Request: prolong the life of abandoned ships

[Undinist]

I like to collect abandoned ships and park them in a row. I want to create that Davis-Monthan AFB look http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/04images/Boneyards/AAA_Boneyard_03.jpg But the game keeps crashing, usually when I have 3 or 4 ships. The most I have managed is 7. I can't work out what is triggering the crashes. (Abandoned ships don't get stored in save files, so if you close the game or die or the game crashes, they all disappear.)

 

I'm playing the PC version with a handful of mods. I try to park the ships away from buildings because I've noticed that they often spontaneously move a few feet to a new parking spot because they are interacting with landing pads or the zone around the remote call terminal. Perhaps they also re-park when they trip the 'Destination Reached' thing.

 

The crashes are very annoying because assembling a group of ships takes forever - it means lots and lots of walking and tricky navigation and inventory management. (The only way I can avoid getting lost is to mark an abandoned ship's location with a grave marker.)

 

Maybe I could reduce the number of crashes if I just parked the ships untidily and left them. But I'm always swapping back and forth from ship to ship so I can get them placed together for a group shot - a group shot is really my only payoff for this whole thing!

 

Here are my best efforts:

 

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab257/eurostar2/threeships.png

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab257/eurostar2/fourships2.png

 

 

I tried to populate all the pads at a Trading Post with my fleet but the NPC ships didn't notice that the pads were occupied so I got some bizarre mergers. When this happened I was still able to get in my ship and fly away:

 

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab257/eurostar2/shipsmating1.png

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab257/eurostar2/shipsmating3.png

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab257/eurostar2/shipsmating2.png