Fixed Co-op save breaking bug

So I am playing on the Alpha 8 archive, and have a save me and a bunch of friends play on. I play single player and switch it to co op if a friend wants to come join. This has worked and we have played together multiple times.

Now however, if I load the save as single player, it all works fine. But if I try to load as co op, I get stuck on the loading screen after it loads planets. I have exited the game with the server still up, and created a copy of the save and tried loading that instead. Both yield the same result:

It spawns me in orbit as a completely new character. Level 1, no ships on registry, no faction, nothing. Normally I could get past this with commands but it seems to take away my admin privileges too. If I save and exit, and load the save as single player, I'm right back where I was before I tried opening Co op. If I try to load Co op, I am in space again. It is like it tries to load a whole other character for co op.

EAC is disabled, UAC is set to give me notifications if the server wants to start up (I get the notification every time). I have hosted the server before multiple times with no issue so my system requirements should not be an issue either. I have no idea how to fix this and not sure if I could come back to this game for a long time if it keeps breaking. Alpha and all that I know, but still lots of time put in the save. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Also verified my files through steam and have tried everything short of reinstalling because that could take me over a day.

 

So in SP I killed my character to see if that would help, and chose Fresh Start. Once I landed on the starter planet in my escape pod, I saved and exited, and tried starting as Co op. It still refuses to load my character. Looking at the empyrion dedicated server tool, it says my character is on Udus, and our starter planet I am on is Hutah. (it says nA after my character on the server tool if that helps).

The only thing that has changed is alpha 9.2 was released but as we were playing on Alpha 8 archive I don't see how that affected my save.

I tried launching co op from old versions of the save, same issue.
Starting a new game as SP then going to Co op in Alpha 8 works fine.
Started a new game as Co op in Alpha 9 it works fine.
Trying to load the save in Alpha 9 Co op gives the same issue.
Loading the save in Alpha 9 SP works normally.

Before this all started I was in Udus Orbit, but had not yet been to Udus in SP or Co op. When starting in Co op, it tried putting me on Udus even though I had never visited the playfield. So in SP I went to Udus to discover the playfield, and now instead of infinite loading, in SP it loads me normally, but in Co op it puts me on the new, non admin character.

It 100% is somehow using two characters. Loading as Co op puts me on a whole new character than when I start the game as SP. And as the character it loads in Co op has no admin rights, I can't fix anything broke by this issue. I can't give the new character admin rights either.

 

Started a new game as Co op in Alpha 9 it works fine.
Trying to load the save in Alpha 9 Co op gives the same issue.

That was in the reply, but it was rather lengthy so easy to miss. A friend helped me troubleshoot and they were able to load into the hosted server fine, which means the issue is with my specific character, or I guess characters I should say since I somehow have 2 characters on the same save.

 

FIXED IT!! Only took like 7 hours to figure out.

I followed the steps here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/383120/discussions/0/3288067088101559318/
but then also repeated the steps for the Shared file. It will reset your character but there will be admin rights now that you can use to get back anything you lost (factory materials, exp, etc.)