[WIP] KerbalSocial - just an idea at this stage

[codepoet]

I am aware of a modder who is actively working on a mental health / sanity type mod with a view to it using connected living space, so I do not think I will do that. However I am tempted to do something related to experience, achievements, and command ability, so if Jeb has allready been to the moon and back he makes a good commander, and that benefits the crew (I am not sure how yet).

[RoverDude]

I am aware of a modder who is actively working on a mental health / sanity type mod with a view to it using connected living space, so I do not think I will do that. However I am tempted to do something related to experience, achievements, and command ability, so if Jeb has allready been to the moon and back he makes a good commander, and that benefits the crew (I am not sure how yet).

Hopped in here since I was just about to embark on this for MKS, since it needs sanity, physical fitness, unique skills, etc. for the next part of colonization. Can you let me know who's working on it so I can check if it's still under active development? I'd just as soon integrate something complete vs. build, but my concern at the moment is having conflicting dependencies with fitness, sanity, etc.

[codepoet]

Hopped in here since I was just about to embark on this for MKS, since it needs sanity, physical fitness, unique skills, etc. for the next part of colonization. Can you let me know who's working on it so I can check if it's still under active development? I'd just as soon integrate something complete vs. build, but my concern at the moment is having conflicting dependencies with fitness, sanity, etc.

This thread was just shooting ideas around. I am aware of this project, but it seems to have been abandoned, which is a shame. I not an project on this sort of stuff that is active. I am personally interested in encouraging mods along these lines as most of these ideas are ideas that would work well with Connected Living Space. Once I have finished my current projects I would like to do something to do with teamworking / mental health / achievements / experience / rank but it is all just ideas in my head at the moment, and I will soon be starting a new job that means I will have little time for modding.

I am not familiar with MKS, but if you want to add ideas on these lines, and would like someone to act as cheerleader let me know, I would be interested to be involved as I am able to.

[RoverDude]

Thanks - will post back once I have a design thread up.

[Floppster]

i think it should be somewhat dependent on ship design. like if you have 1 kerbal in a 1 man lander can for a trip longer than kerbin orbit and back, he will go insane and pilot the rocket into KSC. but if you have like, 3 people in a 4 man hitchhiker, everything is fine because the kerbals have friends and extra space to sit in. great right? also this plus the 4 and 2 ideas would be great!

Going insane after an hour or two alone seems a bit excessive, more so when accounting for the almost constant radio contact with KSC they would have.

My limit for going "insane" would probably be something like an extended roundtrip to Minmus alone. Trips to the Mun would, according to me, not be too bad since you still have a great view of Kerbin and radio contact. Going to Minmus would mean something like 14-20 Kerbin days with limited view and contact.

[Psykikk]

Going insane after an hour or two alone seems a bit excessive, more so when accounting for the almost constant radio contact with KSC they would have.

My limit for going "insane" would probably be something like an extended roundtrip to Minmus alone. Trips to the Mun would, according to me, not be too bad since you still have a great view of Kerbin and radio contact. Going to Minmus would mean something like 14-20 Kerbin days with limited view and contact.

i love the idea about sanity, and managing crews and such. but I see one problem: you don´t want the mod to be sonmething like

"plug this part in and you will survive", yet it will end up being that way. you would just need

-enough space

-enough crew

-match crew characteristics

according to mission length and you´re all set.

thats nice to start and better than nothing but, I think the only way to get further away from just assembling the "optimal mission layout" would be to also measure which kerbal did get "mangaged actively" and what did he do during that activeness.

let´s assume the following: you have a single kerbal that goes on a year long trip.. or longer. think "silent running" times of missions.

as long as the pilot is occupied with stuff, it´s not so bad at all. so, even the most spacious ship wouldn´t help if he doesn´t do various stuff on a consistent basis. and doing stuff and doing different stuff is the key. combine that with the right crew setup and you are golden.

so what is lacking for this to work: stuff you can do in IVA.

yeah you can send the kerbal on regular eva missions. but in space there´s obly so much stuff the kerbal can do.

in IVA, combined witht he right modules, the possibilities are greater.

workouts , playing cards, reading a book , writing one (or a diary), doing lab work, etc etc... what would be needed is different iva animations and a "meter" which measures how long each activity has been conducted...

some activities add to the "work" scale, others to the "enjoyment" scale.

so what you basically have to manage is the "work-life balance of the kerbals....

a lot of ranting.. just my 2cents. maybe I misunderstood your idea completely. if so, I am sorry.

[RoverDude]

So the model I am toying with is less of a linear formula, and more of a variable likelyhood of someone just snapping. i.e. gather up all of the factors, and on a periodic basis, check and see how close to the edge they are, and if they are close, do a check to see if they snap. Surviving these stresses may in some ways help them cope in the future, or may in other cases, result in a PTSD for Kerbals where a seemingly fine Jebediah, despite surviving all of his friends getting killed on that Minums mission, one day just snaps and decides now is a good time to cut all of the parachutes.

So a Kerbal stuffed in a tin can for a year has a greater likelyhood of, at some random point, just snapping. Put him in lots of space and around some friends, and his likelyhood of (at any given point) snapping is reduced, but it's always out there as a possiblity. And the results of snapping could be anything from walking out of an airlock, pushing someone else out of an airlock, or blowing up/disabling/decoupling parts because the voices told them to.

[Psykikk]

So the model I am toying with is less of a linear formula, and more of a variable likelyhood of someone just snapping. i.e. gather up all of the factors, and on a periodic basis, check and see how close to the edge they are, and if they are close, do a check to see if they snap. Surviving these stresses may in some ways help them cope in the future, or may in other cases, result in a PTSD for Kerbals where a seemingly fine Jebediah, despite surviving all of his friends getting killed on that Minums mission, one day just snaps and decides now is a good time to cut all of the parachutes.

So a Kerbal stuffed in a tin can for a year has a greater likelyhood of, at some random point, just snapping. Put him in lots of space and around some friends, and his likelyhood of (at any given point) snapping is reduced, but it's always out there as a possiblity. And the results of snapping could be anything from walking out of an airlock, pushing someone else out of an airlock, or blowing up/disabling/decoupling parts because the voices told them to.

maybe put something in like "psychological evaluation"..

i read some plans ar in place for kerbal training and such. so the psychological aspect should be part of that as well.

conducting tests and interviews and such.

these tests wouldn´t be part of actual modules and such, but require the kerbals to undergo tests before missionlaunch and thus not being available for other stuff.. so that the player has to effectively manage not only parts, science, budget and life support as ressources, but the available kerbal recruits as well.

evaluations and remote testing should then be part of the tech tree as the scientists learn more about psychologicallong term effects in space , the longer the kerbals actually spend in space. which brings a nice touch in like risk and reward:

mission lead: "he´s passed all the tests... it might be time to just try it out with Jebediah"

scientist: "but sir, we still haven´t had any clnclusive tests on the effects of sucha long trip ... even Jeb might not survive it"

mission lead : "don´t kid yourself, we will never know until we try..."

[Javster]

Decrease their piloting ability?

I think if they max out in insanity, it should lock the controls (Alt-L) unless other Kerbals are present.

[codepoet]

I am super excited now that this mod has been released to be used an as API which will provide another essential component of a sanity / social mod. I am really tempted to start work on this now.

Is anyone else aware of a anyone that has already started work on something similar?

I know lots of different ideas for this have been suggested. I will likely start sketching out my plans for this now. I can'y do everything that has been suggested, but an keen to incorporate lots of the ideas that have been suggested. For me, the focus will be on the aspect of building an effective and efficient team that works well together and does not fall out over time, and so creates a little game within the game - that of managing your crew.

The one missing component now I think is what the actual rewards / consequences of having a good or bad team can be within the game. I would welcome some ideas for this.

[RoverDude]

No idea how I missed that stats mod - just saved me a ton of work (luckilly I was just working on the graduating curves, etc. for skills). I was going to do sanity last (skills/training are first, then health), so if you get yours done first I'll happily take a dependency.

[Hattivat]

A few things I've already learned from the papers/studies I've read on the topic of space bases, stations and long-term exploration vessels, mostly concerning the amount of space required for the crew (keep in mind these numbers are for humans, for kerbals you can probably divide them by two):

First off, the amount of pressurized space is very important, but only up to some point. Once you get over 100 cubic meters of pressurized space per astronaut the returns from increasing it are rapidly diminishing (although not so rapidly as to make it pointless in case of very-long-term missions, if you are planning on a 10-yer-long deep-space mission, you need all the morale boosts you can get), and you benefit more from giving your crew additional stuff to do (laboratories, greenhouses) than simply increasing the amount of space at their disposal. Many studies propose (or just quietly assume) sacrificing the efficiency of certain tasks for the explicit purpose of giving crew more stuff to do - for example, most greenhouse projects provide crew access and assume some degree of manual labor, even though doing so almost doubles the required amount of space for the same amount of plants in comparison to a fully-automatic system. Some studies even seem to consider the value of greenhouses to be more in the morale-boosting aspect of having contact with plants and having something alive to take care of than in their food-producing capabilities.

Another thing (pretty intuitive, but it's always nice to have it confirmed by NASA guys) is that habitable space requirements for a mission in Earth orbit or on the surface of some other body are seemingly lower than for one that involves a long period of coasting through empty space.

Example of crafts from real life and in-depth studies:

Name / Pressurized space [cubic meters] / crew / longest mission (actual or proposed)

Gemini / 2.5 / 2 people / 14 days (Earth orbit)

Apollo / 10.4 / 3 people / 12 days (Moon landing and return)

Soyuz / 10 / 2 people / 18 days (Earth orbit)

NASA lunar outpost estimate / 40-70 per person / unspecified (likely large) / 180 days (shifts)

real space stations - almost all in the 80-100 per person range / 437 days (2 other people constantly on board)

NASA Mars reference / 90 per person / 3-6 people / about 2 years (including 2 x 200 days coasting through space)

NASA Deep Space Habitat / 137-205 total / 4 people / 60 days (cis-lunar mission)

NASA Deep Space Habitat / 213-301 total / 4 people / 500 days (cis-lunar mission)

NASA Nautilus-X / 1400 total / 6 people / 730 days (deep space)

Most of these longest mission times likely do not represent the possible maximum for the crafts, with the exception of Gemini and Soyuz, where the crew were reaching their limits.

[Ippo]

Hi guys, I'm really interested in this too

So a Kerbal stuffed in a tin can for a year has a greater likelyhood of, at some random point, just snapping. Put him in lots of space and around some friends, and his likelyhood of (at any given point) snapping is reduced, but it's always out there as a possiblity.

I don't know what's your background, but personally I think that you could handle this very simply and elegantly with a little bit of fuzzy logic.

With a fuzzy logic system you can actually write "code" like:

if space is high and friends is high then snapping is low
if space is low and friends is low then snapping is high

... and any other rule you care to implement. Then the defuzzifier transforms this in a probability according to some parameters.

Just tossing the idea around

[Olympic1]

Can I help with something codepoet?

[Tyrador]

Sorry to go little bit off topic, but is it possible to have a radiation effects on the crew in conjunction with psychological effects? Radiation is quite overlooked in modding community, as far as I can tell.

[Ippo]

Sorry to go little bit off topic, but is it possible to have a radiation effects on the crew in conjunction with psychological effects? Radiation is quite overlooked in modding community, as far as I can tell.

That would be more pertaining to life support mods though.

[Tyrador]

That would be more pertaining to life support mods though.

Yeah, but from point of view of plugin and coding to the KerbalSocial. Radiation effects may not require any additional parts just plugin.

[Ippo]

Yeah, but from point of view of plugin and coding to the KerbalSocial. Radiation effects may not require any additional parts just plugin.

That's not the point: radiation exposure is (imo) something that should be taken care of by a life support mod since it pertains to the physical health of the kerbonauts, while this project wants to deal with psychological health.

[Tyrador]

That's not the point: radiation exposure is (imo) something that should be taken care of by a life support mod since it pertains to the physical health of the kerbonauts, while this project wants to deal with psychological health.

From point of view of coding, radiation effects will be more similar to the KerbSocial, thus easier to implement. But I do see what you mean.

[Olympic1]

Sorry to go little bit off topic, but is it possible to have a radiation effects on the crew in conjunction with psychological effects? Radiation is quite overlooked in modding community, as far as I can tell.

That would be nice

[codepoet]

Can I help with something codepoet?

Sorry guys. I have gone quiet as I have just moved house, and I am preparing to be licensed into a new post next week. I will be down to coding on my one day off a week, and even then after I have done the gardening! So I am afraid nothing much will happen in a hurry.

However it has occurred to me that my the way forwards might be:

1) First to create a really simple sanity mod that uses the stupidity / courage of other kerbals in the same craft / living space to influence the "sanity" of each kerbal. So a courageous kerbal can help keep his team mates sane, and stupid kerbals are more susceptible to loosing their sanity. This may well not be the mod everyone wants, but it allows me to test all the main technical concepts first without it being complicated.

2) Produce a much more complex system where kerbals have multiple attributes and the relationships between each kerbals also have more than one aspect. Technically this will be no more challenging, it is just a matter of balancing the game play correctly.

Thoughts anyone?

[codepoet]

From point of view of coding, radiation effects will be more similar to the KerbSocial, thus easier to implement. But I do see what you mean.

I am not so sure that it would. The unique aspect of a social mod is that the idea that the attributes of one kerbal influance the attributes of the kerbals that they are bunking with. However a kerbal's risk of radiation is influenced more by the ship design / access to specialised parts (ie radiation shelters). I like the idea though.

[TonyC]

I would recommend in that case to have female kerbals (again) for the "relationship" thing to work better, knowing that Kerbal brains are unknown to us, and that adding female kerbals makes a step towards "understanding" the kerbals better.

[Drew Kerman]

Thoughts anyone?

Given the lack of free time, the best approach is to definitely release the simplest, bare-bones concept and just iterate from there as often as you can until the complex final idea is realized. (So basically agreeing with your two step process but saying many steps should go between). With a permissive license, even if you fall off the face of the earth it's a foundation others can keep building on, and it's way more satisfying to be releasing stuff than toiling away on a complex version that might not even make it out if time becomes even more precious for whatever reason.

[codepoet]

I have started playing around with formulas to see how stupidity and courage might affect sanity. What is have done is to say that the insanity (ie lack of sanity) of the other kerbals multiplied by a kerbal's stupidity have a negative influence on sanity; the courage of the other kerbals has a positive influence on the sanity of a kerbal. Positive and negative influences move a kerbals sanity between its current value and "absolute sanity" or "absolute insanity" (ie 1 or 0) (this is to ensure that sanity values tend towards and do not exceed limits).

This approach yields the following results for two different randomly selected starting values for sanity, stupidity and courage:

This model does nothing to take into account general "loneliness" and so for a lone kerbal the algorithm would have a consistent sanity.

It is an interesting spreadsheet to play around with - if you up the courage of one kerbal, all the others have a better outcome in terms of their sanity, and that in turn helps the more courageous kerbal too.

What do you all think?