sorry for the double post, but i thought i'd save someone a lengthy reply:
i'm currently playing back through the peragas level (while not THAT long, still annoying to replay the same ridiculously easy 3 hours) on a new character, and i'm comparing KSE files. i found that the NPC save for T-3 seems to have been corrupted, but i have no idea how (i hadn't used KSE until the game crashed the first time). i'm not back up to the point where the wheels came off yet, but that seems to be the only plausible explanation. is this a common occurrence, and if so does it have an easy fix? thanks.
EDIT: yup. that was the issue. i didnt realize at the time that T-3 was supposed to rejoin the party there - it just said that i found him. i figured he would be repaired or something later. anyway, because of the bad character file he didnt display nor join the party, so when the game tried to load him after i used the turbo-lift it would crash.
so i guess this is a self-fix, unless anyone has any advice on keeping save files from being corrupted. i guess ill leave the posts up just in case anyone else has a similar problem at some point.