Do you think Life Support should be Vanilla?

[Pthigrivi]

They were placeholders. It was work in progress but people didn't understand that and lost their everloving minds and thats why we still don't have tier zero buildings. 

[cfds]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

They were placeholders. It was work in progress but people didn't understand that and lost their everloving minds and thats why we still don't have tier zero buildings. 

Unfortunately the "work in progress" part becomes rather doubtful when people said: "the current  textures look like crap, I hope they get reworked before release" and SQUAD decided to drop the tier zero buildings instead of "finishing the progress.

To me that sounds more like the textures where actually the final ones and the "work in progress" excuse was exactly that.

[lajoswinkler]

8 hours ago, Crocket said:

The barn? Please do edjamacate me.

Passinglurker explained (I'm in the B team even though saying the textures are garbage is simply wrong because they aren't much worse than what we have now) and this is why I liked it. It was a great concept, with very humble rocketry stuff.

For example:

Those are the concrete walls and sacks of sand behind which Kerbals could hide to test the rockets. Very humble and funny, low safety level.

 

My sentiments are explained in roninpawn's video here:

 

 

As usual, Reddit destroyed it. KSP community on the forum is MUCH better, humbler and willing to discuss and help. Reddit has always been awful, but Squad keeps listening to them more than the forum.

Edited September 12, 2016 by lajoswinkler

[passinglurker]

7 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

saying the textures are garbage is simply wrong because they aren't much worse than what we have now

bac9 (the creator of the tier 3 ksc) did a very thorough analysis at the time pin pointing some pretty terrible flaws like textures ripped from real world stock images mixed with shoddy doodles, stretched textures, gaps in the meshes, etc. I dare say they were worse than any old stock part we had then or now. Humble is good, dirty, and toonish is fine, but bottom of the barrel production quality is not.

13 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

As usual, Reddit destroyed it. KSP community on the forum is MUCH better, humbler and willing to discuss and help. Reddit has always been awful, but Squad keeps listening to them more than the forum.

ha ha ha look no offence to some people on the forums, but I've yet to see anyone on reddit talk bad about a high quality part porkjet or any modder has put out. Whereas on the forums the users have shown time and time again that they have no taste or terrible taste as if they were kraken bent on making this game ugly. The forum's reactions to the mk1 cockpit and the leaked rocket revamp pics are good recent examples of just how terrible the forums can be.

Also I haven't seen anything on reddit to suggest they are less helpful than here or lacking in humility any more than here.

 

---

Anyway we came here for life support talk didn't we? I think right now there is to much of a polarizing stigma about it. We can't run off "you can toggle and config it" alone a new user wouldn't know what to do with all those settings, and could give themselves a bad experience if they were prompted to adjust anything to taste before playing for the first time. A system that is fun or tolerable by everyone needs to be found first in order to wet a new users pallet before they go tweaking the settings.

mods can help try to find this magic middle ground but as I said its a polarized subject most people will swear off anything that has to do with life support and never give it a try in the current climate. so what is needed is a way to ease people in to the idea while avoiding any of the triggers that people associate with life support. getting people hooked on habitability well ahead of any form of resource consumption would be a good example.

[klgraham1013]

4 hours ago, passinglurker said:

The forum's reactions to the ... leaked rocket revamp pics are good recent examples of just how terrible the forums can be.

Let's be fair.  That was mainly one person.  I think you're exaggeration levels are a bit high with that one.

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, cfds said:

Unfortunately the "work in progress" part becomes rather doubtful when people said: "the current  textures look like crap, I hope they get reworked before release" and SQUAD decided to drop the tier zero buildings instead of "finishing the progress.

To me that sounds more like the textures where actually the final ones and the "work in progress" excuse was exactly that.

Haha as you can see even the mere mention of it still starts a huge fight years later. I think there's plenty of reason to believe that's why it hasn't come back. 

We're off topic a bit, aren't we? 

[Jonfliesgoats]

I like the idea of life support.  While the arguments that this adds complexity to missions certainly holds true, that is the fun of KSP, right?  Otherwise, why worry about batteries or heat dissipation?  

Each command module could have a certain amount of sandwiches.  Long missions could have a Kerbodyne Sandwich Reprocessor that is heavy and would require so much electricity and create so much heat.  There could also be sandwich tanks.. Each Kerbal eats a sandwich a day, etc.

i like the suggestions by others to make this a selectable feature.

[passinglurker]

2 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Let's be fair.  That was mainly one person.  I think you're exaggeration levels are a bit high with that one.

I wish I was exaggerating but this has been a recurring trend, and while one person or two tended to perpetuate the arguments there was still plenty of other little negative drive by opinions shared by people who fear change dogpiling on.

either way the guy was stabbing the subreddit so I slugged him back that simple.

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

We're off topic a bit, aren't we? 

I've said my return to on topic comments already

6 hours ago, passinglurker said:

Anyway we came here for life support talk didn't we? I think right now there is to much of a polarizing stigma about it. We can't run off "you can toggle and config it" alone a new user wouldn't know what to do with all those settings, and could give themselves a bad experience if they were prompted to adjust anything to taste before playing for the first time. A system that is fun or tolerable by everyone needs to be found first in order to wet a new users pallet before they go tweaking the settings.

mods can help try to find this magic middle ground but as I said its a polarized subject most people will swear off anything that has to do with life support and never give it a try in the current climate. so what is needed is a way to ease people in to the idea while avoiding any of the triggers that people associate with life support. getting people hooked on habitability well ahead of any form of resource consumption would be a good example.

 

[Corona688]

I think the standard "life support" mod is way too complicated given how simple everything else in the game is.  As someone else said, this is KSP, not "Apollo 13 Investigation Committee".  Everything in KSP is a simplification of a real thing, from fuel to power to science to heat.  Which isn't the same as simple as in easy as these things still require careful design and consideration to use.  A lot of complexity can rise from simple rules.

I've suggested this idea before and submit it for your consideration now:  "Kerbals eat and breathe RCS fuel".

It fits the existing game, where capsules and suits already bring meager supplies of this vital resource.  It's easy to plan, keep your kerbals supplied with RCS and they're happy.  Which doesn't mean "easy" as in cheap -- consideration, planning, and work is needed to make things happen, and mistakes will have consequences.

In the end, that's what any in-game resource management is about, isn't it?

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Corona688

[tater]

The most simple LS could be enabled with not much complexity.

It could be set by parts.

All crew command pods/cockpits below mk3 parts have 2 weeks, max, per seat. (so 1 guy in a mk1-2 pod could go for 6 weeks).

Mk3 maybe 3 weeks per seat. (though I think that the airliner-like parts should have a vastly lower rating than this, possibly just a few days per seat.

Hitchhiker/Lab? 2 months per seat. So if you put 4 and a lab on a duna mother ship with 4 crew, you'd have 9 months per crew.

Then add in some advanced crew parts. "Long term space habitat" part might allow 6 months per seat, for example.

[Khobai]

Life support should absolutely be included in vanilla. It should be toggleable on and off though.

 

1) There should be three critical life support resources: oxygen, water, and supplies (includes food, spare parts, medical supplies, etc). Kerbals should be able to live 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food.

2) You should be able to produce oxygen from water. You should be able to produce water from fuel cells. Supplies however would only be replenishable from Kerbin.

3) There should be random failures of life support parts that require EVA to repair.

4) Optionally they could add "exposure" to the game. Kerbals would suffer exposure in hostile environments (radiation, extreme temperatures, acidic environments, etc...). The EVA suits could protect Kerbals from several hours of exposure before the Kerbals have to find proper shelter.

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Khobai

[wrobel-cwirek]

I am for it. With as much complexity as possible - but adjustable by settings:

I want everything:

• quality of life,
• health,
• mental health,
• need to communicate with "family" (ok, just the Space Center - just like probes in 1.2/Remote Tech)
• bones issues after long flights,
• new "doctor" job,
• centrifuge/training stuff required in order not to have health problems after coming back,
• greenhouses,
• oxygen,
• water,
• food
• waste
• CO2 (maybe even CO?)
• filters
• radiation
• radiation shielding (with water tanks also?)
• sex? (new small Kerbals) - ok, maybe this is too much, but... maybe not... after all we have two sexes Kerbals
• age-ing?
• etc. etc. etc.
• hell - add also possible breakdowns, need for replacement parts and real engineer job for our Engineers, not just "parachute re-packer".

Lot's of people wants to have "end-game" - this would be real end game! Not next planet to visit... it will get boring again. But keep you fancy 100 Kerbals alive to travel to Jool and back you are so proud of... yeh... bring the 120 Kerbals back (with 20 small one... or maybe randomly 150? Depends how long also this trip takes). Pool Hofman transfer... ok - but don't expect Kerbals to live so long...

Then you can have the multi-generation ship traveling to new Sun? Also in stock... when old Kerb-sun dies?

After al it is not dV which stops us from going now to Mars - we have the technology to have plenty of dV... it is just expensive. But the real challenge is the health (all categories of health) issues.

Edited September 13, 2016 by wrobel-cwirek

[ISE]

i think it should be added, but it needs to be an optional thing, and it should have a very easy UI

[Wjolcz]

On 13/09/2016 at 0:52 PM, ISE said:

i think it should be added, but it needs to be an optional thing, and it should have a very easy UI

I agree. One "supplies" resource storable in all crewable parts, EC usage per kerbal and one green house.

I think it would make the most sense that way. Nobody has to EVA and go back everytime they want to eat breakfast (no need for outside supply containers), the EC usage would simulate the heat needed to keep the crew alive and a perfect closed water cycle (which is unrealistic, but that way it's easier, simply because your mass and dV doesn't change as you munch down the supplies - everything stays in scratch that, it's actually better if it's simply consumed and thrown out the airlock, because if the greenhouse produces the resource then the mass would only rise, which is silly) one greenhouse that could keep producing food for X amount of kerbals, just so it's easier to calculate how many of greenhouses you need to take with you. You would simply count the crew and say "Ok, so a greenhouse can produce food for X kerbals non-stop, but if I add one more crew member they will run out eventually". A greenhouse would eat EC to produce the supplies, obviously.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Veeltch

[tater]

One "consumable" mass is fine, and it represents the net consumables. USILS has a decent take on this, actually, though I think the mass is slightly high. The base value is 10kg/day (was 16, heading to 10 for update). That includes air, food, and it's actually mostly water. Then, the parts like the lab or hitchhiker (or modded parts) can have things like recyclers that effectively stretch those consumables to some %. Water can approach 100% recovery, as can air, actually. Food clearly cannot. For humans as I recall the food number (dehydrated) is on the order of 1.something kg/day for food. The kerbal equivalent would be the best you'd get to 100% conversion.

Greenhouse parts are usually wrongly done in KSP, as they look like big windows, which would present heat load issues in both directions.

I should add that I never want the ability to 100% close the loop in space. I think that;s beyond KSP scope. I'd change my mind for truly permanent installations. Ie: if we could stake out areas on a world, deliver certain, large masses os supplies, plus extensive ISRU delivered, plus power generation, and batteries (or fuel cells, or nukes) capable of lasting through any night assuming some large nighttime use, then deliver kerbals, and they build a real installation on that world... like a KSC on the Mun (or wherever).