How to copy settings and overview positioning for alts

For a multi-alt setup, such as a mining fleet, it can be difficult to get the overview positioning consistent across all characters.

A third party tool could do this for you, but I have struggled to get them to work. There is a guide on the EVE forums, but I thought it a little too time consuming.

This guide will help you to copy your game settings and overview positioning from one character to all the others, and along-side eve-o-preview, it can be very helpful when commanding a fleet of alts.

Preperation

Depending on the number of alts, you may want to make a small spreadsheet or table to track account and character IDs, which can be referred to if you ever decide to repeat this process.

The easiest way to find a character ID is to search for it on EveWho. If you copy the character name from your table and paste it into the EveWho search box, EveWho will automatically search for the character, saving you some time.

In the URL after the /character is a string of numbers – this is the character ID. So, 2120482057 is the character ID for No Sympathy.

Another way to find the character ID, which is also the way in which we will find the account ID, is through the game files saved to your computer. Close all EVE clients and navigate to:

• Windows:
  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\xyz_sharedcache_tq_tranquility\settings_Default
• MacOS:
  ~/Library/Application Support/EVE Online/xyz_sharedcache_tq_tranquility/settings_Default

(xyzwill vary between installation locations)

You will see various core_char_12345.dat and core_user_67890.dat files with different numbers on each.

Sort this folder by Date Modified, then enter the game on the character you wish to copy the settings from. Click back into the folder and hit F5 to refresh the it. The core_user_ file will jump to the top of the list – this is the account number (you will also notice the core_char_ file jump too).

Having collected this data into your table, it’ll look something like mine:

Copying the files

Referencing your table, find the core_user_ and core_char_ files for the character and account you wish to copy the settings from and copy them into a new folder on your desktop.

Make copies of each file for as many accounts and characters you are using, then systematically go through each file and rename them according to each account and user ID you have in your table. Remember to keep the core_user_ and core_char_ prefixes.

Once you have done this, you can move the files into the settings_Default folder, overwriting all of the existing files. When you load up any of your characters, the settings and overview positioning will be identical.

Things to know

If the primary character has access to chat channels the others do not, each of those characters will attempt to connect to them every time you load into them, resulting in an error message.

You will need to forget the channel on each character if you don’t want to be bothered by the messages. You can open the channel window by clicking the + in the top of a chat window. The channels your characters are attempting to join will be under the Player Channels folder.

Additionally, this does not continually update the settings or overview positioning for the characters. For example, if you move the inventory window whilst docked on one, it will not update on the others. You will need to repeat the process again, which is why we made a table for easy reference.