Well, there's two things that might be causing this.
One, I was using EST, the trading software. So some of the objects have pilot names with ranks.
Second, I was using Terracorps, which named and ranked pilots and assigned them to Task Forces, all of which are in the object line.
This was not an issue in the X3 to X3 conversions before.
Here's an example of a Task Force pilot:
<t id="541">object=ship;main=7;sub=54;sec.x=0;sec.y=5;x=-442;y=880; z=1904;docked=1;id=0186;homebase.id=0279;wares=16.63.1:16.58.1: 16.57.1:16.56.1:16.53.1:16.52.1:16.51.1:16.39.1: 16.25.1:16.23.1:16.22.1:16.19.1:16.18.15:16.17.15:16.16.140:16.14.1: 9.2.2:10.4.5:10.0.14:8.25.4:;hull=100;shield=100;pilotname=CEnsig nX CGaryX CKeeneX;locvars=;cmd=none;target.type=null;target.value=null; name=YM3-MbX SZ-47 CCEnsX CG. CKeeneXX C{TF - 16}X;</t>
This forum software is altering some of the text from the xml file; there are no funny squiggly things, just semi colons and hypens and periods. The strange thing you see above, is replacing "arrows" from the original xml. The Task Force pilots do have some long text associated with them.
Not sure if I can "take them out" without disrupting the sequence of ID numbers. Any way of making the script so that it ignores this stuff? Many of us used the Terracorps scripts by Myros, Jennsemann, Eladin, Siath, etc.