On Implementing Functioning Life Support Systems for Kerbals

[tater]

In the end, life support is simply a matter of "add x additional parts to your ship to give you y time to complete your mission". At the moment, the game offers absolutely zero method for predicting the value of y. How long does it take to reach Duna from Kerbin if you leave at a pretty good transfer window? Once you get there, when will the next transfer window home come up? If, when I'm there, something goes wrong, when will the next transfer window for a rescue mission come round? How long will it take for that rescue mission to reach Duna? Without some kind of method for the player to get a handle on the answers to these questions, the only way of figuring out the value of y and therefore x is pure guesswork and dumb luck. That places life support in the same category as "random part failures" as a mechanic that is 100% guaranteed to enrage players and destroy their fun.

This is very true, there needs to be a planning functionality.

Really, the "Mission Control" building is not Mission Control, that is done by the tracking station (Mission Control controls missions that are in flight). The current MC building is a contract office. It needs a planning functionality added. Perhaps a launch transfer window planner with a round trip option.

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Whenever this topic come up I make the same two suggestions for any implementation of life support in KSP:

- Base life support on snack supply.

- Kerbals never die, but they get grumpy and stop working if they run out of snacks. In career mode this might mean they refuse to do experiments. Not sure what it might mean for sandbox.

Roverdude's new USI LS mod does, well, exactly this. Uses EC, and all pods get 15 days free, then they use the supplies. ("food" being a catch all for all consumables). In his mod, they make waste (mulch) which other LS parts can use to make more supplies (greenhouses, etc).

[rcp27]

I completely agree that some form of mission planning would be useful, and I made a post about it a little while ago that suggested a way to do it that would be in keeping with the KSP style of try-it-and-see, rather than using something like pork chop diagrams that, while powerful tools, are not particularly accessible to newbies and more casual players.

Regarding the "kerbals go into hibernation but don't die" concept, that strikes me as extremely easy to circumvent. Add a probe core to your ship, and it can fly without "active" pilots. Include just enough life support for only the "active" part of the trip, which is pretty much going to be the same for every destination. Deliberately block access to life support for all parts of the mission where you are in time warp, and deliberately "hibernate" your crew. Even if you try to prevent this by disabling access-blocking to life support, it is a trivial matter to put the life support on a separate probe with docking port that flies a parallel course to your main ship. At the end of the day, all this means is every mission requires one identical part to be added to it, regardless of destination or duration, with potentially added annoyance if you require undocking and re-docking.

Basically it comes down to this: If you don't want to worry about life support but it is forced into the game, it either takes the game into rage-quit levels of frustration if it kills your Kerbals, or tedious but trivially exploitable if it doesn't. Neither of these is going to make the game any better for the "I'm happy not to worry about life support" crowd. Furthermore, the wide range of active and actively used mods currently existing for life support solutions means that whichever version is chosen as "stock", a significant number of the pro-life-support player base will still prefer a mod-based solution because their idea of fun life support is different from the stock implementation.

If you want to see how the player base will react to a change in the game that goes from "easy but unrealistic" to "a bit harder but more realistic" just take a look at any one of the flame filled threads about the 1.0/1.0.1/1.0.2 aerodynamics changes.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest something that might seem nuts: Kerbals should consume monopropellant as life support.

Why do I think that? A few reasons:

- Monoprop is exothermic, a lifeform could exist that uses it for energy.

- We already have MP containers in a variety of sizes, including some capacity in every pod. No new parts are necessary.

- The ISRU system already produces it, making bases viable.

- Somehow I find it very "kerbal" to have kerbals powered by rocket fuel.

[RoverDude]

Whenever this topic come up I make the same two suggestions for any implementation of life support in KSP:

- Base life support on snack supply.

- Kerbals never die, but they get grumpy and stop working if they run out of snacks. In career mode this might mean they refuse to do experiments. Not sure what it might mean for sandbox.

That's pretty much where my life support mod landed

[JoCRaM]

I'm not fussed about it, but can't you simulate life support by only using fuel cells? (justify it as providing water) - when your fixed resource (fuel+oxidiser) runs out, your mission is over. Except your Kerbals go into hibernation and so can be rescued by a resupply mission.

[mattinoz]

Seems to me this thread proves why there should be Stock Life Support.

Without it you end up with a stack of variation on a theme mods with the player trusting they'll keep working each update.

A stock system could then serve as a base for mods to extend instead of duplicate with slight differences.

[panzer1b]

While i dont have anything in particular against life support, i feel it would quickly become more of a bother then a fun thing, especially when you have multiple stations all over the place and you need to constantly ship them food to keep them alive (id rather build new craft instead and send them off elsewhere).

Basically the biggest hurdle (at least for me) is that if you make the food drain high enough to actually matter, it will force everyone to constantly resupply every ship/base with food and take away the fun if you arent into 24/7 resupply missions. if you make the resource drain negligible such as 50 years or some absurd number for a single pod, then what is the point of even adding the system, since you will be able to just cram a pod or container with food and forget about it for pretty much the whole game. Then ofc if you make the drain high, and add stuff that can resupply the resources 9greenhouses ect), then it becomes a matter of strapping one more part to your ship and be done with it, all that does is add extra parts for no real net benefit except for knowing that your kerbals are eating and parts are producing food. I can just as well roleplay and imagine that they eat food, but have small growing facilities in the command pods, which is not entirely impossible.

basically regardless of how its implemented, its either going to turn into:

add more parts for self sustained food production

force micromanagement and tedious resupply missions constantly

or insiginificant problem that only comes into play for extremely long duration missions

regardless of which of these it ends up as, its not my idea of fun, and if it ends up with self-sustaining capabilities, then it is ONLY adding extra parts atop already insane part counts for most vessels that arent just a pod+fuel tank+engine+solar panel.

Im all for life support being added IF it can be 100% disabled, but i feel the resources would be best used developing actually useful features (or fixing the crapload of bugs for that matter). i might give it a try if it is released, but i dont see me using it very much.

[Pthigrivi]

So as 2c this was my proposal from a little while ago:

Let's say you could get away with 2 basic resources,

Life Support - Measured in "days" and slowly slides from green to red based on the number of kerbals on board. Different crew capsules could have different loads, but lets assume each starts with 3 days worth for each available seat. There are however 3 ways to extend this:

Life Support Tanks - Generally these are sized so that each kerbal consumes 4kg per day by default. Visually they could be designed to look like they hold air, water, and snacks. Tanks don’t empty, they slide from green to red as they become waste. Life support/waste can be pumped from one tank to another, at which point players could easily jettison waste tanks if they desired.

Small Life Support Tank - (.625m inline and spherical RCS size radial)

- 0.125t

- 160f

- Supports 1 kerbal for 24 additional days (necessary for Minmus, but not Mun missions)

Medium Life Support Tank - (1.25m inline and large RCS size radial)

- 1.5t

- 2400f

- Supports 1 kerbal for 360d, or 3 kerbals for 120d etc.

Large Life Support Tank – (2.5m Inline)

- 7.4t

- 12000f

- Supports 1 kerbal for 1800d, or 3 kerbals for 600d, or 6 kerbals for 300d etc.

Scrubbers – These basically increase life support efficiency at the cost of weight and power. They will probably be essential for interplanetary missions. Because their reductions are across the board, the more kerbals using one the more cost effective it is. However, adding additional like scrubbers will not reduce consumption past the first.

Waste-o-matic Jr. – (1.25m low-profile inline)

- 0.6t

- 1200f

- Draws 0.5e/s

- Kerbals on-board consume life support at 50% their normal rate (worth it for 1 Kerbal after 150d, and 3 kerbals after 50d)

Waste-o-matic Sr. – (1.25m materials bay size unit)

- 1.2t

- 3200f

- Draws 2e/s

- Kerbals on-board consume life support at 25% their normal rate (worth it for 1 Kerbal after 300d, 3 Kerbals after 100d, and 6 Kerbals after 50d)

Greenhouses – Greenhouses use energy to convert waste into usable life support. When facing sunlight they provide some of their own power and are balanced based on average daily life support output, meaning these numbers would hold at Kerbin but more power would be needed farther from Kerbol. Greenhouses can be set to continual production, stand-down mode, or daylight auto-switching, but if left without power they become defunct and will no longer produce life support.

Hydroponics Bay – (2.5m science lab size cylinder, rotates to face Kerbol)

- 3t

- 6000f

- Draws 2e/s when not operating, and 6e/s when producing

- Replenishes life support equal to 3 kerbals’ consumption every 6 hours while in operation (worth it for 3 kerbals after 300d in Kerbol or polar orbit, and 600d when not)

Large Greenhouse – (3.75m dome)

- 4.5t

- 9000f

- Draws 3e/s when not operating, and 9e/s when producing

- Replenishes life support equal to 6 kerbals’ consumption. (Worth it for 6 kerbals after 275d Kerbol or polar orbit, and 550 when not)

All of these factors should be calculated by the game, giving a single "Remaining Life Support" number in days both in the VAB and in the vessel resources bar in flight. This way you could play around in the VAB swapping out different parts and watch the days remaining rise and fall and aid your decision making. I think until you get to greenhouses things are intuitive enough for a new player to navigate them, while still offering some fun challenges to veterans who want to optimize off-world farming. Its hard to to say how ISRU would fit in, but I imagine life support could be directly filled by drilling a distinct life-support resource. This could lead to some interesting trade-offs and synergies between greenhouses and ISRU strategies. We'll almost certainly need a larger reactor in the future, but another interesting strategy might be powering greenhouses by drilling fuel nearby and running it through a fuel cell.

What also might be nice in the difficulty settings would be a softer consequence to failure than mass kerbal death. Kerbals who run out of life support could go into "hibernation" and wouldn't be able to steer or EVA until the vessel is resupplied, and would lose some or all of their accumulated experience. Death could still be the consequence for harder difficulty settings.

Happiness - Kerbals leave the launch-pad with 100% happiness. After that, a lone kerbal will deplete at 1% per day, meaning they will reach zero in 100 days. For each additional kerbal on board, Happiness depletes at half the rate, meaning 2 kerbals will be happy for 200 days, 3 kerbals will be happy for 400 days, 4 kerbals 800 days etc. At the time of reaching a goal Experience pays out at 50% for unhappy kerbals and 200% for kerbals at 100% happiness. The whole experience system needs some major work, and obviously if this was part of it everything would have to be balanced around it to make interplanetary missions more rewarding.

Aside from bringing extra kerbals, Happiness can be extended with the following modules (Percentages stack with multi-kerbal bonuses, but not with other module bonuses)

Small Living Quarters - 2.5m cylinder

- 2t

- 4200F

- draws 1e/s

- Reduces happiness depletion for up to 3 kerbals by 75%

Large Living Quarters - 3.75m cylinder

- 5t

- 6800F

- draws 3 e/s

- Reduces happiness depletion for up to 9 kerbals by 75%

Training Module - (inline Dodecahedron approx 3.75m)

- 5.5t

- 9500F

- draws 2 e/s while dormant and 12 e/s while operating

- Replenishes kerbals' Happiness up to 90% and allows level-up without returning to Kerbin

So 3 kerbals with a small living quarters will arrive at Duna at 75% Happiness, and 6 Kerbals with 2 small or one large quarters will arrive at 97%. You could of course just bring a training module, but it would come at a steep cost. I guess this is a lot of modelling to request, but with about 12 new parts I think there's the bones of a real-feeling colonization platform.

Even with a pretty simplified system like this there's a lot going on, and in practice I imagine keeping track of how much life support each vessel has left would still be a challenge. A big part of this would be showing the user when the vessel will deplete both in the tracking station and in map mode, so you can see early on a warning marker along its flight path where life support will exhaust. Also vehicles in the flight list would have a life-support bar showing how much remains and a red date of when it will exhaust.

Anyhoo this is my best crack at it. What I like about it is I think it brings a real feeling of colonization to the game. With greenhouses and living quarters integrated into the actual gameplay, offering real trade-offs to players, these things aren't just roll playing set-pieces. I also think that with a clever bit of scaling they needn't overwhelm new players, so long as they weren't big concerns until they went to minimus and started leaving Kerbin SOI.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Pthigrivi

[rkman]

Guys, if they are going to implement life support they might as well implement N-body physics. The simple truth is a lot of people do not want to have to maintain constant upkeep on everything they put in persistance.

For most (manned) missions life support does not require upkeep, it just requires planning.

Stations and bases can be resupplied automatically if the following conditions are met:

- at least one manual resupply has been done

- you need a vessel and funds to do the resupply mission

(there is/was a mod that did something like that)

With the game being officially finished, people are likely to start a career game with the expectation that no future update will affect gameplay in such a way that they'd have to start over.

I suspect that adding life support might interfere with that - and maybe could be reason for Squad to not add life support at all.

Edited May 7, 2015 by rkman

[MacroNova]

Interesting discussion in this thread about the intersection between probe cores and life support.

Right now stock players might use probe cores when they know they'll be doing a mission that they can't collect additional science from, or when they don't plan to take a pilot and they want SAS. I agree that it would be cool to have more missions that suggest, "Hey a probe core would be ideal here!" Satellite missions fulfill this role. The exploration contracts also fulfill it to some degree, since you can complete them with minimal risk of losing a Kerbal if you send a probe.

I believe Life Support can be implemented without being meaningless nor a chore, and it would further nudge people to use probes where appropriate. "How much life support do I need for my Duna mission? There's no way to know in-game!" Send a probe and see how long it takes :-D

Life Support should require a small amount of extra consideration in designing craft, but what it really needs to do is encourage the player to revisit crewed stations and bases (especially now that both have a real purpose with Science Labs and Resource extraction). It's Kerbal Space Program, not Kerbal Space Series of Missions.