[1.12.x] USI Life Support

[RoverDude]

Use the tracking center.

[vardicd]

30 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Use the tracking center.

Heh, Thanks, never even would have thought of trying that in there. If that's written somewhere in this thread, sorry I missed it. Thanks again for the help.

[mtpatane]

1 hour ago, RoverDude said:

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

 

Any chance for a universal storage style part for this?

[RoverDude]

Ask the US people

[Mr Shifty]

1 hour ago, RoverDude said:

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

Love it! I'm fairly certain I already know of a good use for that.

[Streetwind]

That thing is adorable! I'll take ten

[toric5]

6 hours ago, RoverDude said:

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).

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.

dont worry, not directly changing the configs, learning to use module manager. ill give it another go!

[Admac]

Large vessels need to be pretty large in my experience. I am working on that Jool 500 Challenge, and my first wave contained a 25 kerbal ship with 27 years of hab. It was 300ish tons of dry mass, but with on orbit refuelling, scaling up is pretty reasonable. There is very little drawback to stacking Kerbitats and Hab rings since they weigh so little. Even my little Duna science mission had 2 of each, and that was lots of time. I think my colonization ship with 25 crew had 12 Kerbitats, but whats 36 tons if you are dooming them to a lifetime in a tin can?

I noticed that was a design shift with using USI, in stock there is very little difference between a Mun mission and a Duna Mission. With Hab requirements and supplies requirements, I find my Duna mission is about 3x the mass now, and Jool missions 5x the mass. Which is pretty much the reason I like having LS mods!

[Telcontar]

Just started using this life support mod, and predictably when it came time for my first longer-term crewed mission (a tourist jaunt to Minmus) I forgot entirely to give them extra supplies. Their craft was stuck in a highly eccentric ~20+ orbit. Fortunately, I'm ALSO using KIS/KAS, so I figured out a resupply vector: Send up Bill, rendezvous, and bolt some snack packs right onto their damn hull!

Sadly, it didn't seem to work. The vessel now registers as supplied again, but the pilot did not switch back to being a pilot - she still reads as a tourist. Have I forgotten to do something or have I managed to bypass some kind of resupply check by using KIS/KAS?

[RoverDude]

hm... should have worked.  Toss me your persistence file and I will take a look (you can PM a dropbox link), be sure to let me know the name of the craft in question.

[vardicd]

Finally got far enough along in one of my career games to deploy the smallest Nom-o-matic agriculture farm thingie. that sucker is way more power hungry than I thought. Going to have to build a massive power module for my Kerbin orbiting space station. O_O

[ibanix]

1 hour ago, vardicd said:

Finally got far enough along in one of my career games to deploy the smallest Nom-o-matic agriculture farm thingie. that sucker is way more power hungry than I thought. Going to have to build a massive power module for my Kerbin orbiting space station. O_O

Uh, I think it's only a few EC/s...

[cantab]

When you've only got OX-STATs that's a lot.

[ibanix]

You may want to research farther up the tech tree before going in for bases. You're going to need strong EC generation via solar panels or nuke reactors to really run an active base. 

[vardicd]

1 hour ago, ibanix said:

Uh, I think it's only a few EC/s...

 

1 hour ago, cantab said:

When you've only got OX-STATs that's a lot.

I don't even have solar panels yet  I've been using the Monopropellent Power Generator included in the MOLE Parts to power my space stations.  UNORTHODOX SOLUTIONS!! {and fails! }

 

[yardpup01]

I'm planning on starting a career save with a 6.4x rescaled system. Is it recommended that I alter the consumption rates and hab requirements? My assumption is that some type of modification is necessary, otherwise interplanetary missions may become absurdly large due to the increased transfer times.

[Telcontar]

Drat, I should've checked back earlier. I've already gone past their supply limit again in the game, so I'm not sure the persistance file would do any good.

I do remember that while the supply was restocked, the HAB setting was in the red - but I was under the impression that wasn't activated yet. 

Anyway, I'll try to send a duplicate resupply mission to try and reproduce the behavior. Will send you the p file when that happens.

[DStaal]

7 minutes ago, yardpup01 said:

I'm planning on starting a career save with a 6.4x rescaled system. Is it recommended that I alter the consumption rates and hab requirements? My assumption is that some type of modification is necessary, otherwise interplanetary missions may become absurdly large due to the increased transfer times.

Personally I'd say try leaving the supply consumption alone, but increase the base hab time a bit.  That will mean you don't have to pile on parts to get hab time, which would be your biggest problem.  Of course, you'll have to still send in plenty of supplies - but you've got a bigger system, presumably you wanted more challenge.    In general it'll mean that recyclers and greenhouses are more important, and worthwhile for more missions.

[yardpup01]

1 minute ago, DStaal said:

Personally I'd say try leaving the supply consumption alone, but increase the base hab time a bit.  That will mean you don't have to pile on parts to get hab time, which would be your biggest problem.  Of course, you'll have to still send in plenty of supplies - but you've got a bigger system, presumably you wanted more challenge.    In general it'll mean that recyclers and greenhouses are more important, and worthwhile for more missions.

Thanks. It was mostly the hab time I was concerned about. I should play around with it first, before I determine that there is a problem. I just wanted to see if anyone else had prior experience with this.

[RoverDude]

28 minutes ago, yardpup01 said:

I'm planning on starting a career save with a 6.4x rescaled system. Is it recommended that I alter the consumption rates and hab requirements? My assumption is that some type of modification is necessary, otherwise interplanetary missions may become absurdly large due to the increased transfer times.

Yep, as noted, easy to tweak the hab modifier

[DStaal]

16 minutes ago, yardpup01 said:

Thanks. It was mostly the hab time I was concerned about. I should play around with it first, before I determine that there is a problem. I just wanted to see if anyone else had prior experience with this.

Just to mention that I don't have experience - but I know that RoverDude put a lot of work into working out how much supplies were being used, so I figured keeping that would be good.  Hab time is more a 'this looks like enough space' thing, as we really don't have good numbers for that from real life yet.  (We have some estimates, but nothing that doesn't have severe structural flaws in the data gathering.  Essentially we won't know the minimum required for an average human until we start shipping average humans around the solar system and start seeing them go crazy.)

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Rover, is there something I'm not understanding with LS behavior? My understanding is that the only things kerbals need are 1) electricity 2) supplies 3) hab stuff. I have hab time's effects turned off, my kerbals have access to supplies and power via a supply ship I just docked (and transferred supplies from), but they will not stop being tourists. The only thing I can figure is that running out of replacement parts is somehow affecting the kerbals, but I thought replacement parts were non-functional? They appear in parts' resources lists in VAB mouseovers (I think), but are invisible in flight. What gives?

Very modded install, I acknowledge it could be a conflict but wonder what that conflict might be if that's the case... Imagine it is probable *I* am missing something, though.

Replicate problem:

1. Send kerbals to a station, leave them a very long time (oops). Hab effects are turned on, so are supply effects. They all get grouchy; they're tourists now.
2. Turn off hab effects in settings from space center screen.
3. Send ship with supplies/fertilizer to RDV with station, transfer fertilizer and supplies into the station (in my case, into the insufficient greenhouse that was pitifully attempting to prevent them from starving).
4. Shouldn't they spring back to life? Nothing happens now that they have access to supplies, though the control panel says they're up to 23 days' worth and hab became "indefinite" after turning that off.

Log: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59567837/output_logUSILS.txt

Edited May 19, 2016 by AccidentalDisassembly

[Streetwind]

33 minutes ago, AccidentalDisassembly said:

The only thing I can figure is that running out of replacement parts is somehow affecting the kerbals, but I thought replacement parts were non-functional? They appear in parts' resources lists in VAB mouseovers (I think), but are invisible in flight. What gives?

They have no mass and are invisible, but that doesn't mean they are nonfunctional. For example, any recycler part consumes them at a slow rate (about 100 per Kerbal capacity per 5.4 Kerbin years), and since you cannot refill them, that will eventually render the recycler inoperable.

Also, you can configure USI-LS to consume an amount of ReplacementParts together with supplies just to keep Kerbals alive. After the resource is consumed, you need to deorbit the parts because they have become permanently unable to support life. But this is turned off by default, so unless you turned it on yourself, this shouldn't affect you.

[AccidentalDisassembly]

37 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

They have no mass and are invisible, but that doesn't mean they are nonfunctional. For example, any recycler part consumes them at a slow rate (about 100 per Kerbal capacity per 5.4 Kerbin years), and since you cannot refill them, that will eventually render the recycler inoperable.

Also, you can configure USI-LS to consume an amount of ReplacementParts together with supplies just to keep Kerbals alive. After the resource is consumed, you need to deorbit the parts because they have become permanently unable to support life. But this is turned off by default, so unless you turned it on yourself, this shouldn't affect you.

I don't think I modified any settings (other than turning off hab effects) from default, but the kerbals nevertheless won't de-tourist. How would I even find out whether everything is set to wear out? I can see wear numbers on things like the science lab, but nothing else, and since the spare parts are invisible, I can't know if they've run out. I'm not sure I see the logic of making them invisible, come to think of it... also did not find anything in the wikis about turning that feature on or off, only reducing the rate of deterioration.

EDIT: Should note that the wear on the science lab etc. is something like 0.4%

Edited May 19, 2016 by AccidentalDisassembly

[Streetwind]

Honestly my (not very experienced) money is on the homesickness timer in this case. If you didn't modify any settings, then ReplacementParts aren't your problem. Since you had the hab timer running, it's even possible that they got grouchy before running out of supplies, just from homesickness/lack of habitation. And perhaps that status doesn't get removed when you turn the option off.

The easiest course of action for you would honestly to launch a crew shuttle to your station, pack these guys into it, and bring them home. The same crew shuttle can carry a replacement crew on the way up.