Why is Life Support missing on the KSP2 Roadmap?

[Book]

Once again people speculating about something that was already adressed in the 2020 PC Gamer article

Quote

The campaign is “explicitly designed to be non- punitive” so you’ll never reach a fail state where you’ve run out of money and have to start over. Colonies won’t require tons of micromanagement. If you leave one in a dangerous state, without enough power or food, it’ll simply underperform. You can ignore it and keep on building that next rocket—the one sure to be your masterpiece, once you solve that little ‘exploding on the launchpad’ problem.

https://www.pcgamer.com/space-odyssey-our-first-big-look-at-kerbal-space-program-2/

While game design is sure to have changed in two years, the non-punitive part seems like a fundamental design pillar to me, so I doubt would have done a 180 on that.
And it seems like a pretty good solution, having kerbals die is anyway not compatible with a game where you can skip ahead ten years in just a few seconds, killing a whole colony because your pressed . insteand of , is terrible gameplay, and the reason most life support mods kinda suck.
Of course the automated supply system will already alleviate a good part of that, but it's even better if you don't have to restart your whole empire because the supply logistics collapsed while you were fast forwarding a whole century to a new system.

As for life support in the ships themselves I doubt they'll do any, unlike colonies I don't really see a midway underperfom state for kerbonauts, everything they do can be of critical mission importance. Maybe they could look grumpy in the crew cameras ?

[Wheehaw Kerman]

I think we’re thinking about reward versus punishment all wrong.  If we define reward as “Kerbals arrive alive at destination, mission accomplished break out the champagne” and punishment as “Kerbals die in any of the numerous ways in which space travel can and will kill you oh god the paperwork”, then we realize that  punishment is just part of the fun, and that KSP has always been pretty punitive.

[MarcAbaddon]

Heatshields are a good comparison, because I agree they are a good comparison to make. Here's some reasons why I think heatshields work:

• Unless you rely on atmospheric capture, you can recover from failing with your heat shields by reloading to before re-entry. So you rarely have to reload to a long time before, and you can usually salvage by either refueling and going into the atmosphere very slowly or by rescuing your Kerbals. So most of the time you can recover from heatshield failure.
• There's a definite reward involved with heatshields, in that good heatshields allows you to save delta-v using atmospheric capture, which is a really cool moment in the game when you pull it off. So there's a carrot as well as a stick.
• They are also cheap and relatively light weight, so it is extremely easy to add to your existing designs when you have forgotten it.  So it's a recoverable failure from a rocket design perspective as well.

In contrast I don't think everything that adds realism is good - it needs to interact with the rest of the game in a good manner, as heatshields arguably do. For example, minute long airlock cycles are realistic, but how many people want them in the game?

The question is still exactly life support would be implemented, and I didn't really see many proposals which don't essentially boil down to a mass tax. Failures would likely occur during transfers, potentially making you miss your insertion burns, so it is much harder to recover from. There's no similar reward to heat shields. If you miss it at the design stage you have to add several tons of mass (admittedly, this depends on the implementation). So I am still doubtful this would improve the game - but again, we are talking without knowing how the system would look like exactly. Maybe the designers thought of a way it would be fun. I just know that to me a simple mass tax with death or craft control as the consequence of failure wouldn't be to me. Fuel is already the main limiting resource and when you run out of that you can at least make sure you end up stranded on a planet or in a relatively nice rendezvous orbit - you have options to mitigate your failure with fuel.

15 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I think we’re thinking about reward versus punishment all wrong.  If we define reward as “Kerbals arrive alive at destination, mission accomplished break out the champagne” and punishment as “Kerbals die in any of the numerous ways in which space travel can and will kill you oh god the paperwork”, then we realize that  punishment is just part of the fun, and that KSP has always been pretty punitive.

Sure, but 95% of the time you can safe your Kerbals by a simple reload, though they might need rescue or have to abort the mission. It's hard to end up in a dead man walking situation where you suddenly realize the craft was doomed for the last in-game year, and there is nothing you can do to salvage the situation. With life support it is easy to imagine a situation where you'd have to reload a long time or accept dead kerbals. 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

4 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

Sure, but 95% of the time you can safe your Kerbals by a simple reload, though they might need rescue or have to abort the mission. It's hard to end up in a dead man walking situation where you suddenly realize the craft was doomed for the last in-game year, and there is nothing you can do to salvage the situation. With life support it is easy to imagine a situation where you'd have to reload a long time or accept dead kerbals. 

I don’t think that this is any different from forgetting heatshields or parachutes.  Do that, don’t notice it, and the result on arrival at Laythe or Eve or heaven forfend DebDeb will be every bit as terminal and game-delaying as not providing adequate LS.  And then you won’t do that again :).

When they brought in re-entry heating, everybody  lost a few crews of screaming flaming dead Kerbals.  Then we adapted, learning to enjoy the fine tuning of ablator levels and parachute selection and placement.   I can’t remember the last time I lost a crew on re-entry.

I can’t see the veteran players messing LS up much, and presumably there’ll be tutorial support for the new players.  If they scale LS to the same level of generous abstraction as they do the rest of the game, we won’t suffer too hard :).

[Strawberry]

Im fine with life support being "punishing" because the gameplay function is to punish longer missions. The way Id like to see life support done from a gameplay function perspective is just a simple mass tax for longer missions (with ways to recuperate that mass tax such as installing greenhouse modules), that way faster missions allow you to save on mass, thus giving them a gameplay advantage. There should definitely be difficulty/turning off all life support options here though, wouldnt be hard to implement and would enable people to play as theyd like.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Strawberry

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 hours ago, Strawberry said:

Im fine with life support being "punishing" because the gameplay function is to punish longer missions. The way Id like to see life support done from a gameplay function perspective is just a simple mass tax for longer missions (with ways to recuperate that mass tax such as installing greenhouse modules), that way faster missions allow you to save on mass, thus giving them a gameplay advantage. There should definitely be difficulty/turning off all life support options here though, wouldnt be hard to implement and would enable people to play as theyd like.

The only problem with this is that you can only run one dedicated mission at a time.  No more dumping a couple of Kerbals into orbit around some place to passively collect / do science or leaving Jeb on the surface while you do something else.  You're literally forcing players to think about - well before they launch - everything they might do to complete each mission and bring the Kerbals back home before you even think about warping to the next launch window and sending your Jool mission... oops Jeb died.

Again - if you want to play like that, good on ya.  But for most people?  Probably not.

 

Addenda:

(The interesting thing for me, reading the countless threads in the KSP2 Sub is learning how many people "Role Play" Space Agency via KSP.  For me it was always a highly challenging and educational game, with the emphasis on game - where I had a ton of fun doing stuff and learned along the way.  Most of the content I have watched on YouTube has been of people doing silly and absurd stuff with rockets, planes, and rovers - or really creative solutions to problems humans have yet to solve (SSTO's and etc.)

But here - with so many voices talking about their hopes for 2... There's been this thread of posts where people want way more realism, sim-lite and role-play than I ever thought anyone would want from this game.  I don't begrudge them this; I just never considered it a feature.

Edited November 23, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

oops Jeb died.

Exactly. Sciman’s post dug into this a bit as well, that many LS mods relied on too many variables and punishing consequences because the underlying game mechanics weren’t really there for a softer reward system. While I think its good to plan ahead you also need to provide players with the tools to improvise. If you’ve got a multi-modular exploration vessel you should be able to move your snacks from section to section or reload from the mothership. You should also be able to use ISRU and greenhouses to live off the land on longer missions. One thing USI LS uses is a consequence-free grace period of couple weeks. Not only does this alleviate the need to worry about LS in the very early game but it allows short excursions that don’t require a bunch of logistics. 

[Guest]

More than punishment vs reward, I think the argument for a non-lethal LS stands entirely in the ability to do rescue missions.

Rescue missions are a staple of the game.

[MarcAbaddon]

13 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I don’t think that this is any different from forgetting heatshields or parachutes.  Do that, don’t notice it, and the result on arrival at Laythe or Eve or heaven forfend DebDeb will be every bit as terminal and game-delaying as not providing adequate LS.  And then you won’t do that again :).

When they brought in re-entry heating, everybody  lost a few crews of screaming flaming dead Kerbals.  Then we adapted, learning to enjoy the fine tuning of ablator levels and parachute selection and placement.   I can’t remember the last time I lost a crew on re-entry.

I can’t see the veteran players messing LS up much, and presumably there’ll be tutorial support for the new players.  If they scale LS to the same level of generous abstraction as they do the rest of the game, we won’t suffer too hard :).

No, it's not the same. First off, you are most likely to first experience it very early in the game, where you only have a single flight at a time.

In the late game most people - especially those a bit newer on the game - do not rely on aerocapture to have enough delta-v. So on late game interplanetary missions, if you burn up in the atmosphere, you can usually load the last save game before your de-orbiting burn. Then you either change the mission parameters or try to somehow get your ship intact through the atmosphere regardless, which is often doable if you have a little of delta-v to spare. If you choose to rely on aerocapture, that's a conscious player choice for a high risk, high reward maneuver.  And it interacts strongly with the orbital mechanics, i.e. you really need good heat shields when coming in from a retrograde orbit.

Point being HS is unlikely to lead to a loss of a significant amount of gameplay time, unless you make a deliberate choice. With LS it is easy to imagine a situation where for example you already went to Duna, explored the planet but then run out on the return trip. 

That's a big downside. But it could be worth it if LS offers interesting gameplay. For example, failing orbital mechanics can definitely lead to catastrophes. Here it's worth it because interaction with the mechanics through gameplay is the single most important element of the game.

A LS mass tax still doesn't sound interesting to me. To give a stupid analogy, having to go on the toilet would make cRPGs both more complex and realistic. And no one is calling for that. The very fact that LS would need to be generously abstracted is what makes it bad gameplay. The science and engineering behind CO2 scrubbers, effects of zero-g and water recovery are super interesting. You might be able to make an interesting game out of it, when focusing on that. But in KSP the most likely effect is that you will abstract both the entire science out of it which negates the educational aspect and adds a simple mass tax without any interesting interaction with the rest of the game. It'll be another checkbox.   

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by MarcAbaddon

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

 

That's a big downside. But it could be worth it if LS offers interesting gameplay. For example, failing orbital mechanics can definitely lead to catastrophes. Here it's worth it because interaction with the mechanics through gameplay is the single most important element of the game.

I’ll just point to The Cold Equations.

Imagine yourself imagining Jeb, Bill, Bob and Reddshurt Kerman eyeing each other in a Hitchhiker Can after Bill announces they have only enough air for three on the return trip.  Imagine Gene Kerman and the Mission Control Kerbs’ reactions to Jeb talking a long spacewalk for bonus drama.  Imagine the boredom at the ceremony when they raise a monument to Jeb’s heroic sacrifice.  Imagine the reaction at the Astronaut Center when Jeb shows up for work the next Monday.

Imagine the gameplay when a rescue mission has a tight timeline due to low LS, and you can either drop everything, strap some solids together and slap a command module on top, and go go go, versus just saving up some rescue missions for when you need some more Kerbals.

I’m not a heartless monster: I always bring stranded Kerbals home, eventually.  But being able to park them on Eeloo indefinitely irks me.  I do think that games get better when the stakes get higher, up to a point.  And Kerbals being at risk of death is a major stake of this game.  I don’t think LS would raise the stakes to anywhere near the point of diminished enjoyment.  Sure, Kerbals might die, and missions might be lost (maybe twice for each player max).  That danger is ever-present in real spaceflight and happens so rarely because NASA and Roscosmos got gud.  And getting gud at KSP has been so fun and rewarding that we’re still here talking about how to improve its sequel, a decade after it launched.

I can’t see an optional LS hard mode as being anything but an improvement.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Wheehaw Kerman

[MarcAbaddon]

16 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I’ll just point to The Cold Equations.

Imagine yourself imagining Jeb, Bill, Bob and Reddshurt Kerman eyeing each other in a Hitchhiker Can after Bill announces they have only enough air for three on the return trip.  Imagine Gene Kerman and the Mission Control Kerbs’ reactions to Jeb talking a long spacewalk for bonus drama.  Imagine the boredom at the ceremony when they raise a monument to Jeb’s heroic sacrifice.  Imagine the reaction at the Astronaut Center when Jeb shows up for work the next Monday.

Imagine the gameplay when a rescue mission has a tight timeline due to low LS, and you can either drop everything, strap some solids together and slap a command module on top, and go go go, versus just saving up some rescue missions for when you need some more Kerbals.

I’m not a heartless monster: I always bring stranded Kerbals home, eventually.  But being able to park them on Eeloo indefinitely irks me.  I do think that games get better when the stakes get higher, up to a point.  And Kerbals being at risk of death is a major stake of this game.  I don’t think LS would raise the stakes to anywhere near the point of diminished enjoyment.  Sure, Kerbals might die, and missions might be lost (maybe twice for each player max).  That danger is ever-present in real spaceflight and happens so rarely because NASA and Roscosmos got gud.  And getting gud at KSP has been so fun and rewarding that we’re still here talking about how to improve its sequel, a decade after it launched.

I can’t see an optional LS hard mode as being anything but an improvement.

I agree that the time timeline sounds appealing - I am just doubtful it will work out like this. 

For example, with time constraints I think mostly the timing just won't work. It'll easy either be relatively easy to get there in time or almost impossible. For example, let's assume you have 2 or 3 months to get to Duna in order to save the crew - if you are capable of doing that then you probably have the experience with the game that you won't have had the life support issue in the first place. And you could get the same type of tight timelines gameplay by giving you a contract - that way the time window can also be controlled to be in a target difficulty window. This is possibly even in KSP 1 right now, without adding LS at all. 

I am less in favor for leaving Kerbals behind in order to save others. What's next, cannibalism when you run out of food? Like weapons that kind of grimness just doesn't fit base KSP for me. 

Of course, an optional LS hard mode is an improvement. Having options at least some players use is always an improvement, but only when regarded in isolation. Every feature you add takes development time away from other stuff. That's why leaving features that only appeal to a much narrower audience to mods is so often a good call. I sometimes play RO-1 KSP and will probably play a similar mod for KSP 2, but I don't think the developers should spend their time adding everything in it as an option to the main.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

 

Imagine yourself imagining Jeb, Bill, Bob and Reddshurt Kerman eyeing each other in a Hitchhiker Can after Bill announces they have only enough air for three on the return trip.  Imagine Gene Kerman and the Mission Control Kerbs’ reactions to Jeb talking a long spacewalk for bonus drama.  Imagine the boredom at the ceremony when they raise a monument to Jeb’s heroic sacrifice.  Imagine the reaction at the Astronaut Center when Jeb shows up for work the next Monday.

Imagine the gameplay when a rescue mission has a tight timeline due to low LS, and you can either drop everything, strap some solids together and slap a command module on top, and go go go, versus just saving up some rescue missions for when you need some more Kerbals.

I’m not a heartless monster: I always bring stranded Kerbals home, eventually.  But being able to park them on Eeloo indefinitely irks me.  I do think that games get better when the stakes get higher, up to a point.  And Kerbals being at risk of death is a major stake of this game.  I don’t think LS would raise the stakes to anywhere near the point of diminished enjoyment.  Sure, Kerbals might die, and missions might be lost (maybe twice for each player max).  That danger is ever-present in real spaceflight and happens so rarely because NASA and Roscosmos got gud.  And getting gud at KSP has been so fun and rewarding that we’re still here talking about how to improve its sequel, a decade after it launched.

Imagine colonies having maluses on their growth based on abandoning astronauts around without LS, the opposite of a boom event.

Reputation and morale being factors in management and influenced by LS.

Non-lethal LS makes space for a ton of gameplay, rescues included, especially if the rescued Kerbals are still incapacitated until brought back to Kerbin or a sufficiently advanced colony.

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

A LS mass tax still doesn't sound interesting to me. To give a stupid analogy, having to go on the toilet would make cRPGs both more complex and realistic. And no one is calling for that. The very fact that LS would need to be generously abstracted is what makes it bad gameplay. The science and engineering behind CO2 scrubbers, effects of zero-g and water recovery are super interesting. You might be able to make an interesting game out of it, when focusing on that. But in KSP the most likely effect is that you will abstract both the entire science out of it which negates the educational aspect and adds a simple mass tax without any interesting interaction with the rest of the game. It'll be another checkbox.   

There is another problem that this brings up, and that is without greenhouses and recyclers the mass tax increases linearly with larger crews and longer missions and would become exorbitant for interstellar missions. To keep things simple I do still prefer to just focus on nutrient/calorie mass and assume water and O2 are being recycled, but thats not to say in the mid and late game you couldn’t introduce food rehydrators, greenhouses, and nutrient reprocessors that would improve efficiency and reduce LS mass on very long journeys. It also introduces some strategy around mass efficiency similar to ISP vs TWR. 

Edited November 23, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Vl3d]

8 hours ago, Master39 said:

the rescued Kerbals are still incapacitated until brought back to Kerbin or a sufficiently advanced colony

This!!! @Nate Simpson

Edited November 23, 2022 by Vl3d

[Rutabaga22]

On 11/22/2022 at 1:34 PM, Wheehaw Kerman said:

fine tuning of ablator levels

Off-topic, but I need to ask, do people fine tune ablator? I just slap on a heatshield and then I'm done.

On 11/22/2022 at 8:29 AM, MarcAbaddon said:

Heatshields are a good comparison, because I agree they are a good comparison to make. Here's some reasons why I think heatshields work:

• Unless you rely on atmospheric capture, you can recover from failing with your heat shields by reloading to before re-entry. So you rarely have to reload to a long time before, and you can usually salvage by either refueling and going into the atmosphere very slowly or by rescuing your Kerbals. So most of the time you can recover from heatshield failure.
• There's a definite reward involved with heatshields, in that good heatshields allows you to save delta-v using atmospheric capture, which is a really cool moment in the game when you pull it off. So there's a carrot as well as a stick.
• They are also cheap and relatively light weight, so it is extremely easy to add to your existing designs when you have forgotten it.  So it's a recoverable failure from a rocket design perspective as well.

In contrast I don't think everything that adds realism is good - it needs to interact with the rest of the game in a good manner, as heatshields arguably do. For example, minute long airlock cycles are realistic, but how many people want them in the game?

The question is still exactly life support would be implemented, and I didn't really see many proposals which don't essentially boil down to a mass tax. Failures would likely occur during transfers, potentially making you miss your insertion burns, so it is much harder to recover from. There's no similar reward to heat shields. If you miss it at the design stage you have to add several tons of mass (admittedly, this depends on the implementation). So I am still doubtful this would improve the game - but again, we are talking without knowing how the system would look like exactly. Maybe the designers thought of a way it would be fun. I just know that to me a simple mass tax with death or craft control as the consequence of failure wouldn't be to me. Fuel is already the main limiting resource and when you run out of that you can at least make sure you end up stranded on a planet or in a relatively nice rendezvous orbit - you have options to mitigate your failure with fuel.

Sure, but 95% of the time you can safe your Kerbals by a simple reload, though they might need rescue or have to abort the mission. It's hard to end up in a dead man walking situation where you suddenly realize the craft was doomed for the last in-game year, and there is nothing you can do to salvage the situation. With life support it is easy to imagine a situation where you'd have to reload a long time or accept dead kerbals. 

I agree. Realism for the sake of realism isn't good game design. Parachutes and heatshields have benefits. Adding life support doesn't make anything easier. Maybe if you could turn some life support biproduct into resources it would be nice (Excrement concrete?) or make life support benefit kerbals' performance in some way it would make things better, but no benefits would make the game worse. Also, everyone knows kerbals use photosynthesis. 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

9 hours ago, Master39 said:

Imagine colonies having maluses on their growth based on abandoning astronauts around without LS, the opposite of a boom event.

Reputation and morale being factors in management and influenced by LS.

Non-lethal LS makes space for a ton of gameplay, rescues included, especially if the rescued Kerbals are still incapacitated until brought back to Kerbin or a sufficiently advanced colony.

I think that penalizing colonies for fatal LS management makes perfect sense; “no way am I going THERE!  Have you seen their casualty rates?”

Being able to rescue a Kerbal after three years (heck, three weeks) in the equivalent of a Mercury capsule doesn’t really add much in terms of gameplay, IMHO.  It’s painfully, glaringly unrealistic: we all know it’s BS and would never work in the real world.  I’ll do rescue missions in Career because they are a huge money saver, but I don’t like them.  OTOH, careful calibration of deadlines on rescue contracts (or building your own craft with typical Kerbal levels of over engineering in terms of LS reserves) could lead to some nailbitingly tight and therefore more dramatic, fun, and memorable rescue missions.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

doesn’t really add much in terms of gameplay, IMHO.

If you don't consider rescuing kerbals a valid gameplay loop.

 

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

It’s painfully, glaringly unrealistic: we all know it’s BS and would never work in the real world.

Gameplay >>> realism.

Realism is subservient to the gameplay.

 

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

OTOH, careful calibration of deadlines on rescue contracts (or building your own craft with typical Kerbal levels of over engineering in terms of LS reserves) could lead to some nailbitingly tight and therefore more dramatic, fun, and memorable rescue missions

Nope.

Lethal LS typically means the "revert to VAB" kind of "rescue mission" for 99.9% of the players, and crew death in the remaining cases.

Frankly if the only argument for LS is realism then it can stay out of the game, along with all the other aspects of real space travel that KSP ignores.

KSP is a game with some simulation aspects, which ones and how realistic they are is driven by the gameplay experience the Devs are creating.

[Davi SDF]

In my opinion, i wouldn't mind having something like TAC Life Suport, but i know that most will disagree, and that's fine! Even if there is no LS, modders will add it anyway!

But being honest, i hope there is a very basic radiation and life support systems (Life Support being "Snacks" and radiation being "perhaps i shouldn't put my crew cabin beside a nuclear engine"), or at least something most would be confortable with.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

If you don't consider rescuing kerbals a valid gameplay loop.

 

Gameplay >>> realism.

Realism is subservient to the gameplay.

 

Nope.

Lethal LS typically means the "revert to VAB" kind of "rescue mission" for 99.9% of the players, and crew death in the remaining cases.

Frankly if the only argument for LS is realism then it can stay out of the game, along with all the other aspects of real space travel that KSP ignores.

KSP is a game with some simulation aspects, which ones and how realistic they are is driven by the gameplay experience the Devs are creating.

In your view.  It seems we have pretty much opposite opinions on all of these points, but that’s fine, and you do you.  
 

Me?  I come down pretty far out on the simulation end of the simulation/gaminess spectrum.   IMHO, game quality correlates strongly to realism.  In KSP, I’d support things like realistic atmospheres/orbital decay, reaction wheel saturation, boiloff, ullage, RTG decay,  limits on throttleability and restarts, and pretty much anything that adds challenge by increasing realism and eliminating that sort of annoying, immersion-wrecking unrealistic omission/copout.  As I’ve said, I’m sure there’s a point where I’d stop enjoying the additional realism, but stock KSP1 is nowhere near that.  I’m never going to pilot a spacecraft, and the closest thing I’ll ever get to that not simulating that sort of think kinda irks me.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

 In KSP, I’d support things like realistic atmospheres/orbital decay, reaction wheel saturation, boiloff, ullage, RTG decay,  limits on throttleability and restarts, and pretty much anything that adds challenge by increasing realism and eliminating that sort of annoying, immersion-wrecking unrealistic omission/copout. 

Woof, yeah, we are miles apart. There are lots of things that are real that I don’t think are good in a game. I don’t want to do a hundred engine tests and static fires before launching a new vessel. I don’t want to deal with vendor contracts or personnel disputes. I just want to make colonies on other planets and grow food and build crazy big interstellar arcs. I want good strategy and less grind. Real physics and chemistry are awesome and a great guide for gameplay, but I don’t want my vessel to blow up because I picked the wrong alloy for my preburner. A lot of that kind of minutia can be simplified and abstracted so we can progress more smoothly toward tackling the real conceptual problems of traveling and living in space.  

Edited November 24, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Me?  I come down pretty far out on the simulation end of the simulation/gaminess spectrum.   IMHO, game quality correlates strongly to realism.  In KSP, I’d support things like realistic atmospheres/orbital decay, reaction wheel saturation, boiloff, ullage, RTG decay,  limits on throttleability and restarts, and pretty much anything that adds challenge by increasing realism and eliminating that sort of annoying, immersion-wrecking unrealistic omission/copout.  As I’ve said, I’m sure there’s a point where I’d stop enjoying the additional realism, but stock KSP1 is nowhere near that.  I’m never going to pilot a spacecraft, and the closest thing I’ll ever get to that not simulating that sort of think kinda irks me.

Well, thanks for not going in circles around it.

I get where you come from, but I've seen one to many good simulators that are terrible games to believe that way.

And not always extreme realism allows the player to play in realistic ways.

Let's pick the example of signal delay, it's a realism feature, but it also means that the Ingenuity Mars Duna Helicopter now requires a crew in orbit to operate. Which is ludicrous for a mere technology demonstrator.

[kerbiloid]

A realism feature life cycle.

1.
Player A: "Can we please  add a realism feature! The gameplay would not lack realism."
The game devs proponents: "You don't need this feature, the excessive realism is too bad for gameplay. Play with calculator if you need realism."

2.
(Devs: silently have added the feature).

3.
Player B: "Can we please remove the feature? The excessive realism is too bad for gameplay."
The game devs proponents: "You need this feature, the gameplay would lack realism. Play with dolls if you can't into the true realism."

4.
(Devs: silently make the feature option switchable).

5.
Player A: "Can we please set it by default on? We forget switching it."
Player B: "Can we please set it by default off? We forget switching it."
The game devs proponents: "The developers set it right. Play with your lamp switch if you want it work in your personal way."

6.
(Devs: silently switch the default option).

7.
Player A & B: "Why did they switch the default setting of the feature? We forget switching it."
The game devs proponents: "The developers set it right. Play with your lamp switch if you want it work in your personal way."

8
Others: eating the local equivalent of popcorn.

Edited November 24, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Strawberry]

On 11/22/2022 at 7:05 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The only problem with this is that you can only run one dedicated mission at a time.  No more dumping a couple of Kerbals into orbit around some place to passively collect / do science or leaving Jeb on the surface while you do something else.  You're literally forcing players to think about - well before they launch - everything they might do to complete each mission and bring the Kerbals back home before you even think about warping to the next launch window and sending your Jool mission... oops Jeb died.

We have colonies now, if you want a dedicated presence in orbit you should make an orbital colony. Im not against things that allow you to have effectively indefinite life support, but it should be large (similar size to mobile processing lab) that way its not a free pick. The latter issue seems mostly like a problem of execution, ideally the storage of snacks should be forgiving enough to where you can have a comfortable excess, but enough to where it isnt trivial. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

20 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

We have colonies now, if you want a dedicated presence in orbit you should make an orbital colony. Im not against things that allow you to have effectively indefinite life support, but it should be large (similar size to mobile processing lab) that way its not a free pick. The latter issue seems mostly like a problem of execution, ideally the storage of snacks should be forgiving enough to where you can have a comfortable excess, but enough to where it isnt trivial. 

That is an interesting point - and one I did not consider 

[magnemoe]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:23 PM, SciMan said:

If Nate has said "no comment" every time, everyone's gonna see what they want to see in that. The people who want life support are going to see it as a confirmation of life support, and the people who don't want it (probably because of past negative experience) are gonna see that as Nate saying that it's not in the game.

Me? I see it as [error data not available].
No comment is just that. A comment that doesn't exist.
In other words, it's the same as saying "I can't confirm or deny 'thing XYZ'".
Gotta remember to take off your rose-tinted glasses and look at the thing objectively.

So do we know if life supports in the game yet or not? NO!
After considering all the data available about the subject (which is nothing), I'm 100% certain that I have no idea if life support is in the game or not.
This is very much a "known unknown".

Now that that's out of the way, I can start discussing the topic like the rest of you have been.

If life support IS in the game, I expect there are 2 potential locations on the timeline where it would be introduced.
LS is in the game from day 1.
Or LS is introduced into the game along with the colonization mechanics, either because the majority of LS is focused on "making sure your colonies can supply a habitable environment for the kerbals that are living there", or that it's for both ships AND colonies, and it doesn't make sense for one to exist without the other if they're eventually both going to be in the game.
 

No comment is probably as its work in progress.  Likely its not something they have decided on or how to implement it. If coming with resources with an small chance with colonies. 
Life support is resources. I'm pretty sure an colony is able to produce enough life support  and  food is the hard thing to make, before this its not an colony its an base like the bases we make in KSP 1. 
You also need enough greenhouses for the base to expand, and extra food can be used on ships. If you have ISRU of fuel and oxidizer you also has oxygen and water. 

For this reason they might just use food for life support. I like TAC life support as to recycle water and air you need 500 kg modules for 8 kerbals so you want it on bases or larger ships. 
Downside is that it don't factor in ISRU. other mods adds greenhouses but water might be an issue. 

One obvious fix to avoid kerbals from dying if life support runs out is to simply have them going into coma. To recover them you have to bring them to Kerbin or an colony. 
Also if your starship  fails then you start braking at destination because the empty tanks you dropped had struts holding the ship together. You are 10 LY out and at .2c, 
Rescuing them will be interesting. 

Had two issues with life support, first was in an game Jeb going around the Mun, forgot to add extra life support, modified it to an free return rather than entering orbit and cheated and added more resources. 

Second was rescuing an kerbal in retrograde orbit around the sun between Dress and Jool. Made an monster with an 2 km/s chemical stage then 1+8 asparagus with LV-N and an chemical upper stage for 20 km/s.
Grabbed the kerbals capsule and wanted to set up an minimum energy free return trajectory then I noticed I has only 100 days of life support.
So I needed to reach Kebin in 100 days, luckily I had 10 Km/s left and used 8. 
Second problem was catching the keral, simply use an second of the 20 km/s rockets.