[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, Bit Fiddler said:

does it go to 11?

Yes... Mix in a few custom patches and it can go up to Plaid too.

[DStaal]

10 hours ago, RoverDude said:

I'd even add that I am unsure what challenge TAC-LS has that USI-LS does not given the multitude of configuration options

He just said *more* challenge.  Not *different* challenge.   

[RoverDude]

20 minutes ago, DStaal said:

He just said *more* challenge.  Not *different* challenge.   

Point still stands though...  It's one of those long-standing (though thankfully, diminishing) falsehoods that TAC-LS is *more* challenging than USI-LS.  This was true at launch, but false once all of the config dials were added ages ago.

[DStaal]

2 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Point still stands though...  It's one of those long-standing (though thankfully, diminishing) falsehoods that TAC-LS is *more* challenging than USI-LS.  This was true at launch, but false once all of the config dials were added ages ago.

My (joking) point was that building a ship with two full sets of life support parts and resources is definitely more challenge than just building it with one - even if that challenge is just in doubling the part count and mass of your LS support infrastructure, and not in any actual mechanics of being added.  There's no particular sane, logical, or realistic reason to do so - but if you want to bloat your partcount as a personal challenge, go ahead. 

[Bit Fiddler]

I have just started my first career using USI-LS (all previous careers were on TAC) and I have to say, I think USI is more challenging when turned up to plaid, or even just on 11. 

 

the idea of "crew space" TAC does not even touch so I used things like Keep Fit or Kerbal Health to get this function.  But since I use every other USI mod I decided I may as well give the LS a try.  At first I was put of by the "abstraction" where TAC had "water" and "Oxygen" for instance.  but after using it for a while now that is no longer so much an issue.  my original games had TAC and things like Biomass running so the oxygen/water/waste cycle was important to get the closed loop system.   However USI may be abstracted but it does cover all these needs in it's abstraction.  

 

so far I am not unhappy with USI it is just a different way of looking at things.  it does basically replace TAC and Keepfit /Kerbal health in a single package so that is always good, and the interaction with the entire USI lineup is a very big bonus.  so unless something drastic comes along later in the career to really break it for me, I may be switching to USI for all my future careers as well.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Bit Fiddler

[Bit Fiddler]

Sorry, new Post, as I do not want this to get lost in the previous wall of text.

 

I have run into a snag.  I have been reading the wiki but I do not find any indication of how I increase the "Home Time" of a craft.  I see the bits for Supplies and Habitation time.  but I do not see any parts that modify the home sick time.  are these only at much later tech nodes?  or am I just blind?

[Robert DeLuca]

2 minutes ago, Bit Fiddler said:

Sorry, new Post, as I do not want this to get lost in the previous wall of text.

 

I have run into a snag.  I have been reading the wiki but I do not find any indication of how I increase the "Home Time" of a craft.  I see the bits for Supplies and Habitation time.  but I do not see any parts that modify the home sick time.  are these only at much later tech nodes?  or am I just blind?

Are you activating habitat when in flight? For instance, the stock Cupola and Hitchhiker parts have a right-click option to "Activate Habitat." When you do that, it increases the home sick time for the whole craft.

[TheRagingIrishman]

3 minutes ago, Bit Fiddler said:

Sorry, new Post, as I do not want this to get lost in the previous wall of text.

 

I have run into a snag.  I have been reading the wiki but I do not find any indication of how I increase the "Home Time" of a craft.  I see the bits for Supplies and Habitation time.  but I do not see any parts that modify the home sick time.  are these only at much later tech nodes?  or am I just blind?

Home is increased by the same parts that increase hab time. The point is that Home is the best ship that kerbal has ever been on and Hab is the amount of time left on their current ship (allows for motherships with tons of hab and then tiny landers with only a few days)

[Bit Fiddler]

ok so I built a School for a contract for "Space Camp" the contract requires 40 days in orbit.

 

in the VAB my craft reports 42 days hab, and 43 days supply.  so this should be enough yes?   not sure when it happened, but around the 30 day mark somewhere all the kerbals refused to work anymore.

[TheRagingIrishman]

3 minutes ago, Bit Fiddler said:

ok so I built a School for a contract for "Space Camp" the contract requires 40 days in orbit.

 

in the VAB my craft reports 42 days hab, and 43 days supply.  so this should be enough yes?   not sure when it happened, but around the 30 day mark somewhere all the kerbals refused to work anymore.

Make sure that the ship is fully crewed (in the vab) when you check timers. Supply time and hab time are both decreased by the total number of Kerbals on board. Also, make sure you right click on the hab parts and activate hab (takes some ElectricCharge)

[Bit Fiddler]

yes ship is crewed in VAB, and yes I turned on the hitchhiker.

[DStaal]

6 minutes ago, Bit Fiddler said:

ok so I built a School for a contract for "Space Camp" the contract requires 40 days in orbit.

 

in the VAB my craft reports 42 days hab, and 43 days supply.  so this should be enough yes?   not sure when it happened, but around the 30 day mark somewhere all the kerbals refused to work anymore.

How's your EC situation?

 

Beyond that, a pic of the ship in flight with the life support window open would likely be helpful.

[Robert DeLuca]

Just now, Bit Fiddler said:

yes ship is crewed in VAB, and yes I turned on the hitchhiker.

Another thing, if you lose power for even a moment (EC goes to 0) and you lose control of the vessel because everyone goes on strike, you can't right-click on the habitat to turn it back on when power is restored. I always stick a probe core on my craft for this reason, among others.

[Bit Fiddler]

In VAB

 

 

 

on the pad

[TheRagingIrishman]

@Bit Fiddler how does that ship generate ec?

[Bit Fiddler]

oh has solar panels...   I will launch it again and post more pics later but I have to go for now.  but I am guessing maybe the batteries have been deleted some how and what remains is depleted on each dark side pass...   not sure however as the problem did not crop up until around day 30 or so.  I will have to watch closer on the next launch and see if I can catch what happens.

[DStaal]

Might be that you aren't generating *enough* EC - if you have some that I can't see, it'd extend the time it's taking to run out, but you still run out.

[Bit Fiddler]

well indeed it turns out I have some how deleted my batteries so only had 155 ec from my pods.  so yes every pass into darkness I had several min. of power outage.  the reason I did not notice it until after 30 days I assume is because I was in time warp.   and the EC did not actually drop until I left time warp and then the mod played catchup and all the lost time came crashing in at once.

[norup]

Kind of related to the discussion above:

When my space station (manned and with probe cores) runs out of EC, functions of Life Support, Agroponics and Habitat very reasonably stop. It is perhaps also reasonable (but tedious) that they have to be manually re-enabled when power returns. But it is quite confusing that the right-click settings with the blue toggle buttons does not reflect the disabled state - they still say "Stop [function]" as state, and have to be toggled twice to return to working state.

[KerbMav]

@RoverDude

Sooo, for the resources to be shared with vessels in 150m distance, there has to be a crewable part on all of them?

Which MODULE is needed to make a vessel part of this "supply network"?
I might want to add it to parts containing supplies, to simulate that the Kerbals can leave the base/lander and retrieve some snacks from a resupply drop/outside stock - if this does not create any problems ...

Oh, another question: How does USI LS determine power generation from solar panels - because the overview shows a declining survival time powerwise when on rails, but when I am actively flying the vessel, the time is constant/halted?

Edited June 18, 2017 by KerbMav

[strudo76]

Hey there

I'm trying to figure out habitation (first time using USI), and I think I might have a conflict somewhere. Playing a career game with USI-MKS and LS, but I also have almost 70 mods. Don't worry, I'm going to try myself and nut out what's going on by trimming mods before I continue playing, so I'm not asking for anyone to try and sort through the mod minefield.

When in the VAB, if I select the Mk1 Command part, it only shows a hab time of 7days 3hrs. My understanding was that a command seat should offer a had time of one Kerbin month? From my searching I found the 7.5 days is the number of Earth days in a Kerbin month, but I definitely have the game set to show Kerbin time.

I quickly set up a vanilla base game and installed only USI-LS, and the Mk1 Command part listed the had time as indefinite, so maybe I'm just really confused by hab time, and not understanding how the system works?

Thought I'd ask here before I do too much mod stripping in case my understanding of the system is flawed and there really isn't anything to look for.

Thanks.

[TheRagingIrishman]

2 minutes ago, strudo76 said:

Hey there

I'm trying to figure out habitation (first time using USI), and I think I might have a conflict somewhere. Playing a career game with USI-MKS and LS, but I also have almost 70 mods. Don't worry, I'm going to try myself and nut out what's going on by trimming mods before I continue playing, so I'm not asking for anyone to try and sort through the mod minefield.

When in the VAB, if I select the Mk1 Command part, it only shows a hab time of 7days 3hrs. My understanding was that a command seat should offer a had time of one Kerbin month? From my searching I found the 7.5 days is the number of Earth days in a Kerbin month, but I definitely have the game set to show Kerbin time.

I quickly set up a vanilla base game and installed only USI-LS, and the Mk1 Command part listed the had time as indefinite, so maybe I'm just really confused by hab time, and not understanding how the system works?

Thought I'd ask here before I do too much mod stripping in case my understanding of the system is flawed and there really isn't anything to look for.

Thanks.

Nope by default each seat gives you .25 months (a month is 30 days) which comes out to exactly 7.5 days and with 6 hour days that's 7 days 3 hours. Not sure what you mean by "the Mk1 Command part listed the had time as indefinite"

[strudo76]

5 minutes ago, TheRagingIrishman said:

Nope by default each seat gives you .25 months (a month is 30 days) which comes out to exactly 7.5 days and with 6 hour days that's 7 days 3 hours. Not sure what you mean by "the Mk1 Command part listed the had time as indefinite"

Ah ok, so there is probably no problem then. Was supposed to be hab time was listed as indefinite, but don't worry about that as it was just a quick test game I set up so it likely wasn't set up correctly

As an additional question, what's the earliest part that can increase hab time? One of the early SETI Unmanned before Manned contracts requires a 12 day orbit, but I don't see anything suitable to get the Mk1 to stretch that far. If I can't stretch that module, I'll just have to wait until I have unlocked more parts.

[DStaal]

1 hour ago, strudo76 said:

Ah ok, so there is probably no problem then. Was supposed to be hab time was listed as indefinite, but don't worry about that as it was just a quick test game I set up so it likely wasn't set up correctly

As an additional question, what's the earliest part that can increase hab time? One of the early SETI Unmanned before Manned contracts requires a 12 day orbit, but I don't see anything suitable to get the Mk1 to stretch that far. If I can't stretch that module, I'll just have to wait until I have unlocked more parts.

On the hab time being indefinite: Were you on Kerbin?  Kerbals don't have habitation issues on their homeworld - they can just go outside.

I believe the earliest part that has dedicated hab time increases is the Hitchhiker.  Though for a 12 day orbit, you might be able to play with adding in something else - an empty lander can or inline cockpit might be able to give you enough extra hab time.  (As every seat will give a bit more, assuming you don't fill them with Kerbals.)  Or the Mk1 Crew Cabin, which I think is a bit earlier.

2 hours ago, KerbMav said:

@RoverDude

Sooo, for the resources to be shared with vessels in 150m distance, there has to be a crewable part on all of them?

Which MODULE is needed to make a vessel part of this "supply network"?
I might want to add it to parts containing supplies, to simulate that the Kerbals can leave the base/lander and retrieve some snacks from a resupply drop/outside stock - if this does not create any problems ...

Oh, another question: How does USI LS determine power generation from solar panels - because the overview shows a declining survival time powerwise when on rails, but when I am actively flying the vessel, the time is constant/halted?

Resource sharing is an MKS thing, and requires a dedicated module - except for Supplies, I believe, as starving Kerbals will pull from anywhere they can get to.  So I don't think you actually need to add anything in your scenario.   (But note they'll always use their current vessel's Supplies first.)

On your second question: It doesn't.  It simply says 'with the current amount of EC stored, at your current drain rate, you'll run out in ___.'  (Or, in the VAB: 'Assuming no other drain than LS, you'd run out the storage in ___.')  If you have generation you can pretty much ignore it - assuming the generation is always active.  (It comes into play when trying to run early Mun trips on batteries, or when setting up solar powered stations that'll have long dark periods.)

[KerbMav]

22 minutes ago, DStaal said:

On the hab time being indefinite: Were you on Kerbin?  Kerbals don't have habitation issues on their homeworld - they can just go outside.

I believe the earliest part that has dedicated hab time increases is the Hitchhiker.  Though for a 12 day orbit, you might be able to play with adding in something else - an empty lander can or inline cockpit might be able to give you enough extra hab time.  (As every seat will give a bit more, assuming you don't fill them with Kerbals.)  Or the Mk1 Crew Cabin, which I think is a bit earlier.

Resource sharing is an MKS thing, and requires a dedicated module - except for Supplies, I believe, as starving Kerbals will pull from anywhere they can get to.  So I don't think you actually need to add anything in your scenario.   (But note they'll always use their current vessel's Supplies first.)

On your second question: It doesn't.  It simply says 'with the current amount of EC stored, at your current drain rate, you'll run out in ___.'  (Or, in the VAB: 'Assuming no other drain than LS, you'd run out the storage in ___.')  If you have generation you can pretty much ignore it - assuming the generation is always active.  (It comes into play when trying to run early Mun trips on batteries, or when setting up solar powered stations that'll have long dark periods.)

1. Bummer - because I do not use MKS, but the LS window shows that feature.

2. So, what happens when batteries are empty, grace period is over - and I switch back to the vessel that let's say is in full sunlight when I do?