Hard Mode + Bugs == No Fun

[Beowolf]

The point is that they should have been fixed by a patch. They really can't put it off until .90 for issues so basic to this game.

And we have another player who didn't understand what "early access" meant. Sorry you're disappointed. Next time I respectfully suggest reading the fine print before you spend your money.

For example, one of my other early access games just announced, "We not only won't be patching this nasty bug, but it won't be fixed in our next release, either. In the next release afterwards, we'd already scheduled to completely rewrite that code so messing with it earlier would be wasted effort we can't afford." It's an annoying bug, but they're right. They have to get the product released and their revenue stream flowing before they're out of seed money or they're bankrupt and there will never be a release. Even a runaway success like KSP probably can't survive just on early-access income, so they're running a race.

[Beowolf]

I'm on easy mode and bugs still annoy me. More than once I've reverted, then quit the game, and a day later loaded up only to see my kerbals still dead, the money still spent.

This may be something I ran into as well. Here's my current understanding: There are four different "games" while you're playing KSP. (1) The live game running in RAM. (2) Your quicksave. (3) The persistence file. (4) a temporary persistence file automatically created when you initiate a launch, that's used to revert.

The persistence file is what gets loaded when you start the game, but only gets updated every few minutes during play (when the game says it's autosaving). It also gets updated when you exit KSP, but *ONLY* if you exit through the menus. If you Alt-F4 it won't get updated.

So, if you revert then Alt-F4, KSP has overwritten the live game, but the permanent persistence file wasn't updated. When you restart, it uses the permanent one but now it's in the last autosave state where I'm guessing your launch happened, but the ship wasn't safe in orbit yet, and it doesn't have screen focus so just runs on rails until it crashes back to Kerbin.

Maybe backing out through all those menus will help.

There's also a wonderful trick you can do with all those save files. If you quickload, then to your horror discover the save was much older than you thought and you wish for an undo, Alt-F4 immediately. The persistence file probably hasn't updated, so when you restart you only lose a few minutes instead of however many hours back that quicksave was.

I've also started dragging a copy of the persistence file to my desktop every time I start a new play session. Haven't needed it yet, but I like that extra layer of safety.

[Guest]

I'm stopping by to repeat what admiral_ant said:

Hey man, these definitely suck. Luckily, there are fixes!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97285-0-25-Stock-Bug-Fix-Modules

For those of you that are frustrated with the EVA bugs and the Decoupler bugs, get this fix from Claw. It makes the game SO much more enjoyable.

Stop by and thank Claw. His thread should be stickied and the fixes should be put in the game and a patch rolled out by Squad! My 10 cents worth.

[Guest]

There's also a wonderful trick you can do with all those save files. If you quickload, then to your horror discover the save was much older than you thought and you wish for an undo, Alt-F4 immediately. The persistence file probably hasn't updated, so when you restart you only lose a few minutes instead of however many hours back that quicksave was.

The alt-f4 trick took a little while for me to learn. I would always look on in horror and disgust until my brain would finally click in and by then it would be too late. Fortunately, the autosave features can be changed in the settings.cfg to give more time to alt-f4 before the overwrite.

[NecroBones]

This may be something I ran into as well. Here's my current understanding: There are four different "games" while you're playing KSP. (1) The live game running in RAM. (2) Your quicksave. (3) The persistence file. (4) a temporary persistence file automatically created when you initiate a launch, that's used to revert.

The persistence file is what gets loaded when you start the game, but only gets updated every few minutes during play (when the game says it's autosaving). It also gets updated when you exit KSP, but *ONLY* if you exit through the menus. If you Alt-F4 it won't get updated.

So, if you revert then Alt-F4, KSP has overwritten the live game, but the permanent persistence file wasn't updated. When you restart, it uses the permanent one but now it's in the last autosave state where I'm guessing your launch happened, but the ship wasn't safe in orbit yet, and it doesn't have screen focus so just runs on rails until it crashes back to Kerbin.

It's also useful to note that the persistence file is often updated when switching controlled craft, or going back to the space center. Also when putting a new vehicle out on the pad. As far as I can tell, it only auto-saves if several minutes have gone by, and you haven't done one of those things.

Alt-F4 (or closing the window if you're in windowed mode), definitely bypasses this and exits immediately.

[numerobis]

Apple-Q used to be reliable like that, but it seems not to be in 0.25 somehow. Whatever, just a game; I'll play career mode if it gets bad.