Unable to Find Ship Files

I've had that happen to exported parts but never a ship.  Do you have a saved game from when you designed the ship?

I have the saved game, and I can open the ship in the designer as well as build the ship at shipyards...

I found a way to resolve this... I recorded the differences between the earlier save (which had a file) and the new ship design (which had no file but was saved in the game) and then deleted the file-less ship, used the old design, made the changes, and saved the corrected design. I'm not sure if there was another work-around, but that's what I did and it worked...

Just noticed the same thing with one of my ships.  I luckily had an autosave to fall back on, but since it wasn't an update but an entirely new ship I can't do what you did as I'd have to build it from scratch.

i thought there was something back in the alpha where they changed the location ship's were being saved to is it possible that your currently looking in the old location?

I suppose that's possible, but all my new ships are going to the Documents/My Games/GalCiv3/Designs folder.

Of course, that doesn't preclude the possibility that the files are also being saved elsewhere, but in addition to looking everywhere that made sense to me, I did a hard drive search for the name of the ship and came up with no results...

"C:\Users\..\Documents\My Games\GalCiv3\Designs"

Should be the location that all ship saves are located, I hope this helps!

Thanks Raynman--it helps knowing that this is where ships should be. But there is definitely a bug in this, and I'm not sure how to report it...

Obviously, if I send the save game, you won't have the ship save file on your hard drive (which is the problem I am having). And I can't send the ship file, because it doesn't exist... I have the saved game with the ship in question visible in the designer (minus a thumbnail)--would it be helpful for me to submit a support ticket with the saved game? Maybe you could duplicate the bug in the saved game by opening the ship in the designer and then attempting to save it as a new design?? When I try saving it as a new design, no file is created...

Let me know if sending the save game wouldn't be a waste of the team's time and energy, and I'll send it.

trumpeter87,

I have had success with the following procedure (of my own devising, so no guarantee whatsoever).
[Assuming no hardware problems]

What you can try is - at your own risk:

1. Make sure GalCiv3 is not running;
2. Rename the Designs directory - For example rename it to DesignsBackupDir;
3. Create a new Designs subdirectory;
4. Leave it empty;
5. Start GalCiv3;
6. Load a gamesave which contains the ship you wish to rescue;
7. Enter the Designer;
8. Make a small modification to the ship;
9. Save it with a different name - A unique name that you have not used previously;
10. Close GalCiv3;
11. Look in the Designs directory, if the design files are there then move the three files into the old designs sub directory (DesignsBackupDir);
12. Remove the now empty Designs sub directory;
13. Rename the old designs sub directory back to its original name Designs;
14. On the same level as the Designs sub directory there may exist a file also called Designs (this file should not exist), rename it to something else - For example Designs.old
15. Start GalCiv3;
16. Start a new game, with the same race as to which the missing ship belonged;
17. if needed unlock the techs;
18. Enter into the designer;
19. if you can now see your ship, Yeah, but still continue on;
20. Undo the modification done in step 8;
21. Save it under its original name;
22. Close GalCiv;
23. Check if you can now see both the ships in the Designs directory - the one with the unique name and the one with the original name.

Good luck.

Thanks Thecw. If I encounter this problem in the future (assuming the bug can't be found and squished), I'll try the process you've outlined. I really appreciate the detailed response.

A little while ago I had another file-less ship issue, and I ran through your steps and everything seems to have worked. After I backup the design and submit it, I am going to see if it also remedied the file in the original save game...

Tried your method Thecw, but got no job.  However, when I was messing with it I added a piece of equipment and the new save of the ship started to show up in the shipyard list and also in the design folder.  I have no idea why it did this.  I wonder if it had anything to do with that I cheated my way to the large hulls confused the game.

The Sisko don't think cheating caused it, I am well over 100 designs and my favorite to play is to give all the civs every tech and 1000000 credit.  I've never lost a ship except the few alpha 3 broke.  Oh and it makes for an interesting game too.

The adding of something marks the design as 'modified'. The designer only make a real save (to file in the Designs directory) if he think there has been a change. That is why step 8 in my procedure is essential. if not done the designer thinks there is nothing to save and consequently does not even try.

I can imagine several things (bugs) that could cause the 'not-saving' behaviour: The 'modified'-flag is not properly set (during design alteration) or read (when you close the designer), the target design file might be in use (by another thread or antivirus[?]).

When i am going to design a ship i quite frequently start up GalCiv3, create a new game, unlock all the techs, and then do my thing. So i too 'cheat' my way to the larger hulls, and i have never had any problems because of that, nor have i heard of anyone having the unlocking of techs cause the 'not-saving' problem. In my regular games i never (unlock) cheat, because that messes up everything, so if i design a ship while 'in-game' it is one with the hull size and techs available a that moment.

Update on the not saving problem:

After an email exchange with Brad Ather (Stardock support) in which i supplied a game save file which contained an unsaveable design, they came to the conclusion that there was something (invisible) strange inside the name field; even while there was nothing weirdly done during the naming of the ship.

The resolution (that works for me) so far is:

During saving of the design, use the <Delete> key to completely empty the name field, then hit the <Delete> and <Backspace> key for good measure to really make sure the name text field is empty; Give it a new name, and see if it now saves.

Maybe this helps other people with the same problem.

Good call on the naming convention. I suspected it may have been because I was using an initial, hyphen, and number before the name, which isn't something I normally do, but that seemed to be about the only difference. And the ships named like that were not saved about half the time.

trumpeter87,

if you have game saves that contains unsaveable designs please submit them to support because while they observed the error, they were unable to discover what causes it to occur.

one thing I found out with the png file is if the game see the other two files it will make a new .png file.

CW, I have doing exactly this every time I save  a new ship design. However when I share my design files others cannot see the ships unless I strip down to hull only, no arms, defense, or support parts modules, then rename the file in game before sending it or uploading it, This seems to be the only way I can share my ship files that other can see and use in game.

I still think there is a problem with functional ship parts that come with game that are contributing to the save problem. I cannot share files of fully equipped ships that other testers and players can see in designer or shipyard without them being stripped down to hull only.

Question is why is this happening? Prior to Beta 2 update 0.50 this was not even a problem, update 0.51 made it even worse.

I've reported this to the developers. Thank you for posting the information regarding this issue.

Thank Gear. Glad you reported this!!!!

I want the OVERWRITE feature brought back to the ship designer like we had in GC2 when we saved ships after modifying them. I think this would solve a lot of problems.