zabieru

For sure, and it sounds like you've a better handle on the performance impact than I do. It's certainly not worth a major hit. I do think a TC slider would be a good option, though: rather than seeking out weird cheaty edge cases to reduce the TC costs of your routes, just turn the slider down. Obviously Gliph is having a good ol' time with his ten xenon freighters and I would hate to take that away from him, but personally I'd be irritated that I couldn't send two big freighters instead without paying the TC cost.

A little more structure might be good, though. I think USI-LS is a good model here: you can turn everything off if you like, you can make everything reversible (tourist/grumpy instead of dead) or you can play it hardcore, and you can adjust the timers as well. Some kind of TC multiplier slider would be nice, at the least. There is also some odd behavior that's a bit harder to justify. For instance, you can launch your rocket dry, start the route, fuel it from a tanker truck right there on the launchpad, launch to orbit, and get a zero-TC route without any orbital infrastructure. Perhaps the comparison should be final weight to the maximum weight during the route, instead of to the starting weight. That's correct behavior. This is basically how WOLF works: the parts (and crew) disappear into WOLF-land and keep working there.

Or you could go the ColonySupplies route: a base with a decent chunk of hab time, a Colonization Module, and some ColonySupplies. As your Kerbals start to run low on hab/home time, stick 'em in the module and turn it on. It'll roll the timers back. This represents a more resource-intensive solution: you might think of the "just get over 50y/kerbal" approach as building a small town in space, and this as the luxury hotel approach.

Bah. Mine's actually Lowlands/Lesser Flats/Midlands. (I'm only using the Lowlands and Lesser Flats, so.) But try near 6N/170E, looks like there's some reasonably close there.

Probably still true. This isn't one of those "midlands-south pole-canyons" situations on what should be the midlands-canyon boundary, it's a semi-legit (not sure if the Flats are really supposed to be there, but maybe) corner. I have a base on a Lowlands-Lesser Flats boundary with Slopes within about a kilometer, same deal.

IIRC it might be the center of mass, not the root part, that determines a base's biome... I think I've had bases 'hop' biomes when attaching heavy bits. And automated maintenance is periodic, it won't happen just because machinery drops to 1999. I think it's supposed to be daily. I've had some not-sure-if-bug-or-doin'-it-rong issues* with it seeming to not happen on refocusing the base, but if it's an issue I just move the engineer to another module, then back again, and it seems to trigger again. I can confirm it does work with both the inflatable and Tundra-375 workshops. *I'm also not sure if there's enough machinery in storage to do everything at once after a long catch-up, so that's my best guess at the real issue, since I don't think it waits for PL to refill the container.

Did you try pulling off the other construction port? Dock and weld it while it only has one port, then put the other back on? Another option is cheating your KIS config to let kerbals lift umpteen tons and KIS-attaching it.

And, uh, "better" kerbals build stuff faster. (IIRC just on the final build, I don't think it matters for smelters or metal->rocketparts, but it's been forever since I played non-MKSed EL.)

Correct. Two different modules that do different things with the same resource. (Though of course letting the hab timer run down and then un-touristing the kerbals has the same end result.)

Yes, if you have crew who've been tourist-ized and you want to turn them back.

Well... Yes, technically, but that won't get you any parts since they're in the same folder. Download and install MKS but not USI-LS, and that should work okay for you. It'll add some extra kerbal classes that you don't care about, mind, so if you're super into rescue missions maybe delete the .dlls after all.

Something to try if your base is sliding/jumping/slowly twisting to one side. If you're not having that problem, don't worry about it.

Efficiency parts need to be on the same vessel, nothing needs to be directly manned. (Don't quote me on this, but I think the only MKS module function that cares if the kerbal is sitting in that part rather than just anywhere on the vessel is the workshop automated maintenance function.) They also need to be configured as such. You want the one that says "Smelter" or "Greenhouse" or whatever, as opposed to one of the "Cultivate" or "Polymers" settings. Bay counts are accessible in the VAB. You're looking for the number of listings for "Swappable Converter." Should be one per bay. IIRC the Tundra habs have just one per, and aren't actually super-great hab modules (which makes sense, really: that's one case where volume is pretty important.)

Yes, and yes. First off, the balancing parameters are total deployed mass/volume and not which product line they're in. If you have 50 tons of Tundra stuff, and I have 50 tons of Ranger stuff, we should have identical outputs (unless one of us has significantly more volume, in which case maybe a little skew for that, but mass is the more important parameter). Second, and more importantly, the Tundra figures you're likely looking at are per bay. Tundra modules mostly have more than one bay, Ranger ones don't. So a Ranger greenhouse looks a bit better than a Tundra Ag module, but the Ag module can actually do that twice over, or do that and something else.

The current configuration is, for full in-and-out PL you'll need warehouse-enabled containers attached directly (scavenging etc won't work) to a craft with a pilot/quartermaster and a logistics module, either the Duna Logistics Module or the Tundra Pioneer+Logistics module. If you only want to push, I think the MPUs will let you do that, as will logistics modules without pilots.