Start in any year

A quick guide to editing a save game to allow you to start in different years.

Requirements

Hex editor (if you don't know what this is, then it's probably best you don't make these changes)
Text editor

Process

Create a new save game, with the map you wish to use and the settings you like. Set the year to 1960. Save it with a name that does not include "1960".

Locate your save game (<steam folder>\SteamApps\common\SovietRepublic\media_soviet\save\<name>).
Open the file "header.bin" in your hex editor.
Search for the integer value 1960. In the save I have used, this has always been at offset 19C, but yours may vary.
You'll see the hex values A8 07. Change this to 9E 07 for 1950. Save the file.

Open the file stats.ini in your text editor.
Search for the string "1959" and replace with "1949". If you made the save as soon as the game began then there should be two of these entries. It is possible that by random chance "1959" could appear in other places. Only edit lines starting with "$DATE_YEAR".
Update: Now that seasons have been implemented, the game no longer starts at the beginning of the year, so the first year may be "1960". If you don't find "1959" then try "1960" and replace that with "1950".


Save the file and then open the save in the game.

You can use other values too. Even though vehicle availability dates start at 1950, they still appear even in 1940.
Update: Vehicle dates are now strict in the open beta, so you will need to use mods or edit the start dates of the vanilla vehicles.

The modding community has created this collection of pre-1960 vehicles to use:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2354857994

[Aberro]

I sent you a friend invitation, so that I won't have to send my contact details in comments. Please, accept and write me a message. I'll need slightly more info to debug.

[lynx]

@Aberro. I tried to use your tool but despite of following the manual from GitHub I got error that I put -r or -c parameters in bad format. How, if I put them as integer numbers?
Example of tool callout in wincmd: "SRStatEditor.exe -r=1 -u=1 -i=stats.ini -o=stats2.ini"

[Laertes1972]

You probably mean the script set.Year from cKorzeN. You can find it in the Workshop -> Scripts.
However, it does not seem to work so well in version 0.8.8.15 ... at least I have some problems with it from time to time.
I'm probably too blond for @Aberro's tool. I can't find a download button on the page. It still works best directly according to @Fiend's description.

[Aberro]

Seriously?
It's literally one comment below yours.

[Ale is Yum!]

Somebody made a little tool that could do this. It was great, but now a I can find it.

[Aberro]

It can not only modify header.bin, but also statistics files - changing years, removing some entries from older years. Multiple statistics files supported.

[Aberro]

I've made a tool for this, based on your instruction: https://github.com/Aberro/SRStatEditor/releases/tag/1.0

[Musickiller]

I don't think it works still... can't find it in my saves =(
Does it matter whether it's a cloud or local save?

[LKC]

Thank you!!!

[johnny]

Hi, for everyone who can use linux, here is a a shell script you can use to set any start year. You can copy the following lines into a file called 'changeyear.sh' in your save game directory. Then run 'sh changeyear.sh 1920' for e.g. changing the year to 1920.
And here is the script:

---

#!/bin/sh

year=$1

echo "Changing start year to $year"

dd if=header.bin of=header.bin.new bs=412 count=1 >& /dev/null
echo -ne "\x`echo "obase=16;$year%256" | bc `" >> header.bin.new
echo -ne "\x`echo "obase=16;$year/256" | bc `" >> header.bin.new
dd if=header.bin of=header.bin.new skip=414 seek=414 bs=1 >& /dev/null

mv header.bin.new header.bin

sed -r "s/(\\\$DATE_YEAR) [0-9]{4}/\\1 $year/g" -i stats.ini