Having trouble getting Kerbalism and Kolonization to play nice

[panarchist]

54 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

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.

To be fair, MREs are a recent invention (and in part inspired by NASA from Skylab, Apollo, and the STS).  One could argue it both ways, although I don't think any of the LS mods currently model loss.  IRL, you lose O2 and N2 through leakage and cryogenic expansion and venting, you lose minor amounts of H2O through leakage in the pressure vessel, and unless you recycle your solids, you lose phosphorus, though that's only important for really long-term missions with greenhouses.  I don't think many of us want to model the system in that much detail - most of us are looking for a happy medium.  I'd like to see some loss of Supplies in USI-LS due to leakage, but you can argue it's already abstracted into the efficiency mechanic.  I used to be a dedicated TAC-LS user, but I think RoverDude has created a perfect balance between TAC-LS and Snacks - detailed enough to please the realist in me, while abstracted enough that I don't need to manage my LS with a spreadsheet.  I'd love to see the Wear mechanic applied to all parts, not just Hab, and I'd like to see radiation modeled, and cabin temperature - all of which are currently in Kerbalism.

The issue, though, is getting the two to play nice together.  If enough people use both mods, then at some point RoverDude and/or ShotgunNinja may take steps to make the mods compatible - similar to what's going on now with UKS and Planetary Base, but unless/until that happens, the choices appear to be either to use one and not the other, or for someone to take it upon themselves to create a MM patch to handshake the two mods (and then support the patch).  It seems like that'd be pretty challenging considering the complexity of both mods and the need to understand clearly all of the underlying mechanics of each.  

[RoverDude]

To be honest, the issue (and this is a pretty insurmountable one) is that UKS uses all of the stock mechanics, and leans heavily on things like thermal modeling, required resources, and dynamic efficiency (as well as fun things like skill requirements) and at the moment, these are things Kerbalism does not model.  I expect it works well with other mods either because (a) people just ignore that some mechanics just vanished (no radiators for drills for example), or because said mods don't leverage all of the stuff in stock (i.e. parts packs).  

Not sure where Kerbalism will land - because I expect that by the time you put the stock goodies back in, you will start seeing performance issues with a lot of ships running in the background.  But from my standpoint, it really does not make sense to abandon stock, and right now Kerbalism has no support for some really key bits that UKS uses (see above).

(addendum)  

Probably the only way it would work would be for Kerbalism to be opt-in (unless it is already) and only swap out stock modules if explicitly set to do so.  But then that makes it a lot more of a pain for Kerbalism to work with parts packs, so no idea where this one will land.

Edited May 17, 2016 by RoverDude

[goldenpsp]

18 minutes ago, panarchist said:

To be fair, MREs are a recent invention (and in part inspired by NASA from Skylab, Apollo, and the STS). 

 

Honestly not sure of the relevance of that statement.  My only point is whether you look at life support as Food/Water/oxygen. or "supplies" doesn't really break immersion at least for me, much the way of thinking about the individual things that go into a meal vs a MRE would.

Quote

The issue, though, is getting the two to play nice together.  If enough people use both mods, then at some point RoverDude and/or ShotgunNinja may take steps to make the mods compatible - similar to what's going on now with UKS and Planetary Base, but unless/until that happens, the choices appear to be either to use one and not the other, or for someone to take it upon themselves to create a MM patch to handshake the two mods (and then support the patch).  It seems like that'd be pretty challenging considering the complexity of both mods and the need to understand clearly all of the underlying mechanics of each.

 

Yea guessing that will be falling directly on ShotgunNinja's lap.

[panarchist]

2 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Honestly not sure of the relevance of that statement.  My only point is whether you look at life support as Food/Water/oxygen. or "supplies" doesn't really break immersion at least for me, much the way of thinking about the individual things that go into a meal vs a MRE would.

"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" - prior to the MRE, military logistics did have to worry about how much silverware, how many potatoes, etc - and for the most part, they still do for surface installations, but they used to in the field as well.  I'm saying that your analogy is valid, but so is the alternative - MREs (unified supplies) have only been around for half the length of the US space program.  

Like you, "Supplies" doesn't break immersion for me, like I said, I think RoverDude struck the perfect balance between the simplicity of Snacks and the complexity of TAC-LS.  I love both of those mods also, but USI-LS is what I choose for my actual save game.

[RoverDude]

9 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Yea guessing that will be falling directly on ShotgunNinja's lap.

Yup.  As it is, the omission of required resources and efficiency invalidates about 80% of MKS  

[not-working-at-work]

1 hour ago, goldenpsp said:

Honestly not sure of the relevance of that statement.  My only point is whether you look at life support as Food/Water/oxygen. or "supplies" doesn't really break immersion at least for me, much the way of thinking about the individual things that go into a meal vs a MRE would.

I don't have any problem with 'supplies', if the only source for them was when you take off and have to bring along a stockpile.

 

The problem for me comes in when I have to find resources on other planets and try to make usable materials out of them.  I don't like the idea of melting ice from an asteroid and now my Kerbonauts have enough food for the rest of the mission.  If I lose too much water through recycler inefficiencies, I should have to look for Ice.  If I want a food source, I need to find some way to lug along a 5-ton greenhouse.  It should matter what the atmospheric composition of a planet is, because that impacts whether I need to bring extra oxygen or whether or not I should bring a filter to collect some from the air of my destination planet.

 

I get that not everyone wants that, and that's OK.  I found a mod that works for me.

[goldenpsp]

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

I don't have any problem with 'supplies', if the only source for them was when you take off and have to bring along a stockpile.

 

The problem for me comes in when I have to find resources on other planets and try to make usable materials out of them.  I don't like the idea of melting ice from an asteroid and now my Kerbonauts have enough food for the rest of the mission.  If I lose too much water through recycler inefficiencies, I should have to look for Ice.  If I want a food source, I need to find some way to lug along a 5-ton greenhouse.  It should matter what the atmospheric composition of a planet is, because that impacts whether I need to bring extra oxygen or whether or not I should bring a filter to collect some from the air of my destination planet.

 

I get that not everyone wants that, and that's OK.  I found a mod that works for me.

Ok, but I can't make magic food from water in USI-LS?  And if I'm using MKS (making that assumption since it is part of this thread's title), I do need parts to make food (the aeroponics module is about 8-tons with machinery), and multiple resources to do so.

 

[RoverDude]

@goldenpsp is correct.

There are specific resources for greenhouses (and part of that assumption is that we're using biological filters for the water/oxygen), as well as allowances for water-only, or a combination of both.  i.e. I already thought about this when I made the mod

[kananesgi]

4 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

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.

This is exactly what I am talking about with the idea of Supplies being a Ration Pack. The only thing about my idea is that those packs could be broken down to use the base components elsewhere, such as using drinking water as emergency reactor coolant. 

As @not-working-at-work said, it's also about the production process. I personally like complicated interdependent systems. 

I just started playing with USI-LS so I I'll have to wait to give a good opinion on it. The habitation part sounds interesting, I have to admit. 

[kananesgi]

5 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

 

1 hour ago, RoverDude said:

@goldenpsp is correct.

There are specific resources for greenhouses (and part of that assumption is that we're using biological filters for the water/oxygen), as well as allowances for water-only, or a combination of both.  i.e. I already thought about this when I made the mod

So, I haven't done much with MKS. Does this mean there is a way to make supplies using water as the only input resource? How do you get food from just water? I suppose I could imagine that the kerbals have some strange digestive system that allows them to survive from microscopic organisms in the water

[RoverDude]

Supplies != food.  That's the first misconception.  Food is just one component (well, and oxygen).  The vast majority of supplies are taken up by water for drinking, hygeine, etc.  Having access to water can reduce consumption (from, say, 16L per day to about 1.6L per day).

To actually make more supplies, you need access to water and substrate, as well as fertilizer (which can also be generated).  

[goldenpsp]

57 minutes ago, kananesgi said:

This is exactly what I am talking about with the idea of Supplies being a Ration Pack. The only thing about my idea is that those packs could be broken down to use the base components elsewhere, such as using drinking water as emergency reactor coolant. 

As @not-working-at-work said, it's also about the production process. I personally like complicated interdependent systems. 

I just started playing with USI-LS so I I'll have to wait to give a good opinion on it. The habitation part sounds interesting, I have to admit. 

The thing is there isn't really any gameplay need to break out supplies to different parts, especially production.  USI-LS is plenty complicated with MKS on the production side.

Now, at the end of the day if you or anyone has a preference for one life support or another, that's great.  It is awesome that there is choice.  While I don't expect I will ever use Kerbalism, I am excited that another modder has put his hat in the ring so to speak.

The only reason I keep harping on these issues is that while I don't have any issue with someone having their preferences, I don't like when people make arguments based off incorrect information.

[cantab]

I do think that bundling water, oxygen, and food into the single "Supplies" makes some things a bit problematic. For example if you want a part or set of parts to get usable drinking water and nothing else from the environment, it can't actually do so because that would have to be folded into supplies and you'd be implicitly making food from nowhere. So instead a drinking water source can work as a "recycler", which seems a bit more obfuscated and less obvious. And the recycler can only stretch out the supplies you have, you can't leave with more drinking water than you arrived with. For example suppose I want to launch interplanetary ships from Kerbin with plenty of food and oxygen, but short on water to save weight, and I want a simple mining operation on the Mun or Minmus to make drinking water and send it out to meet the interplanetary ships. Can I do that when using USI-LS?

And I don't see the advantage of "supplies" other than shortening the resource lists. Which I acknowledge may have been a major factor considering how often TAC-LS got criticised for "too many resources".

[RoverDude]

1 minute ago, cantab said:

I do think that bundling water, oxygen, and food into the single "Supplies" makes some things a bit problematic. For example if you want a part or set of parts to get usable drinking water and nothing else from the environment, it can't actually do so because that would have to be folded into supplies and you'd be implicitly making food from nowhere. So instead a drinking water source can work as a "recycler", which seems a bit more obfuscated and less obvious. And the recycler can only stretch out the supplies you have, you can't leave with more drinking water than you arrived with. For example suppose I want to launch interplanetary ships from Kerbin with plenty of food and oxygen, but short on water to save weight, and I want a simple mining operation on the Mun or Minmus to make drinking water and send it out to meet the interplanetary ships. Can I do that when using USI-LS?

And I don't see the advantage of "supplies" other than shortening the resource lists. Which I acknowledge may have been a major factor considering how often TAC-LS got criticised for "too many resources".

Same point as above.  Supplies != food.  Regarding your specific example, this is a bit incorrect - I specifically designed it to allow your scenario - i.e. grab a bunch of water from an asteroid to effectively extend my mission duration.  So yes, you can absolutely send drinking water to your ships and with the right recycler on board (which is effectively a water purifier in this case) you land in the same place.  It would be pretty trivial to do a similar abstraction to handle oxygen, although in my experience, this takes up so little mass as to almost not be worth it.

The first bit is to kinda get past the whole 'supplies are food' bit.  It's an abstraction, but as noted, in cases where I want to take advantage of one resource (water in this case), I can land in the same place with a lot fewer resources.  Bear in mind the reason I went to fewer resources (two down from six) is because in actuality, 99% of the time we just managed to the shortest resource in TAC-LS, and fiddled with stuff to get everything to line up with 'x number of days'.

 

 

[kananesgi]

1 hour ago, RoverDude said:

Supplies != food.  That's the first misconception.  Food is just one component (well, and oxygen).  The vast majority of supplies are taken up by water for drinking, hygeine, etc.  Having access to water can reduce consumption (from, say, 16L per day to about 1.6L per day).

To actually make more supplies, you need access to water and substrate, as well as fertilizer (which can also be generated).  

I know supplies = more than food, but food is a component, and what you had said before made it sound like there was a method to create supplies (which include food no matter how small the portion) from water alone, and that was my catching point. Thank you for clarifying it. 

[RoverDude]

(addendum)

This is also where I gently remind folks that I did not make USI-LS for you folks... I made it for me, and the way I play KSP.  If folks happen to enjoy it, that's awesome (and by all accounts, quite a few people seem to).  If it's not your cup of tea, there are a ton of options out there, but I have no intention of changing it unless it happens to be a change in a direction that makes my own save games more enjoyable.  

Our social contract (and its a fair one) is that I will share stuff in exchange for testing and pull requests

1 minute ago, kananesgi said:

I know supplies = more than food, but food is a component, and what you had said before made it sound like there was a method to create supplies (which include food no matter how small the portion) from water alone, and that was my catching point. Thank you for clarifying it. 

Nope, no can do (that would be silly, as we both agree).  Hence the very best recycler (which is really a water purifier) requires water, and caps at the percentage of supplies that would be water (i.e. about 90%).   

[kananesgi]

5 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

(addendum)

This is also where I gently remind folks that I did not make USI-LS for you folks... I made it for me, and the way I play KSP.  If folks happen to enjoy it, that's awesome (and by all accounts, quite a few people seem to).  If it's not your cup of tea, there are a ton of options out there, but I have no intention of changing it unless it happens to be a change in a direction that makes my own save games more enjoyable.  

Our social contract (and its a fair one) is that I will share stuff in exchange for testing and pull requests 

That is a wonderful attitude, and I honestly can't imagine how you have the time to even have a save game with all your incredible mods. That's why I don't mod myself. What little time I have, I would rather spend it playing than modding. 

Just to clarify a point, too. I was never suggesting that you change how your mod works. What I was suggesting was a plug-in that could bridge between USI & TAC by converting resources on the fly. Basically a way to allow kerbals to be able to live on either/or. 

[RoverDude]

Thanks, but as you can see by our discussion, that would fundamentally go against what the mod does, and would cause some ridiculous amounts of weirdness in UKS, hence it's something I would not consider.

[KSPNerd]

Will the quality of life mechanic from kerbalism ever be added to UKS? I think it would work very well.

[RoverDude]

USI-LS already has it's own habitation mechanics that UKS fully supports.

[adriangm44]

Okay, is this possible? What are the steps I should follow to make some Kerbalism features (all the science stuff, radiation, space weather) but make USI have all the life support systems?