[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[AndrewHere]

1 minute ago, Kobymaru said:

Electric Charge. Produced by Solar Panels, Fuel cells and Nuclear Reactors. Stored in Batteries. Consumed by... pretty much everything.

Got plenty of those, my space craft's never run's out of charge.

Edited July 12, 2016 by AndrewHere

[RoverDude]

You will need to provide more detail on the problem then.

[Andem]

56 minutes ago, AndrewHere said:

Why is EC always so low? Like i have 60 days of supplies, 50 days of habitation and only 20 days of EC :/

Because the USILS information window doesn't calculate parts that generate electricity. You typically don't have to worry about it, but If you, say, had on a Mun base, you would have to worry about the long Munar nights and your Kerbs running out of battery.

[AndrewHere]

9 minutes ago, Andem said:

Because the USILS information window doesn't calculate parts that generate electricity. You typically don't have to worry about it, but If you, say, had on a Mun base, you would have to worry about the long Munar nights and your Kerbs running out of battery.

No, i just have an orbital space station at the moment. And i will provide more details and images asap @RoverDude

[DStaal]

28 minutes ago, AndrewHere said:

No, i just have an orbital space station at the moment. And i will provide more details and images asap @RoverDude

So, assuming you have enough batteries to last ~20 minutes, and enough generation to refill those batteries while you're in the sun (or if you've got enough generation not need to rely on stored charge) you should be good.

You don't need to have enough EC to last your entire mission.  You only need to have enough to last until you can get more EC.

[Tokamak]

USI-LS has become my life support of choice, now that I get it, and MKS is also on my essential list. Thanks for all of this work! I'm a little unclear on whether you are meant to be able to ALSO use TAC-LS, for more depth, or whether that will deactivate some of USI-LS.

But that's not the main question. I'm sorry if I've just missed it, but I can't find in the wiki or in the in-game interface any way to get a good overview of the LS status of my kerbals from the KSC. I know that in-flight, the USI-LS icon brings up stats on every kerbal in any vessel, which is awesome. Is there a way to get something like that in the KSC or tracking station? It'd be useful when I am building and time-skipping to be able to tell at a glance if anyone is about to starve or go insane, without having to go to the flight scene each time.

[Tokamak]

Oh, unrelated, but an MKS part is throwing an exception on my system:

DragCubeSystem: Creating drag cubes for part 'MKS.LightGlobe'
 
(Filename: C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/UnityEngineDebugBindings.gen.cpp Line: 64)

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at ModuleDeployableSolarPanel.AssumeDragCubePosition (System.String name) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at DragCubeSystem+<RenderDragCubes>c__IteratorC.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine_Auto(IEnumerator)
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine(IEnumerator)
<RenderDragCubesCoroutine>c__IteratorB:MoveNext()
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine_Auto(IEnumerator)
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine(IEnumerator)
<SetupDragCubeCoroutine>c__IteratorD:MoveNext()
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine_Auto(IEnumerator)
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine(IEnumerator)
<CompileParts>c__Iterator4A:MoveNext()
 
(Filename:  Line: -1)

 

[Reiver]

Okay. I'm pondering making a ModuleManager patch to convert the Food supplies from Litres to KerbalDays, the green marshmellow equivalent of man-hours.

I'd need to divide the volumes of all resources by 16.2, multiply weight and cost by 16.2, and... the volume too, I guess?

[Rafael acevedo]

Roverdude thanks for a great mod.  I have created a little cfg file to bring basic usi-ls t=compatibility to procedural parts.  Here are the results of my efforts. I was able to closely approximate USI-LS  tanks capacities.  The differences can be easily explained to different constructions materials, internal bracing etc. The tank has 4 different options, life support (supplies, mulch, fertilizer), fertilizer, mulch, and supplies. On the screenshots you can compare the procedural tanks with the equivalent usi-ls tank.  Hope you like this. obtw I included your name on the cfg file  

3.75 tanks

2.5 tanks

1.25 tanks

fertilizer tanks

4 tanks contents options

and of course standard procedural parts shape options

[AndrewHere]

On 7/12/2016 at 6:28 PM, AndrewHere said:

No, i just have an orbital space station at the moment. And i will provide more details and images asap @RoverDude

Back with an update. It's just a thing while having another vessel loaded. If i load the specific vessel the days until charge it's running out resents, usually to 20-40 days.

[The Destroyer]

I'm confused by the habitation value. It says it can be reset, so even if it's just a short trip in the rover, then back, it will be fine. However, when I went into the rover, the hab expired. Is this because they had 6d18hrs of hab in the base left, and the rover  only has 30 days of hab?

 

Edit: So I ditched Jeb so they could have more hab time, finished experiments, and returned to the lander. While approaching the lander, the hab time expired, and then 10 seconds later the hab time was reset- over a year of hab time. Then I boarded the lander and- hab time expired! Wat?

In addition, the inflatable shelter appears to eat parts that were in a kerbals inventory with KIS

EDIT2: Whoa, this is getting even weirder. I flew the lander up to the mothership, and when I got within 200m the habitation value was reset, so now I have 30 days on the lander again...

Final edit: After decoupling from the mothership (so its just a pod for re-entry) the hab time expired, until the mothership exploded and got far enough away, then hab time was normal, in fact reset- so the home time was also 7 days

Yet another update: So, turns out I didn't pack chutes on that mothership, so I quickloaded and sent a rescue mission to them in orbit. Unlike before, the LS worked as planned- it didn't expire, and the home value didn't reset 

Edited July 18, 2016 by The Destroyer

[RoverDude]

There are two hab timers.  What will help me is if you clarify which ones you are talking about

[RocketBlam]

I've been trying to use this mod, but I don't see any instructions about how to turn mulch into supplies. I've been experimenting with it, but I don't have Kolonization (do you need it for this mod?) 

Perhaps you could explain how it works on the first page for people who haven't used it or aren't used to the Kolonization system.

[RoverDude]

Look at the tool tips for the recyclers in the VAB...   your answer is there.

[zakkpaz]

I can't find any documentation on the Life support Setup menu and I'm having trouble figuring out what any of this means

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by zakkpaz

[eberkain]

Looks like most of it is right from the .cfg file, the explanation for that is here. 

https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI-LS/wiki/Configuration

[zakkpaz]

On 7/21/2016 at 9:04 AM, eberkain said:

Looks like most of it is right from the .cfg file, the explanation for that is here. 

https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI-LS/wiki/Configuration

I get most of it I just can't figure out the side effects does effect mean what happens if you run out of that thing does it mean its the side effect of using it?

[ExplorerKlatt]

1 hour ago, zakkpaz said:

I get most of it I just can't figure out the side effects does effect mean what happens if you run out of that thing does it mean its the side effect of using it?

Think of them as consequences not side effects.  It is what happens when you run out of a particular timer. 

[Tyko]

I'm trying to make my station work with the inline greenhouse and I'm running into power issues. Maybe my math is wrong, but I looked at RoverDude's example station and that seems like it won't work either, so my math must be wrong

 RD's sample shows a station with 8000-10K EC (there are 2 4000EC batteries, plus some extra from the other modules) and RD says it's supposed to function non-stop in a 100K orbit.

The parts page says that the inline greenhouse uses 20EC / sec. That's 1200 / minute which means that station can only run without solar panels for 7-8 minutes.

I'm pretty sure a 100K orbit will have you in the dark for something like 15 minutes.

What am I missing?

[Merkov]

11 minutes ago, tjt said:

I'm trying to make my station work with the inline greenhouse and I'm running into power issues. Maybe my math is wrong, but I looked at RoverDude's example station and that seems like it won't work either, so my math must be wrong

 RD's sample shows a station with 8000-10K EC (there are 2 4000EC batteries, plus some extra from the other modules) and RD says it's supposed to function non-stop in a 100K orbit.

The parts page says that the inline greenhouse uses 20EC / sec. That's 1200 / minute which means that station can only run without solar panels for 7-8 minutes.

I'm pretty sure a 100K orbit will have you in the dark for something like 15 minutes.

What am I missing?

What you missed is that in the example ship, they weren't using the inline Nom-O-Matic 25000, they used the radial Nom-O-Matic 5000. There are two "sizes" of radial Nom-O-Matics, but only the large one has an inline variant. The smaller Nom-O-Matic has a lower throughput, but also consumes a lot less EC. If I recall correctly, the large Nom-O-Matic consumes 2-2.5 times the EC of the smaller one, so it looks like your math is correct. 

[Tyko]

10 minutes ago, Merkov said:

What you missed is that in the example ship, they weren't using the inline Nom-O-Matic 25000, they used the radial Nom-O-Matic 5000. There are two "sizes" of radial Nom-O-Matics, but only the large one has an inline variant. The smaller Nom-O-Matic has a lower throughput, but also consumes a lot less EC. If I recall correctly, the large Nom-O-Matic consumes 2-2.5 times the EC of the smaller one, so it looks like your math is correct. 

Thanks for the reply, but I'm still not seeing it. Here's a copy/paste of the picture from RD's page. It's not using the Radial 5000, it's using the Inline version.

EDIT...okay, the text says "This base requires research up to at least the OKS Hub Assembly, Gigantor XL Solar Array, and Nom-O-Matic 500 greenhouse". Assuming that he meant the '5000' greenhouse, that would suggest that the pix he posted don't match the text. So this may be a case where he made changes and didn't update the page with new pix.

Edited July 21, 2016 by tjt

[Hupf]

Could you be confusing the Nom-o-Matic 25000-I with the Mobile Processing Lab at the bottom? You can see the radial NoM 5000 at the very bottom of the craft.

[The Destroyer]

On 7/18/2016 at 3:44 PM, RoverDude said:

There are two hab timers.  What will help me is if you clarify which ones you are talking about

By that you mean both hab and home? Well, the hab time would expire when I got in lander (home still fine, over a year) , and both hab and home time were reset as I approached mothership, (to 7 days) and docking with mothership, hab/home time reset to over a year. When I left mothership and got a decent distance away from it, both values reset to 30 days. I get back to mothership, reset to 1y+ (normal), then when I decoupled from mothership both hab and home time expired, until I was a fair distance away, both values reset to 7 days. After quickloading and sending a rescue vessel up, the system worked normally- hab time changed to 30 days, (big rescue vessel) and home time ~300 days

[Tokamak]

I'm playing around with making patches for some other parts mods, to make them USI/MKS compatible, and I'm trying to stick to the official recommendations unless I have a reason not to. Among other things, I am experimenting with making some parts into dedicated life support recyclers, or combination recycler and storage. However, the "Supporting MKS in your mod" part of the MKS wiki doesn't list any recommendations for this sort of part. The formula for life support recyclers only applies to parts like the Kerbitat that are meant to be habitation and recycling together.

So I only have one part to base it on, which is the RT-500... and that seems to be deliberately made as a clunky early-game part, that is really heavy for what it does. 

I'd welcome suggestions!

[DStaal]

4 hours ago, Tokamak said:

I'm playing around with making patches for some other parts mods, to make them USI/MKS compatible, and I'm trying to stick to the official recommendations unless I have a reason not to. Among other things, I am experimenting with making some parts into dedicated life support recyclers, or combination recycler and storage. However, the "Supporting MKS in your mod" part of the MKS wiki doesn't list any recommendations for this sort of part. The formula for life support recyclers only applies to parts like the Kerbitat that are meant to be habitation and recycling together.

So I only have one part to base it on, which is the RT-500... and that seems to be deliberately made as a clunky early-game part, that is really heavy for what it does. 

I'd welcome suggestions!

The RT-500 actually follows the formula given: 0.6 tons of mass / 1 kerbal = 0.6 recycle percent.

Note that the guidance in the wiki uses 'number of kerbals' in this section not to mean 'number of kerbals that fit into this part' but to mean 'number of kerbals this part recycles supplies for' - those Kerbals may be in that part or in another part entirely.  To quote the wiki:

Quote

Crew capacity is different then seating capacity; it is the number of crew that this part can recycle (at 100% of rated recycle rate) for. That may be higher or lower than the seating capacity.

So the fact that the part has a seating capacity of zero doesn't mean that it's crew recycle capacity can't be 1, or 5, or 10, or whatever, and the guidance should apply to that.

If the part is multi-purpose, you should decide how much mass is dedicated to each part of the purpose and calculate based on that.  So, if your part is combination recycler and storage ideally some of the mass should be dedicated to handling the 'storage' and not included in the formula.  For example a 2.5 ton part that includes a storage bay might decide that 0.5 tons is dedicated to holding the storage, and then if you decided that it had a crew recycle capacity of 5 it's percent would be 0.4.  (2/5)

I hope that helps and clears things up.  If you have suggestions on how to clarify the wiki I'd be glad to hear them.