[Guide] Useful Save Game Edits (many cool tricks & workarounds!)

[Simoom]

How to edit coordinates of ship in your fleet to different?

Can you be more specific about what you are trying to do? Are you trying to move your ship to a different location in the same zone, or a different zone altogether?

Is there any way to advance a savegame to a new plot mission? I'm stuck at the "Wait" part of the mission where you have to go to Last Stand and fight some Xenon. Apparently, four major versions and god knows how many minor versions are not enough to fix all the bugs with this oh-so-compicated campaign /s.

Usually the "Wait" part of a mission has a timer that expires if no enemies are found (happens on patrol missions frequently if a zone you need to patrol has no enemies). How long have you been waiting on this part?

I have played through the campaign 4 times now and the only time I had a plot-breaking bug was when the game was in v1.x (the final part scanning the Xenon station, the drone interface bugged out)

If you are very sure your plot mission is stuck, link me your save game, I'll take a look.

[J. Spartan]

Is there any way to advance a savegame to a new plot mission? I'm stuck at the "Wait" part of the mission where you have to go to Last Stand and fight some Xenon. Apparently, four major versions and god knows how many minor versions are not enough to fix all the bugs with this oh-so-compicated campaign /s.

Usually the "Wait" part of a mission has a timer that expires if no enemies are found (happens on patrol missions frequently if a zone you need to patrol has no enemies). How long have you been waiting on this part?

I have played through the campaign 4 times now and the only time I had a plot-breaking bug was when the game was in v1.x (the final part scanning the Xenon station, the drone interface bugged out)

If you are very sure your plot mission is stuck, link me your save game, I'll take a look.

Thanks. This was the weirdest thing ever... when I did the mission, I had to kill ~20 Ks constantly jumping in around the Dig site. So I'm guessing it probably took about two hours to actually clear the sector, which was pretty full of wrecks by the end. All throught that, the mission was just stuck at the "Wait" part and never updated once all the enemies seemed to be destroyed. It was kind of fun, pretty much the first time I had to call in 3 destroyers to help as it felt the endless waves of Ks would just never end. After that I flew around but nothing happened.

So I ended up reloading from the old save I mentioned in the other thread at Spoilers and proceeded straight to do the mission to check if that solves my problem. Guess what... the mission updates straight away, Yisha yelled something about Xenon ships, but at this time, it was only 2 Ks and a couple of fighters. After they were dead, everything went on as intended. Don't know what broke the first time around... but at least it is solved now

[Simoom]

Hmm something must be wrong if you had 20 K's jumping in. I don't remember seeing that at all on X-treme difficulty setting.

Glad you got it resolved!

[Ezarkal]

I noticed several issues with the upkeep missions so far in 4.0:

1. Sometimes, when a ship with upkeep missions (such as assigning cargo drones) is sold to a NPC shipyard, the upkeep missions stay in the mission log even though the property no longer belonged to the player, causing there to be no way of completing such missions (without editing the save game).

I noticed this too. I'd even change the "sometimes" by "very often".
Could you please give some insight on what to edit in the save file to get rid of these missions? I have accumulated a few of these and I'd like to do some cleanup.

Many thanks.


Edit: Post moved out of beta thread as not best place for mod/save edit discussion - Sparky

Edit: Thank you Sparky - Zark

[Simoom]

I noticed several issues with the upkeep missions so far in 4.0:

1. Sometimes, when a ship with upkeep missions (such as assigning cargo drones) is sold to a NPC shipyard, the upkeep missions stay in the mission log even though the property no longer belonged to the player, causing there to be no way of completing such missions (without editing the save game).

I noticed this too. I'd even change the "sometimes" by "very often".
Could you please give some insight on what to edit in the save file to get rid of these missions? I have accumulated a few of these and I'd like to do some cleanup.

Many thanks.


Edit: Post moved out of beta thread as not best place for mod/save edit discussion - Sparky

Edit: Thank you Sparky - Zark

Sure. There are three ways to do it:

1. Transfer ownership of the ship back to you: Open the save game file in a XML editor, and locate the ship (easiest way is to note down the names of the crew on the ship, and search for that). Locate the first line of the asset, it will look something like this:

   Code: Select all

   <component class="ship" macro="[ship's macro]" connection="space" owner="[faction name]" nameindex="1" id="[random numbers]">

   Change the "owner="[faction name]" tag to owner="player". Now do the same for each of the crew members. Now load the save game and the ship should show up under your property list. If it does not respond to your commands, tell it to join your squad, and it should now respond properly. Now do whatever it is you need to complete the upkeep missions (assign more crew, add drones, etc.)
2. Add drones/wares directly to the ship: You can add drones and wares directly to the ship in the save game XML. To add drones, locate the following section under the ship's script:

   Code: Select all

   <turret>[a bunch of turret values]</turret>

   Insert the following lines after the </turret> tag:

   Code: Select all

   <ammunition>
   <available>
   <item macro="units_size_xs_welder_drone_macro" amount="10"/> 
   (construction URV; specify any number you want under "amount" tag)
   <item macro="units_size_xs_transp_empty_macro" amount="10"/>
   (cargo lifter URV)
   <item macro="units_size_drone_attackdrone_plasma_mk2_macro" amount="10"/>
   (intrepid URV, you can specify mk1 or mk2)
   <item macro="units_size_drone_missiledrone_dumbfire_mk2_macro" amount="10"/>
   (overrun URV, you can specify mk1 or mk2)
   <item macro="units_size_xs_wardrone_macro" amount="10"/>
   (assault URV)
   <item macro="units_size_drone_rubble_collector_mk2_macro" amount="10"/>
   (surface miner URV, you can specify mk1 or mk2)
   <item macro="units_size_drone_liquid_collector_mk2_macro" amount="10"/>
   (scoop collector URV, you can specify mk1 or mk2)
   </available>
   </ammunition>

   I can't think of any upkeep mission where you need to add wares... but if you ever need to do so, locate the ship's scripts and search for "storage". You will find a line like this:

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   <connection connection="connection_storage01" macro="connection_storage01">
   <component class="storage" macro="storage_ship_xl_universal_01_macro" connection="shipconnection" id="[0x1059a]">

   The macro="[value]" tag specifies the type of storage (liquid, bulk, etc.). I don't think the game glitches out if you put an inappropriate type of ware in the wrong type of cargo bay, though a little exclamation mark may show to indicate an issue with the storage.
   
   To add wares, simply paste these lines below:

   Code: Select all

   <summary state="collapsed" parent="[0x1059a]" connection="cargo">
   <ware ware="energycells" amount="1000"/>
   <ware ware="reinforcedmetalplating" amount="1000"/>
   </summary>

   The list of ware names is too exhaustive for me to post here, so... if you need help adding a specific ware, let me know.
   NOTE - DO NOT add crew members using method 2; adding crew is a bit more complicated then copying and pasting an NPC's codes in, as the game needs to generate corresponding attributes to each NPC. If you need to add crew, use method 1.
3. The last method is to simply delete the upkeep mission. Below is a sample codes from one of my upkeep missions:

   Code: Select all

   <mission id="39947" name="Acquire units" description="It has been requested that certain units are delivered to this station to improve its operation." faction="player" type="upkeep_units" abortable="0" activation="0" associated="[0x105a1]">
   <briefing>
   <objective step="1" type="acquire_units" text="5 x Cargo Drones for VMC URV BTO Line" active="1"/>
   </briefing>
   <objective step="1" type="acquire_units" text="5 x Cargo Drones for VMC URV BTO Line">
   <targets>
   <target id="[0x105a1]"/>
   </targets>
   </objective>
   </mission>

   You can locate the upkeep mission you are looking for usually by searching directly for the words stated in the objective (for example if it asks you for 3x cargo drones, look for "3 x cargo drones"). You can also locate it by noting down the ship's unique id ("id=[random numbers]"), and search for the value in the brackets. The mission will be tied to that id value.
   
   Deleting everything from <mission> to </mission> tags will remove the mission from your game.

[Ezarkal]

Many thanks! I'll try this out tonight.

[TheZapper]

An easy one:

How to edit (delete) a (M) ship that is stuck inside the Teladi Verdant Profit Ring station.

I sent it in to repair.
Never came out.
It's in there, in my property menu.

4.0 bug of some type.
(Station has all wares for repair or building of any ship).

TZ

[Simoom]

An easy one:

How to edit (delete) a (M) ship that is stuck inside the Teladi Verdant Profit Ring station.

I sent it in to repair.
Never came out.
It's in there, in my property menu.

4.0 bug of some type.
(Station has all wares for repair or building of any ship).

TZ

If the ship still shows up in your property menu, you could simply give it a name, then open up the save file and locate it by searching for that name you gave.

Removing all the codes for that ship from your save game will delete it from the game. However, this is not an advisable method as there may be leftover values from NPC crew (body part values etc.), and I don't know how good the game is about cleaning up such items for objects that no longer exist in the game.

Shouldn't create any ill effect on the gameplay, though. I've done this before for orphaned drones, and the game ran fine.