No I think there is nothing wrong with the game crashing per se when it encounters a dangling reference (dangling as in: use type7b.tower2 ; but there is no such object).
I think the real problem is the way in which the cfg files were designed, almost nothing uses the exact same format, they seem to have started to read in simple ini-files and then by demand added more and more, until they had database-like functionality. What results is quite a mess imo, but at least it does the job. It still should have been in XML or even better, a database.
Everyone who starts working with this stuff should prepare for very tedious editing of text, with many pitfalls if everything is not 100% correct. The engine does not tolerate spelling mistakes / typos or general sloppy work..
That's why I suggested a validator which tests all references in the cfg data. Such a tool would be absolutely feasible, but it'd be a lot of work with so many different formats. It's a pity no one ever wanted to do the work, I am sure the game would be extremely stable that way.
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