[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[Cruzo]

Is there still a way to get the legacy parts?  I have a beloved craft file from an old save I'm trying to revive and the one part preventing it from loading is the old version of the 2.5m greenhouse.  

[Brigadier]

1 hour ago, Sarxis said:

Can't say for certain, but it was a unique instance that I've never had before.  I've also never intentionally 'EVA starved' a kerb before and switched to them to see them poof.  The log has the instance where I switched to Valentina for the last time, followed by a ton of exceptions. 

I'm no expert but I took a quick look at the log (which I didn't do before) and noticed that you've installed KSP to C:\Program Files.  Others have reported that KSP does not behave well in this path.  Try reinstalling to another, non-Program Files path and see if that cleans up the log.

[TheRagingIrishman]

1 hour ago, Cruzo said:

Is there still a way to get the legacy parts?  I have a beloved craft file from an old save I'm trying to revive and the one part preventing it from loading is the old version of the 2.5m greenhouse.  

The USI-LS github has all of the old versions available for download. 

[Immashift]

Just a few questions... Regarding hab/home, does this mechanic attempt to encourage crew rotation? Like does it track hab/home per kerbal in the sense that once Jeb's 300 odd days are up in the station, I bring him back to Kerbin, and send him back up after a bit, is he gonna be able to do another 300 days in the station? Or does the system simply give each part a finite number of days it can support life? If the former, then great, incentives to rotate crew. If it's the latter then I'm not sure what the system is trying to achieve, other than making perpetual bases annoying to launch.

Edited March 23, 2017 by Immashift

[Merkov]

3 minutes ago, Immashift said:

Just a few questions... Regarding hab/home, does this mechanic attempt to encourage crew rotation? Like does it track hab/home per kerbal in the sense that once Jeb's 300 odd days are up in the station, I bring him back to Kerbin, and send him back up after a bit, is he gonna be able to do another 300 days in the station? Or does the system simply give each part a finite number of days it can support life? If the former, then great, incentives to rotate crew. If it's the latter then I'm not sure what the system is trying to achieve, other than making perpetual bases annoying to launch.

It's the former. As soon as your kerbals return the Kerbin, their hab and home timers are reset.

[Immashift]

I thought so. It took me a while to catch that, and is why I initially got frustrated and swapped back to TAC, but apparently TAC for me isn't working at all, and now the hab/home mechanic seems really interesting at a certain level. What affects homesickness? 

[Merkov]

14 minutes ago, Immashift said:

I thought so. It took me a while to catch that, and is why I initially got frustrated and swapped back to TAC, but apparently TAC for me isn't working at all, and now the hab/home mechanic seems really interesting at a certain level. What affects homesickness? 

Sorry, what do you mean when you ask what "affects" homesickness?

If you mean how do you increase hab/home time to prevent it, then it's simply a matter of having many parts on your vessel that provide habitation bonuses. In a stock/USI-LS game, this mostly means the hitchhiker (which will consume EC and provide a large habitation bonus) and the cupolas (both stock and the mini USI ones, which add a habitation multiplier, increasing hab times even further).

If you mean what effect does homesickness have on a kerbal, that is something that you can select from the USI-LS settings window by clicking on the green cube icon from the space centre scene. Here, you can pick all of the consequences for the various things that can happen to your kerbals, including when their hab/home times expire. You can pick from all sorts of penalties there.

If you meant something else entirely, then nevermind this

[Immashift]

Useful info, but I meant what is the difference between hab and home? Unless they have different contributing factors, and different effects, then what is the point of two separate stats that do the same thing?

[Urses]

26 minutes ago, Immashift said:

Useful info, but I meant what is the difference between hab and home? Unless they have different contributing factors, and different effects, then what is the point of two separate stats that do the same thing?

Not Really

Habitation means how long will your Kerbal Stay at this Vehikel where he is at the Moment. How Many Elbow Freedom he have or he can find some Place to get some Privacy and so on.

Home is how long  he can be away from Kerbin before he goes mentaly Ill.

Hab resets every time the Kerbal goes in new Vehikel. And counts from this Moment down.

Home resets only than if you show him a absolutely new EyeCandy but is kumulative. 

If you bring him After 30 Days as example in a Station with 1000 Days Habitation. His hab will go for 1000 but home goes for 970 (1000-30).

Look at Wiki there is a Really Good explanation by RD.

E: I read yoir first question and yes it prefers rotation. But Jeb is bad example , he is a Pilot and Pilots ans Scouts never get homesick. They only wish to Switch but never wish to go back to Kerbin. All others will go back.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Urses

[DStaal]

47 minutes ago, Immashift said:

Useful info, but I meant what is the difference between hab and home? Unless they have different contributing factors, and different effects, then what is the point of two separate stats that do the same thing?

Urses has it pretty well - just in case, I'll restate:

Habitation is how long they can handle being cooped up in their *current* vessel.  Larger vessels help, and it resets every time they enter a new vessel.  If you keep switching vessels (including going back to vessels they've been in before, after being in some others) they'll never run out of habitation.

Homesickness is how long they can handle being away from Kerbin.  Larger vessels help, and will increase the amount of time they have on the counter - but it never resets until they get back home.  No amount of switching vessels will keep it from running out.  (Though if you have enough space and have colonized a world enough, they can forget about home.  But that's a *lot* of work.)

[Immashift]

Alright, thanks guys. Clears that all up quite nicely. 

One of the things I like doing in KSP is building giant sort of motherships, or generational ships, and touring the system. Often, with a few planet packs, this means I'm so far out, that returning my kerbals to Kerbin is just not feasible. I wonder if you get that magic 50 year hab number, if you can get homesickness indefinite as well. But then I would wonder what happens when you enter a lander or something, whether suddenly you go from indefinite to a few days or not. 

I suppose something like DeepFreeze Continued might freeze the whole hab/home thing too (because I am constrained by vessel mass and part count so I can't be too nuts), but it still might be a limit.

[DStaal]

2 minutes ago, Immashift said:

Alright, thanks guys. Clears that all up quite nicely. 

One of the things I like doing in KSP is building giant sort of motherships, or generational ships, and touring the system. Often, with a few planet packs, this means I'm so far out, that returning my kerbals to Kerbin is just not feasible. I wonder if you get that magic 50 year hab number, if you can get homesickness indefinite as well. But then I would wonder what happens when you enter a lander or something, whether suddenly you go from indefinite to a few days or not. 

I suppose something like DeepFreeze Continued might freeze the whole hab/home thing too (because I am constrained by vessel mass and part count so I can't be too nuts), but it still might be a limit.

50 years *plus* a high colonization factor, I believe.  And to get a high colonization factor, you need to be in the same SOI for a while.  There's also a couple of parts that can roll them backwards in MKS.  (At a high resource cost - but for a generation ship it might be worth it.)

DeepFreeze however does freeze the whole thing for any frozen Kerbals.

[Urses]

@Immashift

Like @DStaal said Freeze helps a lot. Other Concept is to build Generation Ships or use a Combine (2 and more Ships in a Convoi) or or or....

And 2 things more.

1. Use Pilots and Scouts at Ships with at least 1 Year habtime to Trigger the homesikness immunity.

2. Or/and aktivate and enlarge Kolonisation Bonus for Solar SOI. Asteroidbases and Stations. With time it is mich easier to Stay in Space.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Urses

[RoverDude]

12 hours ago, DStaal said:

50 years *plus* a high colonization factor, I believe.  And to get a high colonization factor, you need to be in the same SOI for a while.  There's also a couple of parts that can roll them backwards in MKS.  (At a high resource cost - but for a generation ship it might be worth it.)

DeepFreeze however does freeze the whole thing for any frozen Kerbals.

FYI - the 50 year exemption has nothing to do with MKS bonuses.  At 500% in MKS land, all Kerbals effectively act as Scouts.  With just USI-LS, any ship with 50 years becomes indefinite hab/home. 

[Terwin]

12 hours ago, Immashift said:

One of the things I like doing in KSP is building giant sort of motherships, or generational ships, and touring the system. Often, with a few planet packs, this means I'm so far out, that returning my kerbals to Kerbin is just not feasible. I wonder if you get that magic 50 year hab number, if you can get homesickness indefinite as well. But then I would wonder what happens when you enter a lander or something, whether suddenly you go from indefinite to a few days or not. 

Homesickness is always based on the biggest/best vessel the kerbal has ever been on.

As such if they are on a 50 year ship, their homesickness will be indefinite until they get back home.

If you send a Kerbal from a 50 year mother-ship down to a planet in a 2 month lander, they will be fine for 2 months(more if they EVA on occasion)

 

Kolonization modules, when supplied with Colony Supplies, will suspend or reverse hab and homesickness timers.

Medical modules, when supplied with Colony Supplies will return a Tourist to active duty(eventually)

[Immashift]

3 hours ago, Terwin said:

Homesickness is always based on the biggest...

Okay. Thanks a bunch for all the info. I think now my goal is to see whether I can make a lander(s) capable of mining the resources fast enough required to create:

Fuel for the vessel the lander docks to, ColonySupplies to keep them happy, and Supplies to keep them fed. Oh and possibly kits/parts for epl while I'm at it in case stuff breaks -_-. Gonna be fun. I know I'm a bit mental.

The question is if I can get a good enough net gain on it. My original plan was 10 kerbals cruise the solar system (with OPM installed :D).

Those 10 are going to have to somehow mine enough of all the MKS stuff to resupply their mothership within a month, maybe two, otherwise the trip time and life support needs are gonna be like ice skating uphill (hell, I'm already looking at DeepFreeze to freeze em during transfers cuz something about a 200 year round trip grand tour doesn't seem right to me if they're supposed to be alive the whole time). Recently I haven't been too impressed with the mining rates in KSP. Even with a 5* engi it's painfully slow in my tests. Karbonite seemed faster, but Karbonite alone can't convert into anything other than fuel really. Maybe MKS ores mine faster... Suppose I'll have to test that. But then again I'm limited by lander mass if it has to be a universal lander. I realize that a big floating interplanetary colony ship rigged to do everything isn't exactly what certain mods (like MKS) were envisioned to do, but that's the fun of it.

But I digress. It's good to know that with some messing about I can convince them to be happy on a single ship on their own for however long is needed.

Now to test it all haha

[Terwin]

22 minutes ago, Immashift said:

Okay. Thanks a bunch for all the info. I think now my goal is to see whether I can make a lander(s) capable of mining the resources fast enough required to create:

Fuel for the vessel the lander docks to, ColonySupplies to keep them happy, and Supplies to keep them fed. Oh and possibly kits/parts for epl while I'm at it in case stuff breaks -_-. Gonna be fun. I know I'm a bit mental.

There is a non-trivial supply chain, and lots of required resources, so you may want to not only look at multiple landers, but multiple automated landers. 

The automated drills and refineries can push to planetary stores and then you could drop down with a cargo lander to haul it all up to your ship.

Of course the MKS components are better suited to a long-term base/station than a mother-ship.  You should probably expect to spend as much as 20% of your trip time planet-bound unless you plan to push around several 15m storage tanks as part of your mothership.

 

An additional option would be to bring along a series of DIY kits of automated bases, perhaps 2-3 per planetary system, take them down to the planet with a container of material kits, build them and  get them working on producing whatever you need locally.

That would let you stop back by a body with a previously deployed harvester set-up to re-supply.

 

[Immashift]

30 minutes ago, Terwin said:

There is a non-trivial supply chain, and lots of required resources, so you may want to not only look at multiple landers, but multiple automated landers. 

That would let you stop back by a body with a previously deployed harvester set-up to re-supply.

 

Interesting. 20% of my time planetside is acceptable. Granted, with Deepfreeze my kerbals should consume nothing for however long my transfer is, which means it cuts my required life support time down from decades to maybe a (total, all planet stops combined) year or two as the vessel orbits while the landers resupply.

The idea of planetary stores would ease logistics quite a bit to be honest, and was something I hadn't thought of before. I'm still green enough with MKS that I don't know the entire resource chain and how small I can make it yet.  

In my last round of this, I designed a sort of dropship lander that landed horizontally and was capable of actually taking detachable fuel tanks from the mothership with it to the surface on light gravity bodies, then haul them back up again when complete:

This was back in .25 though before I really cared enough to have life support or mine something that might *actually* be able to be refined into fuel in real life.

That thing, with the lander, had 22km/s dV. If I can get around the same with life support and mks on it, I'll be happy. It can be a good deal bigger now because of Unity 5 and 64bit and whatnot.

I wonder if automated miners can pull the same efficiency though. Like with stock mining, without a five star engineer, your mining vessel generates extremely little ore. I wonder if it's the same with the USI/MKS drills and resources. I should really go read the wiki and see if that info is listed there... *Googles USI-LS wiki* I appreciate the input by the way. 

Edited March 24, 2017 by Immashift

[Terwin]

18 minutes ago, Immashift said:

Interesting. 20% of my time planetside is acceptable. Granted, with Deepfreeze my kerbals should consume nothing for however long my transfer is, which means it cuts my required life support time down from decades to maybe a (total, all planet stops combined) year or two as the vessel orbits while the landers resupply.

If you are primarily concerned about supplies(aka the basics of life support), then nom-o-matics combined with recyclers should limit your need to re-supply.

Drop an automated fertilizer lander(gypsum drills + automated refinery or three) on a low-g moon and pick it back up when you leave, you should be able to bring up enough fertilizer to  refill your tanks.  

 

let's see:

200 years @ 427 days -> 85,400 days x 10 kerbals = 854,000 kerbal days 

10.8 units of supplies per kerbal day x.21 for having at least a RT-5000(this would be x.135 if you have a 3.75m tundra kerbitat recycler instead) supplemented by as many light weight RT-500 modules as needed(10 for the 5000, 11 for the tundra) reduces that to 2.268 supplies per kerbal day.  Nom-o-matics turn 10 mulch(used supplies)+1 fertilizer into 11 supplies, reducing that to 0.2062 fertilizer per kerbal day

So you will need a total of 176,094.8 fertilizer to keep all 10 kerbals awake for 200 years. 

The 1.25m MPU produces 1.476 fertilizer/hour consuming 2.952 Gypsum and 6.48E-3 Machinery.

So you will need 119,305.5 hours of refining(46.7 years) and 773.1 units of machinery. If you use a un-manned 1.25m MPU.  (the larger ones are faster, the 3.75m one only takes 6.4 years but may take more machinery)

 

I am thinking that for only 1-2000 machinery, it may not be worth-while to bring the entire supply chain, just take an extra 1000 machinery so you have a nice safe margin of how long you have to turn it off after you will be able to fully refill your fertilizer...

 

 

[danielboro]

This is an 8 kerbal ship that will go to urlum

The burn is in 8 kerbal days

The hub section going to minmus to join the drive section that is a bit bigger. 

You need to plan big for a small crew. Or get mks parts (I didn't research most of them yet)

Edited March 24, 2017 by danielboro

[DStaal]

1 hour ago, Immashift said:

Interesting. 20% of my time planetside is acceptable. Granted, with Deepfreeze my kerbals should consume nothing for however long my transfer is, which means it cuts my required life support time down from decades to maybe a (total, all planet stops combined) year or two as the vessel orbits while the landers resupply.

The idea of planetary stores would ease logistics quite a bit to be honest, and was something I hadn't thought of before. I'm still green enough with MKS that I don't know the entire resource chain and how small I can make it yet. 

For Colony Supplies - not very small.  You basically need to produce *everything* else first.

Another thought might be to send ahead automated miners to some of the planets to get fertilizer going, and just collect it once you're there.  Personally I'd just carry some Colony Supplies and a MedBay - to be used sparingly, and only when necessary.

[Immashift]

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

So you will need a total of 176,094.8 fertilizer to keep all 10 kerbals awake for 200 years. 

The 1.25m MPU produces 1.476 fertilizer/hour consuming 2.952 Gypsum and 6.48E-3 Machinery.

So you will need 119,305.5 hours of refining(46.7 years) and 773.1 units of machinery. If you use a un-manned 1.25m MPU.  (the larger ones are faster, the 3.75m one only takes 6.4 years but may take more machinery)

 

I'm actually toying with the idea of having a second large automated ship with landers etc, to go ahead of the crewed ship. It would mine stuff during the crewed vessel's trip out to the next planet.... Swap large containers of stuff once it gets there. It might get a little complicated with transfer burns + time spent at planets but then again Deepfreeze.... The fact is most of the time the ship spends in space is going to be cruising towards the next destination. If I can turn that into usable time it might be kind of cool. Logistical nightmare maybe, but that's part of the fun to me.

[Terwin]

2 hours ago, Immashift said:

I'm actually toying with the idea of having a second large automated ship with landers etc, to go ahead of the crewed ship. It would mine stuff during the crewed vessel's trip out to the next planet.... Swap large containers of stuff once it gets there. It might get a little complicated with transfer burns + time spent at planets but then again Deepfreeze.... The fact is most of the time the ship spends in space is going to be cruising towards the next destination. If I can turn that into usable time it might be kind of cool. Logistical nightmare maybe, but that's part of the fun to me.

Why not just send out single-planet vessels, probably with a couple landers and an orbital relay or two.  That should let you have well-stocked planetary stores by the time you get there.

You do not even need to launch them all before you send out your mothership, just at any available transfer-window.

Just make sure that your resource retrieval vessel has both logistics and a pilot, so you can fill your tanks and holds without needing to land close your facilities.

 

Note: actually making things and advanced refining(refined exotics and silicon) cannot be done with automated parts and may have greatly slowed production without kerbals.

[NermNermNerm]

I've been trying to understand how the Tundra Medical Bay works and having no luck.  I put a ship with a medical bay in orbit with a crew, then waited for the crew to become homesick, trucked up a medic and put the homesick kerbal and the medic in the medical bay, clicked on "Start MedBay" and I don't see any impact on Hab or Home time; Colony Supplies do get consumed, but to no apparent effect.

Also, if it works like the documentation says it should, I'm a little concerned there's a problem.  The documentation says that you can fix a homesick kerbal, but what if all your Kerbals set off in the same ship at the same time?  The whole ship (including the scientist/medic who's there to save the day) becomes homesick and useless at the same time as all the kerbal they're supposed to cure.

[RoverDude]

7 hours ago, NermNermNerm said:

I've been trying to understand how the Tundra Medical Bay works and having no luck.

More of an MKS question but no worries

The Tourists were physically in the medbay correct?  If no resources were consumed, it tells me they probably were not.

RE having your entire crew go Tourist at the same time... that would be by design.  You'd have to send out a rescue vessel with a new scientitst to rescue your tourists.  To prevent them being tourists in the first place, use a Kolonization module.