Reddit post from HarvesteR

[bigbadben]

Since life support options are up...

Snacks! is a great mod. Light-hearted and fun to use. The thing that the developer of Snacks! got right, is that the life support function is tied to your existing crewed parts (habitats/pods/etc), which reflects real life. If we are sending out a mission to the moon or what-not, the existing containers will be crammed full of food, to eat and discard. There isn't a greenhouse on the ISS, Mercury, or Apollo missions. It was already contained.

But...

The book, 'The Martian' by Andy Weir, illustrates how important food is for a long-term planetary outpost. I think life support should be a factor in that, not so much space travel (since it's implied as cargo in the pods). A greenhouse-etc., and the underlying requirements/problems for managing that, would be more 'realistic' if you are trying to create a Duna base. And I would love the challenge, since that is one of the major issues in managing long-term manned missions.

Just my 2-cents.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I wonder what the discussions would have been like if electricity was not a resource at all and only now was being added to the game. Everything people are saying they don't like about life support applies to electricity. You have to bring extra parts that can add mass to your ship, and can be completely circumvented by adding a couple RTGs to the vessel provided it's not an ultralight ion probe. You forget this and uh oh you're toast, and stranded. Why can't life support simply be treated exactly like electricity is now? Some battery equivalent storage units, some generation units, and engines can generate both electricity AND life support. A simple and not thought-through suggestion, but honestly the arguments against continue to ring hollow to me.

[CaptainKipard]

^^ That's a good point actually.

[Tw1]

A lot of the argument about life support resolves around the need to run many supply missions to keep things topped up.

This shouldn't apply to most flights- if you've got some idea how long it will take, you can bring enough, if you don't, it was a mission planning failure.

It's bases and stations that we have to worry about.

Automated re-supply missions have been suggested before, but perhaps there could be a better strategy- resupply sub-contracts.

Doning it like this would simplify a lot of things- there wouldn't need to be any automated flying to run a system like this:

Click for bigger.

This diagram assumes that their new, simplified resources happens somehow, and also that we get a new part which can create life support if landed on a planet where oxygen, water, and soils could theoretically be extracted. Perhaps it could work on a few planets, with different rates.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Tw1

[Brethern]

I wonder what the discussions would have been like if electricity was not a resource at all and only now was being added to the game. Everything people are saying they don't like about life support applies to electricity. You have to bring extra parts that can add mass to your ship, and can be completely circumvented by adding a couple RTGs to the vessel provided it's not an ultralight ion probe. You forget this and uh oh you're toast, and stranded. Why can't life support simply be treated exactly like electricity is now? Some battery equivalent storage units, some generation units, and engines can generate both electricity AND life support. A simple and not thought-through suggestion, but honestly the arguments against continue to ring hollow to me.

Let's see, if you run out of electric charge on a mission the only thing that happens is you lose control of the space craft. You always have the option of sending a rescue mission out and getting more charge to the craft. No matter how long the mission would be.

Life support won't work off that system, if you run out of it and no kerbals die what's the point of having it? If you have it so that kerbals die while you could in theory send a mission to get them supplies you're going to need mechjeb to pull it off. Or perform allot of save scumming.

A lot of the argument about life support resolves around the need to run many supply missions to keep things topped up.

This shouldn't apply to most flights- if you've got some idea how long it will take, you can bring enough, if you don't, it was a mission planning failure.

It's bases and stations that we have to worry about.

Automated re-supply missions have been suggested before, but perhaps there could be a better strategy- resupply sub-contracts.

Doning it like this would simplify a lot of things- there wouldn't need to be any automated flying to run a system like this:

Imagine snip.

Click for bigger.

This diagram assumes that their new, simplified resources happens somehow, and also that we get a new part which can create life support if landed on a planet where oxygen, water, and soils could theoretically be extracted. Perhaps it could work on a few planets, with different rates.

This is a good idea, instead of having to make supply runs we could get a new building called logistic center. You'd design a rocket and then select it in the building for scheduled supply runs. Then every so often it would send out supplies to re supply stations. It wouldn't launch a rocket it would be done in the abstract sense. There also could be an option to do the mission yourself if you want as well.

[psyper]

So you want life support but you want a simple way to circumvent it? Sweet, a new part that is a must-include for every long-distance ship, that adds nothing to the game but a little extra mass.

I have two greenhouses/hydroponics parts that I 'borrowed' from an old mod and turned in to what a few of the converters do in TAC Life support - turns co2 in to o2, waste water in to water and waste in to food. But it doesn't do this to a 100% ratio - there is some loss. They are huge and heavy and require a heck of a lot of electricity to run. Ideal for large bases or long planetary missions but not something you can just plug on to every craft you have in your fleet. I've ended up with a bio-station in LKO which resupplies all my operations in the kerbin system and I'm going to create a large ship for planetary transfers which will have one of these aboard - you'll still need supplies as its not a complete life support loop but it extends life support capabilities at the cost of delta-v and electricity.

PS Since watching all your youtube series' I now only read your posts in your voice along with your infectious laugh - keep recording, they are awesome!

Second, the reason for self: having a feature as part of the stock game makes it an 'opt-out' (at best) rather than an 'opt-in'. This holds an entirely different psychological space and weight. To explicate, when you 'opt-out' you are choosing not to play the whole game. When you 'opt-in' you are choosing to play the game PLUS something else. Yes, this is 'silly' in some sense, but it's a real psychological phenomenon (for me, at least). That's why, at some point in the future, I'll probably enjoy playing with the Dang-It mod, but I don't want it to be part of stock functionality, ever - I don't want to have the back-brain feeling that I'm not playing 'the full experience' of KSP.

opt-in makes sense and I agree 100%. however, since the new difficultly levels are now in place how about having an option to turn on random breaking parts and have that only come on when you select hard. you can of course customise this by turning it back off again. Then you'll have people posting their youtube videos of them doing ksp in hard mode along with parts breaking, no quicksave, no launch reverts. It'll be awesome. How about another button to turn lifesupport on or off too while they are at it. Or realistic aerodynamics such as FAR or NEAR - but only have those come on when the play selects hard mode.

[rkman]

They just want to make a game that's engaging, but not so complicated that the uneducated get overwhelmed and give up.

I think that except for the very beginning of the game, orbital mechanics and rocketry-by-the-seat-of-your-pants (as opposed being guided by Dv and twr) is a whole lot more overwhelming than adding enough life support to last for the duration of a mission.

Life support can be really simple. Not 3 types of food that you need to bring in fixed ratios anyway, not randomly varying consumption rates. The challenge is not in baby-sitting but in exponentially increasing mass requirements for long duration manned missions - that is the main challenge of manned missions. If a manned mission to the Mun is maybe 10 times harder than sending a probe there, a manned mission to Duna should be like 100 times harder than sending a probe to Duna. Still very much possible but it would require a much bigger rocket, possibly provide a real reason for orbital assembly other than bragging rights, and require more planning than an unmanned mission.

Maybe it should be made so that Kerbals can't die from hunger, lack of oxygen and exposure, but instead go into stasis so that they can't perform the mission anymore, but they can be saved.

[Northstar1989]

So you want life support but you want a simple way to circumvent it? Sweet, a new part that is a must-include for every long-distance ship, that adds nothing to the game but a little extra mass.

You could say *EXACTLY* the same thing about solar panels.

Greenhouses would be not only a way to avoid having to run constant re-supply missions to permanent bases and stations, they would also be realistic (they can be built in real life, albeit with maximum efficiencies between 90 and 98%). What life support + greenhouses add to the game is immersion (and no system is fail-safe, you could always lose your greenhouse, or the solar panels powering it, but not your command pod, in a collision, for instance...) And besides that, greenhouses also look cool, and give a visible sense of permanence to bases.

Greenhouses would/should be far heavier than carrying a limited (exhaustible) supply of food/water etc. Where they should REALLY shine is with permanent bases/stations, or "cycler ships" (that travel between two or more planets in a stable orbit that requires almost no station-keeping fuel).

Players could configure the maximum efficiency of greenhouses with mods, tweakables (less efficient greenhouses would be cheaper/lighter), or perhaps with a difficulty slider. Thus, players who wanted a little more realism could have it, while players like me who didn't want to be bothered with tedious re-supply missions (and didn't like the idea of an abstracted re-supply system) could have that too...

If you're looking for a good model of what I'm talking about, consider TAC Life Support, its various life support recyclers (including CO2-Scrubbers, a Sabatier Reactor, etc.), and the CELSS Greenhouse mod...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. More information on cycler ships, because they're awesome:

http://buzzaldrin.com/space-vision/rocket_science/aldrin-mars-cycler/

https://engineering.purdue.edu/people/james.m.longuski.1/ConferencePapersPresentations/2006GuidanceStrategyforHyperbolicRendezvous.pdf

Edited November 13, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Red Iron Crown]

I wonder what the discussions would have been like if electricity was not a resource at all and only now was being added to the game. Everything people are saying they don't like about life support applies to electricity. You have to bring extra parts that can add mass to your ship, and can be completely circumvented by adding a couple RTGs to the vessel provided it's not an ultralight ion probe. You forget this and uh oh you're toast, and stranded. Why can't life support simply be treated exactly like electricity is now? Some battery equivalent storage units, some generation units, and engines can generate both electricity AND life support. A simple and not thought-through suggestion, but honestly the arguments against continue to ring hollow to me.

This. If anything, life support is a more important consideration in crewed spaceflight and really should be modeled by the game IMO. It would add an interesting dimension to mission planning, and give real consequences for messing up maneuvers in that you might not be able to just time warp until things align again.

The challenge is not in baby-sitting but in exponentially increasing mass requirements for long duration manned missions - that is the main challenge of manned missions.

Why would life support mass increase exponentially? It would be linear with mission duration I would think.

[Technical Ben]

I wonder what the discussions would have been like if electricity was not a resource at all and only now was being added to the game. Everything people are saying they don't like about life support applies to electricity. You have to bring extra parts that can add mass to your ship, and can be completely circumvented by adding a couple RTGs to the vessel provided it's not an ultralight ion probe. You forget this and uh oh you're toast, and stranded. Why can't life support simply be treated exactly like electricity is now? Some battery equivalent storage units, some generation units, and engines can generate both electricity AND life support. A simple and not thought-through suggestion, but honestly the arguments against continue to ring hollow to me.

Nope. RTGs and solar panels make electricity nothing like "life support". It's a mix between electric and fuel. In fact, if a craft has both, it already has most "life support" needed for a kerbal.If one or the other fails, the ship already looses function (cannot fly without fuel, cannot move/operate without electric).

Food is a delivery resource. I've been trying to deliver fuel to Jool... it's hard. Though "snacks" would be lighter, it would be a chore for constant resupplies without an automated system (automated resupply based on time etc if you have funds to launch the craft). AFAIK automation is out the window. I'd not want that many manual flights... so we'ed need lots of greenhouses.

[r_rolo1]

Nope. RTGs and solar panels make electricity nothing like "life support". It's a mix between electric and fuel. In fact, if a craft has both, it already has most "life support" needed for a kerbal.If one or the other fails, the ship already looses function (cannot fly without fuel, cannot move/operate without electric).

Like I said in a series of posts on this same thread the moderation decided that would be better in the Suggestions forums ( and TBH, this discussion is Suggestions material ), that is simply because the devs chose to make a highly abstracted version of electricity in game. Notice that RL electrical devices also have shelf lives, that degrade in space even faster than their shelf lives in the home planet and that those are hard to produce in situ, not mentioning that all the ships have a baseline consumption as long as they are working ( for a example, the Rosetta probe needed to be shut down during one of their Martian flybys because the inbound battery had not enough capacity to provide for the needs of the ship during the time it would be ocluded by Mars ) ... pretty much like the idea of resources HarvesteR seems to have and that he is nixing. In other words, if the devs had modeled ingame electricity like RL electricity, it would also have a finite component, that would be the shelf live of all the electrical components ( batteries, solar panels, RTGs ... ), but the devs chose to cut that part out ...

What the posters above are asking is that, given that the devs had no issue to make a heavily chopped version of electricity to put in game, why they are so reticent of putting supplies in game, that are at core the same feature than electricity, and worse , why they are giving a excuse for that that beats against their own previous work ?

Edited November 13, 2014 by r_rolo1

[Treldon]

Some words from a new player

Life Support

Even though I have yet to go on an extended mission - even getting to Mun and back isn't easy as I am still on/around the 'Well, that rocket looks big enough' level - I can imagine the situation

Adding another requirement to the game would add more depth and role playing - would certainly make those rescue missions truly important - but the constant need to resupply the bases and stations would turn the game into a chore for sure.

For 'There and back' type of missions, it would 'only' mean more planning, optimizing your flight path and additional mass

But there are two things I believe could be added that, while adding an additional difficulty, would not make the game overly difficult

- Cryostasis: Nobody wants to sit and stare out the windows for several years on an extended mission. Therefore the Kerbals could and should go into suspended animation for the duration of the journey, with only 1 or 2 awake (in rotation) to supervise the systems (and make necessary repairs). Of course for bigger things like maneuvers (especially getting into and out of orbit, etc) you would need the full crew to pull off

What would it require: One or two extra parts. A one-kerbal pod would be about the size of the Mk1 Fuselage, a 3-kerbal version the Mk2 Lander can. Add electricity (perhaps somewhat big drain to make it more than just slapping on one more solar panel), and your kerbals are taken care of for a while

- Supplies: While we can go the way of doing it with a constant need for them (be it just 'Supplies' or full food-water-air needs, it is not a big difference), it would then 'realistically' need to be supplied from Kerbin and ferried around all the time.

What I had in mind is to make it somewhat simpler by adding just air.

How would that work? Well, kerbals are obviously not humans (a hint: they are green ). There is even a note on the Wiki that kerbals might be plant related and the green skin could be due to chlorophyll. So lets say that they truly only need air and light (which would be just electricity drain), because the water is recyled by their suits.

What would it require: Two or more parts. One would be the tank(s) for storing the Air (might as well go with LO, but that would be too simple, plus plants don't need too much O₂). The other would be a sort of mining unit that could, from the minerals on planets, moons and asteroids mine the necessary materials and convert them to Air - and collect it on Kerbin and Laythe. It would of course consume electricity to operate, but we have Kerbol and RTGs for a reason.

This way we would have a solution for bases - the miner could go all the time to keep the tanks full - and the ships could fill up at bases or with just one more part added fill up the tanks at their destination or on the way. Stations would have a harder time, but you can always resupply just like with fuel, or attach a smaller asteroid to them (and finally make use of all that debris flying around)

Random failures

I, for one, would love it if the kerbals were around for something more than just sitting around and planting flags. Occasionally fixing a broken part would make stuff more interesting.

Smaller issues like a leaking tank or a solar panel that would not be too big an issue: go EV, fix the part, profit. Of course on probes it would not be that easy, but that's why we have our ships, to go there and fix it.

I would not like a major failure breaking a long term mission, like the whole ship blowing up or anything - though with an Extreme Realism difficulty that might as well go - just smaller stuff for flavor.

In the difficulty settings we could have a scale of 1%-50% or so (1%: you are pretty safe; 50%: you can be sure something will go wrong) so everyone could set it to their needs.

How exactly that would work script-wise I will leave to the tech gurus

I would set both requirements to be toggleable. Though the 'Opt-out' issue earlier mentioned is real, but these would be things that make the game more interesting - unlike an exploding launchpad...

[_Augustus_]

No one wants new planets but me.

[iFlyAllTheTime]

No one wants new planets but me.

That and may be a new star system, but I think of those as expansions to the game.

I'm liking where this discussion about improving the core mechanics of the game is leading to.

ps: the pic in your sig made my day!

[rdwulfe]

I do not consider myself an advanced KSP player. I'm good, but I'm not amazing. I can get to the Mun and Minmus without MechJeb. I can inefficiently get to Duna, and probably Eve without it too. I tend to use MechJeb for a few reasons. One, to time burns and such, because I am not so precise. I get distracted. Cats jump on desk, etc, etc. So MechJeb is a safety net for me, considering I play with quickloads and reverts turned off to give myself some challenge and force me to deal with problems as they arise.

I use TAC Life Support, SCAN Sat, Procedural Fairings, Trajectories, Modular Fuel Tanks, Karbonite, RealChute, Fuel Wings, KAS, Fine PRint, and Toolbar. Possibly a few more small mods as well, I jus-- oh, SelectRoot, for example. Some other small things to make the game work better (AnchoredDecuplerFix, EVAEjectionFix, etc.)

I consider these things more or less essential. Sometimes I toy with Interstellar. Sometimes other parts packs that do interesting things. Once you get past 'go to the moon, go to Duna... it helps to have things to make something more interesting. Life support makes time a factor. I cannot leave my Kerbals sitting on Duna for a year. Nor the moon. If they wreck, I have to send a recovery mission, if it's feasible. If not right away, I have to plan how to send life support packets to keep them alive, until I can recover them. Sometimes this involves sending a care package FIRST, before everything else. I have left life support craft in orbit with excess food, or escape ships, or what have you. They're automated cores that I can use to drop on a crash site to save the Kerbals within hours. Costs more? Yes. But I place value (in my mind) on getting my Kerbals home.

To me, this makes KSP MORE fun, to have this sense of urgency when it comes to manned missions, and gives a reason to do unmanned ones. Do I want to risk Kerbal lives on a Moho mission? Can I afford the necessary life support? If not, a probe may have to do. It'll be lighter, easier, but has the drawbacks of not getting as much science.

A manned mission requires more forethought and planning, of putting craft up into orbit and awaiting their transfer sometimes, uncrewed. I transfer crew aboard right before the departure date, and even have an SSTO designed to specifically do this!

Also, life support isn't even a huge deal. The capsules have 2-3 days worth of food on them. Mun trips don't even require extra. (I put it on, though, to be safe.) A round trip to Minmus takes 15 or so days, so I make sure my Munar/Minmar lander has 30 days worth of food. More than enough to send a recovery mission, should there be a failure. Which has happened. I crushed my engine on landing once. Heh.

In any case, these things add to the game, and make it more fun, not less... And they don't even add that many parts.

[Northstar1989]

This. If anything, life support is a more important consideration in crewed spaceflight and really should be modeled by the game IMO. It would add an interesting dimension to mission planning, and give real consequences for messing up maneuvers in that you might not be able to just time warp until things align again.

Indeed. I'm in full agreement. Although life support needs to be a toggle-able difficulty factor for precisely that reason, as it makes the game a bit harder...

Why would life support mass increase exponentially? It would be linear with mission duration I would think.

Well *technically* the more life-support you carry the less Delta-V your ship has for the same fuel mass, which might mean you have to take a longer/slower transfer to get to your destination, which means you have to carry more life-support... Of course, it's probably rarely a major factor in this aspect.

I do think life support would add in a lot of interesting immersion/realism possibilities besides just "pack a bunch of food and water" (water can easily be electrolyzed for Oxygen and LiquidFuel/Hydrogen). For instance, not just greenhouses, but also the ability to potentially place your crew in hyopthermic "turgor" (surprisingly, this is something NASa is actually seriously investigating for a Mars mission)- which would also reduce the need for living space if that aspect of life support were ever implemented... (a living space/ morale system sounds interesting to me- as long as it can be toggled in difficulty settings...)

As I pointed out before, life-support also gives an actual use to a "cycler ship", which could easily be equipped with greenhouses and extensive living-space, as it would only have to be accelerated to its transfer-orbit velocity *once*, and could be re-used many times...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. If you didn't catch the embedded link, here it is again. It's to a decent article on cycler ships:

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-martian-express/

Edited November 14, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Superfluous J]

I've given some thought to the solar panel/life support thing and while I agree that they're similar, they are not the same.

Power generation is ubiquitous. It's used for everything in the game from turning wheels to transmitting data to rotating your ship. Life support is single purpose.

Also, power generation is more than slapping a solar panel on a ship. Where should you put it? Should you use the kind that fold out and hate atmosphere (and hitting the ground) or should you use the sturdier ones that don't auto-aim at the sun? How many do you need and where should they go to both be functional and aesthetically pleasing? These are all design decisions. Also, you can literally get away with a single, weightless solar panel if you're careful, and that solar panel will provide power to everything in your ship.

None of that can be said of life support. It's bulky, severely increasing the mass of the vessel to bring dozens of years of food (2 kerbals to Jool is likely 10 or more years worth of food). Or a magical 100% greenhouse that is likely just as heavy (or heavier) that doesn't have any of those design decisions put on it that solar panels do.

Don't get me wrong. I really do like the idea of life support and feel like I'm cheating not having to care about it. However, I've used life support mods and frankly find it tedious and superfluous.

Kinda like science. It would add complexity for complexity's sake. At least with science there are mods out there to take the drudgery away while still maintaining the purpose of science.

[Tw1]

It's bulky, severely increasing the mass of the vessel to bring dozens of years of food (2 kerbals to Jool is likely 10 or more years worth of food). Or a magical 100% greenhouse that is likely just as heavy (or heavier) that doesn't have any of those design decisions put on it that solar panels do.

But that is the point- life support adds more mass, making further out missions harder, as well as timely maneuvers important. But it doesn't have to be too hard- if set up well, you shouldn't need unmovable amounts to do further out missions.

AFAIK automation is out the window. I'd not want that many manual flights... so we'ed need lots of greenhouses.

Automation may not be happening, but you only would need re-supply missions for bases and stations. This basically a resource transfer, I recon a form of automatic refueling could be done like subcontracting resupply missions, without needing those missions to actually take place- There'd just be a cost, and resources transferred as per a schedule.

[John FX]

I don't quite get the "no time based mechanics, because you can just warp" logic. Isn't that the point of warp, so you can have things that take a long time, but don't need to wait for it?

Like a trip to the Mun, which should take six hours, but with warp is dismissible in a flash?

If done well, a few timed mechanisms, like having to wait for a materials exposure experiment to happen, could add to immersion. Plus, it's your choice if you warp for forever, or go and do things while waiting.

And if you have a few things going on at once, then there is less reason to warp to far.

I think the critical thing is it should not just 'reward' you for warping but make it necessary sometimes, and penalise you for warping too much. Life support could come into this.

I disagree with not having life support at all- it's such an important part of real life space exploration. Especially if it was done so simply, you could easily work out how long an amount would last per number of crew. Sure, you might need to check on some missions, but that's part of managing a space program.

If they had something that let you check it from the tracking station, or a notification system like for contracts, keeping track would be pretty simple.

There's a fair bit to add there, but features like these would help flesh out KSP from a launching and flying game to more of a space exploration experience.

I`m currently playing a game with construction time and extra contracts, ones with short expiration dates.

My game has a sense of pace and I often don`t warp more than a day or two.

I`m busy. I can`t just warp months away waiting for things, I`d get too many failed contracts!

Sometimes i`m on a tight limit and have to recondition my launchpad for the next launch so I can complete the contract in time because the last craft blew up so I had to make a quick replacement and put that to the front of the queue (which caused a domino effect on other missions) and simply making the craft puts me close to the latest I can launch and still catch my window.

etc etc etc

LOTS of fun. It really makes you feel like you are running a space program instead of making rockets by magic.

Not possible of course without a Kerbal Alarm Clock...

Contracts need to not run out in years but days (for kerbin SOI contracts)

Then the `problem` of people wanting to warp goes away. They only warp due to boredom...

EDIT :

I've used life support mods and frankly find it tedious

As do I. Unlike FAR or DRE, coping with it is not fun, it is drudgery.

Edited November 14, 2014 by John FX

[CalculusWarrior]

I agree. We don't need life support to give a sense of time into the game. Shortening the contract deadlines would help immensely. Suddenly you're under time pressure to get to the Mun and plant a flag. If ships took time to build, this would add so much to the game; we'd have to be careful not to make a terribly complicated ship so that it can be finished on time. Alternatively, this also incentivizes surface bases/long-term missions. It's much faster to get Ludfry Kerman to get outside and plant a flag, rather than wait for a whole new mission to build, launch, and transfer to the destination.

EDIT: Heck, we could even go one step further! Why not make time into a sort of resource, almost like those already in play? There could be Strategies which increase contract deadlines, at the price of reduced Science rewards, more expensive launch costs, etc.

Edited November 14, 2014 by CalculusWarrior

[Franklin]

Random failures should exist, but should be very rare and based on wear, not simply random and across the board. Failures should be rare to non-existent for parts that are never used or used properly.

We already have landing leg and wheel failures due to misuse, and nobody complains about those because they make perfect sense. Solar panels are ripped clean off when used atmospheric flight, and nobody complains about those misuse part failures because they make perfect sense. Why would extending misuse wear to other parts be different?

The kids who think operating their rocket like an a-hole shouldn't have consequences have poor coping mechanisms.

[John FX]

Ooh, bit harsh there Franklin?

I agree. We don't need life support to give a sense of time into the game. Shortening the contract deadlines would help immensely. Suddenly you're under time pressure to get to the Mun and plant a flag. If ships took time to build, this would add so much to the game; we'd have to be careful not to make a terribly complicated ship so that it can be finished on time. Alternatively, this also incentivizes surface bases/long-term missions. It's much faster to get Ludfry Kerman to get outside and plant a flag, rather than wait for a whole new mission to build, launch, and transfer to the destination.

EDIT: Heck, we could even go one step further! Why not make time into a sort of resource, almost like those already in play? There could be Strategies which increase contract deadlines, at the price of reduced Science rewards, more expensive launch costs, etc.

I like the idea of having strategies that affect contract deadlines etc and I like your comments about time and construction and it is totally the case that I have now considered building a base for a kerbal just for them to run out and plant flags in various places, something I had absolutely no need for before funds. Time is another `pace making device` that should be used in the mechanics of the game instead of dismissed IMHO

I don`t think Harvester thought through craft construction time and dismissed it with `but they could just warp` without thinking of ways to make that not an effective strategy. Ways that would improve gameplay as a side effect...

EDIT : Also, people have a hard time moving away from the concept that `failure=a 100% failure` when it often is not. Let`s say the `failure` of your main engine is that when running it leaks 10 units of LF every minute. Your mission is not an automatic failure, it just got really really hard. Or it runs at 100% fuel consumption but 75% thrust.

Maybe your solar panel drains your batteries in 20 minutes in the dark (instead of 3 hours) because a diode has failed?

Maybe your fuel tank leaks a bit. Not a lot, just a bit.

Failures should be very grey, not black and white.

Maybe your chute only slows you down 80% of the amount it would fully functional?

One more thing, Harvester talked about selecting a node to research then using science to unlock it.

I like this idea but it could do with a little extra thought.

I think you should have access to those parts right away but they are `prototype` parts with reduced stats and increased weight and an increased chance of a fault (not failure) like those above which further lowers their usefulness.

They *should* be a little problematic, that is why they are experimental or prototype. They are not finished yet.

This would keep the player invested in researching the node while letting them get used to new parts (for new players). It would also stop `experimental parts` from being the `free part mechanism` because you really would only want to test them instead of using them in important missions.

Edited November 14, 2014 by John FX

[Franklin]

Also with all the gripe Squad has with time-based elements I don't get why they never broach the idea of making certain time-based elements un-warpable. That would stop the "can't, people would warp to skip it" argument dead.

If a space station or satellite running continuous experiments paid out a trickle science gain outside of the main physics stream, un-warpable and just provided a background science gain, that would give a use to those types of designs. And frankly, currently and for the foreseeable future long-term satellites and stations serve no purpose beyond gas stations and one-off contract padding.

Also the biggest argument against the knee-jerk complaint with life support management being tedious is providing recycler parts. Solar panels are the "recycler" parts for batteries, just provide CO2 scrubbers and food-producing parts and so on to act as functional equivalents to solar panels for Kerbal life support. They could even boil down these parts into multi-purpose units to keep part-counts low. This makes it so early-games haven't researched the recycler parts yet, giving them short-range operations, but by the end game they've been unlocked and life support concerns become less and less a problem.

I think most people (and it's not just a few, clearly) who want life support have been compromisingly all right with an all encompassing "Snacks" that can be as functional as electricity is now. Give us some late-tree "Snacks" recyclers that act like solar panels do now and it's pretty close to what we want to see.

Edited November 14, 2014 by Franklin

[StrandedonEarth]

As for random part failures how about basing it on a part's "rated service life." Parts are given a service life, either hours burned, total impulse provided, or simply days (years) since launch (for engines, anyways). The right-click menu would show a design life bar, either green (less than 50%), yellow (over 50% rated life, time to recondition), or red (failure imminent, recondition now!). Random failures would only occur when a part was in the red, and it could be reconditioned by a tech or engineer Kerbal, perhaps using a spare part module to recover more service life

[metl]

As for random part failures how about basing it on a part's "rated service life." Parts are given a service life, either hours burned, total impulse provided, or simply days (years) since launch (for engines, anyways). The right-click menu would show a design life bar, either green (less than 50%), yellow (over 50% rated life, time to recondition), or red (failure imminent, recondition now!). Random failures would only occur when a part was in the red, and it could be reconditioned by a tech or engineer Kerbal, perhaps using a spare part module to recover more service life

Dang It! already is based on service life, and the longer teh part is in service, the higher the chance of a failure. Partial failures (small annoyances like a light not working or a leg not extending) wouldn't be a big deal. But when failures affect components which directly impact the success of he mission, that is where the problem is. If you send a probe and get a fuel tank leak, you can't do anything about it. If you build to tight specs and the engine suddenly loses half it's TWR, you can't do anything about that (especially if it is a deep space probe.) There is a fine line between being fun/entertaining, and just downright hindering.

The same goes with life support. As I said before, TAC and the other current working LF mod both require electricity for your Kerbal to live, plus oxygen scrubbers, water recyclers, etc. That is a bigger problem than simply needing to attach a small canister of generic "supplies" to ensure your kerbal has enough supplies (whether it be oxygen, carbon, cookies, hydroxide, whatever the little things survive on or you want to pretend is in it) to last a given time frame. Disconnect electricity from life support (because a munar mission before batteries is certain death otherwise), make the containers fairly lightweight, figure out some sort of "holy crap I don't have enough supplies until the rescue mission arrives" workaround (the costly supply missions option mentioned earlier might be a solution), and Squad might be able to make something that could be acceptable. Everyone needs to remember, not all players are looking for a real life simulator, they enjoy just getting to play with rockets.