RoverDude

Thanks, glad you dig the concept. RE your question - if a Kerbal walked up to a fresh pod, he would not get an extension. We're assuming that a Kerbal can go two weeks unsupplied, hence no resources on the pods. We'll see how it plays out if I have to change that, but right now I want to take the approach of being as uninvasive as possible. Good deal Nope, so a legit tactic is to run them out there with a probe core controlling the ship. But no EVAs, no special bonuses, etc. - at that point they are just passengers.

I expect if someone wants to add that level of complexity, a mod will emerge for that, but it won't be this mod

Pretty much what the guy above me said Support will remain, but it's going to be secondary to USI-LS support in my mods. I make this stuff for me first, you fine folks second.

Yep, you probably want this:

The life support manager has public access, and you will also be able to see if a Kerbal has gone on strike or not But we do not have a different gameplay for TAC-LS And the latter suggestion is certainly doable and hooks are all there, but out of scope for this first cut. Optional, no life support is required. USI-LS will be the default and everything will be optimized for it, but a config that swaps out TAC resource production vs USI-LS resource production can be done via MM.

See, but that is precisely the thing Having three supply channels does not mean you need to have three (six) life support resources. Solve the gameplay mechanics bit first, then look at what resources you need to support the same amount of fun. There is a reason MKS came first before I bothered with a LS mod

I'll actually handle all three of these at once because they touch on the same thing Let's look at the three TAC-LS life support resources... Food, Oxygen, Water. Now. Let's look at stuff we get when we start raising a bunch of plants... Plants can suck out nutrients from waste water, and some plants can be used in water purification. We already know we can get oxygen from plants as a waste product, and of course we get to eat them. Now. Look at what stuff it takes to make supplies from scratch... Substrate and Water. Where do we get oxygen on the moon? Well, mostly from lunar regolith. Plus other interesting minerals and trace elements. Now. Let's look at the resource 'Supplies'. Consider it an abstraction of food, oxygen, and water in one handy package. Semi-replenishable through the use of a greenhouse, fully replenishable on planetside. So less 'one resource' (a jar of peanut butter) and more 'a combined resource' (like a peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich!). Next... let's look at gameplay. TAC-LS: I add six resources to every pod, and a tank with three full and three empty (in case I care about recyclers). Lack of any one of these has precisely the same effect. I add recyclers and such to extend, but in the end, I add, say, 1 ton of mass to travel around for three years. USI-LS. I add no resources to the pods, and a tank with one full and one empty. Lack of the one resource has the singular effect. I add recyclers and such to extend, but in the end, I add, say, 1 ton of mass to travel around for three years. So what do three resources add? Certainly not variety. Loss of any single one still has the same penalty (death). Probably the one thing that can be said (and I agree) is that for bases, it forces you to consider multiple resources. Oh wait... I did precisely the same thing with USI-LS for base building. TAC-LS with MKS in 0.90: Find a source of water and substrate so you can make biomass to turn into food, with your greenhouses and purifiers handling the water and oxygen side of things. USI-LS: Find a source of water and substrate so you can make organics to turn into supplies that represent all of the stuff a Kerbal needs to live. Again... I am finding no benefit still. There are not different effects (like better food or super oxygen or something) like RealFuels... just... well, three things that at the end of the day do the same thing. TAC-LS: Penalty for losing food: Death. Water? Death. Oxygen? Death. USI-LS: Penalty for losing supplies: Inanimation or death, your choice. Life Support should be first about gameplay and interesting mechanics, with just enough of a resource base to make that mechanic work. It should not be about making a set of resources, then figuring out gameplay mechanics to make them interesting. Someone earlier in the thread put it best. Less tedium more funium.

MKS will have it's own parts that support USI-LS out of the box. You will still have the Kerbitat/Aeroponics pair. Aeroponics turns mulch into organics, kerbitat turns organics into supplies. A Kerbal can go 15 days without as an individual, hence no supplies. He goes hungry at launch, and as long as he gets a meal within 15 days, you're good. So strapping on a pair of radial tanks may not be a bad idea for a short mission (in testing, you get about 75 kerbal-days of supplies per radial tank as shown in the screenie). You start in the orange (0 supplies). At -15, you go red. If you have supplies, we issue the first warning at 15 days supplies left. So from green to non-working is 30 days. Options are always possible, but I want to keep things fairly consistent. I am also considering the default to just be 'meh, an EVA Kerbal can stay EVA forever till rescue'. Because it's not like they are going home anyway Thanks

It's per Kerbal, so 15 days. They don't care where they get their meals. So by default, no pods have any life support. You add containers if you want to extend this. None built in. That's an area for mods

So I have been considering over the past month or two the creation of a life support system tailored to fit in with the USI mods, and also bring together some the bits I like about other mods already on the market, and add a few of my own tweaks, etc. This is pretty much my interpretation of how, if I were to go buy Kerbal in a store, I would expect a stock-ish life support system to work. I've been playing with it and minus a few refinements am very happy with the result. Since code is basically wrapped up, it's time to unveil what will be the next USI mod (which will be released immediately after KSP 1.0). Basic overview stuff. Mechanics wise, it's pretty simple. Kerbals require supplies. Kerbals also require EC. these are both on the same timer, so I just check supplies for the status window. When Kerbals are done consuming supplies, leftovers, scraps, and 'anything else' is either tossed overboard, or (if storage is available) tossed into a 'mulcher'. The resulting organic slurry is called 'mulch' and can be used to feed greenhouses, etc. at the player's discretion (or in the case of MKS, converted into Organics at varying levels of efficiency). 15 days out, the visuals go yellow (sorry, no auto-warp-slowdown-thingie, use KAC). When supplies run out, things go into the red. If you leave them unsupplied for 15 days... well, they just say 'screw it', get grouchy, and quit. They are still in the pod. they still take up a seat. But they can't fly, can't EVA, and essentially do the Kerbal equivelant of spinning around in their office chairs, refusing to work, until resupplied. This is a design consideration in that all of us, at least once, has just flat out done goofed, and lost a whole colony of Kerbals via glich or other sadness. Yes, death/despawn will be an option. Not the default one tho. Once resupplied, they are happy as clams and will return to work. All of the above is code complete. For the EVA, my plan is to put them on a similar timer (3 days vs 15 days). So stupendously long EVA times (Kerbals are durable). A kerbal left out longer than that will either go 'missing' and wander home as a new Kerbal (default) or death (optional). Lastly. Toggleable option (default is on) for your orange suited Kerbals to be immune to the ill effects of life support. They will still consume supplies if given, but do not leave the job. This always gives a player (especially a new one) an 'out' to test out a manned mission before actually committing your other kerbals, etc. to a horrible death of snack deprivation. Yes, it's a bit more 'Kerbal' than TAC-LS, but also a lot more predictable and with harder consequences than 'Snacks'. It does, however, feel 'right' (at least to me) from a design standpoint. Parts wise: Four. Three inline storage compartments and a radial tank. No extra recyclers needed. No resourced added to pods (the 15 day window covers all of the Kerbin SOI so no point). No random contracts. MKS/OKS Changes MKS wise, closed loop just got a lot harder/more interesting (depending on your point of view). The old C3 (now renamed to the Pioneer Module) will have a basic mulcher and greenhouse and can do recycling at 50% efficiency for up to four Kerbals. Kerbitats operate at 75% efficiency. Mk-IV modules (the giant biodome thingie you saw earler) operates at 90% efficiency off-world, 100% efficiency on the surface (pulling in of local material is inferred, no extra drills required). Supplies come from organics. Organics come either from mulched supply waste, or from a combo of water/substrate. So surface bases are easier to get to self sufficiency - if they are on water/substrate deposits. Orbital will always be a pain - so you will need to fly up fresh organics or keep large stores. And since organics creation is not tied to the life support loop, building large surface farms is also pretty easy now. Dealing with hungry Kerbals So you can do some very interesting things. Run a command pod to dock reviving supplies/snacks to a starved out colony ship. Use one of your orange-suits to lead a mission and conserve supplies. Note that Kerbals are pretty damn aggressive about getting their snacks - the only way to lock them out of the biscuit tin is to click that little feed button by the resource on a part (same way we reserve some battery power for a probe). Note that a Kerbal about to starve (i.e. no supplies for 15 days) will in fact happily break open said biscuit tin. witty screen message included Design side note: So 'Mulch'. Waste was used, and too generic. And I wanted something that showed that the stuff was kinda useful, not edible, and felt more 'kerbal' (and less like poo!) if that makes sense. The idea of Kerbals tossing all of the spare bits and scraps into a contraption and getting out a semi-useful generic organic slurry had a certain appeal, hence the abstracted mulchers and mulch resource. The resource itself is just 'supplies' and has the visual representation of a translucent, semi-rounded green cube. What are they? Well... leave that to the imagination. But the labeling will read 'N.O.M.S. - (Nutritional Organic Meal Substitute)' on the tins

Ship, yes. Fly, no. But note that refineries are generally geographically close to the oil fields (within the usual economic,environmental constraints). And are also pretty large structures, so placement next to, say, an off-shore oil rig is highly impractical Hence why we have all kinds of refineries around coastal Texas (as an example) to handle load from the gulf, etc. Tho the analogue above is a lot closer to drilling for oil in, say, Kuwait, and flying it via 747 to a refinery in New Jersey, and wondering why, by the time you are done and refueling in Newark, that your net jet fuel is pretty much zero (Kethane by the way would have a closer analogue to natural gas lines vs. crude oil).

MKS question actually... try reinstalling MKS 0.22.8

You're welcome, I felt it was appropriate given the tone of your post. So I reserve that for when I see outrage at game mechanics Unless you have Karbonite engines (which are almost exclusively for surface lifters for mining craft) there's no need to have said Karbonite in orbit. It's like hauling up a crate of rocks.

For the same reason that we do not load iron ore into 747's and fly them cross country to the smelters in Pittsburgh. Refine it on the ground. Problem solved. Or just mount a few scoops and cloud dive into Jool, and there isn't even a landing involved. So let me fix those steps for you: 1. try making a lander for minmus (very low grav) 2. use and extremely efficient engine i.e. The nerva. 3. make the lander have big LFO tanks (mostly empty). 4. land fill tanks next to the Karbonite miner you've had running tied to a converter. thanks to out of the box background processing, odds are you have a ton of LFO just waiting there. And even better, the spot won't dry up. 5. take off and make orbit (with full tanks of LFO) 6. Enjoy all of the fuel you can now bring up to your orbital station (or send other ships down to your surface one). 7. Realize that maybe, just maybe, you have to think outside the box.

tbh at this point I just set target, point, and go for it. With a minor course correction or two along the way.

Helaeon nailed it

It's breaky right now unfortunately - getting bug reports with the cocktail of this mod, MKS, and EL.

@Taranis Any chance of backing out the whole 'add test subject to every single manned part' config? It's wrecking havoc with MKS/OKS by making unreasonably luxuriant contracts and causing me a few support headaches? And while I could just tell folks to ignore it or delete the MM config file, we both kinda know how well readme's help with support issues And I'd prefer to not have to start doing a bunch of defensive coding. Thanks!

Given I can get to Jool in a matter of seconds... I think the speed is just fine as is

Given that's pretty much what NASA plans on doing (i.e. breaking up rocks to get stuff out of them, including stuff for propellants), then yep. Makes perfect sense (I shall leave this here since I can anticipate the next question...) Ore (noun) a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted. There are examples of non-metallic ores, just not a lot of them (Asbestos is one, for example). And one could argue that on a planet or moon where oxygen and hydrogen are extremely valuable, and can be profitably extracted from a naturally occurring solid material (like lunar regolith), then yes, in that case, one term that could be used to describe the stuff we're extracting fuel from is 'Ore'. Also note that Ore is not, contrary to popular belief, a geological term. It is an economic term. Go in your back yard. Take a shovel full of dirt. the instant it becomes economically valuable to extract the trace amounts of gold, platinum, or other valuable elements from that dirt is the instant it goes from being 'dirt' to 'ore'.

tbh, ever since 0.90 that's been the best way to set scale (hence why most of us converted over to model node scale vs rescalefactor)

You also caught the bit about the difficulty slider?

...or Okra... But I expect folks get the point by now Naming stuff is hard. Naming something everyone is happy with is harder. Oh... and certainly not Unobtainium. Given it's common availability it would have had to be Obtainium

I expect that any term selected that translated as 'a pile of rock and dirt that you can get useful stuff from' would have had precisely the same reaction

Graphic enhancements refer to the different visualizations Max has already shown. Basically the upcoming stock scanners. And Ore is a pretty good word that describes 'a rock that has valuable stuff in it'. Anything else is too specific. Probably your closest analogue on that chart is 'dirt' - and the only difference between ore and dirt is that ore can have the good stuff economically extracted, and dirt is the stuff we've not yet figured out how to get the good stuff out of. And I expect someone will do a re-implementation of the old resource flow soon after 1.0 Tho it would surprise me if the RSS/RO folks went that route (I expect they'd replace everything with real elements, etc.)