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Life supports


Eaten by Black Hole

Basic Question About Life Supports  

57 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you play KSP with Life Support mods?

    • Yes.I love planning my missions correctly.
      28
    • Not really.
      29


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I've come to dislike life support mods. The more detailed they become, the worse they are.

Quite generally, the agreed-upon mass and density of "food" as written down in CRP (and hence used by basically everyone) is based on an 1980's shuttle mission. Shrink-wrapped freeze-dried stuff, nearly 50% packaging by weight. Conversely, "waste" is mostly plastic wrappers.

This works reasonably well with TACLS in a RealismOverhaul context, at least for short-term missions. Though even there you need huge garbage bins because high-density carbon-scrubbers become low-density waste. The KSP resource in, resource out model doesn't allow for used scrubbers to be put back in the box they came from. And going to Mars on low-density shuttle supplies? It's by no means impossible, but the scale of the larder becomes noticably silly.

Many other mods that claim compatibility with Life support of whatever kind seem to assume that "waste" is 100% organic and compostable, and that "food" is sacks of potatoes and sides of meat. Which is no worse an assumption than shuttle food, but a) I'm not aware of any mod requiring a galley, and b) if containers are scaled off CRP densities (which, to recap, assumes-freeze dried food and plastic wrapper waste), things become weird.

 

TL;DR: life support gives you a lot of numbers to watch and pay attention to. Depending on which system you use, it can become a minigame in it's own right. That's fine. Just don't believe that it's realistic or correct. Especially not if the system of your choice allows you to build self-sufficient bases. Do Kerbals mend their socks, and if so, where do they get the thread?

 

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On 12/5/2018 at 12:07 PM, Geonovast said:

Yes.

I used to leave LKO...

Right now waiting on USII to finish their re-balance so I can rebuild my LS calc.

There's no rebalance going on :)  Only change was to some of the back-end processes (architectural changes for performance and upcoming projects).

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2 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

There's no rebalance going on :)  Only change was to some of the back-end processes (architectural changes for performance and upcoming projects).

Not for kerbal consumption, but I believe there's some fuel cell re balancing going on, which my calculator take into account.  So once the new USII release is out (There some other exciting new features announced too, I believe!) I might start a serious game again.

Which is good, USII is a phenomenal mod, and they can take their sweet time to make it even more awesome.  I don't mind a silly KSP break :D

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On 12/6/2018 at 1:00 PM, BadOaks said:

I think that's actually why they're different, Hab time does get reset by "getting out of the can" like a landing trip or rover excursion, while Home time is supposed to represent the cumulative pressures of living in artificial environments since leaving Kerbin. I like the rationale, but the implementation is a little nonsensical since you can have your kerbals briefly stay at a luxury station in LKO to give them a really long Home timer before going interplanetary on a much smaller ship, then have your ship equipped with a small runabout to reset the Hab timer as needed. 

Actually... you can't hop vessel to vessel (USI-LS does track most recent vessels), that was a potential exploit fixed early on as I recall :)

Just now, Geonovast said:

Not for kerbal consumption, but I believe there's some fuel cell re balancing going on, which my calculator take into account.  So once the new USII release is out (There some other exciting new features announced too, I believe!) I might start a serious game again.

Not by me ;)  I don't have USI-LS fuel cells :D

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8 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

1. Snacks.

2. This is pretty flimsy reasoning

1. Snacks aren't food provisions, they are for enjoyment; not subsistence.

2. It's not though! Kerbals are aliens. We have no idea how their bodies work, for all we know sunlight is more than enough for them. Or they may be capable of long term hibernation. They may even be artificial in nature, or purposely bred for space travel, we just don't know. The only "lore" about Kerbals we have to go on is what is presented in the game itself, which clearly illustrates they require nothing. So that's the lore as it stands now; Kerbals don't require life support, or food, or any of the things Humans would need to survive a long journey through space.

8 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

you're better than that.

Apparently not? Lol. (Are we taking this thread seriously? No one told me. I kind of wrote it off when I read the *potentially* condescending poll options. For the record, I would definitely like to see a stock Life Support system as an optional setting.)

*I'm not sure what the OP meant by "correctly." It could be taken two different ways.

Edited by Rocket In My Pocket
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1 hour ago, Randazzo said:

Using life support drained a lot of the fun out of the game for me. 

That is all. 

Yeah this is definitely a playstyle thing. In the past I've done stand-alone missions to everywhere and I've just played in sandbox making spaceplanes and weirdo contraptions but for the the last 2 years I've fully invested in a modded LS save trying to build a whole interplanetary infrastructure launch by launch. In 2 years of real time playing I've sent probes to most planets, landed on Duna, sent crewed missions to Eve and Moho and thats it. I've spent the last two months just gearing up for going to Jool! Thats a bonkers time commitment for most people and I don't blame anyone who doesn't have my obsessive mindset about KSP.  Not that thats all a consequence of LS--mostly thats all this long-investment-horizon infrastructure stuff--but the careful planning and risk involved in keeping your little guys alive and happy does add complication to an already complicated game. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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I would like to use a life support mod but I really *don't* like part mods... simply because an update or an outdated mod can easily screw up an entire save. 

Plus a lot of the LS mods seem... not overly complicated but more like they don't match the games current level of complexity. For example, the stock comms network is simple - have an antenna in range of home. Life support seems to be too many additional resources with different use rates and too many additional parts... I think snacks is probably the best out there imo. But still, no additional mission critical parts from mods for me :)

If I was playing a super realistic RO game though, then yes, I'd use it.

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The other thing I'll say in favor of making LS stock is that it opens up the potential to integrate time into other elements of the game without the usual time-warp pitfalls. For instance tourism contracts could stipulate that a kerbal must be provided with a 1 week stay on the Mun and that would be a meaningful challenge. You could also introduce things like construction and upgrade times, long-term experiments and so on that players wouldn't so easily be able to just time-warp through. It's not just another logistical consideration, there's the potential for a whole new strategic layer to gameplay.

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In my new OPM save, I run TAC-LS, and its rather fun.

I like TAC-LS because it doesn't have that silly 'homesickness' feature other LS mods have. I hate it because you really can't plan around it - you can only extend it but at a point it all gives up and I can't be bothered trying to figure out such a complicated (imo) mechanic. TAC-LS simply has Food,O2 and Water - what more do you need?

Yeah, its a minigame at times, but its definitely better to do math in order to keep your kerbals alive rather than doing math so that you can ace the math term exam the next day.

Of course, sometime you want to do a grand tour and don't want LS, in that case I can slide all the TAC-LS values to 0.

Edited by Xurkitree
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I played using TAC lifesupport, since it's mechanics are rather easy to understand and fairly straightforward (Don't let supplies get to 0, and you're fine). On a side note, I also used it alongside DeepFreeze mod (Aka Kerbal popsicle mod) to put any kerbals into cryosleep (Basically disabling any life support requirement for that kerbal, but also makes them unavailable for use) when I missed the resupply mission launch window or can't be bothered with kerbal's bodily needs when doing interplanetary or stupid shenanigans. It's basically my "off" button (in style) when I'm not really in mood using life support, but too lazy to open the gamedata and delete the mod folder

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7 hours ago, ARS said:

I played using TAC lifesupport, since it's mechanics are rather easy to understand and fairly straightforward (Don't let supplies get to 0, and you're fine). On a side note, I also used it alongside DeepFreeze mod (Aka Kerbal popsicle mod) to put any kerbals into cryosleep (Basically disabling any life support requirement for that kerbal, but also makes them unavailable for use) when I missed the resupply mission launch window or can't be bothered with kerbal's bodily needs when doing interplanetary or stupid shenanigans. It's basically my "off" button (in style) when I'm not really in mood using life support, but too lazy to open the gamedata and delete the mod folder

Me, but for long missions like Jool5

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9 hours ago, ARS said:

I played using TAC lifesupport, since it's mechanics are rather easy to understand and fairly straightforward (Don't let supplies get to 0, and you're fine). On a side note, I also used it alongside DeepFreeze mod (Aka Kerbal popsicle mod) to put any kerbals into cryosleep (Basically disabling any life support requirement for that kerbal, but also makes them unavailable for use) when I missed the resupply mission launch window or can't be bothered with kerbal's bodily needs when doing interplanetary or stupid shenanigans. It's basically my "off" button (in style) when I'm not really in mood using life support, but too lazy to open the gamedata and delete the mod folder

If I'm not mistaken, TAC has a difficulty option for background processing that you can toggle on and off whenever you wish.

I play with Deepfreeze too, but haven't used it in a long time.  I'd like to be able to use them for, say, escape pods, but with a relatively high chance of fatality on thawing (say 10-15%).  Basically so they're available, but you don't want to use them unless you have to.

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On 12/5/2018 at 11:52 AM, ZL647 said:

Nice biased poll you got going there, implying that people who dont use life support mods are somehow playing the game incorrectly.

Interesting, I was going to say that any kind of poll like this is biased for statistical reasons. I feel that few people would come to a thread like this to profess their deep resentment of life support mods, whereas people who do feel strongly about including life support will vote more frequently. This is really just a comment oriented at all the forums polls, and really shows that without a meaningful and representative sample size, you cant get good data. 

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