seanth

I'm going to be pretty busy until after winter solstice, but after that I'm going to look closely at things that have been reported as bugs. I'll make sure I post update links to fixed releases here.

A few ready-made craft is a good idea. Are you willing to explain further about a correct tech tree progression? We put a bit of thought into the tech tree progression for Hard. Do you disagree with how things are introduced and their descriptions?

This is a long term problem we've been having. We have the start of some tutorials up on the wiki, and try to give hiints on how things interconnect, but it's still not transparent. The idea is to have the science parts act as in-game tutorials that slowly introduce each aspect of the systems: photosynthesis/respiration/growth/seed production, conversion of seeds and biomass into food, conversion of basically anything with carbon into fuel, waste break down. We just haven't gotten as far as polishing the science experiments since we (I) have been focused on trying to get the biology right. Turns out it's hard to simulate plant growth in KSP. Any suggestions on how to best get players to learn how the systems interconnect? Oh, I should add I took all your comments and put them in as github issues.

Holy testing! It'll take a bit to digest everything you have there. I'll rope Roberto in on this, too. A few notes: 1.) I don't use ckan, but I'll see if we can get it setup for use with ckan. 2.) It looks like I must have made a mistake and put a "debug" version of the mod in the wild. You shouldn't be seeing so many buttons in the menus. Update soon hopefully

[quote name='Kreole']I've been toying around with converting from oxygen to LqdOxygen... and everything works perfect except one thing. Suddenly my Kerb's don't seem to produce CO2 .... Anyone know how changing oxygenresource=oxygen to oxygenresource=LqdOxygen might affect the CO2 creation algorithim? Everything else from Tac's dll works great. I get waste and waste water production, food, LqdOxy and water are being consumed... I just don't see any CO2 production.... I tried bumping up the default consumption (in this case production) of CO2 to crazy large numbers just to see if it just took a lot of time to produce CO2, but I still see empty CO2 storage over time (in command modules as well as CO2 tanks....) Any thoughts are appreciated... thanks! ~K[/QUOTE] Not sure this helps, but the BioMass mod has a part that convert liquid oxygen to oxygen and that works fine with TAC-LS. Having re-read your post, are you trying to get the kerbals to breath liquid oxygen? That seems...bad.

I've been away for a while, but now I'm back and want to dive into this mod with gusto. Does the Keiger-Müller Radiation Detector actually display rad levels? I was planning on putting some living quarters with water tanks for shielding up in high Kerbin orbit, and started thinking it'd be cool to actually see the counts in the pods, especially when a solar storm rolls through.

There are no parts included in TAC-LS for something like that right now. You'd have to grab another mod that allows for extracting gasses and water vapour from atmospheres. I _think_ Karbonite allows for this. I know BioMass has a part to do it

Cool. Good to know. Thx.

I was recently playing with the idea of "Booster Planes" (20x video here), and I started wishing it was possible to integrate craft recovery and subassemblies to reduce cost. So, to use the booster plane example, you land your planes and on recovery, you have the option to put them into the things in sub assemblies instead of getting money back. When you build your next rocket and reuse that booster plane, there would be no cost associated with building it since you are reusing it. The only cost would be for the fuel to refill it.

I've been playing with the Research Bodies mod, and wanted to have telescopes that would let me "discover" planets as well as let me really look at them, so I wrote some MM patches. No github, so I'll post them here: @PART[Telescope]:NEEDS[ResearchBodies]{ MODULE { name = ModuleTrackBodies difficulty = 4 minAltitude = 200000 maxTrackDistance = 60,000,000,000//see out to Jool electricChargeRequest = 6 landed = false viewAngle = 20 scienceReward = 6 } } @PART[Pictozoom 2000]:NEEDS[ResearchBodies]{ MODULE { name = ModuleTrackBodies difficulty = 4 minAltitude = 200000 maxTrackDistance = 200,000,000,000//see beyond Eeloo. //Can this see exoplanets in other mods? electricChargeRequest = 6 landed = false viewAngle = 20 scienceReward = 6 } } On a related note, I personally add moduleCommand modules to the telescope parts so I can click on a planet, set it as target, and then say "control from here" on the telescopes. As long as the telescope is connected to something with RCS or reaction wheels, it keeps me pointed at my planet or moon on interest. @PART[Telescope]{ MODULE { name = ModuleCommand minimumCrew = 0 RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = 0.01 } } }

I'm enjoying this so far, and wanted to try and integrate it with the HullCam VDS mod. The two telescopes in that mod should now be able to discover bodies, and let you continue to use them as actual cameras. @PART[Telescope]:NEEDS[HullCamera]{ MODULE { name = ModuleTrackBodies difficulty = 4 minAltitude = 200000 maxTrackDistance = 60,000,000,000//see out to Jool electricChargeRequest = 6 landed = false viewAngle = 20 scienceReward = 6 } } @PART[Pictozoom 2000]:FOR[ResearchBodies]:NEEDS[HullCamera]{ MODULE { name = ModuleTrackBodies difficulty = 4 minAltitude = 200000 maxTrackDistance = 200,000,000,000//see beyond Eeloo. //Can this see exoplanets in other mods? electricChargeRequest = 6 landed = false viewAngle = 20 scienceReward = 6 } }

This sounds like an issue I ran into with stock converters, and it might have something to do with actual available space for a resource. The full post is here, but the TL;DR version is that, if you have something where conversions go like A-->B-->C, and if you have lots of A and lots of space for C, but little or no room for B (because B is turned into C immediately), if the craft is not selected you will get no C. The engine can't find a place to put B, so it stops trying. Does this match what you are seeing? If so, I am fairly sure it's not the TacGenericConverter so much as how the game is (currently) working, since the same thing is seen with stock modules.

I don't use CKAN (I'm on a Mac, and have no reason to install Mono, so no ckan for me), but it sounds like it's useful for people in the same way that R's cran is useful or how homebrew is super useful.

This sounds pretty cool. I just built a craft with wrapper tanks full of water to go to Duna, and was wishing those water tanks would actually protect kerbals from radiation. Looks like I'll have to give this a try.

Well...if you're willing to add another mod, BioMass includes compressors and release valves that let you release the oxidizer to make oxygen. So you could go Kethane-->Oxidizer-->oxygen.

I'm really enjoying these. Do you have a github up for part adjustments? Specifically the amounts held by the water/waste water truss and the LF/Ox truss Suggested volume changes based on the tank sizes: HexTrussLongWater max WasteWater: ~600 max Water: ~600 HexTrussLongTank max Oxidizer: ~800 max LiquidFuel: ~400 These are based on guesses on volumes when comparing the tanks to squad tanks. The truss with oxidizer and liquid fuel is not a great match for those fuels though. Most squad engines use Ox:LF at a ratio of something like 1.2, so it should probably be 800 oxidizer and 666 liquid fuel.

I don't think so. I have not played with USI-LS at all, but if I understand it correctly USI-LS abstracts the idea of life support so things like Food, Oxygen, CO2, etc, are lumped as "Supplies". BioMass somewhat models how plants grow, how materials breakdown, etc. USI-LS is more similar to BioMass' "classic" and "easy" play difficulty that uses Nutrients(similar to USI-LS' Fertilizer) and Waste(similar to 'Mulch') to produce Oxygen, BioMass, or Food. So I suppose someone could adapt USI-LS/BioMass on "classic" and "easy" difficulty to work together, but "classic" is not being improved at all, and "easy" is just a mass-balanced version of "classic". You can get an idea of what I mean by "mass balanced" if you take a looksie here and here for specific examples. If someone wanted to put together a module manager patch for making BioMass work with USI-LS, we'll happily add it. I'm personally not very interested in supporting it for "medium" or "hard" BioMass, though: those levels are aimed at being closer to realistic and try to show just how hard growing plants in space is. - - - Updated - - - Right now there is a part that makes LiquidFuel from BioMass, and other parts that make Kethane(methane) for use in kethane engines. Is that what you mean?

Since we're digging up the dead, I'll pimp the BioMass ISRU mod. Four difficulty levels of play: Classic (which ignores mass balance is meant just for casual play), Easy (same parts as classic but is mass-balaned even if the chemistry is wrong), Medium (a slightly nerfed Hard), and Hard (as close to reality as I could get it given the available modules) Ability to convert waste into fuels Ability to convert BioMass into fuels or food (Koylent) 5 different types of greenhouses (depending of play level difficulty. On hard you get an experimental 0.6125m, a 1.25m, a 2.5m, an advanced 2.5m with plants that actually grow, and a algae tank. Compressors to store gasses (KethaneGas<-->Kethane (which is functionally the same as methane), oxygen<-->oxidizer, CO2<-->LqdCO2, hydrogen<-->monprop(yeah, I know monoprop should be ethylene oxide) Ability to extract gasses from atmospheres for compression and use Details on a (in process) wiki--included reaction formulae for those so inclined: https://github.com/VigilanteInc/BioMass/wiki/The-BioReactor

I wouldn't consider BioMass to be a life support mod. It's meant to integrate into life support mods, but it's more of a ISRU mod in my mind. BioMass can stand on it's own, but was designed to complement TAC-LS.

Agreed. Now, I'm not saying TAC-LS is perfect. I often wish that it would take into account % of CO2 in the atmosphere of vessels and cause problems if it got too high, or there could be explosions if the oxygen content got too high. But the work TaranisElsu put into trying to get the consumption and production values correct is really great. And leaky canisters sounds like a great level up. I'll have to give it a try. I use BioMass with TAC-LS, so I use the oxidizer-->oxygen release and I guess I'd need to make a custom MM file to make the oxidizer tanks leak, but totally worth the trouble I think.

Been slowly refining BioMass as I have time as a part of a ISRU test run (growing food in space is definitely a ISRU issue). Latest changes: ###2015.0919 Fixed the volumes held by the food and seed storage containers. MUCH more storage now. Also fixed the left and right nodes on the food and seed storage containers ###2015.0901 Added "wrapper tanks" to hold water. Useful for protecting crew from radiation. ###2015.0818 Pull requests merged (punctuation changes). Additional changes related to punctuation. Rest the hydrogen gas compressor to ~9877:1 MonoProp:H2Gas. ###2015.0805 Updated Alternate Resource Icons. Included a radial oxidizer tank on Medium and Hard. Included gas storage bags (based on roverdude's landing bags). This allows things to function on rails when not selected by providing places for gasses to actually be. Will only be in medium and hard. LiquidCO2 changed to LqdCO2 to comply with community resource pack. The Atmospheric extractor works on Kerbin and Duna (though there is a rate bug on the KSP side, I think). ###2015.0704 Tweaked aspects of how the compressors work. Added a new part: gas bleed valve for venting excess gas to the atmosphere (or wherever). It's meant to be used on the surface of planets during ISRU stuff. Added Alternate Resource Panel icons back in. Not sure how we lost them.

As a card carrying biologist that plays KSP, TAC-LS is _by far_ the best and most realistic life support mod out there. In my opinion, if you are playing a game that is literally about rocket science, and you think TAC-LS is too hard...I guess welcome to one of the reasons space travel is hard. Having said that, TAC-LS is up on github. There's nothing stopping anyone from forking the code and/or making commit requests. TaranisElsu started the mod, but that doesn't mean he needs to do all the work. If you think you see an area TAC-LS can be improved, dive in and give a hand.

Roger. No curl or wget friendly option.

Any chance we can get a curl or wget friendly download link? I try and automate things for fresh KSP installs, but Hyperedit says "DOWNLOADER: Sorry, no direct access."

Just to weigh in on the opposite side: I like Kethane because of the finite nature of the deposits. I'm not really keen on infinite resources.