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 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...

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?

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank Gear. Glad you reported this!!!!