[WIP] - USI Life Support

[RoverDude]

Thanks

[Dazpoet]

So freaking hyped for this!

[Gkirmathal]

This sounds like a great LS mod Roverdude! Nicely fitting for KSP in simplicity if you ask me. Awaiting it's release.

Just a quick question I haven't really found an answer on in the thread: when using this on stock, thus without USI, will it be able to have a recycling/regeneration feature which can be added via MM to a part? Lets say to the Mobile Proccessing Lab.

Reason I ask is that a lot of LS mods I see around either use a flotilla of new parts and resources to implement it. Which is inconvenient when you already have use a lot of mods. Or they only deal with LS as being just 'a consumable resource', which is added to crewed parts, without a regeneration feature.

[hab136]

After reading through the whole thread, the system still seems exploitable.

1. Send Kerbals and a probe core on a 2110-day trip to Eeloo with no supplies. They pass out.

2. Send a separate unmanned Supplies ship at the same time, with 3 days of supplies.

3. Arrive at Eeloo, dock ships.

4. Kerbals wake up and do all their science and flag planting in 3 days, then pass out again.

5. Probe core drives the Kerbals home

Normally a trip to Eeloo would require about 4,707 days of supplies; this would allow me to do it with 3 days of supplies (or less, if I science faster). This would be a cheap way to level up Kerbals; fling them to the far reaches of the solar system, wake them up long enough to plant a flag, then put them back to sleep.

Is this is an intended mechanic? For TAC there was a cryo-storage mod (DeepFreeze) that would let you do exactly this, but it required additional planning.

Or will they maintain a deficit, such that if they've passed out for 2,000 days, they'll need 2,000 days of supplies to revive?

[Sigma88]

After reading through the whole thread, the system still seems exploitable.

1. Send Kerbals and a probe core on a 2110-day trip to Eeloo with no supplies. They pass out.

2. Send a separate unmanned Supplies ship at the same time, with 3 days of supplies.

3. Arrive at Eeloo, dock ships.

4. Kerbals wake up and do all their science and flag planting in 3 days, then pass out again.

5. Probe core drives the Kerbals home

Normally a trip to Eeloo would require about 4,707 days of supplies; this would allow me to do it with 3 days of supplies (or less, if I science faster). This would be a cheap way to level up Kerbals; fling them to the far reaches of the solar system, wake them up long enough to plant a flag, then put them back to sleep.

Is this is an intended mechanic? For TAC there was a cryo-storage mod (DeepFreeze) that would let you do exactly this, but it required additional planning.

Or will they maintain a deficit, such that if they've passed out for 2,000 days, they'll need 2,000 days of supplies to revive?

even better, put the whole ship into an eeloo encounter then undock the food storage section, this way you don't need to worry about making 2 ejection burns

Honestly I don't see why this should be accounted for, anyone who will install this mod is probably doing it because he/she wants to account for the whole trip... If someone wants an easy way he/she just needs to not install this mod

[helaeon]

I have a fix for that exploit: Kerbals with no snacks that have passed out need a non-passed out kerbal to revive/feed them to bring them back to working status.

If you want to take advantage of class system, needs to be a scientist (medic).

Which... if the above were done then maybe a "stasis pod" part (very high tech level)? Auto revives kerbals but must be pre-set to do that at a certain time. All sorts of limitations could be imposed on the use of that part besides that.

Edited April 14, 2015 by helaeon

[Sigma88]

I have a fix for that exploit: Kerbals with no snacks that have passed out need a non-passed out kerbal to revive/feed them to bring them back to working status.

If you want to take advantage of class system, needs to be a scientist (medic).

Which... if the above were done then maybe a "stasis pod" part (very high tech level)? Auto revives kerbals but must be pre-set to do that at a certain time. All sorts of limitations could be imposed on the use of that part besides that.

the problem with this is that it voids completely the purpose of the mod.

If I have grasped the aim of roverdude I think the mod is designed to give a Life Support system which is less punishing than other mods out there now (see TAC-LS) and will give you some leeway in those "OH F**K" moments when you realize you've starved your crew to death for a stupid error in decoupling order or something like that.

Of course this is my interpretation of RoverDude words, so take it with a grain of salt.

What I'd like to see is an increment in electriccharge consumption after the kerbals go on strike. This can be both explained by them being in some sort of stasis but also with them partying during the strike, with the stereo at high volume and raised temperature to get the kerb_ladies to take off their uniforms.

-edit-

Now that I think about it, I don't know if this will be possible, but I think some mods like texture replacer should add party hats to kerbals when they are on strike

Edited April 14, 2015 by Sigma88

[helaeon]

I think that sounds fine to me. I was throwing an idea out there on how to deal with it in the case of your Eeloo mission.

If its in the case of that "oh NO!" moment, then you'd be able to revive with that rescue crew. (Stasis pod thing was a wild idea thing and I agree they should consume silly electric charge and if you budget bad... punishment...)

Electric charge consumption is fine, but, electric charge is super easy to make, so not a great limit.

Or while throwing out crazy ideas - maybe you can't revive kerbals in space. You'd have to bring them back to Kerbin. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanic there could/should be... Though I also think that if you have a well-stocked planetary base, ship, or space station you should be able to revive there as well. Need 2-10x resources for a certain amount of time to revive a kerbal? Special inventory part (for KIS) or resource?

Basically something where yes, you can wake them up, but it would have been better to pack enough life support to start with without being super punishing.

Like on your partying idea, you'd need 2 kerbals for every 1 you need to revive? Basically acting as bouncers breaking up a rowdy party.

I'm mostly going off of what RoverDude seems to do with his mods with the simple as possible thing without being too simple, with that less punishing simpler life support system idea in mind.

[kerbiloid]

As Akademy can train Kerbals, maybe, for example, only MK4 dome can revive them?

Another thing: how to move disabled Kerbals to bring them back? As they cannot EVA and they are not parts. Probably, something like CrewManifest would be used.

Also a penalty for such starvation could be used: amnesy causing kerbals' experience level down.

Edited April 14, 2015 by kerbiloid

[Sigma88]

I think that sounds fine to me. I was throwing an idea out there on how to deal with it in the case of your Eeloo mission.

If its in the case of that "oh NO!" moment, then you'd be able to revive with that rescue crew. (Stasis pod thing was a wild idea thing and I agree they should consume silly electric charge and if you budget bad... punishment...)

Electric charge consumption is fine, but, electric charge is super easy to make, so not a great limit.

Or while throwing out crazy ideas - maybe you can't revive kerbals in space. You'd have to bring them back to Kerbin. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanic there could/should be... Though I also think that if you have a well-stocked planetary base, ship, or space station you should be able to revive there as well. Need 2-10x resources for a certain amount of time to revive a kerbal? Special inventory part (for KIS) or resource?

Basically something where yes, you can wake them up, but it would have been better to pack enough life support to start with without being super punishing.

Like on your partying idea, you'd need 2 kerbals for every 1 you need to revive? Basically acting as bouncers breaking up a rowdy party.

I'm mostly going off of what RoverDude seems to do with his mods with the simple as possible thing without being too simple, with that less punishing simpler life support system idea in mind.

Oh you're right... I totally forgot you can send live kerbals with the rescue mission

DERP

I'm using remote tech too much

- - - Updated - - -

As Akademy can train Kerbals, maybe, for example, only MK4 dome can revive them?

Another thing: how to move disabled Kerbals to bring them back? As they cannot EVA and they are not parts. Probably, something like CrewManifest would be used.

Also a penalty for such starvation could be used: amnesy causing kerbals' experience level down.

I don't think you will be able to move them, that's the point of them not answering to your orders. I think

[kerbiloid]

Ambulance can move "disabled" patients. So why not evacuate disabled Kerbals to the nearest large base with a MK4, revive them and then send them back to Academy to restore a level or two?

[Sigma88]

Ambulance can move "disabled" patients. So why not evacuate disabled Kerbals to the nearest large base with a MK4, revive them and then send them back to Academy to restore a level or two?

I misunderstood your question, I thought you wanted a way to move them while on strike before getting there with the rescue ship.

Idk if this would be possible to do but yeah, as soon as you get some live kerbal in there you should be able to move everybody around to revive the corpses.

I don't know if roverdude idea was to add that much complexity to this mod tho

Edited April 14, 2015 by Sigma88

[kerbiloid]

I just think, without any penalty it will become a common practice to starve poor Kerbals and then making them work for some food.

Level down would cause player to be more kind with Kerbals.

Btw, a random level-down could be a price for a freeze chamber mod or detail, too, if any were here.

(I know about DeepFreeze, but this is another thread).

[Sigma88]

I just think, without any penalty it will become a common practice to starve poor Kerbals and then making them work for some food.

Level down would cause player to be more kind with Kerbals.

Btw, a random level-down could be a price for a freeze chamber mod or detail, too, if any were here.

(I know about DeepFreeze, but this is another thread).

I understand that, but if you are goind to do that... why bother installing the mod? just go with stock immortal kerbals and call it a day

also, mid course corrections would be a pain if you want to starve the kerbals during the flight

[kerbiloid]

I understand that, but if you are goind to do that... why bother installing the mod? just go with stock immortal kerbals and call it a day

also, mid course corrections would be a pain if you want to starve the kerbals during the flight

Personally I am going to send a large unmanned transport full of food, fuel, parts and other supplies to await Kerbals near the target - before every expedition. So, that was not about me, that was in general.

Edited April 14, 2015 by kerbiloid

[Sigma88]

Personally I am going to send a large unmanned transport full of food, fuel, parts and other supplies to await Kerbals near the target - before every expedition. So, that was not about me, that was in general.

Yeah, I did not mean "you" as in YOU but a generic person using the mod.

another exploit possible is to put enough supplies to keep the kerbals alive a couple of months, shooting your ship towards eeloo

then quick-save, uninstall the mod, time-warp to eeloo, quicksave again, reinstall the mod and then take all the science you want.

do the same for the return trip and you have succesfully exploited the system.

how many people do you think will bother doing this?

[RoverDude]

Just a quick question I haven't really found an answer on in the thread: when using this on stock, thus without USI, will it be able to have a recycling/regeneration feature which can be added via MM to a part? Lets say to the Mobile Proccessing Lab..

Sure, it's just a converter (Mulch + EC = Supplies).

After reading through the whole thread, the system still seems exploitable.

1. Send Kerbals and a probe core on a 2110-day trip to Eeloo with no supplies. They pass out.

2. Send a separate unmanned Supplies ship at the same time, with 3 days of supplies.

3. Arrive at Eeloo, dock ships.

4. Kerbals wake up and do all their science and flag planting in 3 days, then pass out again.

5. Probe core drives the Kerbals home

Close. That ship had better have at least one supply container per Kerbal because they are going to ransack them and dump all of the extra stuff.

This would be loosely akin to hibernation.

Now, I like interesting mechanics. One mechanic I have considered is that if the time alone is excessive (and this would be configruable), the Kerbals in their effort to find even a crumb of snacks, will start breaking apart parts of the ship.

So. You launch your ship. You fling it to Eeloo. As you go to re-focus it, your Kerbals, who have been starved, try to find food. If they can't find food, they look for locked containers. If they can't find locked containers, they start tearing through bits of the ship looking for snacks to eat. Things are broken... better hope it's not your landing engine

I have a fix for that exploit: Kerbals with no snacks that have passed out need a non-passed out kerbal to revive/feed them to bring them back to working status.

If you want to take advantage of class system, needs to be a scientist (medic).

Which... if the above were done then maybe a "stasis pod" part (very high tech level)? Auto revives kerbals but must be pre-set to do that at a certain time. All sorts of limitations could be imposed on the use of that part besides that.

It is a pretty easy mechanic to require a non-strike Kerbal present to revitalize the rest. I may add this idea as well.

Now, I am not opposed to a hibernation component at all, but would see that as a separate, more controlled mechanic

[Sigma88]

One mechanic I have considered is that if the time alone is excessive (and this would be configruable), the Kerbals in their effort to find even a crumb of snacks, will start breaking apart parts of the ship.

This is very nice

It fits well with both the "kerbals on strike" and "kerbals on stasis" idea

[JumpsterG]

Now that I think about it, I don't know if this will be possible, but I think some mods like texture replacer should add party hats to kerbals when they are on strike

Want. Failure would be hilarious. Probably not going to happen, I don't think I've seen any mods add props to IVA kerbals and a dependency on texture replacer (if it could even be used for this purpose) is too big a requirement for such a small feature. We can imagine it at least.

Party music playing, might be doable... *hope*

[Gkirmathal]

@Roverdude, I reconed that to be the case hehe.

Tested it with IFILsupport mod, but the authur didnt included a waist byproduct.

So I'm really looking forward to your LS mod!

[tater]

Given that "supplies" are really all consumables (air, water, and food), The idea of cannibalizing a ship for parts or possible LS is sort of interesting. Imagine a stranded base, and the kerbals could stretch LS based upon skill (engineers and scientists might do better) until rescue as another option. NOte that they'd be stretching it at the expense of the craft working as rover dude suggests...

I'm interested in ways for kerbal skill to matter since AI kerbals are not a thing. I'd like to see this mechanic as an option even should we chose death as the result of no LS.

They could:

Drain fuel/oxidizer tanks, make a science lab or experiments no longer work (taking parts to make equipment to extract useful LS from other parts). Wreck engines for parts.

Ideally, it would be in a hierarchy that makes sense. Science stuff would be the first to go, particularly any mobile processing labs as that part seems an excellent choice for stuff that might be used. Then perhaps draining some tanks for chemicals that could be turned into water or O2. It shouldn't buy much time, though. Rescue within Kerbin SoI, maybe...

[Angelo Kerman]

Oh very cool. I just noticed that supplies remaining includes years in the measurements. I have been wrapping up a .25 playthrough this morning and TAC-LS measures time remaining in days, and that drives me nuts. Definitely looking forward to this new mod.

[Sigma88]

Want. Failure would be hilarious. Probably not going to happen, I don't think I've seen any mods add props to IVA kerbals and a dependency on texture replacer (if it could even be used for this purpose) is too big a requirement for such a small feature. We can imagine it at least.

Party music playing, might be doable... *hope*

more than a dependency I was thinking just some bonus prop you get if you have both mods installed.

much like including PlanetShine config in a mod that adds new planets, you don't need planetshine to get the new planets, but if you have both mods you will get bonus features

so the party hat could be included either in USI_LS or TextureReplace, and will do something only when both mods are installed (assuming thi can be done of course)

[JumpsterG]

Given that "supplies" are really all consumables (air, water, and food), The idea of cannibalizing a ship for parts or possible LS is sort of interesting...

Makes even more sense when you say it that way. Sounds like a very fun concept that will also take care of the exploits that have been suggested.

As you say, with the death setting, this would create some uncertainty as to exactly how long the kerbals can keep themselves alive. Cutting it close never felt so good.

Kerbal engineers could be awesome at re-purposing stuff, but since players should be actively avoiding out-of-supply scenarios, I don't think kerbal skills are necessary to tie into the mechanic. No reason not to, if it's easy to do, though.

[Sigma88]

Makes even more sense when you say it that way. Sounds like a very fun concept that will also take care of the exploits that have been suggested.

As you say, with the death setting, this would create some uncertainty as to exactly how long the kerbals can keep themselves alive. Cutting it close never felt so good.

Kerbal engineers could be awesome at re-purposing stuff, but since players should be actively avoiding out-of-supply scenarios, I don't think kerbal skills are necessary to tie into the mechanic. No reason not to, if it's easy to do, though.

you can give all the kerbals an emergency kit with a cyanide-soaked treat. this way when they are about to tear apart the ship they just go harakiri