[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[RoverDude]

I will need to look at that.

[blu3wolf]

I was under the impression there is a 15 day grace period. Indeed my recent mission to minmus depended on the existence of that grace period, as no supplies were included...

[vardicd]

So, just curious, what's the functional difference between grouchy and mutiny? I'm not seeing it posted anywhere, but maybe I just missed it?

[mcortez]

7 minutes ago, vardicd said:

So, just curious, what's the functional difference between grouchy and mutiny? I'm not seeing it posted anywhere, but maybe I just missed it?

I believe when they Mutiny, they destroy a random part of their ship and then become tourists.

[cantab]

Can that be any part, or are there limitations? For example can they destroy a "middle" part and thus split their vessel in two, something that I think the scrap/salvage mechanics in UKS disallow.

[VaPaL]

30 minutes ago, cantab said:

Can that be any part, or are there limitations?

Last time this happened to me, the vessel was a MK1 Command Pod, parachute, heat shield, decoupler, Science Jr., some sience instruments attached to it, fuel tank and LV-T45. the only thing left after was the command pod.

[spacegardener]

1 hour ago, VaPaL said:

 the only thing left after was the command pod.

So, that is where those orbiting pods for rescue missions come from :-)

[VaPaL]

1 hour ago, spacegardener said:

So, that is where those orbiting pods for rescue missions come from :-)

Hahha haven't thought about it this way yet! Unrfotunately mine was in a collision course with Kerbin returning from Minmus. 

[karamazovnew]

20 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Huh. I just deliberately ran myself out of Ec. Nothing happened, apart from supplies no longer draining. None of the Kerbals onboard - a mix of orange suits and regulars - went grouchy, as they are supposed to (all available options are set to grouchy right now). They all went EVA and did stuff just fine. I was able to cruise the entire nighttime portion of a 90 km Kerbin orbit without power, while still keeping control of my vessel and even conserved supplies while at it.

It appears that either, there is indeed a grace period for power outage, or power outage has no consequences at all.

 

@Streetwind and not only, it does work, but unfortunately there is no indication of the "grace period" timer. Yes, the supplies timer goes negative, but that's not the same thing. 

First of all, the default settings "break" some of the effects. Pump up the difficulty to see them better. Here are my settings.

Be warned tho... settings and timers are stored PER SAVE. So if you alter your settings during play, that Duna base you've been leaving without EC through the night might kill your kerbals instantly. I've basically allowed for just one day of grace period, 2 hours of EVA, 10 times the amount of EC needed for life support PER KERBAL. As my career goes on, I'll even consider reducing the percentage of Mulch created to really punish myself

Second, use the AmpYear power management mod. It will be crucial if you use the above settings and a great mod in itself. Also, unlike USI-LS which cuts the EC at high time warp, AmpYear's Manager (if enabled) still drains your batteries enough to make EC cheating impossible. 

Now stop thinking about Supplies as just water/food. Consider them a combination of powdered food, water, heating coils, coolant for the air con, filters, oxygen. Also consider that the pods have invisible systems for delivering water, mixing it with the powder to create food, running your breathing, in one word Life Support, balanced to "run out" all at once and not individually (as in TAC-LS). It makes sense since nobody would fill up a craft with food for 3 years but water for just 2 days, oxygen for 3 hours and enough CO2 filters to last till Judgement Day.

All of these systems use electricity. Because of a stock bug, EC is not consumed at very high Time Compression (so use AmpYear to drain your craft of EC). Supplies are consumed as long as you have EC at any TC (including 10000x). But if you run out of EC, all the delivery systems for LS stop so Supplies are no longer consumed. You immediately enter the grace period and, with my settings, your kerbals will die after 1 day. Here, AmpYear can save your ass, for a while. You can use the remaining reserve power to transfer 1% EC at a time, to reset the grace period timer or reorient your craft. Reserve power drains as well so you can't do it for long. Consider it as an Apollo 13 method of nursing your craft home or to the light of dawn. And get the capacitors from Near Future Electric to help you as well.

Edited May 16, 2016 by karamazovnew

[RoverDude]

@karamazovnew - I hardly consider the default settings 'cheating'... they are reasonable defaults based on the vision for this mod, so I'd appreciate them not being referred to as such.

And the grace period is pretty clearly shown as that very first option in the upper left (in seconds).

Lastly - stock EC scaling is not a bug, it's a design choice to handle intermediary storage of EC.

[Domfluff]

Speaking of the vision of the mod - I'm currently seriously digging into UKS/USI Life support since the addition of Hab/Home times, and finding it suitably difficult to plan a Duna mission without the advanced parts (Zubrin's "Battlestar Galactica").

On DasValdez's stream, you produced a KERB module, which was a 1.25m part that expanded to roughly the size of the Hitchhiker storage module (so, 2.5m). I'm going to assume that the game effect would be similar to that of a Hitchhiker module, in that it's one of the most efficient ways to add Hab time to the craft.

Are there plans for integrating the KERB into USI:Life Support? Equally, a 1.25m-> 2.5m could be paired with 2.5m -> 3.75m and a 3.75m -> 5m part with correspondingly greater facility, so I'd guess that the intent would be for larger parts as well?

 

[karamazovnew]

14 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

@karamazovnew - I hardly consider the default settings 'cheating'... they are reasonable defaults based on the vision for this mod, so I'd appreciate them not being referred to as such.

And the grace period is pretty clearly shown as that very first option in the upper left (in seconds).

Lastly - stock EC scaling is not a bug, it's a design choice to handle intermediary storage of EC.

Aye aye. That's why I used quote marks . I can't imagine how I could've played early Hard career with my current settings. 

But you're wrong on the second one. Yes you can set the grace period, but in flight there is no indication that you've entered it because you ran out of EC, how much time has passed since then, or, better, how long you have until your kerbals suffer from it. 

Here, my kerbals are seconds from dying, after EC ran out "2 days ago":

My suggestion is to add a bit of code to the Sup timer. If you run out of EC but have supplies, the timer turns BLUE and starts to count down from your currently set Supply Time. When you have EC but don't have supplies (or both), timer acts the same way, but in red. Possible?

Edited May 16, 2016 by karamazovnew

[RoverDude]

The EC bit is a bug as noted.  Your indication that you are in timer land is that it goes negative, and you have until negative 15 days before it runs out.  So while there may be better ways of surfacing the UI, it is shown

[karamazovnew]

2 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

The EC bit is a bug as noted.  Your indication that you are in timer land is that it goes negative, and you have until negative 15 days before it runs out.  So while there may be better ways of surfacing the UI, it is shown

Roger that and thanks. Don't worry, I know about the negative timer feature. Been seeing it a lot . 

 

[Streetwind]

Okay, my takeaway from these exchanges seems to be - please correct me if I am wrong -

- Currently there is no way to configure habitation and homesickness separately; you can only toggle both of them together, and the disparate naming of the toggles in the GUI and the config file is simply an artifact that reflects that
- The ReplacementParts resource seems to exist only for the purposes of (optionally) giving spacecraft/stations a limited lifespan, where at some point they become unable to provide life support to Kerbals in an irreversible manner and need to be deorbited and replaced
- Lack of Ec simply prevents Kerbals from consuming supplies, at which point they immediately begin their (by default) 15 days grace period timer; but there is currently a problem where this is not displayed even though it should be

I hope I got all of that right

[RoverDude]

- Habitation and Homesickness work off of the same penalty by design.  They are just two separate timers that work with the same effect.  i.e. this is something that will not change.

- Second point is correct.  It is off by default because USI-LS has no built in mechanic for making new replacementParts, nor do a lot of the base building parts packs.

- The EC one I have to investigate separately.  I have thoughts on how I want to handle that one.

[toric5]

it it meant to be at all possible to get kerbals to jool? i calculate 9 or so kerbal years for a round trip, about 3 years per leg, and another 3 waiting for the transfer window. i have trouble getting 10 years for just 6 crew, and thats after i MMed the orbital ring (UKS) to have a hab multiplier of 4 (figure artificial gravity makes it a lot more homelike) this makes a sustained base infesable, as even on an extremely large base personell will probably spend over half their time in transit. maybe a ground module, either in this mod or UKS, that either stops hab timers or even reveses them? (spending time planetside?) maybe they could act as a tourist, or at least be severely under skilled, while they are on their 'break'?

[RoverDude]

It's pretty easy to get some very large hab values - in your case, sounds like you need to add multipliers (consider cupolas, etc.).  Unbalancing the parts is not the answer  

[blu3wolf]

I like the idea of crew being able to reverse some of those timers under certain circumstances. It would be nice to be able to have permanent bases whose residents are settlers, not crew. Perhaps some mechanics for hiring permanent settlers could be set up, sort of like a tourist but also sort of like crew? And the settlers have no home timer, but have some other drawback... I dunno.

[toric5]

26 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

It's pretty easy to get some very large hab values - in your case, sounds like you need to add multipliers (consider cupolas, etc.).  Unbalancing the parts is not the answer  

i had a good amount of multipliers, as i said, ive set the inflatable ring to 4. also have several cupolas and a kerbitat. the ship is getting unreasonably large, and i haven't even set up propulsion. (thank kod i have NFT, or propulsion would be a nightmare.)

also, as i understand the design goals of UKS, as written on the wiki, one of the goals is 100% sustainability with significant investment. currently, the hab timer is the only thing that is not sustainable for a base.

[RoverDude]

5 hours ago, blu3wolf said:

I like the idea of crew being able to reverse some of those timers under certain circumstances. It would be nice to be able to have permanent bases whose residents are settlers, not crew. Perhaps some mechanics for hiring permanent settlers could be set up, sort of like a tourist but also sort of like crew? And the settlers have no home timer, but have some other drawback... I dunno.

Already planned.  But it's going to take some work in-game to get there (i.e. you can't do it on your very first base).

5 hours ago, toric5 said:

i had a good amount of multipliers, as i said, ive set the inflatable ring to 4. also have several cupolas and a kerbitat. the ship is getting unreasonably large, and i haven't even set up propulsion. (thank kod i have NFT, or propulsion would be a nightmare.)

also, as i understand the design goals of UKS, as written on the wiki, one of the goals is 100% sustainability with significant investment. currently, the hab timer is the only thing that is not sustainable for a base.

As I said, pretty easy to do without hacking the configs.

I have a 12 year (almost 13) ship for a crew of six - Two counter-rotating hab rings, two Kerbitats, two hitch-hikers, and four cupolas.

Two suggestions.

1.  Less crew.  

2.  If that's an issue, change your life support settings instead of changing configs, or you're going to have upgrade problems.

[cantab]

My two cents is it feels more sensible for the hab ring to be a multiplier than a fixed hab value - I'd see access to artificial gravity as a major quality of life benefit much like access to a good view of space through a cupola, more than it simply being "more living space". But game balance comes into it too and other people know more about that than me.

For anybody who does want to change configs, I strongly recommend making your own Module Manager patches rather than editing the original config files. Module Manager isn't that hard, and put your patches in your own folder under GameData and they won't get clobbered when you update mods.

[RoverDude]

This is by design, and balanced for a very good reason.  Specifically, that the hab ring is the efficiency part of the Kerbitat.  Hence, the kerbitat is the multiplier part, and the hab ring (or the regular habs for ground bases) are the living space bits.  Changing it means you suddenly have no hab-space bits for stations, which is no bueno.

And yes, please use module manager if you mess with the bits, tho I don't recommend it as it leads to support issues, especially as folks module manage their way around mechanics

[RoverDude]

Also you're getting a little babby recycler for the next release.  60% efficiency, supports one Kerbal.

 

[vardicd]

Is there no way to check the lifesupport amounts of vessels in flight from the space center anymore or am I missing it? So far I've only been able to see the amounts of various craft by going to one in flight, and I swear we used to be able to check that from the space center view? just curious.