Persistence in your KSP experience

[rawghi]

It's maybe my first post on the forum but I'm a KSP enthusiast from years. If I consider that I pay 10€ for a drink in a club that lasts 15 minutes and I paid a little more for KSP (more than 100 hrs) I can absolutely say that I totally love KSP and the work that Squad done.

But I've some "ethical" question that I'd like to share and see your answers.

During the various times, I made several games (both career and sandbox) and sometimes bad things happens.. an infamous kraken, a corrupted savegame and so on (the last one is a some sort of phantom force applied to the vessels when I enter Mun SOI... the vessel go out of the view and you cannot control it anymore).

I totally accept that, I usually play with mods, KSP is in beta, so, no I'm absolutely not complaining nor KSP nor Squad.

Let's go to the question: how did you manage that? I mean, what you do to keep some sort of persistence through you game experience?

I'd love to have many satellites and vessels in orbit but these savegame breaking problems usually stuck in and you have to start from scratch.... you keep track of your achievement? you focus your experience on building and testing?

Thanks in advance for you suggestion!

[Guest]

I have around 2k hours in ksp, with 1k on steam and I have to say I very rarely come across something truwly save breaking, and even then a lot of the time you can just edit the pwersistance files

[Lysergic]

I've only encountered one truly bad bug (randomly deleted ships) but it was the day 0.24 hit and I was using a few mods. I suspect one of them was behind it, since when I updated them the next day I never saw the problem again. And in fact I think that's the only bug I've ever seen in 600 hours playtime.

[The Jedi Master]

I've met a few nasty bugs (like the time a ship randomly exploded when I approached it), but nothing truly save breaking. I can honestly say KSP is more stable than some Triple-A games.

[timsfitz]

Haven't had many problems. 1850 hours of play. I start a new game with every update however.

[rawghi]

Mmh... You let me think that maybe I have to check more if these problems are mod related...

[Taki117]

Too many hours to count here, but if I can't edit the save file in some way (which usually fixes most of the bugs) a quick save/reload or game restart usually fixes things, but if I run into a bug I always check the output log to ensure that it's not caused by a mod, and if it is I try to let the mod author know about it.

[Sirrobert]

Kerbal Alarm Clock can automaticly makes backups of your save file. I'd recomend giving that a try

[Pecan]

I only started with 0.22 but so far every update has offered so much that I've restarted. Design lessons, even if not complete .craft files, have accelerated what I can do in each version so I don't think I've really ever lost that much. With 0.24(.2) it's true that my old save had satellites and space-stations around (almost) every planet but since that includes the hardest ones - eg; Moho - and only excludes the ones for which I was still awaiting a transfer window - ie; Eve - I consider it 'done'. I could always launch the same ships all at once and time-warp to ahead of where I was.

[rawghi]

Turned out this time was totally mod-related. Feel free to use this thread to insult me... I'm feel totally dumbass...

[The Jedi Master]

Hey, we're all civilized people. We don't insult people for a simple mistake. This isn't Call Of Duty.

[rawghi]

Hey, we're all civilized people. We don't insult people for a simple mistake. This isn't Call Of Duty.

ahahah you're right.. after all we are... ROCKET BUILDERS!!!

[Sirrobert]

Turned out this time was totally mod-related. Feel free to use this thread to insult me... I'm feel totally dumbass...

That would make sense.

For an early acces alpha, KSP is remarkably stable, so most problems are caused by mods

[katateochi]

Turned out this time was totally mod-related. Feel free to use this thread to insult me... I'm feel totally dumbass...

Any chance you can tell us which mod or combination of mods caused the problem?

I've had saves get broken before, but its not very common, but craft are more vulnerable; the symmetry bug for example can render a craft file totally useless.

Because of that (and because its all to easy to ruin a perfectly good craft yourself) I've written a tool (link in my sig) that maintains automatic version control of both craft and save files. It enables you to reload any past past version of a craft and reload saves (quicksave or autosave) from any point in your career's history, right back to the start if you wanted. It uses the git version control system, so having every single past save and craft version available takes up less space than making 10 regular copies of a persistence file.

[MockKnizzle]

I've suffered more than my fair share of crashes after "upgrading" to the x64 version (sometimes four or five a day), but I still love the game to death. The contract system has actually been a huge factor in my recent persistence, since it gives me concrete goals that are still there when I restart the game. Previously, if I had a Bad Problem in the middle of a particularly long mission, it would put me off the game for several days and when I came back I would just not care about whatever project I had been working on. But now, there are clueless Kerbal companies depending on me

[rawghi]

Any chance you can tell us which mod or combination of mods caused the problem?

Yes it was definitely NOT savegame breaking, as I mistaken for the "Claw/Warp Kraken" that affect the 24.2. It was in fact a little problem with the Chemcam of Tarsier Space Tech, in fact, when I mounted the cam and exit Kerbin orbit the views shift to the left and the vessel exit the viewport (on the right) making it uncontrollable.

Probably is not related to Tarsier Tech, but a combination of mods (I use really many) so I don't think that Tobyb121 (the author of the magnificent Tarsier) can do something.

[cantab]

Backups. I have my KSP folder covered by my online backup tool, which watches for new files - be it persistence, craft, or even a mod I just installed - and automatically uploads them to the backup service.

So yes, while having my flags or even my space station eaten is annoying, I know I can always recover anything if needed.

[Geschosskopf]

Let's go to the question: how did you manage that? I mean, what you do to keep some sort of persistence through you game experience?

I'd love to have many satellites and vessels in orbit but these savegame breaking problems usually stuck in and you have to start from scratch.... you keep track of your achievement? you focus your experience on building and testing?

If it happens to a single ship, well, that's just space travel for you. The most common marking on the star chart, after all, is "Here there be Krakens" Losses are expected. So, depending on how important it was, I might have a memorial service of some sort, or not. But I always just accept the loss and go on.

If it ruins the whole save, well, that's to be expected sometimes given the unfinished nature of the game and all mods. Plus, every update usually breaks a few mods I use, either through their abandonment or by the modder taking the game update opportunity to introduce fundamental revisions to the mod. IOW, I pretty much have to start from scratch with every update anyway. So I just assume that Kerbin is in a cluster of big blue stars that go supernova regularly. When this happens, it destroys everything in space and nukes Kerbin back to basic technology. Whatever happened in the previous version becomes legend, remembered only in the screenshots I took at the time (assumed to be hanging on the wall somewhere in a bunker under KSC).

[magnemoe]

Have had plenty of problems, back in 0.23 I mostly had problems with memory limits, 64 bit has problems with mods as in lots of mod problems. Tried to use some B9 parts and it broke my save and last quicksave was days ago so I use the Skyrim practice, new hard save then I return to spaceport for new important launces or other milstones.

[Rowsdower]

KSP is "Persistence: The Game." If at first you don't succeed...

[Sirrobert]

KSP is "Persistence: The Game." If at first you don't succeed...

...you blow up more Kerbals

[Aethon]

Love your take on the value received for your money spent. Couldn't agree more. Also applies to many other areas of life.

Yeah the Chem cam from Tarsier is buggy, a shame too 'cause it's so cool. I've heard it will cause engine overheating on attached rockets but haven't seen this in person. Currently have one deployed with a crap early rover on the Mun and it's working fine. DON'T let me talk you out of the Tarsier tech mod. I consider it semi essential (come on, Space telescopes) and it has worked fine for me other than some small glitches. I'll edit in a some screen shots.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=267023890

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198071909842/screenshot/3264295631621753721

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300027848

I play moderately modded.

Essentials:

K(erbal) A(larm) C(lock) KAC

K() E(ngineer) R(edux) KER

Chatterer

Enhanced nav ball

ScanSat

Procedural fairings

One thing I do to keep continuity in a worst case scenario is take a lot of close up vessel screen shots so I can reproduce said from images . It's also very important to create backups of your save file. Every few days (usually after accomplishing something painful to reproduce- tech tree completion, satellite net established) I make a stable saves folder to hold my latest KSP save (I keep two). Ask if you don't know how to do this, I can explain (Steam).

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=278677147 (System shuttle detaches from Hydra and turns around for an aerobrake at Kerbin. Remains in orbit to ah- sh shuttle stuff, around the system, I guess.)

And if you lose everything it's a great time to refine your designs and come up with somethin' bigger, better, faster, stronger. I always start a new game every update (Why wouldn't you?). It's a world of impermanence.

Edit- Sometimes when I see something beginning to glitch I'll Alt f4 out before it gets worse and corrupts the save file.

Good luck, welcome, and don't be afraid to ask questions. This is a great community!

-Side note: I hope multi-player PVP KSP doesn't bring the hot heads in here to ruin this helpful camaraderie we have, and make it like some other Forums I don't have to mention.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Aethon

[Javster]

When I installed the Cacteye mod and it deleted all my ships, that was frustrating... It didn't help that the modder refused to take responsibility for the mod having problems.

I think what kept me playing was the general messing around that you can do as well as the serious missions.

[Mazlem]

I still play my original sandbox save from .18.4. Currently it's on .23.5 until a couple mods gets updated (Interstellar please!). The only tweaks I've had to do while upgrading so far were when the landing legs got updated (the first time), when science was introduced, and when asteroids were introduced. If anything I've lost a few ship files from losing the parts for them or something, but I believe everything in-game has been fine.

[roosterr]

I have mapped a network drive on my home network, to a flash drive added to my router. Then at good points in my play, I copy the "saves" folder from KSP to the network drive. This keeps a backup off my main computer. Alternatively you can do the same save on an external hard drive attached to your computer.