Having trouble getting Kerbalism and Kolonization to play nice

[not-working-at-work]

I've got the Kerbalism mod running, as well as the USI-Kolonization mod.

The problem is that Kerbalism modifies the game so that Kerbals require Food and Oxygen as resources to survive, and Kerbals do not produce waste.

In the USI-Life Support mod, Kerbals require Supplies, and produce a waste product Mulch.

USI greenhouses take Mulch and turn it back into Supplies.

 

I'm looking for a way to modify it into a compromise - Greenhouses produce Food instead of Supplies, and Kerbals still produce Mulch.

 

Were I more confident in my abilities, I'd do a find>replace to turn "Supplies" into "Food" in the USI files, but I really don't want to screw up my savegame..

 

Any suggestions?

[RoverDude]

Heya!

The best bet would be for someone to make a module manager patch for this.  That being said, I'm not sure what kind of an effect Kerbalism's replacement of converters and drills will have on USI Kolonization - i.e. dynamic efficiency, required resources, and thermal were all bypassed (tho I expect @ShotgunNinja would be in a better position to update what happened with those mechanics).

- Dynamically changing efficiency is pretty core to how UKS changes efficiency based on the crew and their skills.

- Required Resources are absolutely core - it's how I handle letting people ship out very light shells, then filling them up with machinery in-situ.  Bypassing this unbalances all of the parts and removes the entire point of most of the production chain.

- Thermal - specifically core thermal, and the accompanying specialization bonuses are pretty central to drills, ISRU, nuclear reactors, and thermal control systems.  Bypassing these removes the need for radiators and specialist kerbals, which is also a big balance issue.

- I'm not sure if Kerbalism takes into account crew specialization bonuses - I vaguely recall not seeing that step in the code that @ShotgunNinja posted.

Remember that USI Kolonization is not a parts pack, it's a gameplay mod - and it leverages a lot of the stock mechanics (source:  I wrote a lot of those stock mechanics!).  So while a MM patch will get stuff to (technically) 'work', it may behave in a way that's unpredictable, or breaks major mechanics.  This is in no way a dig on Kerbalism - it's an awesome mod.  But just be aware that it uses a different set of assumptions and compromises than stock.

Now, if you just want to use UKS as a parts pack on top of Kerbalism, a MM patch should do that.  Tho in that case, I'd recommend using MKS-Lite instead of UKS since it already simplifies some of the mechanics above, and the impact to gameplay would be a bit less severe.

 

(Side note:  USI-LS does not go from mulch to supplies anymore.  It goes Mulch+Fertilizer to supplies :))

Edited May 11, 2016 by RoverDude

[ShotgunNinja]

@RoverDude is absolutely right on all those points. It was necessary to simplify converters and drills simulation in background considerably. They are quite complex in the stock system. My main concern from my point of view was simulating EC consumption, continuously. Unfortunately for doing that I had to simulate the other resources too...

Required resources should be easy enough to add, and I'm planning on generalizing that for scrubbers/recyclers/etc. Efficiency I've still to get how it work, but if it only depend on crew trait and expecience it should be doable.

The real problem IMO is thermal dynamics, I just can't do that in background.
 

[not-working-at-work]

 

Quote

Remember that USI Kolonization is not a parts pack, it's a gameplay mod

Would it be better to uninstall Kolonization and keep the other USI mods?

If I just had the parts from USI (with tweaks to input/output resources - making them more like the greenhouses from Kerbalism) but with the mechanics of Kerbalism (no mulch, but Oxygen scrubbers and Food resources), would that work?  I would hope that the game would no longer be looking for a Supplies resource to consume - I'd hate for the game to think my Kerbals were starving just because they had food instead of supplies.

Though, I suppose I wouldn't be able to do any mining or off-world construction.

 

Didn't expect to hear from both of the mod developers!  Thank You!

 

The problem is that I want the best of both worlds - I want the mining and manufacturing, and whole slew of new parts from USI; the Oxygen, Food, Radiation, Quality of Life from Kerbalism.  

Though at least now I can use both Kerbalism and RemoteTech together.  They both have communication range simulators, but I love RemoteTech's flight computer.  Sending off a probe with pre-programmed instructions at then watching it fly off and hoping for the best is awesome, and really adds a new dimension to the game.

[RoverDude]

TBH, if you're using Kolonization I'd just go with USI-LS, as it has habitation as well as supply.  So it does put you in the same place, but all of the bits are compatible and are designed to play together.  Really depends on which is the priority for your save, and only you can answer that one.

[not-working-at-work]

Yea, I was looking for something with as many new parts as the USI mods, but I really wish food, water, and oxygen weren't abstracted down to a singular "supply".  I know how ridiculous this sounds for KSP, but it's a little immersion breaking.  Also, "Valentina is running out of Food" sounds more dire than "Valentina is running out of Supplies"

 

Is there a way for me to do a string replace that swaps out "Supplies" to "Food" without changing any of the gameplay?

[RoverDude]

It would break all kinds of things, and also be a bit weird because of the sheer volume of supplies required (as the majority of the mass is the water used not only for drinking, but for hygiene, etc.)

[not-working-at-work]

Are there any plans to separate Food, Water, and Oxygen in USI?

Especially with Water, which could be harvested from some biomes (ice caps, etc), where the abstracted "supplies" would not accurately represent.  (You don't melt Duna's ice caps and get a hamburger)

[merlinux]

@not-working-at-work Water is used in UKS. It is a ressource used to grow plants to make supplies. You can mine it like any other ressources.

[RoverDude]

31 minutes ago, not-working-at-work said:

Are there any plans to separate Food, Water, and Oxygen in USI?

Especially with Water, which could be harvested from some biomes (ice caps, etc), where the abstracted "supplies" would not accurately represent.  (You don't melt Duna's ice caps and get a hamburger)

Water is handled via the high efficiency recyclers, which dramatically reduce supply consumption by using harvested water, so this is already represented.

Remember - supplies are not food.  They represent water, oxygen, and food all in one.  And the largest chunk of that is water.

[not-working-at-work]

1 hour ago, RoverDude said:

Remember - supplies are not food.  They represent water, oxygen, and food all in one.  And the largest chunk of that is water.

I know that's how it works now, I just wanted to know if that would be expanded on in future updates.

[RoverDude]

Never say never, but there's no real reason to, as there's nothing I can do with three resources that I can't achieve with one.

[karamazovnew]

21 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Never say never, but there's no real reason to, as there's nothing I can do with three resources that I can't achieve with one.

Well, although the OP was talking about food specifically, better integration between UKS and Kerbalism would be nice...

-USI-LS: no complaints in regards to food consumption/production. I love the Fertilizer system. The only problem I see is that the "habitation" system is going to fall way behind Kerbalism. Not only does it have better integration with RemoteTech, it features breakdowns (separate from Kolonization's integrity), radiation (weight) and climate (electricity). I think UKS's parts desperately needs complete compatibility with Kerbalism in this matter. Radiation could very well affect the integrity of the parts 

-TAC: doesn't feature Fertilizer in UKS. Too bad. The beauty of having Oxygen and Water is that it integrates with Universal Storage's fuel cells and has the nice touch of making water seem more important. A few tweaks to the UKS production line would be amazing. Kerbalism is already compatible with it so it could very well serve as a pivot between these 2 mods. 

-Kerbalism's food system: well... I do like the Greenhouse, but... renders most of UKS useless so... meh. Although the idea of harvests and "natural light" vs "eletricity" would be nice in UKS as well. 

Should these mods become more compatible, I could foresee these scenarios:

- Kerbalism without UKS: Hard to survive but dead easy to make resources, focus is on "electricity". Bases are just cosmetic. 

- USILS+UKS: what I'm currently using, easy to understand supplies, easy to survive, focus is on "homesickness".

- TAC+UKS: meh... different flavor, but no fertilizer so... closed loop? Boring. 

- Kerbalism+USI+UKS: easy supplies but very hard to survive... 

- Kerbalism + TAC (with fertilizer) + UKS: godlike. Hardest of the hard. Diorite hard fun. 

Any thoughts?

Edited May 13, 2016 by karamazovnew

[RoverDude]

Not sure how the hab system is behind Kerbalism in any way to be honest, is there a feature I'm missing?  

The Remote Tech bit I see as not really a part of life support - apples and tractors   Tho I hear we're getting a stock analogue to RemoteTech/AntennaRange (I might know the guy writing that...).

Radiation is something coming to USI-LS (as it's a life support concern).  Part breakdown is a bit different - I separate wear and tear (which is a USI and USI-LS concern) vs. breakdowns (whcih other mods do well, like DangIt!, etc.)

To be honest, the only compatibility barrier with Kerbalism is strictly on @ShotgunNinja 's side - as noted, he bypasses some pretty core stock mechanics, which in turn mean that anything that depends on stock thermal or efficiency, is going to have some issues.  Again, nothing wrong with this, but we're talking stock incompatibility, not mod incompatibility at this point.  And no point in dumbing down UKS to dump all of the stock mechanics, since it's designed to leverage all of the fun bits in stock heavily (and will continue to do so).

I'd also disagree that TAC-LS is harder than USI-LS... it's pretty easy to make USI-LS ridiculously lethal, and you have different competing mechanics to deal with (two habitation timers, and a variety of penalties) that TAC-LS lacks.  What TAC-LS does have is greater resource fidelity, so it's really a tradeoff.

[karamazovnew]

33 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Not sure how the hab system is behind Kerbalism in any way to be honest, is there a feature I'm missing?  

The Remote Tech bit I see as not really a part of life support - apples and tractors   Tho I hear we're getting a stock analogue to RemoteTech/AntennaRange (I might know the guy writing that...).

Radiation is something coming to USI-LS (as it's a life support concern).  Part breakdown is a bit different - I separate wear and tear (which is a USI and USI-LS concern) vs. breakdowns (whcih other mods do well, like DangIt!, etc.)

To be honest, the only compatibility barrier with Kerbalism is strictly on @ShotgunNinja 's side - as noted, he bypasses some pretty core stock mechanics, which in turn mean that anything that depends on stock thermal or efficiency, is going to have some issues.  Again, nothing wrong with this, but we're talking stock incompatibility, not mod incompatibility at this point.  And no point in dumbing down UKS to dump all of the stock mechanics, since it's designed to leverage all of the fun bits in stock heavily (and will continue to do so).

I'd also disagree that TAC-LS is harder than USI-LS... it's pretty easy to make USI-LS ridiculously lethal, and you have different competing mechanics to deal with (two habitation timers, and a variety of penalties) that TAC-LS lacks.  What TAC-LS does have is greater resource fidelity, so it's really a tradeoff.

I did not mean to say that current TAC is harder to play than USI (quite the opposite tbh). I meant that transforming UKS's supplies system into TAC directly would be hard to understand. Just think about the recyclers . Carbon dioxide as a resource for plants to give oxygen? Waste water being filtered to water? Waste being turned into fertilizer etc.etc. Even if the end result would be the same, it would be really hard to figure out and maintain. But fun, probably.

If radiation is coming to USI, that's great, can't wait. But I do like the breakdowns of Kerbalism, and Dang-it is currently unavailable. I'm not saying that USI needs them :P. As for Remotetech, you might want to think about it... home-sickness isn't just being physically away from home. In The Martian, you could really tell when the ship was close to home and they could communicate without 20 minutes of lag . RT Signal Delay and connection could slow down the homesickness in USI, don't you think? I'm not sure if you can "slowdown" the timer for homesickness, but if it is possible, you only need 3 more variables in the config file: RTBonusEnabled (true or false), MaxRTBonus (in percentage) and a MaxDelay (in seconds). You'd get zero bonus at the max delay (say near Jool) lineary scaled to zero (Kerbin Orbit) where it would reach the MaxRTBonus (say 50%). The interface in the editor would assume no RT at all. 

 

Edited May 13, 2016 by karamazovnew

[not-working-at-work]

I think I found the answer I was looking for.  TAC-LS has the food/water/oxygen separation I was looking for, and it's compatible with the USI mods (I just had to uninstall USI-LS, but that's fine).

 

So my Aeroponics leg of the Thunderdome (My Kerbin-orbiting Space station.  I may move it into orbit of another planet once I have everything added to it that I want) now produces Food and Oxygen.

 

Thank you so much for all your help, and thank you for making such amazing mods!  I can't wait to start mining!

[RoverDude]

Good deal, have fun

[kananesgi]

On 5/13/2016 at 8:43 AM, not-working-at-work said:

I think I found the answer I was looking for.  TAC-LS has the food/water/oxygen separation I was looking for, and it's compatible with the USI mods (I just had to uninstall USI-LS, but that's fine).

 

So my Aeroponics leg of the Thunderdome (My Kerbin-orbiting Space station.  I may move it into orbit of another planet once I have everything added to it that I want) now produces Food and Oxygen.

 

Thank you so much for all your help, and thank you for making such amazing mods!  I can't wait to start mining!

@not-working-at-work

Did you have to remove Kerbalism for this to work? I'm currently using the TAC emulation profile that comes with Kerbalism, but it doesn't work with the USI mods. Things like the DERP and the inflatable emergency hab module (can't remember the correct name) are not real useful since they want supplies. I'm considering removing Kerbalism and installing usi-ls, but there are elements of Kerbalism I don't want to lose, such as the part failure system, which I think is better than DangIt! especially since DangIt isn't available and no real idea if/when it will be available.

Last time I played with DangIt, failures only happened on the active craft. This made things like CommSats relatively immune to malfunctions because you don't generally ever go back to them after they are in position. In my current game with Kerbalism, one of my Kerbin orbital CommSats has suffered 3 failures, with the last being a failure of the antenna, meaning I now have to send a special mission out to either repair it or replace the whole satellite. Having to do that adds a serious layer of immersion to the game, IMHO. 

If I can install TAC and simply deactivate Kerbalism's LS functions, I guess that would be a decent compromise. I've never used USI-LS as I liked the description of TAC-LS better when I first started playing KSP. when I moved to 1.12, TAC wasn't available, so I tried Kerbalism. I was under the impression that USI-LS was a "non-lethal" life support mod, which didn't make sense to me. 

Edited May 16, 2016 by kananesgi

[RoverDude]

Actually, USI-LS can be pretty lethal (if not more so than TAC-LS) as it's all config based...

And at this time, because of how Kerbalism changes stock behavior, it causes some really wonky behavior with anything that takes advantage of stock mechanics beyond basic conversion (i.e. thermal, required resources, dynamic efficiency).

[not-working-at-work]

15 hours ago, kananesgi said:

@not-working-at-work

Did you have to remove Kerbalism for this to work? I'm currently using the TAC emulation profile that comes with Kerbalism, but it doesn't work with the USI mods. Things like the DERP and the inflatable emergency hab module (can't remember the correct name) are not real useful since they want supplies. I'm considering removing Kerbalism and installing usi-ls, but there are elements of Kerbalism I don't want to lose, such as the part failure system, which I think is better than DangIt! especially since DangIt isn't available and no real idea if/when it will be available.

I don't know if I had to, but I did it anyway to avoid conflicts.  TAC-LS produces waste (waste, wastewater, and CO2) and Kerbalism doesn't.

 

I do kinda wish DangIt! were updated, but the parts breakage wasn't that important to me.  Kerbalism's Food/water/oxygen system is covered by TAC-LS, and the communications system is covered by RemoteTech, so keeping Kerbalism would just be redundant.

 

I do kinda wish the Radiation and Quality of Life requirements were available in TAC-LS, but it's not too great a loss.

[kananesgi]

I'm trying USI-LS out now. Might switch back to TAC-LS later. I am removing Kerbalism too. I kinda hate to do that, as I love the quality of life, part failures, and space weather effects, but I want to use Kolonization and if it won't work, it won't work.

On a side note, would there be any way to make the game work with both USI and TAC life supports? Basically, Kerbals would use require food, water, and oxygen to survive, as with TAC-LS. Then make some kind of plugin that automatically converts other resources into those three. That way, Kerbals could still use Supplies as they would be converted into the needed resources on the fly. Supplies could then be seen as something like an emergency rations pack, providing all the needed supplies to support a kerbal for a length of time, but still allow segregation of the different resources for on the fly production reasons. There would also be a converter of some kind to convert a certain amount of food, water, and oxygen into Supplies. I have no idea if this is possible, or if it's a good idea. Just something that popped into my head this morning.

[goldenpsp]

39 minutes ago, kananesgi said:

I'm trying USI-LS out now. Might switch back to TAC-LS later. I am removing Kerbalism too. I kinda hate to do that, as I love the quality of life, part failures, and space weather effects, but I want to use Kolonization and if it won't work, it won't work.

On a side note, would there be any way to make the game work with both USI and TAC life supports? Basically, Kerbals would use require food, water, and oxygen to survive, as with TAC-LS. Then make some kind of plugin that automatically converts other resources into those three. That way, Kerbals could still use Supplies as they would be converted into the needed resources on the fly. Supplies could then be seen as something like an emergency rations pack, providing all the needed supplies to support a kerbal for a length of time, but still allow segregation of the different resources for on the fly production reasons. There would also be a converter of some kind to convert a certain amount of food, water, and oxygen into Supplies. I have no idea if this is possible, or if it's a good idea. Just something that popped into my head this morning.

There really is no point honestly. 

To be honest, I still don't fully get why people get so stuck on the splitting of resources.  In most cases there is almost no gameplay difference if your life support container has 1 bar (USI-LS) or 3 bars, that go down at the same rate (TAC-LS).

[not-working-at-work]

33 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

To be honest, I still don't fully get why people get so stuck on the splitting of resources.  In most cases there is almost no gameplay difference if your life support container has 1 bar (USI-LS) or 3 bars, that go down at the same rate (TAC-LS).

It's mostly immersion.

 

plus, there are differences in how the resources are created.  Greenhouses can create food and oxygen, but not water.  If I send a mission to Duna and land on the Ice cap, I can melt it for drinkable water for my mission, meaning that I don't have to pack as much (BTW, is there a device in any of these mods that, when activated in an "ice caps" biome or on an icy asteroid, can turn EC into Waste Water, then to be filtered into Water?  We should get one of those).  Or air filters that can turn the atmospheres of some planets into breathable oxygen?

 

Also, if someone wants to create a device for a mod that takes Water and EC and turns it into Rocket Fuel and Oxidizer (through electrolysis http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-to-turn-water-into-rocket-fuel-ndash-scientists-unlock-power-of-the-sun-882613.html ), that would be fantastic for planning a mission to Duna that creates all the fuel it needs once it gets there.

[goldenpsp]

I guess that's where we differ.  I have no immersion issue with "supplies".  I think of it similar to how the military deals with troops.

When planning for a deployment into the field, a military planner isn't going to say, that soldier is going out for x days, he is going to need this much of item 1,2, a fork etc.  They say he's going to need X MRE's (the military analog to USI-LS supplies).  Each MRe will have everything that soldier needs to prepare and eat his meal.  The food, a heater packet, silverwear, a napkin etc.

[RoverDude]

2 hours ago, kananesgi said:

On a side note, would there be any way to make the game work with both USI and TAC life supports? Basically, Kerbals would use require food, water, and oxygen to survive, as with TAC-LS. Then make some kind of plugin that automatically converts other resources into those three. That way, Kerbals could still use Supplies as they would be converted into the needed resources on the fly. Supplies could then be seen as something like an emergency rations pack, providing all the needed supplies to support a kerbal for a length of time, but still allow segregation of the different resources for on the fly production reasons. There would also be a converter of some kind to convert a certain amount of food, water, and oxygen into Supplies. I have no idea if this is possible, or if it's a good idea. Just something that popped into my head this morning.

As noted, not really much of a point - they hit precisely the same problem space.  About the only relevant change coming up is separate timers for EC vs. Supplies.

35 minutes ago, not-working-at-work said:

plus, there are differences in how the resources are created.  Greenhouses can create food and oxygen, but not water.  If I send a mission to Duna and land on the Ice cap, I can melt it for drinkable water for my mission, meaning that I don't have to pack as much (BTW, is there a device in any of these mods that, when activated in an "ice caps" biome or on an icy asteroid, can turn EC into Waste Water, then to be filtered into Water?  We should get one of those).  Or air filters that can turn the atmospheres of some planets into breathable oxygen?

UKS/MKS already does this in the form of high-efficiency recyclers that require water (i.e. they are basically fancy water purifiers vs. just water recyclers).  So you get to pretty much the same place, minus a few resources.