[WIP] .25 - PaladinLabs Dev Thread - DeepFreeze cryonic crew storage - v.14

[RedParadize]

I have a "bug" to report. Seem to be related with the latest version of TAC.

When you freeze a kerbal, TAC still track it, the "last updated" timer go up and, when you unfreeze. It update and substract the resource that would have been consumed if not freezed. If you happen to not have enough supply, TAC kill the Kerbal as you unfreeze it. There is a work around, if you save and reload before unfreezing, then it work fine.

Hope it helped

[scottpaladin]

I have a "bug" to report. Seem to be related with the latest version of TAC.

When you freeze a kerbal, TAC still track it, the "last updated" timer go up and, when you unfreeze. It update and substract the resource that would have been consumed if not freezed. If you happen to not have enough supply, TAC kill the Kerbal as you unfreeze it. There is a work around, if you save and reload before unfreezing, then it work fine.

Hope it helped

That's very strange. I just loaded up my test environment and I can't replicate the behavior. TAC behaves as I expect it to both when the vessel is focused and when it is in the background. I'm not sure what corner case you've run across that could be causing this. When you've had this happen, what was the state of the vessel (prelaunch/orbiting/landed)?

[RedParadize]

That's very strange. I just loaded up my test environment and I can't replicate the behavior. TAC behaves as I expect it to both when the vessel is focused and when it is in the background. I'm not sure what corner case you've run across that could be causing this. When you've had this happen, what was the state of the vessel (prelaunch/orbiting/landed)?

I have been using your mod for quite a while, Given I dash 3.2 gig with mods, I do have to reload KSP quite often. Thats probably why I noticed this strange behavor only yesterday. I updated TAC and Deep freeze about a to week ago, I also updated again when I noticed the bug.

To anser your question, It first happened to me on a ship on the way to duna. After 124 days, when I unfreezed the food droped to the level it would be if I didn't freeze. The ship have was focused durring all the trip.

I then preformed several test, some landed on the pads ( did a quick lunch and landing), some in flight and in orbit. Result was always the same. Then I noted that in the TAC life support roaster window, the frozed kerbal were still there and the "last updated" timer was still going up.

[Secuas]

I love using this but i have one problem. I can't seem to thaw my Kerbals. When I click: "Thaw <insert name here>" it waits a bit and says thawing aborted for no reason, all my life support recourses are full and I have enough eletrical charge I think, it has 1410 units. It drains untill it's empty but this worked for freezing it just keeps regaining charge untill it's able to freeze.

Help please, my kerbals are getting colder by the minute.

Thanks in advance!

Edited November 18, 2014 by Kaname

[scottpaladin]

I love using this but i have one problem. I can't seem to thaw my Kerbals. When I click: "Thaw <insert name here>" it waits a bit and says thawing aborted for no reason, all my life support recourses are full and I have enough eletrical charge I think, it has 1410 units. It drains untill it's empty but this worked for freezing it just keeps regaining charge untill it's able to freeze.

Help please, my kerbals are getting colder by the minute.

Thanks in advance!

I found the problem. The initial freeze process should have been aborted; the EC requirement is 3,000. I tested it a minute ago the freeze isn't canceling like I intended.

I'm working on an update that will fix this and while I'm at it I'm going to make the ChargeRequired (total EC needed for freeze/thaw) and Chargerate (EC pulled per tick) pull their values from the part.cfg file instead of being hard coded like they are in the current release candidate. This will be a slightly savegame breaking update so heads up there.

[Lechuza]

Love the idea for this mod. Downloading and testing, will post back if I encounter any bugs or glitches. Thank you for making this! Keep it up

[scottpaladin]

DeepFreeze v0.14 Released

Download

Changes:

• Fixed freezing failing to abort when EC is depleted
  
• Added part.cfg values for ChargeRate and ChargeRequired to allow for future parts using different EC values.
  

THIS IS A SAVE GAME BREAKING UPDATE!

I had originally intended for a couple of values related to electric charge usage of the cryonic storage to be pulled from the part.cfg for the part, but the initial release has these hard coded. I've fixed that now but since these values weren't set a persistent before, they don't exist in the vessel entry in your persistent.sfs file. Consequently, any CRY-2300 modules already launched before you update to v0.14 will be render inoperable (trapping your kerbals for and eternity of wintery stasis)

If you are not confident in your ability to modify your save file, just hold off on updating until you have unfrozen all your crews and are done with those ships. Land'em, crash'em into kerbol, whatever. Then update ate your leisure.

If you're not scared of messing with your persistent file, here's what you'll need to know to fix it. Open your save file up in your favorite text editor and look for a section that looks like this:

                MODULE
                {
                    name = DeepFreezer
                    isEnabled = True
                    FrozenCrew = Bill Kerman,Jebediah Kerman
                    FreezerSize = 10
                    TotalFrozen = 2
                    FreezerSpace = 8
                    IsCrewableWhenFull = True

All you need to do is add two lines after "IsCrewableWhenFull = True". These are to set ChargeRequired and ChargeRate, which tell the cryo chamber how much EC to draw and how fast. It should look like this:

                MODULE                {
                    name = DeepFreezer
                    isEnabled = True
                    FrozenCrew = Bill Kerman,Jebediah Kerman
                    FreezerSize = 10
                    TotalFrozen = 2
                    FreezerSpace = 8
                    IsCrewableWhenFull = True
                    ChargeRequired = 3000
                    ChargeRate = 30

Do that for any currently flying freezers and you should be good to go.

[scottpaladin]

Kaname, since you vessel doesn't have a storage of 3000 EC in total to thaw your kerbals. I'd recommend setting ChargeRequired = 1000 or less in your persistent.sfs file for that vessel. Should let you thaw your kerbals and complete your mission.

[Secuas]

Thanks for the quick fix! Will definitly do that. (although the ship is autonomously controlled) My Kerbals are gratefull!

And I want to mention again, this is mod is usefull and awsome i've ever seen!

Edited November 19, 2014 by Kaname
Typo's

[scottpaladin]

So I acquired a copy of 3DS Max and instead of poking my modeler friend to make me stuff, I asked him to teach me instead. I saw a request over on reddit for a particular part and it seemed not too complex so I tried my hand at it.

You can find the download over at Kerbal Stuff.

At the moment I'm trying my had at a 2-man 2.5 meter command pod as well.

[CTCParadox]

Made snowflake Part Catalog tags. Maybe not useful now that you are branching out with more parts

PaladinLabs_On

PaladinLabs_Off

[Riverey]

Can you please make some resource tanks for deepfreeze?)

[scottpaladin]

Can you please make some resource tanks for deepfreeze?)

I can. I shall. This is one reason why we're not at v1.0 yet.

[Deredere]

Something I'd like to get some opinions on is our new resource, glykerol (pronounced with the first syllable rhyming with "fly"), and how it's consumed by the chamber to store kerbals. Glykerol is supposed to be based off real world glycerol/glycerin, so it's about 20% denser than water and like CRP water, we measure it in litres per KSP unit. Here's the updated cfg file:

I'm assuming that we'll be filling up the whole cryopod with glykerol whenever we freeze a kerbal. The volume of the pods works out to be about 220 litres. But that's based on external dimensions and we're shoving a kerbal in there which will displace some fluid. Let's make the math easy and say you need 100 units of glykerol to put a kerbal into suspended animation. That works out to 1.2 tons of resource per freeze. The big chamber planned for the mod has 10 cryopods (which double as glykerol storage) so we can reasonably assume that it can hold 1000 units. With the weight of the chamber itself (at the moment, same as the science lab), a fully loaded cryochamber is 15.5 tons.

I'm months late, but what planet do you live on where 100 liters of glycerin is 1.2 tons? It would be 120 kilograms on earth.

Which would make your weight a lot more reasonable. But you've probably fixed this months ago.

Oh, and this system is awesome. I should say that too.

[scottpaladin]

I'm months late, but what planet do you live on where 100 liters of glycerin is 1.2 tons? It would be 120 kilograms on earth.

Which would make your weight a lot more reasonable. But you've probably fixed this months ago.

Oh, and this system is awesome. I should say that too.

Hm... I think you're right.

I had pulled my original density value from the entry for water in the CRP way back when I first started working on this but it would appear that I probably screwed up the decimal place. So that'll be fixed next time I push an update.

If anybody wants to implement the fix themselves just edit the cfg:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION{
   name = Glykerol
   density = 0.0012
   flowMode = ALL_VESSEL
   transfer = PUMP
   isTweakable = true
   unitCost = 0.8
}

[eataTREE]

I really need this mod! It's hard to bring enough Nutritionally Complete Koybean Paste for a century-long mission.

[a__gun]

Love the idea, but can't help thinking its a bit cheaty. Life support mods introduce ongoing resource needs for all crew on a craft and I think this should follow the same idea. Instead of a one off cost of a resource and electricity, there should be an ongoing cost for keeping your crew frozen. At the very least there should be an ongoing electrical requirement, with crew deaths if this isn't met. Otherwise it just seems to totally negate the point of having a LS mod installed.

I know this goes totally against what you originally planned here:

Next up is to set up resource utilization properly and do a balance pass. Current plan is thus: the cryonic chamber will take a very large amount of electric charge and a decent amount of glykerol whenever you freeze a kerbal. Keeping frozen kerbals in stasis is currently not planned to require any resources

but I definately think it would be more balanced - maybe offer it as a seperate version?

Anyways already a great mod as it stands - keep up the good work!

[DaveStrider]

i quite like the idea, it would be really useful for escape pods on other worlds where rescue can't arrive within the few weeks that life support would allow.

i do have one request though. could you make the thawing process require a non-frozen kerbal to activate?

[scottpaladin]

Love the idea, but can't help thinking its a bit cheaty. Life support mods introduce ongoing resource needs for all crew on a craft and I think this should follow the same idea. Instead of a one off cost of a resource and electricity, there should be an ongoing cost for keeping your crew frozen. At the very least there should be an ongoing electrical requirement, with crew deaths if this isn't met. Otherwise it just seems to totally negate the point of having a LS mod installed.

I know this goes totally against what you originally planned here:

but I definately think it would be more balanced - maybe offer it as a seperate version?

Anyways already a great mod as it stands - keep up the good work!

I've given this topic a lot of thought; gone round and round on it. TL;DR: I'm still behind the idea that resources are only used on freezing/thawing.

I quite like the way the the current system changes your mission planning process. I don't think it completely negates having and LS mod install, but it does change how you plan you missions. It replaces the total mission time to resource calculation of the life support system. With DeepFreeze you're planning you mission around total working time for your crew, how long they'll be active, and the total number of freeze/thaw cycles you'll need to complete. Take for example my most recent trip to Jool: before, I had to calculate out both my launch window and my return window, and the travel time back to Kerbin, and use that total trip time to figure out how much food/water to bring along (I think it was a few Kerbin years), but with cryonics available, I knew that my crew would only need a few weeks of working time at the most because all of my long time could be spent in stasis. It was a much easier calculation for me to handle, since neither my travel time nor wait to my return window mattered for how many tanks of food/water/oxygen I brought along.

I'll freely admit that DF scales back the difficulty imposed by life support; that's my goal. Life support + DeepFreeze provides a sort of compromise in difficulty, where you trade off a little bit of extra complexity in your craft and trip in order to let you have slightly easier time.

So I won't be adding a constant resource requirement (EC or other), but my code is open source and my license is permissive. I'd be plenty happy if someone wanted to branch it and push for more realism.

i quite like the idea, it would be really useful for escape pods on other worlds where rescue can't arrive within the few weeks that life support would allow.

i do have one request though. could you make the thawing process require a non-frozen kerbal to activate?

The one kerbal pod will be best suited for that use, it's coming. The thawing process does require some source of command (so either unfrozen crew or a probe core). As long as you have a probe core, you should be able to freeze/thaw even the one crew member of the ship. That being said, if I can think of a way to have even the last crew member with no probe core freeze themselves, I'd be tempted to add that.

In other news, I'd be interested to hear feedback on my proposal for an external glykerol tank:

Mostly uses a stock KSP texture to minimize RAM usage, but that center band could be used to distinguish the contents (so it'd be easy as pie to bang out versions for any other resources). Haven't decided on a concrete scale yet, so I'm especially interested in how much extra glykerol anyone would be interested in packing along on their journeys. Would you be more happy with an extra 20 units? 100? 1000?

[Deredere]

I think probably 60 at the very least, so two mass-balanced tanks can freeze a Kerbal. Volume wise, that monoprop tank in stock looks to be about bathtub sized, which would be around the 120 liters needed to do one Kerbal; but if you wanted to keep it lower to game-balance, you could pretend it includes bulky heating equipment to keep the Glykerol liquid. Or just scale it like you said.

So I'd say 60 or 120.

[madlemur]

At the moment I'm trying my had at a 2-man 2.5 meter command pod as well.

https://i.imgur.com/wULqw7r.png

Stealing designs from Corellian Engineering?

[scottpaladin]

So I'd say 60 or 120.

Cool. Data point noted. Thanks.

Stealing designs from Corellian Engineering?

Yes but probably not specifically the one you're thinking of.

[Kitworks]

I'll freely admit that DF scales back the difficulty imposed by life support; that's my goal. Life support + DeepFreeze provides a sort of compromise in difficulty, where you trade off a little bit of extra complexity in your craft and trip in order to let you have slightly easier time.

So I won't be adding a constant resource requirement (EC or other), but my code is open source and my license is permissive. I'd be plenty happy if someone wanted to branch it and push for more realism.

While I totally get the idea of needing constant energy requirements, and think that would be perfectly fine in the scope of this mod... I totally agree with you.

I think the added ease this brings to mission planning is great, and it's offset well by needing to bring along the stasis chamber, to design and build around that.

[Patupi]

With the talk over whether the freezer units should use resources just when freezing, or continuously during holding a frozen Kerbal, with the proposed changes for 0.90 with crew being more useful (pilots stabilizing craft etc) it's actually detrimental to have them frozen now. Without a pilot the craft will have less maneuverability thus I think sticking with the current system of resource just when freezing is good. It may seem 'cheaty' to some to have them stored for free, but soon having them stored (and unable to do piloting/science etc) will be enough of a disadvantage, especially when the number of freeze/thaws will be limited by the amount of Glykerol available.

[GrimT]

While I totally get the idea of needing constant energy requirements, and think that would be perfectly fine in the scope of this mod... I totally agree with you.

I think the added ease this brings to mission planning is great, and it's offset well by needing to bring along the stasis chamber, to design and build around that.

I fully intend on adding this mod to my list... mission planning for a trip to another planet is daunting enough of a task for me as it is, adding life support (which I have) only further complicates things. That all being said, I would love to see a config or slightly modified version of this that requires x amount of EC to sustain the cryostasis. Add to that, that I have DangIt! installed, mid mission I might have to thaw a Kerbal to repair a battery or solar panel. It adds challenges in different ways (for me at least) that for some reason I like to continue to throw at myself. Either way, Im using this mod as is. If someone makes a spinoff that does exactly as I suggested, I would love to add that "hard-mode" of this great addition to the community. Thanks Scottpaladin for a great mod

edit: would also like to comment for the above scenario that electrical charge should be based on a per kerbal frozen basis and if the 'ec maintenance cost' drops below whats required per kerbal, instead of killing the kerbal, it thaws them out and ejects them.

Edited December 12, 2014 by GrimT