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[1.0.5] TAC Life Support v0.11.2.1 [12Dec]


TaranisElsu

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Moderator edit: This thread has been closed as another has taken on maintenance of the project, you can find the new thread here:

Presenting Thunder Aerospace Corporation's Life Support system (TACLS)

Many Kerbal lives were bravely sacrificed to bring you the latest in biological needs.

The latest release is version 0.11.2.1 which works with KSP 1.0.5. Download below or read the release announcement. Upgrading from a previous version? Read this.

Having problems with this mod (or any others)? Read the [Official] How To Get Support and my Help page. I cannot do much to help without log files.

Features

  • Kerbals require resources to survive, whether in a vessel or on EVA: Food, Water, Oxygen, Electricity (for air quality and climate control)
  • Resources are needed all the time, even when flying another vessel, or sitting at the Space Center or Tracking Station.
  • Kerbals can die if they go without resources for too long. The defaults are: 360 hours without Food (60 Kerbin days/15 Earth days), 36 hours without Water, 2 hours without Oxygen, and 2 hours without Electricity.
  • Kerbals produce waste resources: Carbon Dioxide, Waste, and Waste Water. Currently Carbon Dioxide can be recycled into Oxygen, and Waste Water can be recycled into clean Water. Also can filter Oxygen out of IntakeAir, or split Water into Oxygen and Waste (hydrogen). A greenhouse part that allows growing Food is planned, but is not included yet.
  • Filling up with waste resources (Carbon Dioxide, Waste, Waste Water) has no effect. Any excess is dumped overboard, and you lose the opportunity to convert them back into good resources.

Read the full description (on the wiki).

Pictures (New pictures coming soon)

Spoiler

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LifeSupport2_zpsbaee0683.png

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LifeSupport1_zpsa1dc1a42.png

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Download the latest version

Available on the Download page. Read about the recent changes (on the wiki).

Requires Module Manager.

Need some help?

See the new Tutorials and Help pages on the wiki.

License

CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Notice

This mod includes version checking using MiniAVC. If you opt-in, it will use the internet to check whether there is a new version available. Data is only read from the internet and no personal information is sent. For a more comprehensive version checking experience, please download the KSP-AVC Plugin.

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Parts are coming. I am going to upload some Hexcan versions soon, as placeholders. You can also edit the cfg of any parts to add my resources to them. Note that all of my parts end with "_TAC" to reduce the chance of collisions with other mods.

I will also eventually make converter parts for recapturing the waste resources.

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Very much like, but clearly needs to finish: needs parts for extended life-support, parts that can achieve partial and full recycling at cost of lots of weight and electricity. Full recycling (via Green house, green algae panals or electrobiosynthesis reactors) is necessary to make colonies self-sufficient, because having to constantly resupply them is a pain in the ***. Other extras that would be nice:

-Waste dumping port/ejector: that spews transient clouds of yellow or brown.

-Atmosphere extractor: that can convert atmosphere into water and oxygen (dump CO2), performance depends on the planet (laythe easy, Eve almost no water)

-CO2 absorber: Absorbs CO2 by consuming new resource (LiOH) produces Li2CO3 Waste and water.

-CO2 scrubber: all CO2 is removed at a continuous rate, more scrubbers remove more CO2, consumed electricity, CO2 dumped continuously.

-Carbonate reactor: CO2 to O2 and C: 100% CO2 recycled back to O2, requires a lot of electricity, carbon soot waste is dumped (of course food is not recycled, nor wastewaster or waste)

-Water recycling: recycles ~80% water.

I like the ~12 hours of EVA support limit, that a very nice touch that even Ioncross Crew Support Plugin does not have yet. Keep up the work!

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CO2 scrubbers are not needed because that is accounted for in the electricity requirement. I assume that all crew capsules come with them, in addition to things for: temperature control, air circulation, humidity removal, CO2 removal, and air filtration. When electricity runs out, the scrubbers and other systems stop working and air quality deteriorates -- eventually killing the crew.

Recyclers are on my list. Coming soonTM.

Also note that waste and waste-water are not just from Kerbals. They include wrappers and other in-edible trash from food products, hair and fingernail clippings, etc. And waste water also comes from hygienic needs: washing hands, bathing, etc.

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Some other mods that would dovetail into this are nothke's KASPAR system if/when it is released http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/27587-WIP-KASPAR-Portable-Payload-Racks?highlight=KASPAR and mauriciolisco's ck 0.82 container system http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29584-ck-0-82%21

Edited by Gristle
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Yes but your saying the CO2 waste just builds up at present, correct? You need to make it so CO2 disappears unless electricity is cut off or run out of absorbent, then CO2 levels rise to a certain level and then the kerbals die.

Remember FULL recyclable needs to be an option (costly option but possible none the less) or else space colonies are no longer possible. You can add "trash incinerator" as a part to recycle solid waste into soot that the greenhouses/green panels/electrobiosythesis reactors can recycle. I know IRL 100% recoverability is impossible but for KSP it needs to be possible, either that or unlimited auto extraction of resources on a planet, either way I don't want to activate a colony to find them all died.

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Some other nods that would dovetail into this are nothke's KASPAR system if/when it is released http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/27587-WIP-KASPAR-Portable-Payload-Racks?highlight=KASPAR and mauriciolisco's ck 0.82 container system http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29584-ck-0-82%21

This would actually couple very well with both of those mods and I'd love to see some collaboration between them. Or at least compatibility fixes for those parts.

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Some other mods that would dovetail into this are nothke's KASPAR system if/when it is released http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/27587-WIP-KASPAR-Portable-Payload-Racks?highlight=KASPAR and mauriciolisco's ck 0.82 container system http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29584-ck-0-82%21

Those do look nice.

Yes but your saying the CO2 waste just builds up at present, correct? You need to make it so CO2 disappears unless electricity is cut off or run out of absorbent, then CO2 levels rise to a certain level and then the kerbals die.

Remember FULL recyclable needs to be an option (costly option but possible none the less) or else space colonies are no longer possible. You can add "trash incinerator" as a part to recycle solid waste into soot that the greenhouses/green panels/electrobiosythesis reactors can recycle. I know IRL 100% recoverability is impossible but for KSP it needs to be possible, either that or unlimited auto extraction of resources on a planet, either way I don't want to activate a colony to find them all died.

That is where my mod differs from others that people have made. The CO2 amount that you will see increasing has already been filtered out of the cabin air and sequestered in a storage container. Filling the storage containers will have no effect on the Kerbals, the excess is dumped overboard, and the systems that remove the CO2 keep working as long as there is electricity -- no "absorbent" requirement. I do not model CO2 buildup in the cabin air. I know that is less realistic, but it is a decision that I made in favor of gameplay.

I would prefer not to do 100% recyclable, instead creating ways to get some of the resources from the planets or moons. That will make a base on Laythe (which has water oceans and an atmosphere with oxygen) easier than a base on the Mun.

Although I have heard that our Moon might have everything we need. We can extract Oxygen and Hydrogen from materials present on the surface, the only issue would be growing food -- which we can do in greenhouses. More research needed...

can it be configured such that Kerbals only become catatonic (or their crew pod unresponsive, same thing really).?

I can make that a configuration option. I will make the default be to kill the crew if they run out because that is the purpose or challenge of using this mod. I think that you will find it is pretty easy to keep your crew supplied. It will not require frequent supply runs. It just requires some planning. The supplies do not actually weight very much. Not compared to the rocket fuel to get them anywhere far away.

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Should not a ship become non-responsive if it runs out of power, regardless if it has a crew or not?

Supply runs to deep space colonies are a pain, you need some kind of system to make them self-sufficient, I don't care if it is 100% recycling or an automatic atmosphere/water mining system, or else when you deselect them and come back to them years later they will be dead, and I'm not doing that again! Of course a 100% recycling system would make a a Valley Forge possible. How about this, make the system easily modifiable with .cfg files so those of us that want to can take some of the recycling parts like green houses and make them 100%?

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I have used something like this before made my rutech or something like that... Although with .20 update his life support mod did absolutly nothing and last time I checked had not been fixed. It although did already have CO2 converters, water producers via hydrogen and oxyegen. Plus multiple storage tanks for the different resources. I would really want to be able to use a mod like that again for my .21 youtube series if you keep up the work on it!

Just a small suggestion please add an alarm type system that gives you like a maybe five day notice before a ship runs out of resources. I wouldn't want to have my Refueling station in LKO run out of resources just because I was busy getting a probe to Jool without knowing about it.

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Should not a ship become non-responsive if it runs out of power, regardless if it has a crew or not?

It should. I did not do anything beyond making Kerbals require resources yet; but that will come in an update soon.

Supply runs to deep space colonies are a pain, you need some kind of system to make them self-sufficient, I don't care if it is 100% recycling or an automatic atmosphere/water mining system, or else when you deselect them and come back to them years later they will be dead, and I'm not doing that again! Of course a 100% recycling system would make a Valley Forge possible. How about this, make the system easily modifiable with .cfg files so those of us that want to can take some of the recycling parts like green houses and make them 100%?

Would it make a difference if the colony can last for 10+ years on one supply run? I do plan on making much of the mechanics as configurable as possible, so players can tweak it to match their expectations.

I have used something like this before made my rutech or something like that... Although with .20 update his life support mod did absolutly nothing and last time I checked had not been fixed. It although did already have CO2 converters, water producers via hydrogen and oxyegen. Plus multiple storage tanks for the different resources. I would really want to be able to use a mod like that again for my .21 youtube series if you keep up the work on it!

Unfortunately, I think 0.21 will severely break this mod -- or maybe open up a whole new, much better way to implement it. We'll see :). So no promises on getting it updated quickly after 0.21.

Just a small suggestion please add an alarm type system that gives you like a maybe five day notice before a ship runs out of resources. I wouldn't want to have my Refueling station in LKO run out of resources just because I was busy getting a probe to Jool without knowing about it.

I plan to talk with Trigger Au about allowing me to set alarms in the Kerbal Alarm Clock. That would be the ideal. For now, I manually set an alarm using the information from the Life Support Monitoring window. It gives the time until each of the resources runs out.

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Wow I have just found this on the forums after having a look for mods/plugins that add realism and my God I am amazed. I've tried it out and it needs some minor improvements which already have been pointed out so I wont repeat them. The ideas pointed out by people also make sense and if implemented would make this an amazing mod. More to the point, if you need someone to test or make models just give me a PM on here. I've made plenty of models before for a different game and it would be a nice challenge to make some for this mod.

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Interesting.

I especially like that ships/Kerbals still use resources when not active. Do I understand this correctly, in that if I park Bill in orbit around Minmus with an O2 tank, and forget about him while I've flying a probe to Jool, he can suffocate?

If so, suddenly the alarm clock mod becomes important; even if MechJeb warps to "alarm points" automatically, I would still need to track "external" events.

I've been tinkering with resource conversion in the Kethane mod (e.g. adding the ability to create Oxygen for my current life support mod), so I can see stations/bases not being 100% able to re-cycle resources (we can't do that, and we're the size of a planet; think oil) - you just have to make sure they're well supplied with Kethane.

I do like the idea also of modding the jet intakes to consume power and be able to "scoop" materials from the atmosphere or oceans - this might be a much less costly (in terms of power and equipment) means of gathering resources, so that a base on Laythe might be able to survive with minimal energy cost and converters, while a base on the Mun might be constantly mining Kethane to keep running.

I would very much like to see large greenhouse habitat modules that would consume large amounts of power and water (waste water? convert waste water to water?) into modest amounts of food.

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Ion-whatever doesn't simulate air pressure. Do you think you'll want to try something like that so we can build properly functioning airlocks instead of allowing Kerbals to simply exit through hatches that "expose" the inside to vacuum?

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Ion-whatever doesn't simulate air pressure. Do you think you'll want to try something like that so we can build properly functioning airlocks instead of allowing Kerbals to simply exit through hatches that "expose" the inside to vacuum?

Who says the hatches expose to vacuum?

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If you look from the inside you can tell there is no airlock, the hatch does lead straight outside.

I read some interesting reasoning as to why certain spacecraft dispensed with airlocks in favor of cabin depressurization-EVA-repressurization

airlocks are massive and weigh far more than just carrying surplus oxygen to repressurize with....

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