

It sounds like the safer option is to just sequester Jeb/Bill/Bob away instead of trying to delete them. You know, put them in a capsule and send them to the North Pole, or something.

[Superfluous J]

Instead of deleting them, I just renamed them and changed their values so they were just like the other Kerbals.

[problemecium]

Having read the above posts, my closing statement for posterity is that if you don't want the orange guys, delete them before you launch anything.

[Madrias]

I tend to send Jeb, Bill, and Bob on a nice semi-permanent vacation to the Island Runway.

[pxi]

Can I ask what text editor you used to edit the save file?

AFAIK bad things will happen if the text file's encoding is changed from ANSI UTF-8, such as if you use windows notepad to edit the file.

[katateochi]

What is this? the 3rd AGM of the Society for the Deportation of Jeb?

Seriously, interesting bug find, but why is everyone banishing Jeb and co? Is it for their own protection or did they do something?

Can I ask what text editor you used to edit the save file?

AFAIK bad things will happen if the text file's encoding is changed from ANSI UTF-8, such as if you use windows notepad to edit the file.

I've found that windows notepad does work, but it's unpleasant to use. Vim. I use Vim. for a couple reasons 1) vim opens large (several 100mb) files very fast, whereas notepad can take ages loading just a 4mb save file, 2) vim has line folding so you can collapse sections into a single line which is extremely useful when editing saves/craft files. It's a bit tricky to learn thou. I hear good things about notepad++

[Superfluous J]

What is this? the 3rd AGM of the Society for the Deportation of Jeb?

Seriously, interesting bug find, but why is everyone banishing Jeb and co? Is it for their own protection or did they do something?

I can't speak for others, but I put the names of any viewer who asks in my game and when I got enough people, it seemed better to have only viewers (and me) and just skip on Jeb, Bill and Bob.

I hear good things about notepad++

It's my editor of choice. Other than a command prompt, it's just about the only program I have running 24/7, unless my computer has just been rebooted and I haven't gotten around to loading it.

[pxi]

I've found that windows notepad does work, but it's unpleasant to use. Vim. I use Vim. for a couple reasons 1) vim opens large (several 100mb) files very fast, whereas notepad can take ages loading just a 4mb save file, 2) vim has line folding so you can collapse sections into a single line which is extremely useful when editing saves/craft files. It's a bit tricky to learn thou. I hear good things about notepad++

Funny, I've heard the exact opposite about windows notepad, wheras using windows wordpad was always suggested instead.

And Notepad++ is really quite good imho.

[NecroBones]

Personally, I use the Windows version of Vim for editing the save files. I haven't had any problems with that, as the "Vi" line of editors are designed to preserve formatting as much as possible.