A New Look at Life Support

[Waxing_Kibbous]

So, the balance of KSP recently has been like this: First, once probe cores were unlocked manned missions became pointless, or at least pilots did. It was nothing early on to stick a probe core on a command pod, load Bob in, and milk the Mun and Minmus for tons of science. Then came the comms system in 1.2 and doing that wasn't so easy anymore, as a matter of fact probe cores became kind of, not pointless, but harder to use, and suddenly manned missions with pilots became the way to go, tipping the balance once again. In this current state having life support becomes the final weight to balance the whole system out. If you haven't tried it, or were put off by it previously, try it now with the comms system active in your game- I think you'll find it to be an interesting addition that adds flavor as opposed to an optional level of difficulty. I've always wanted to like LS before but it always felt tacked on and burdensome, now it feels like it really belongs as a proper cog in gameplay.

[MGCJerry]

I was a huge fan of the mod "Snacks!". By default it doesnt kill Kerbals (but you can set it to) and I found it simple & fun to use for a simplified life support mod.

[CommanderSmith]

I personally believe that a very simple life support feature would be good for the game. It would, as was pointed out, make sending Kerbals everywhere a little more logistically challenging, as probes are right now. Perhaps keep it to two resources, "Life Support" and "Waste" (or whatever you want to call it), have a time limit after which it either kills or just disables your crew (this can be changed in the difficulty settings), and it can, like the comms system, be either activated or disabled per save through the difficulty settings.
In the same way that stock comms is like a simplified version of Remote Tech, stock life support could be a simplified [insert favourite life support system here], and could be disabled with a click of a button. Thus, if people want a simple life support, they can, and if they don't, they can simply disable it.
And, of course, if you want something more complicated, mods will still be around to add all sorts of other features.

[pincushionman]

I'd support simple life support such as Snacks!, or a little more flexible like USILS, but I'll say it yet again - we need mission planning tools built into the game, starting with TWR/dV info and ending with detailed long-term maneuver planning - before it should be implemented. We're already lacking this when all we need to worry about is fuel requirements - adding LS adds a time requirement, and will result in a lot of dead Kerbals because there's no real concept of time as a resource in the game right now.

[obi_juan]

After my first days in the game I started to play with "TAC - Life Support"... Later change to "USI Life Support" is more Kerbal way to live (or die, I play with the option of death if they run out of supplies)

The game is not the same for me if I don't have Life Support.

[RX2000]

I'm actually gonna be pretty disappointed if life support isnt the main thing added in the 1.3 patch. Its the #1 thing still missing from the stock game (well ok maybe the #3 thing behind dV & TWR calcs.)