[1.12.x] - Modular Kolonization System (MKS)

[RoverDude]

Ok - so got a few things done on the AC:

You can now disable Kerbonaut customization.

You can choose to enable/disable Kerbal cost overrides.

You can customize costs for both the base Kerbals (Engineers/Scientists/Pilots) or Kolonists to suit your playstyle.

 

Working now on seeing about restricting rescue contracts to only the base types

[voicey99]

2 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Working now on seeing about restricting rescue contracts to only the base types

Does that fall within the scope of MKS?

[RoverDude]

You are probably misunderstanding.  This is in relation to getting Miners, Farmers, etc. for rescue contracts vs. just pilots, engineers, and scientists - which is an issue early career.

[TDplay]

5 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Working now on seeing about restricting rescue contracts to only the base types

Yes, stranded scouts would be quite amusing.

[voicey99]

Oh, you mean the stock types? I thought "base types" meant the MKS kerbals. In that case, that wold be great.

[RoverDude]

Coding day is done

 

You now have a lot of new options regarding astronaut complex behavior, based on feedback since the introduction of the new Kerbal types.  

For background, the reason for the new professions was to mitigate the exponentially high cost of Kerbals caused by needing lots of the little guys for your various MKS bases.  They simulate the enthusiastic civilians that are volunteering for your colonization program.  The cost represents the very minimal training requirement (safety training being the first to be cut).

Base/Core Kerbonauts are your three canonical types - Pilots, Engineers, and Scientists.

Kolonist Kerbonauts are the extended MKS types.

 

You can now:

• Toggle the ability to customize Kerbonauts.  If enabled, you can change bravery/stupidity and choose a starting level.  If disabled, these options will not be available.
• Enable / disable the hiring of Kolonist Kerbonauts (i.e. combined with the option below, you can disable MKS extended classes altogether).
• Enable / disable Kolonist Kerbonauts being available in rescue contracts (if disabled, only base kerbonauts appear as rescue kerbals).  
• Use either the stock calculated cost or a custom price for your Kerbals.  This setting is independent for base vs kolonists, so you could use standard pricing for your pilots, engineers, and scientists - but still get cheap pricing for Kolonists.
• Enable/disable and configure a custom price cap for all hires.  i.e. you could decide to use the stock hiring scheme, but with a specific max cap so it does not rise to unreasonable exponential numbers.

 

I'll be putting all of this out (plus other changes) as an optional pre-release for testing.

 

[RoverDude]

Secondary achievement of the day - Added the first USI Difficulty option.  This one lets you turn off Machinery wear.  What this means is that if you miss MKS-Lite, or are just starting off and want to pull that part of base maintenance out of the equation, you can do so with a toggle (and even turn it on once you are ready to step up the challenge).

Note that Machinery is still required and impacts efficiency as it accounts for a lot of a part's mass.  This option just turns off it's slow depletion.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

8 hours ago, Urses said:

This look more and more like USI MK2 and not like "update"

(*notice on self :we never mention GPP ninjapost, we do not know anything nonono*)

Don't give me more ideas.  

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Awesome update notes @RoverDude ! *starts checking USI Github page for updates 3 times a day instead of 2*

[Murdabenne]

@RoverDude Have you seen the bug report for "Civilian" (not tourist) kerbal types breaking MKS saves? These come from

 

 

This might be a fun adjunct to MKS/USI-LS to give "real" (permanent and growing) colonies a reason to exist other than science and mining - and a good reason to build up a lot of life support infrastructure.

And this is the post - it looks like a generalizable problem that will hit any mod that adds custom herbal types that USI-LS is not aware of.  Perhaps this would be a way to make kerbal types extensible and understandable across mods, perhaps using some sort of Community "Kerbal Tyoes" - something like you did with your Community Categories mod for parts, or the Community Resources mod.

Quote

BTW: The non-recognized profession 'Civilian' is breaking savegames with MKS/USI-LS. Once 'Civilian' Kerbals become tourists due to some shortage in Hab/Home time or supply, the game breaks at least on recovering them on Kerbin. Just a fair warning, I filed a bug report against MKS for that issue.

 

Just curious if this release fixes that problem?

Edited April 9, 2017 by Murdabenne
clarification

[goldenpsp]

44 minutes ago, Murdabenne said:

 

This might be a fun adjunct to MKS/USI-LS to give "real" (permanent and growing) colonies a reason to exist other than science and mining - and a good reason to build up a lot of life support infrastructure.

Just out of curiousity.  If @RoverDude has already adding MKS style "breeding", and already has a completely full plate with his own constellation of mods, why would we want him trying to integrate a separate mod that he doesn't use and is still in redevelopment?

Edited April 9, 2017 by goldenpsp

[sh1pman]

3 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Just out of curiousity.  If @RoverDude has already added MKS style "breeding", and already has a completely full plate with his own constellation of mods, why would we want him trying to integrate a separate mod that he doesn't use and is still in redevelopment?

As if @RoverDude made all his mods just for himself! 

[Murdabenne]

23 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Just out of curiousity.  If @RoverDude has already added MKS style "breeding", and already has a completely full plate with his own constellation of mods, why would we want him trying to integrate a separate mod that he doesn't use and is still in redevelopment?

It has parts, and uses a different mechanic, and unlike MKS, these are supremely unproductive in Kerbal terms, meaning they add to the challenge in a realistic manner - these are the equivalent of children - or non-direct producers that would exist in a real colony, like managers, food service workers, store clerks, etc.  It adds challenge.  This is especially useful with larger populations like those in the parts of that mod.  It meshes well with a lot of other mods that have new planets or starsystems to colonize.

Plus its the general principle of mod interoperability. If your assumption were the case, then we would never have seen OSE interoperability for example, nor cross support of any other mod outside of Roverdude's personal USI mods. I think you are assuming a bit much here in white-knighting for Roverdude.

The fundamental issue is that If any other mod comes along with a  custom Kerbal type, MKS is going to blow up.  This is something that should be fixed. At a minimum, exceptions for unknown types should be handled more gracefully, but an optimal solution would be a general solution to avoid further work in the future if others customize their kerbals types.  One of the best ways to do this is take control of the kerbal "type" definitions, and establish them in an expandable and open fashion like the aforementioned Community Resources and Community Catagories mods have done.  It would move types into more of a config/MM issue instead of a code issue. And it could be leveraged by USI in the future to easily add more types without breaking current ones.

Edited April 9, 2017 by Murdabenne
Edit for amplification and clarification (didnt mean to ninja)

[goldenpsp]

3 minutes ago, Murdabenne said:

It has parts, and uses a different mechanic, and unlike MKS, these are supremely unproductive in Kerbal terms, meaning they add to the challenge in a realistic manner - these are the equivalent of children - or non-direct producers that would exist in a real colony, like managers, food service workers, store clerks, etc.  It adds challenge.  This is especially useful with larger populations like those in the parts of that mod.  It meshes well with a lot of other mods that have new planets or starsystems to colonize.

Plus its the general principle of mod interoperability. If any other mod comes along with a  custom Kerbal type, MKS is going to blow up.  This is something that should be fixed.  At a minimum, exceptions should be caught, but optimal would be a general solution to avoid further work in the future if others customize their kerbals types,

I'm not talking about the merits of the mod.  @RoverDude already has more than enough stuff to work on for his own mods that he makes for his own enjoyment.  As an example, he doesn't use TAC-LS and no longer officially supports it, but if someone sends him a pull request for compatibility he will happily suck it in.  He has stopped using EL, and is depricating official support of it, but again if someone sends a PR to maintain compatibility in the future I'm sure he would suck that in.

Similarily, if someone were to make a pull request for Civ pop compatibility I'm sure he'd accept it.

[Murdabenne]

FYI, this is bug report #1224, which uses Civilian Population Revamp as a specific example of a general problem.  This isn't about specific app compatibility as much as it is a save-game breaking issue if any mod has kerbal types that USI-LS is not aware of.  It may be a unexpected use case, but its a legitimate software defect in that USI-LS/MKS does not properly handle it and "fail gracefully", preserving functionality for the data it does "know" about.

[goldenpsp]

Yes I am aware, I've seen the bug report.  It is also one of 252 active ones, and is very likely WAY down the priority list.  I'm sure if someone with a big interest in fixing this compatibility were to send  PR to fix it, the issue would get resolved much quicker.

 

Ultimately I'm just speculating based on history in this thread and it will be up to Roverdude to decide.

Edited April 9, 2017 by goldenpsp

[DStaal]

I wonder if Colonists have the same issue, or if it's a specific compatibility issue with Civilian Population.  If it's the latter, I’m guessing the fix will be low-priority.  If it affects both, then it's much more likely to be a general issue that should get solved.  (I'm guessing it's a specific compatibility issue.  I may check - I do have one Colonist out on Minmus in a rover at the moment.  Wouldn't be hard to send up a small automated recovery ship and stick them in it until they go crazy.    But don't expect it immediately - I don't get huge amounts of time to play and they're currently needed.)

[Murdabenne]

Which addon are Colonists from?  I could give it a test. If its a general issue then RD needs to know, otherwise its a single conflict and as said above probably low priority, or maybe fixable from the CPR mod side.

Is there a place where USI-LS sets up the data for types that it knows about?  I'm thinking an MM script would fix things if such a config exists.

[JadeOfMaar]

 

[Merkov]

Hey @RoverDude, quick question for you: would you be opposed to a pull request to add the MKSModule to USI-LS partd when both MKS and USI-LS are installed? I have a habit of building my starter space stations out of an MPL, inline NOM and a large recycler. Since none of these parts have the MKSModule kerbals on board aren't contributing the planet's kolonization bonus. 

As a follow-up, are there any parts you would NOT want to see have the MKSModule? I'm thinking the little radial recycler and perhaps the little cupolas don't really make sense (they're as likely to be on a transfer vessel as a station or other longer-term vessel) but I thought I'd check with you first. 

[RoverDude]

@Murdabenne - you're probably talking USI-LS not MKS since you are discussing life support.  And I thought this was a breaking issue only if you uninstall CivPop, not in having both at once.  Since last I checked it was the former (which makes sense - USI-LS tracks your original experience trait so it knows what to reset you back to once you are no longer a tourist) then it would absolutely break... and that falls in the category of 'Don't do that then!' since it would only manifest itself when you uninstalled a mod mid-save.

42 minutes ago, Merkov said:

Hey @RoverDude, quick question for you: would you be opposed to a pull request to add the MKSModule to USI-LS partd when both MKS and USI-LS are installed? I have a habit of building my starter space stations out of an MPL, inline NOM and a large recycler. Since none of these parts have the MKSModule kerbals on board aren't contributing the planet's kolonization bonus. 

As a follow-up, are there any parts you would NOT want to see have the MKSModule? I'm thinking the little radial recycler and perhaps the little cupolas don't really make sense (they're as likely to be on a transfer vessel as a station or other longer-term vessel) but I thought I'd check with you first. 

Sure, fine with that for the bigger parts - go for it

[jd284]

Are there any PDU transmitters that work without crew? If not, I think at least the microwave transmitter should work unmanned, for all the others I'd accept that you need crew to maintain the (virtual) cables.

[TauPhraim]

I'm excited by the upcoming new logistics, but also (a bit) worried  how will this be balanced ? won't it be too easy to send any resource to any remote place ? If it's tweaked with just "taxes", you could overcome that by spamming more drills. Ideally (but hard to implement), to establish any logistics link between A and B (even just planetary), you'd need to unlock / "prove" you can make the connection, by for example driving a specific (big) part from point A to point B.

[Tabris]

25 minutes ago, TauPhraim said:

I'm excited by the upcoming new logistics, but also (a bit) worried  how will this be balanced ? won't it be too easy to send any resource to any remote place ? If it's tweaked with just "taxes", you could overcome that by spamming more drills. Ideally (but hard to implement), to establish any logistics link between A and B (even just planetary), you'd need to unlock / "prove" you can make the connection, by for example driving a specific (big) part from point A to point B.

i expect it will require a Logistic Module (Duna or Tundra) at each end and possibly a cost/mT in either fuel or Funds (or both)

[Urses]

12 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Don't give me more ideas.  

Why not? 

Your "messing around" on the mods in the wild makes it a realy pleasant adventure to "stalk" the outcome what you are generate out there. (GPP, Airline, Domes, Skyboxes...) And if we say people like RoverDude here are the modder elite, than we have to state too people like you are the Modetweakers. And this is a realy pleasant expirience, because i ask me every time "how it comes that he know what i miss before i know that i'm missing it?".

I love the way how all the modders work around and generate a realy deep content. But sometimes i think it become a lill suspicious (?) If the only thing i have to say is "Thank you!". 

Only my 2 pence and sorry for the "wall"

Goodspeed and have a good time

Urses