[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[RoverDude]

0.3.9 - 2016.02.04
-------------------
Fixed issue that was causing some life support stats to vanish
Fixed an issue where recyclers were not.. well... recycling.
Fixed an issue that would potentially make permanent tourists
 

[Kowgan]

Yay, the UI should be fixed! Grabbing my copy now!
Thank you so much, Rover.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Kowgan

[RoverDude]

Welcome - hope this is it

[Kowgan]

Yes!!! Have a beer on me. Any donate links available?

[RoverDude]

PayPal or Patreon   (I think the PayPal one is in the MKS thread)

[Kowgan]

Done! I wish I could donate more, but my current financial conditions + the dollar being 4x my currency value makes it harder for me. Sorry.

[RoverDude]

Take care of yourself first   No need to apologize, a thanks is more than sufficient!

[Kiwa]

I recently updated from 0.1.5(?) to 0.3.4 because AVC kept nagging me about it, and because I read that 0.3.4 still mostly kept the old stats and starting with 0.3.5 things would get even more complicated, and I just can't figure out how to "fix" things such that I could continue playing my savegame.

Well, I did figure out the part about editing the config to disable the hab-stuff and the "effects" back to what I had, and to control the supply requirements over time (I am not going to be the one to explain to Val why, halfway to Duna, after a software-upgrade of the LS system she suddenly became a glutton and too fat to comfortably fit into the ship I sent her in, tyvm). I have checked back to page 50, but still can't figure out how to get rid of the additional new not quite hidden resource (no Kolony mods here, and what has repairing modules got to do with life support anyway?), and neither how I can temporarily lock some of the LS containers while transferring supplies between the others. You see, I have been using TacFuelBalancer for a long time to transfer resources, and usually that means temporarily locking the tanks you want to keep at their current levels and then just setting the others to "in" or "out" as appropriate. Except - you guessed it - the forced unlocking of all the supply containers prevents me from doing so. I am specifically not locking all containers, so there are always supplies available, but it still won't let me lock some of the cans   (Bob, those are Vals snacks, and don't you dare touch them unless you're starving!). And finally there is the problem of changing the recycling "recipes" -- is there an MM.cfg to set the two Greenhouse modules back to their previous stats?

The other reason why I updated was to check out what to expect, should KSP 1.1 really break the mods as many knowledgeable people seem to expect and I were forced to update. I would rather sooner than later switch to a working win64, and unless there is some way to keep the old stats, it looks like I may have to say good bye to this mod. I started using USI-LS in part because I really liked RoverDudes argument about how two resources (supplies and mulch) would be so much better than six (TAC-LS), since really, it's all the same. Meanwhile they first became three (fertilizer), and then four (the repair stuff), so we're almost back to six, but it's still a rather easy to use mod and the parts look nice, so it would be unfortunate to loose it.

 

Sorry, this became more of a rant than I really wanted to. But I'm probably not the only one who would be really grateful if RoverDude or somebody else has any LifeSupport.cfg's and MM.cfg's to bundle with the release which would allow us to use USI-LS 0.3.5+ while keeping the stats slower players like me started their games with. Allowing to lock some cans (while there are other supplies available) would be really nice, too.

 

(Edit: For clarification, I think the hab-mechanic is a good approach, and probably the other things, too - but really only for new savegames; the somewhat arbitrary selection of "booster" parts and rules make them not suitable for existing saves with long flights still underway.)

Edited February 5, 2016 by Kiwa

[jonrd463]

50 minutes ago, Kiwa said:

Sorry, this became more of a rant than I really wanted to. But I'm probably not the only one who would be really grateful if RoverDude or somebody else has any LifeSupport.cfg's and MM.cfg's to bundle with the release which would allow us to use USI-LS 0.3.5+ while keeping the stats slower players like me started their games with. Allowing to lock some cans (while there are other supplies available) would be really nice, too.

 

(Edit: For clarification, I think the hab-mechanic is a good approach, and probably the other things, too - but really only for new savegames; the somewhat arbitrary selection of "booster" parts and rules make them not suitable for existing saves with long flights still underway.)

I'm with you there. I spent almost 3 weeks planning for and executing a Duna base mission. Once I was on the ground and set up, I upgraded the mod. Now a base that had around 3 years worth of supplies, which was enough to last until I sent a greenhouse module and resupply ship at my next Duna transfer window, suddenly has about 49 days. Likewise, the return vehicle's supplies have been reduced drastically below what is needed to return to Kerbin. I've tried to edit the Settings.cfg file to bring the rate of consumption back to .00005, but it doesn't seem to have an effect. This has frustrated me so much, I've decided to shelve KSP until 1.1 comes out, and play around with other games in the meantime. I'm likely done with any sort of LS mod, as they're proving too much trouble than what they're worth.

[RoverDude]

As you've seen, you can set stuff back to the older values.  Set the ReplacementPartAmount in the config to '0' (which it should already be) and you will not see the wear mechanic.  That's the default.  If you also use UKS/MKS-Lite you will need to do this in the config in Kolonization as well.  And said resource is hidden and really only there to serve the gameplay mechanic (so you're still at three).

Not aware of a config to reset the recyclers - the reason this was changed (as noted earlier in the thread) is because we had a few conflicting mechanics competing for the same resources, and it was confusing.  So everything got consolidated and streamlined.

As an addendum.  You will get a pretty config UI come 1.1, but I am minimizing investments in UI's right now due to the move to Unity 5.

The design goal here is to add a series of simple, toggleable (think lego) complementary mechanics (breadth) vs. focusing on one highly detailed one (depth).

Edited February 5, 2016 by RoverDude

[Yuri kagarin56]

Just downloaded this but I've run into a problem. Compared to tac there is very little supplies in a container. It will require a lot to get to duna. Is there any way around this? Also it doesn't show any info on vessels in the toolbar. For example I have two missions going on and there is no way for me to tell how much life support they have left. 

[Brigadier]

15 minutes ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

Just downloaded this but I've run into a problem. Compared to tac there is very little supplies in a container. It will require a lot to get to duna. Is there any way around this? Also it doesn't show any info on vessels in the toolbar. For example I have two missions going on and there is no way for me to tell how much life support they have left. 

Invest in modules with recyclers.

[Yuri kagarin56]

What about not being able to see my life support timer?

[Yuri kagarin56]

Also do kerbals have an eva set of supplies that they live off of. Or do they just go without on eva?

[Brigadier]

1 hour ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

What about not being able to see my life support timer?

They are definitely supposed to show up.  Have you visited the craft and checked the LS from there?

I'm no expert, just relaying what others have told me or what I've read.

29 minutes ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

Also do kerbals have an eva set of supplies that they live off of. Or do they just go without on eva?

I'm pretty sure that there is an EVA timer and no supplies, per say (6 hours time limit, maybe??) after which something is suppose to happen (set by one of the config files).

[Yuri kagarin56]

Ya I've just got a blank screen when visiting the craft 

[Kowgan]

Trying to corner the cause of the problem. Did you make sure you've installed 000_USITools at the GameData folder as well?

[Kiwa]

17 hours ago, RoverDude said:

As you've seen, you can set stuff back to the older values.  Set the ReplacementPartAmount in the config to '0' (which it should already be) and you will not see the wear mechanic.  That's the default.  If you also use UKS/MKS-Lite you will need to do this in the config in Kolonization as well.  And said resource is hidden and really only there to serve the gameplay mechanic (so you're still at three).

Not aware of a config to reset the recyclers - the reason this was changed (as noted earlier in the thread) is because we had a few conflicting mechanics competing for the same resources, and it was confusing.  So everything got consolidated and streamlined.

As an addendum.  You will get a pretty config UI come 1.1, but I am minimizing investments in UI's right now due to the move to Unity 5.

The design goal here is to add a series of simple, toggleable (think lego) complementary mechanics (breadth) vs. focusing on one highly detailed one (depth).

Yes, the config for the ReplacementPartAmount already says zero, and I haven't seen any consumption of them. But I think the resource is only partially hidden - from the right-click menus and probably from the stock resource panel, but not from the middle-click-in-VAB window (is that actually stock, or some mod? not sure right now), and of cause not from alternative resource monitors. Let's assume I manage to write an MM.cfg which would remove the Resource:ReplacementParts and Module:ModuleHabitation blocks from all parts again, do you think that would work? or NRE / crash?

For the greenhouse recipes I guess I'll have to make copies of the old parts, rename them to xyz_legacy and search/replace in the savegame. Not like we haven't done that before elsewhere... just hopefully the parts themselves don't break with 1.1. I'm not MM-savvy enough to be able to replace the complete part configuration :-/

I really like the simple and clean approach, after all it's (mostly) a game. Since usually different savegames end up in separate KSP installs anyway, even the simple config file approach without UIs works fine for me, although per-save-settings are probably nice to have. And as I said before, I think the Hab-mechanic is fine (for new savegames), too - it simply changes the ship design rules, no more than say... BTSM manned ship designs end up being very much LS-driven.

 

Do you see any chance of relaxing the forced unlocking of supply containers? Since it worked like this earlier, the code might even still be there and just deactivated right now? It's mainly causing issues when dealing with ships docked to a station; just two examples:

1. "life raft" escape vehicles, they have per-determined amounts of supplies to match their mission profile, but with the "grab food from anywhere" mechanic, they are not ready for use in an emergency (both LS endurance and available delta-v are different)
2. the same holds for landers attached to stations or motherships; usually after docking, they would dump their mulch into the station greenhouse and re-fill their supply for the next landing mission; but since the greenhouses dump their output all over the place, this ends up in a *lot* of alt-clicking all the parts which have supplies

By the way, landers also appear to raise a problem with the new recycler design mechanic: right now, (my) landers do not require recyclers at all; they have storage and their host station takes care of all the recycling. It appears in the future default settings, landers either need recyclers to reduce the basic consumption (which is unlikely - why would one carry a greenhouse down to a moon into a shadowed crater and launch it back up, exposing it to all the g-forces and bad vibrations?), or bigger tanks and more fertilizer later at the station. The bigger tanks.. well okay, but the fertilizer is where it's kind of broken.

Edited February 6, 2016 by Kiwa
spelling

[mitko]

Kiwa, if you use USI-LS why do you even need supplies on a lander? The kerbals can last 15 day without supplies, so for a quick visit on the surface the lander does not need any supplies and for a longer than 15 days stay you'll need a base, even if it's a small one.

[Kiwa]

@mitko: I guess... because I consider those 15 days a grace period, and because I'm playing with an LS-mod because I want to play with (some degree of) LS. "Some degree" as in: back in the day we used to carry locked RCS-tanks to simulate the added weight of LS and regularly dump some of it, and nowadays USI-LS conveniently takes care of the math, dumping and even has greenhouses and nice looking parts.

Let me put it differently: I could go entirely without supplies even with USI-LS loaded, because each time the kerbals go on EVA and back, the 15d-timer is reset. So on the way to Duna, just set Kerbal Alarm Clock to ring you up for an EVA every 14 days and voi'la, no supplies needed at all

In a more realistic example: send a ship to Minmus, have a manned science lander which visits each biome for, say... 3 days and then returns to the station (drop off science, refurbish the single-use experiments, a shower and some R&R for the crew). The total accumulated time on "free" LS would well exceed 15 days. That's why even landers have at least one of those 100kg supply packs and a matching mulch pack. Or any other ship which does more than... say Jeb taking a quick hop to the Mun to pick up the wallet he forgot there last time.

[Yuri kagarin56]

8 hours ago, Kowgan said:

Trying to corner the cause of the problem. Did you make sure you've installed 000_USITools at the GameData folder as well?

Ya I do. 

[Yuri kagarin56]

Ok so I've got the toolbar working but my kerbals haven't produced mulch in 50 days.  Which means no fertilizer which means no supplies.  Never mind now I'm producing mulch but no fertilizer. 

Im also getting 2 different supply readouts. The main one is showing I have 231 days while the base resources shows 1700 days. Is it normal for the 3.75 supply tank to only hold supplies for 200 days for 4 kerbals??

Edited February 6, 2016 by Yuri kagarin56

[Yuri kagarin56]

http://imgur.com/a/HkjZX

these are the readouts im getting

 

now Im making fertilizer but no supplies? Im very lost right now I thought this life support was supossed to be easier than tac.

http://imgur.com/a/6zVFR

Edited February 6, 2016 by Yuri kagarin56

[goldenpsp]

23 minutes ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

http://imgur.com/a/HkjZX

these are the readouts im getting

 

now Im making fertilizer but no supplies? Im very lost right now I thought this life support was supossed to be easier than tac.

http://imgur.com/a/6zVFR

On the first I haven't played enough with the new system to know why you get the two different values.

 

On the second picture I believe all you have turned on there are the recyclers, which lower food consumption but don't actually make more supplies.  Who said USI-LS was easier?  I never considered it easier, just different.  With the latest changes it is definitely not easier than TAC-LS.

[RoverDude]

On 1/21/2016 at 4:55 PM, Fraz86 said:

Hmm, I apologize, but I'm still a bit confused. I'm specifically trying to understand exactly what this does:

MODULE

{

name = ModuleHabitation

KerbalMonths = 12

} 

My in-game testing indicates that it doesn't quite act through straitforward addition or multiplication of the habitation value. It looks like every seat on a vessel contributes a default of 1 KM to the habitation value. If a ModuleHabitation is present, then it looks like the aforementioned habitation value is multiplied by (1 + sum of KerbalMonths values defined in all ModuleHabitations). Is that right?

That first readout is not accounting for consumption