Recovering a ship

[GeneralGrievous]

Hello! It appears that I have a little problem.

Recently, my game corrupted, and I had to uninstall/reinstall it. I took my precautions and placed my blueprints in a separate folder, and then did the whole procedure. However, for some reason, part of one of my ship's folders was also destroyed in the process. Long story short, I tried everything I could to recover it, but all of my information was gone. Or almost. I compared the remnants of the blueprint's folders with the other blueprint folders I had.

within them, I can see "ATTACHED_X" X being different numbers, that go from 0 to 80 and more. On my remaining files of the blueprint I wished to save, only a few of these "ATTACHED" were still there. However, the "DATA" folder is still completely intact, and even has some information named "ENTITY_SHIP_Nameoftheshipwithnumbers" as a SMD3 file. What I am wondering is: Based on this, is there a way I can take this entity, move it in my server, and recover the ship? If not, is there anything else I can do? Hopefully, this is the right spot on the forums to post this.

 

[DrTarDIS]

I've had luck copying the entity files from the old/corrupted universe (not the blueprints) into the new universe a very specific way:

Create a new entity, just a core, in an open sector, with EXACTLY the same name as the entity you wish to recover (numbers too)
copy the files of that exact name from the old universe OVER the files of that name in the new universe (while it's not loaded, of course)
reload universe, recovered entity should now be floating where the core was.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Thank you for the reply. However, I'm afraid it didn't work. The files I have for the entity of my ship is a SMD3 file, where as the files from the new world is ENT files. Not only this but the names for those files don't contain extra stuff, like .0.0.0. at the end of them. I still tried to do what you did, but It didn't work. Is there anything else I could try?

 

[DrTarDIS]

no, copy the ENT file from the old world man, THat's the way

 

[Donoterase]

I know this is an old thread, but I would rather post here than create a new one. I tried several methods that were outlined throughout the forums, including DrTarDIS's, but none of them worked right. The closest I had gotten was an invisible ghost that had the structure and armor points correct and nothing else but a core.

Do not despair! I have found at way to at least partially retrieve your ships with the current (0.199.664). My method was this:
* Build a fresh savegame (new universe).
* Find an empty sector, create a core with the EXACT SAME NAME as the ship you are trying to recover.
* Exit the game completely.
* Go to your game's folders. If you use Steam, this could take some digging. But head over to StarMade\StarMade\server-database\MyCrashedWorld\DATA. Look for something called ENTITY_SHIP_(your ship's name).smd3
* Copy that file directly over to the new world's location, overwriting the file you find there if prompted.
* Log back into the game. Your core should now be a ship.

Now, this is a partial fix. Tried as a might, I could not get the docked entities to come back with it correctly. Also, everything from guns to logic to passive effects are unplugged and need to be reconnected. Display modules will have to be re-entered, as well. I still found this to be a rather small price to pay, since the ships I was retrieved represented dozens of man-hours of planning and building to get to where they were, and a few elevators and hangar doors were a very small price to pay (I save turrets separately, so no real loss there, either).

If someone should find a way to get a more complete recovery than this, I am all ears. I have had my savegames crash three times, now, in the span of 3 months. I don't like the idea that I have to save every WIP at the end of each session, and if I have a world I really like, I will now have to devise a way to periodically export the whole save folder as a sort of backup.

 

[AndyP]

Or with pictures:
How to recover a ship from a broken world.

As an alternative:
Skip the .ent file copy, and just copy the smd2/smd3 files over.
This would only transfer the block-data and delete all links and such, but at least preserve all the design work.

- Andy