[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[RoverDude]

Fully configurable as always

[Snarfster]

23 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

I forget what the effects of MIA are.

Isn't that respawn at KSC without experience?

[PocketBrotector]

I'm thinking of using the guidelines in LSModule.cfg to whip up some MM configs for other part packs (mostly Nertea's). Would these be considered for inclusion in the USI-LS releases? 

Also, thinking out loud on an earlier vessel design... I have a design that consists of cupola, kerbitat, pioneer, hab ring, and orbital ag module. A round trip to Eeloo takes about eight years. For a crew of three, it's pretty easy to pack enough fertilizer to last that long (less than five tons if my math is correct.) But the hab time is showing as only 1457 days (with everything inflated); at this point, I already have the best of everything (hab space, hab multipliers, etc.), so it looks like I would need to start doubling up on kerbitats, hab rings, etc. to make it out there. Eeloo is hard! Or at least very hardware-intensive.

[loki130]

The USI-LS.cfg in the Kolonization folder and the Settings.cfg in the Life Support folder both seem to refer to the same thing. Does one of them take precedence over the other?

[mcortez]

12 minutes ago, loki130 said:

The USI-LS.cfg in the Kolonization folder and the Settings.cfg in the Life Support folder both seem to refer to the same thing. Does one of them take precedence over the other?

Yes, @RoverDude has indicated the most pessimistic value takes precedence - which I took to mean, whichever value is more likely to made you have a bad day is the value that will be used.  If customizing, modify both or you can probably delete one of the files.

[Death Engineering]

2 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Fully configurable as always

I like the sound of that..   I can live with the massive changes in consumption but is there a way I can control my own resource management?  I'd like to be able to tell my kerb's which supplies to draw from. 

[Parkaboy]

On 26/01/2016 at 0:59 AM, RoverDude said:

0.3.5 - 2016.01.25
------------------
Kerbals now consume (by default) 16.5kg of supplies per day

Wait, isn't that like more than five times what an average person eats per day? 

[mcortez]

1 minute ago, Parkaboy said:

Wait, isn't that like more than five times what an average person eats per day? 

Don't forget, this is an abstraction of all resources a person needs including oxygen.  I read somewhere that a person uses something like 550 liters of oxygen a day.

[ExplorerKlatt]

14 minutes ago, mcortez said:

Don't forget, this is an abstraction of all resources a person needs including oxygen.  I read somewhere that a person uses something like 550 liters of oxygen a day.

Yes, but oxygen is stored in liquid form so usage is only about .8kg per person/day

 

27 minutes ago, Parkaboy said:

Wait, isn't that like more than five times what an average person eats per day? 

More like about half what the estimated average human uses per day at a lunar outpost

https://www.apu.edu/cris/pdfs/cris_lunar_life.pdf

[RoverDude]

4 hours ago, PocketBrotector said:

I'm thinking of using the guidelines in LSModule.cfg to whip up some MM configs for other part packs (mostly Nertea's). Would these be considered for inclusion in the USI-LS releases? 

Also, thinking out loud on an earlier vessel design... I have a design that consists of cupola, kerbitat, pioneer, hab ring, and orbital ag module. A round trip to Eeloo takes about eight years. For a crew of three, it's pretty easy to pack enough fertilizer to last that long (less than five tons if my math is correct.) But the hab time is showing as only 1457 days (with everything inflated); at this point, I already have the best of everything (hab space, hab multipliers, etc.), so it looks like I would need to start doubling up on kerbitats, hab rings, etc. to make it out there. Eeloo is hard! Or at least very hardware-intensive.

Probably better for Nertea to include them tbh, tho I expect he's appreciate the pull request.  And yeah... eeloo is hard

3 hours ago, loki130 said:

The USI-LS.cfg in the Kolonization folder and the Settings.cfg in the Life Support folder both seem to refer to the same thing. Does one of them take precedence over the other?

They are auto merged with the most pessimistic settings taking precedence.

2 hours ago, Parkaboy said:

Wait, isn't that like more than five times what an average person eats per day? 

Actually, food is not your problem - water is.  Drinking, hygiene, food prep, etc. - As noted, the default USI-LS number is about half of what a human astronaut hauls to space per day.  It's a really interesting problem space.

[tater]

NASA says that number is about 1.83 kg/day, actually. (from memory, but it's that order of magnitude). Water is very well recovered.

[CovertJaguar]

36 minutes ago, tater said:

NASA says that number is about 1.83 kg/day, actually. (from memory, but it's that order of magnitude). Water is very well recovered.

And that's what the recyclers are for.

[Fraz86]

@RoverDude I'd like to better understand your reasoning regarding the current cost of supplies. A Kerbal consumes 486 supplies per month. At a cost of 15 funds per supply, that's 7290 funds per Kerbal per month. As such, the cost of food and water to sustain one Kerbal for one month is more than 12x greater than the cost of a Mk1 Pod. This strikes me as wildly unrealistic; several orders of magnitude too high. Is this intentional, or just a placeholder value that wasn't ironed out for the initial release?

[Kobymaru]

37 minutes ago, Fraz86 said:

@RoverDude I'd like to better understand your reasoning regarding the current cost of supplies. A Kerbal consumes 486 supplies per month. At a cost of 15 funds per supply, that's 7290 funds per Kerbal per month. As such, the cost of food and water to sustain one Kerbal for one month is more than 12x greater than the cost of a Mk1 Pod. This strikes me as wildly unrealistic; several orders of magnitude too high. Is this intentional, or just a placeholder value that wasn't ironed out for the initial release?

The ressource costs themselves aren't really well balanced.

However, let's be honest: In a multi-launch mission where the costs go into the millions, just how important is a supply cost of 10k, 20k, 30k? I consider that negligable. 
It's all the more reason to bring along recyclers which reduce consumption and agroponics which produces supplies (by converting fertilizer).

[RoverDude]

2 hours ago, tater said:

NASA says that number is about 1.83 kg/day, actually. (from memory, but it's that order of magnitude). Water is very well recovered.

.Yup - but then that assumes recyclers.  Recyclers are a separate thing now.  A much better comparison is the mass used on the Gemini missions.

[CovertJaguar]

1 hour ago, Kobymaru said:

The ressource costs themselves aren't really well balanced.

However, let's be honest: In a multi-launch mission where the costs go into the millions, just how important is a supply cost of 10k, 20k, 30k? I consider that negligable. 
It's all the more reason to bring along recyclers which reduce consumption and agroponics which produces supplies (by converting fertilizer).

More like 100k per year for a crew of four. So a Duna mission is around 300k.

[RoverDude]

Given that most of a unit of supplies is now water (whereas before the mass was mostly food), it's due for a price review.  Granted, that also means looking at the rest of the corresponding resource chain, fixing lots of tanks, and updating CRP (which means giving other modders some runway) - i.e. not something likely to change soon.

[Parkaboy]

6 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Actually, food is not your problem - water is.  Drinking, hygiene, food prep, etc. - As noted, the default USI-LS number is about half of what a human astronaut hauls to space per day.  It's a really interesting problem space.

Ok, it makes sense. I just assumed water and oxygen was automatically recycled on all crewed modules and supplies meant food, since the supplies storages have that "Nutritious Organic Meal Substitute" labels.

Edit: another question, though... Is that consumption per day based on an Earth day or a 6h kerbal day?

Edited January 28, 2016 by Parkaboy

[Kobymaru]

6 minutes ago, Parkaboy said:

Ok, it makes sense. I just assumed water and oxygen was automatically recycled on all crewed modules and supplies meant food, since the supplies storages have that "Nutritious Organic Meal Substitute" labels.

In the older versions, that's what it did mean. In the latest, recyclers have to be explicitly brought along.

 

6 minutes ago, Parkaboy said:

Edit: another question, though... Is that consumption per day based on an Earth day or a 6h kerbal day?

It's a 6h Kerbal Day.

[Snarfster]

6 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

It's a 6h Kerbal Day.

Wouldn't that mean that the amount of supplies used is about twice of what that study linked to accounts for? One earth day being the equivalent of 4 KSP days.

Edited January 28, 2016 by Snarfster

[RoverDude]

Other than everything in KSP is scaled

 

[Snarfster]

The food has a higher density?  

[ModZero]

1 hour ago, Snarfster said:

The food has a higher density?  

I'd expect that. Kerbals, being fairly small, obviously have shorter digestive tracts than humans. That means that, like Earth cats, they have more stringent requirements on what they can and cannot eat – particularly I'd expect less tolerance of non-digestible stuffing (because they can't process it away). Things really depend on details (rats are pretty good at being highly adaptable omnivores, but they're also very small), but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were obligate carnivores. This here vegan is not amused :-(

edit: this is also a case for increasing the living space needs. Possibly to one Kerbal per vessel, no sharp objects. 

Edited January 28, 2016 by ModZero

[eberkain]

I don't understand the habitation mechanic, in the VAB it says 30 days, put the craft into orbit, and it says 30 days no matter how long they stay in orbit...

[mitko]

15 minutes ago, eberkain said:

I don't understand the habitation mechanic, in the VAB it says 30 days, put the craft into orbit, and it says 30 days no matter how long they stay in orbit...

That is because the habitation mechanic is switched off by default. You have to enable it in the Settings.cgf file. The relevant line is ReplacementPartAmount.

Edited January 28, 2016 by mitko