What kind of life support would you like to see in stock?

[Rath]

In my head canon kerbals still need to eat but eat much less and only once a day because they get 60%-70% of their energy through photosynthisys. This could be portrayed by making them not need as much space for food as you wuld expect for scaled-down humans

[WinkAllKerb'']

...

I don't think any LS mods include this at all, so I bet their mass numbers are really optimistic. For a simple, stock system this just means increasing the mass of LS supplies used per kerbal, per day. It's also an entirely legit reason for having an engineer aboard reduce consumption (he's fixing the LS all the time). No outposts should be 100% efficient unless they have the capacity to manufacture spare parts (EPL?).

...

yup this ; also why send from kerbin to somewhere something you can find once you're there ? so a few values to adjust to give the ability to take profit/advantages or not of the crew location.

[tater]

In my head canon kerbals still need to eat but eat much less and only once a day because they get 60%-70% of their energy through photosynthisys. This could be portrayed by making them not need as much space for food as you wuld expect for scaled-down humans

Photosynthesis doesn't mean they don't use supplies, it just changes the mechanism. It's not like plants don't need raw materials.

[WinkAllKerb'']

http://crawleyhorticulturalsociety.org.uk/resources/NPK%20Picture.gif?timestamp=1251291868453 n p k n p k n p k xDr ( & poêt poêt, co², water & etc.)

The question could be: where to found thooses 3 mineral & co² with different ratio on different celestial bodies within the sytem with the http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/%27Drill-O-Matic%27_Mining_Excavator (some intake and some converter also, why not <=> jool and or atmo bodies) and why send more this than that when going here and not there ; )

Edited August 25, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''
pom pom pom ; ) yeah i could use to be a slighty a compulsive consumer of N P K ; ) nevermind xDr

[Falkenherz]

Just pls keep in mind that the result, how it plays, should be both entertaining and remotely realistic. If life support was just about adding another tank, I would rather consider it just as a nuisance. Now, if it required me to actually plan some logistics like

- food supply

- waste disposal

- health&psychology (injury, gravity, sleep, recreation)

then I would consider this as quite some added value gameplay.

Who knows, one day this game might have transformed into a Colonisation&Sims type of game on top of its impressive physics simulation. I can dream, can I?

[Torquemadus]

From a gameplay perspective, life support would mostly be concerned with mission planning. While Kerbals could get by with just a capsule for short duration missions, they would need more supplies and living space for a long duration mission.

Players would need to be given an incentive to bring a habitat module with them on longer missions. I would suggest something similar in size and mass to the mobile science lab. There might need to be a few different shapes and sizes of habitat to suit use in stations and ground bases.

Although the need to re-supply bases and stations could be added, I imagine that most players would get bored with doing supply runs before very long! A cargo delivery mission for Career Mode might be interesting.

[Renegrade]

I really thought SQUAD once said something about extra mass breaking the animations...

But now I can't find anything.

Maybe someone just said why they think squad might have made EVA propellant a separate resource from monopropellant. (It really doesn't make much sense?)

You probably mean this:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/62465-EVA-Propellent/page3?p=853691#post853691

Harv was completely wrong. Not only was the mass incorrectly calculated, but also there are lots of mods that add mass for LS where there's no problem (TAC_LS, BTSM, etc), and you can really, REALLY overload a kerbal with junk and still have them move (you wouldn't believe the junk I've carried in KAS/KIS).

Say NO to #lolmassless. Any life support system should involve mass. So should EVA propellants (an MMU is just a very tiny space ship afterall). But that's a different thread.

(I happen to favor an EC+generic single resource design myself, as it fits in better with the rest of KSP's level of abstraction. LiquidFuel anybody?)

[pandaman]

I fall into the single 'consumable' resource (food and water etc) + electricity (to power the air filtration etc) camp. Stock needs to be kept simple. A more detailed system would be ideal for a mod though.

Difficulty settings could be along the lines of 'Off', 'Electricity only', 'Consumables only' or 'Both' with a low/med/high consumption rate option. Then with the effects being 'Hibernation' for X time then death (with a few 'hibernation' time until death options ranging from a few days to up to pernanent (no death).

[WinkAllKerb'']

then I would consider this as quite some added value gameplay.

Who knows, one day this game might have transformed into a Colonisation&Sims type of game on top of its impressive physics simulation. I can dream, can I?

don't be so Jules Vernes or any other visionnary peop's ; ) it's not the time yet ; ) or may be it is, not sure anyway, may be just a first step to some realized dream ;'') xDr

@panda:

imho it will be really sad (not to say gameplay error @ medium term) not take into account crew destination (and what they could find once there) regarding what supplies you send with a mission

(and so you need to have a very few ratio to play with, one part with with a few tweakable sliders is enough to make this available a simple way*).

Frankly that's what bug me the much about life support stock implementation. Especially because space is all about that sincce a long time ago.

Also one tweakable bar with multiple cursor/sliders could do the trick even better: [a.........],,[c....],[empty...................]

(include this way: weight, usefullness of brought material to a location, max storage capacity by tweakable merging in a single bar)

Edit:

On a side note ; notice this kind of bar with multipe slider could be usefull for many other things (as reducing same looking part with multiple ressource containement abilities), if such a bar is doable, but it should be, no reason it can't.

Edited August 27, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''

[shynung]

I agree with people saying LS should be limited to OneResource + ElectricCharge, but I'd like to add a complication. We already have a working ISRU system already in place, which is stock Ore. What I'd suggest is the capability to make more LS resource from this Ore.

Taking USI-LS as an example, we have a Supplies resource, which is consumed by kerbals and turned into Mulch (waste products). There's a greenhouse part included within USI-LS that recycles Mulch back to Supplies at 50% efficiency - i.e., 1 Supplies for every 2 Mulch. However, it is also capable to recycle Mulch back to Supplies at slightly higher than 100% efficiency, but with an added twist - it needs another resource called Fertilizer. What I'd like to see is some way to convert harvested Ore into Fertilizer, so a base or ship that's too far away from Kerbin doesn't have to depend on resupply launches to keep itself going.

In the end, we have an LS system that's not 100% closed - so I can't simply stack enough parts to make it self-sufficient from the get-go - but also allowing long-term missions at far-away locations such as Joolian moons or Eeloo a possibility to resupply themselves on the spot.

[Joonatan1998]

I think if LS uses ISRU system it should have its own resource.

The ISRU system seems really silly and unfinished because it clearly is designed for more than one resource, but in stock there is only one. (yes I know it is for modding.)

[GDJ]

Just my 2¢ here, but I have to agree with having a stock life support module. Just a single module that requires electricity.

All the pods can have 2 game-days worth of life support and snacks built in, but anything longer (like a economy route to the Mun or Minmus) you better add the module. Kerbal death would result in 1/2 game-days if one doesn't.

Each module has 2 game-weeks of supplies (14 days). It will need power, albeit not much (0.02/second is reasonable. Almost every solar panel can handle that alone). It will need mass (again, doesn't need much. 0.1 tonnes per module is reasonable).

If one needs to get fancy, put a nice bar display on it. If the bar is completely lit up it's full. If it's 1/2 depleted, make the bar half the size, and so on.

I think that's as close to realism as we would need to go. As it stands right now, the Kerbals must eat recycled snacks and breathe dryer lint for survival. That's just not right.

[Wjolcz]

Just my 2¢ here, but I have to agree with having a stock life support module. Just a single module that requires electricity.

All the pods can have 2 game-days worth of life support and snacks built in, but anything longer (like a economy route to the Mun or Minmus) you better add the module. Kerbal death would result in 1/2 game-days if one doesn't.

Each module has 2 game-weeks of supplies (14 days). It will need power, albeit not much (0.02/second is reasonable. Almost every solar panel can handle that alone). It will need mass (again, doesn't need much. 0.1 tonnes per module is reasonable).

If one needs to get fancy, put a nice bar display on it. If the bar is completely lit up it's full. If it's 1/2 depleted, make the bar half the size, and so on.

I think that's as close to realism as we would need to go. As it stands right now, the Kerbals must eat recycled snacks and breathe dryer lint for survival. That's just not right.

A built-in module in every crew tank would work better IMO. It would simply drain more EC if there were more kerbals on board. Let's say one crew member needs 5EC/hour. Then you bring another one and the amount of drained EC goes up by another 5 units. It just adds.

And the food could be stored in crew-able parts too. Let's say there's an X amount of food in the Hitchhiker by default, but if you decide to take only 2 kerbalnauts instead of 4 you can throw the other two seats out and put food there instead. As the food is drained below a certain level the seat would be again able to store a kerbal.

You fill it with food, you eat it, throw the trash out, there is more room and the vessel loses the mass.

Edited August 29, 2015 by Veeltch

[snakemasterepic]

I would like to see life support added into the main game, but the biggest problem is having it not be too complex. TAC LS is good, but it has a lot of resources to manage. I like the approach of USI LS because instead of having food, water, and oxygen, there is one resource, supplies (as well as mulch for waste and fertilizer for surviving).

On one hand, I feel that some stock life support system should be added soon because there are so many life support mods for modders to deal with for supporting (Greenhouses). On the other hand, I feel that life support should come after the ability to use science to improve existing parts (which is likely to be a lot of work especially with balancing) because that would allow for recyclers to upgrade to near 100% efficiency.

[TeeGee]

Why not just add another resource to all the stock pods and containers so that we can fill them up with "supplies"?

The more supplies you have, the heavier the pod. Done.

Small pods have less supplies. Large pods have more. The bigger the volume the more supplies we can carry. We don't need extra parts. We don't need scrubbers. We don't need more complexity. Managing air water and food is tedious. If we run out of food kerbals should die even though we have 3 more days of air and water. So why complicate the life support more than it needs to be?

[Jimmidii]

Snacks.

Kerbals eat snacks (or sneaks) ((or snacks made of sneaks)).

Every habitable pod or crew container have supply of snacks, direct function of capacity. (To help mods. They do not need to update all the parts, that have crew capacity)

Also, there is snack containers of various sizes.

Kerbals can be in operational, conservation, or sleeping modes.

In operational mode, they eat N snacks a day ( N=1? ). They can do whatever they trained to do.

In conservation mode, they use N/2 snacks a day, but they cannot do anything, but complaining or switching back to operational mode. Mode switching requires 2*N snacks.

When entire ship runs out of snacks, kerbals switch to sleeping mode, one by one, as their "need to eat" timers trigger.

They cannot be put in this mode forcibly, and they cannot switch back from this mode, unless there is an active crew member and new supply of snacks becomes available, via docking with rescue ship, for example. Automated systems continue to function.

I like this idea, but I'd adjust it slightly to abstract it away from Snacks directly being the life support resource.

Each Kerbal could have its own 'Energy' resource, depleted at a flat rate normally, with functions such as a pilot's heading hold, or a scientist's experiment reset or an engineer's repair depleting it faster.

Energy could be replenished by Snacks, or by breathing air (as if Laythe wasn't already awesome enough...) with Snacks stored on a ship like any other resource and perhaps replenished by an Electricity consuming module (improving the efficiency of that could perhaps give Scientists something else to do).

I love the idea of Kerbals going into hibernation, it'd stop the life support game play being too punishing, and make rescue missions possible (and stop the fridge horror of what happens to the Kerbals from all the rescue contracts you don't take...).

Oh, and hi everyone! Long time player/lurker here!