I ran into the "Fearless ID" problem cpmartins mentioned a few days back.
Original PostSpoiler
I'm almost certain that's a Nexerelin bug. Shadowyards does not do any special faction spawning action in it's scripting, and if I were still using outdated personality ids in the faction file it would crash the game while initializing the campaign (specifically while doing the first couple months of economy simulation).
Also, there's this, right before the crash:
79509 [Thread-5] WARN exerelin.utilities.ExerelinConfig - Faction config not found: neutral
79509 [Thread-5] WARN exerelin.utilities.ExerelinConfig - Faction config not found: neutral
The actual crash itself indicates that game is trying to create an officer with an invalid personality, so if I had to guess, Nexerelin, unable to find the desired faction configuration file, is defaulting to something else which still includes the [fearless] personality trait. Since that trait has been removed in 0.7a, the game can't load it and crashes.
I was able to replicate the issue, locate what I believe to be the culprit, and patch it. Two files in the Shadowyards 5.2.5 folder reference the older "Fearless" label.
Problem LocationSpoiler
..\shadow_ships\data\world\factions\shadow_industry.faction
Line 229
"fearless":1,
..\shadow_ships\data\world\factions\pirateAnar.faction
Line 227
"fearless":1,
My take on the bug is that Nexerelin references one or both of these two factions when it is creating its sector. Since those two factions have the older "fearless" flag toggled, it causes the crash. Setting them both to 0 instead of 1 has proved a valid workaround in my testing.
WorkaroundSpoiler
..\shadow_ships\data\world\factions\shadow_industry.faction
Line 229
"fearless":0,
..\shadow_ships\data\world\factions\pirateAnar.faction
Line 227
"fearless":0,
If you would like more detailed troubleshooting procedures or other specifications, please let me know. I'll respond back as soon as possible.
Thanks for all the hard work on the mod MShadowy. I greatly enjoy it alongside many others in this amazing game. Keep up the good work!