Space Haven – How to Copy an Old Ship to a New Save

This can be used to copy a ship from Alpha 9 to Alpha 10, or just from one save to another in Alpha 10. It also copies over the crew, inventories, and all the settings like schedules, priorities, and manufacturing limits. It will not carry over money or shuttles and pods, however. It can also be used for multiple ships.

Guide to Copy

All credit goes to Blue2237!

Copy from the Old File…

You’ll need a current-version manual save file, so if you don’t have one then start a new game, take note of the name of the ship you start on, save manually, and then quit.

• Go to SteamsteamappscommonSpaceHavensavegames, then find the folder with the name of your old save. Copy and paste it to another location as a backup. Open it, then open the one called “save”, and then open the file called “game” with something like Notepad++.
• Press Ctrl-F and type your ships name. If you have “Match case” checked, either uncheck it or type the name in all caps. Then click “Find All in Current Document”.
• Take note of the line number that your ships name is on. Open the find window again and type </ship>, then click “Find Next”. Click on the line number that </ship> sits on.
• Now, go back to the line you noted and Shift-click on the line number. Press Ctrl-C and, to make it easy to find again in case you copy something else, paste it in a text file.
• You’ll also want to search for isPlayer=”true”, and copy the line that’s between <createdShips> and </createdShips>, which are right below what you just searched. Paste that to a text file as well.

…and Paste It to the New File

• Now you need to open your new save file. It’s the same process as before, but with the new files name instead. Make sure to back this up as well.
• Press Ctrl-F and type the starter ships name. If you have “Match case” checked, either uncheck it or type the name in all caps. Then click “Find All in Current Document”.
• Open the search window again and type </ship>, then click “Find Next”. Go to the end of the line and press Enter. Paste your old ship here.
• Now search for isPlayer=”true” again. There will be a line like the one you copied before, so go to the end of it, press Enter, and paste the old line.
• Save the new save and, if everything went well, you should now have your old ship in your new game as well as your old crew, resources, and ship/crew settings. It won’t carry over your money or your shuttles and pods, though.
• If you load the new game and save it, the game seems to update some stuff like the crew to the new version, so you can edit them easily as well.