[1.12.x] TAC - Life Support v0.18.0 - Release 19th Sep 2021

[entropy--]

1 hour ago, damerell said:

"With more Kerbals, your mileage may vary, but it's definitely worse" is frankly gibberish, and I don't see what's wrong with the original statement. "Supports up to N kerbals"; the converter can keep up with the CO2 (etc) generation from up to N kerbals. That seems entirely clear to me.

What I meant to say is that it still works with more Kerbals, but you burn through your supplies faster (since it's not keeping up). Depending on your mission duration, it might still be better to not add another converter.

[dueb]

I don't know if it can help or not (and if it's still accurate), but here is the sheet Tanaris Elsu used and shared for all the mod balance.

[damerell]

8 hours ago, entropy-- said:

What I meant to say is that it still works with more Kerbals, but you burn through your supplies faster (since it's not keeping up). Depending on your mission duration, it might still be better to not add another converter.

That seems entirely an entirely obvious consequence of it supporting up to N kerbals. I cannot imagine why anyone would suppose it would _stop working_ with N+1 kerbals, rather than just not be able to keep up.

[entropy--]

35 minutes ago, damerell said:

That seems entirely an entirely obvious consequence of it supporting up to N kerbals. I cannot imagine why anyone would suppose it would _stop working_ with N+1 kerbals, rather than just not be able to keep up.

Depends on your target audience I guess ... Microwave ovens still cary a warning text instructing you not to use it to dry your pets .

In any case I think "At full efficiency, the converter can keep up with the [waste resource] generation from up to N kerbals." + [Text about specialist impact]. Sounds like the clearest way to say this. I'd love to see the descriptions updated. Can one contribute patches to this mod?

[damerell]

12 hours ago, entropy-- said:

Depends on your target audience I guess ... Microwave ovens still cary a warning text instructing you not to use it to dry your pets .

In any case I think "At full efficiency, the converter can keep up with the [waste resource] generation from up to N kerbals." + [Text about specialist impact]. Sounds like the clearest way to say this. I'd love to see the descriptions updated. Can one contribute patches to this mod?

Well, no. In general, they don't carry such text, and there is no credible evidence anyone has ever accidentally microwaved a pet. (The persistent urban legend comfortably predates the invention of microwave ovens, no less).

I don't think the description should be changed because of some entirely hypothetical population of idiots who enjoy KSP and use TACLS.

[entropy--]

2 hours ago, damerell said:

and there is no credible evidence anyone has ever accidentally microwaved a pet. (The persistent urban legend comfortably predates the invention of microwave ovens, no less).

TIL

Let me restate my point in more serious terms then: With the current description, it takes a long hard look at the config files, lots of in-game experimenting, or digging around a forum to figure out how the converters actually work. This makes the mod not just "advanced" but downright unfriendly to new users. Why not alleviate that if a string update is all that it takes?

[Jso]

On 2/4/2017 at 2:23 PM, JPLRepo said:

Try setting the following values and let me know if that seems right (sorry but just struggling to find the time to test things myself):
 

UseSpecialistBonus = true
SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.5
SpecialistBonusBase = 1
ExperienceEffect = ConverterSkill
EfficiencyBonus = 1	

 

I had an opportunity to test this - (what a pain). It appears to work as intended. You get the advertised efficiency with no engineer, +50% with one, and +50% for each star. Is requiring an engineer for these converters to work desired? Changing SpecialistBonusBase to 0 will make them non-functional without one, 50% efficient with a rookie no star engineer, and 100% with a one star, up to 300% with a five star.

[damerell]

13 hours ago, entropy-- said:

Let me restate my point in more serious terms then: With the current description, it takes a long hard look at the config files, lots of in-game experimenting, or digging around a forum to figure out how the converters actually work.

I find this completely remarkable. It was entirely obvious to me. I don't see that "supports N kerbals" admits of any interpretation but the correct one.

[entropy--]

1 hour ago, damerell said:

I find this completely remarkable. It was entirely obvious to me. I don't see that "supports N kerbals" admits of any interpretation but the correct one.

That's not the current description. The current description is "Rated for up to N Kerbals, with an efficiency multiplier of about X." This is what started this entire sub-topic

[damerell]

I don't see that that admits of multiple interpretations. This whole "ah, but what if we have 2N kerbals, what is the efficiency then" (answer: the same) business is completely out of left field.

[JPLRepo]

On 2/7/2017 at 11:07 PM, Jso said:

I had an opportunity to test this - (what a pain). It appears to work as intended. You get the advertised efficiency with no engineer, +50% with one, and +50% for each star. Is requiring an engineer for these converters to work desired? Changing SpecialistBonusBase to 0 will make them non-functional without one, 50% efficient with a rookie no star engineer, and 100% with a one star, up to 300% with a five star.

Thanks for testing it out for me.
This is the question I'd like to answer before needing to worry about what the part info might say.
I can make it so the converters work at 100% without any specialist. and adding a specialist increases their efficiency based on their stars.
OR
The can be non functional completely without one. and then go up as @Jso describes above.
What do people think?

For the description. Once the above is decided I can tweak the text based on the way it will be.

[entropy--]

2 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

I can make it so the converters work at 100% without any specialist. and adding a specialist increases their efficiency based on their stars.
OR
The can be non functional completely without one. and then go up as @Jso describes above.
What do people think?

My vote goes to option #2. This kind of equipment should just work fine on its own (if we ignore braking and spare parts). Lots of people have water purifiers at home, and most of them are not engineers . Kerbals probably managed the same levels of quality!

[DerekL1963]

4 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

I can make it so the converters work at 100% without any specialist. and adding a specialist increases their efficiency based on their stars.

This.

[overkill13]

3 hours ago, entropy-- said:

My vote goes to option #2. This kind of equipment should just work fine on its own (if we ignore braking and spare parts). Lots of people have water purifiers at home, and most of them are not engineers . Kerbals probably managed the same levels of quality!

I wouldn't trust a Brita to filter my waste.  

Personally I'd just prefer them to work 100% at all times without any engineer bonus, but I'll just write a patch to switch the bonuses to false if it remains.

[JPLRepo]

Hmm. Ok, How about this. I'll include some MM patch cfg files with the distribution so people can customize.

[damerell]

7 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

I can make it so the converters work at 100% without any specialist. and adding a specialist increases their efficiency based on their stars.

OR
The can be non functional completely without one.

I don't know that there's a lot of wiggle room here for the converter to be useful with no specialist, have specialist stars give a meaningful bonus, and not permit over-unity operation with a 5* specialist, but I think it would be worse to render the parts useless for one-Pilot missions.

I don't really believe the argument that "lots of people have water purifiers at home, and most of them are not engineers" - they don't turn urine into water, and also they break sometimes and do need an engineer (but the one thing that can't be done in a stockalike mod is to add part breakdown...)

[overkill13]

One could argue that the ISRU could function as a basic idea of the process.  It's code follows:

Quote

UseSpecialistBonus = true
SpecialistEfficiencyFactor = 0.2
SpecialistBonusBase = 0.05
ExperienceEffect = ConverterSkill
EfficiencyBonus = 1

That should be 5% without an engineer and 20% per star up to 105%.  There's a lot of room to play with between 0% and 100% without an engineer.  I think 300% is a bit much even with a veteran engineer.  Maybe 100% as a base and 10% per star? 80 and 15?  Again though, I'm not keen on engineers affecting the output anyway.  Particularly with Planetary Base and Universal Storage not using the engineer bonus.

[DerekL1963]

13 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

Hmm. Ok, How about this. I'll include some MM patch cfg files with the distribution so people can customize.

Could work, especially if it defaults to not needing an engineer - the more hardcore players are more likely to know how to jigger around with MM files.

[NeoAcario]

17 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

Hmm. Ok, How about this. I'll include some MM patch cfg files with the distribution so people can customize.

This is a great idea... but if I were to cast my vote...  I'd say have converters work at 25% without a specialist.  Engineer?  And up to 100% with level 5.  Can make it a similar scale to drills.  My 2 cents.

[ethambutol]

Okay, because this is verging on TL;DR from the last few pages, so I'm just going to ask and confirm:

With the current version of TACLS, you do not get the advertised input/out and even with an engineer, you get an improvement but still not 100% of the advertised input/output. Am I right?

Because the values (+/-) are not tallying with the theoretic values my combined TACLS+KPBS spreadsheet are saying, ie, I am getting much less than I expect. All values in the spreadsheet were directly ripped out of the .cfg files and they match. Things tallied until the latest TACLS update where the specialist bonus thingy was tweak.

-More edits-

Commented out all the specialist lines gives the stated values.

My 2 cents: Without specialist you should get 100% of the stated value. Add specialists, get your bonus.

Edited February 11, 2017 by ethambutol
Addendum

[entropy--]

If breakdowns were a thing, then it would be natural to do something like a low % without an engineer, and then up from there to 100%. But since in stock there's no such thing, doing 100% without an engineer and then a bit up from there with the engineer seems more natural. That is, the engineer is tweaking things; he is neither operating, nor fixing things.

[Phoenyx]

My kerbals for rescue are dying!

Even if I do not have control over the kerbal the TAC time starts to run, and when I get close to the place they are all dead.

TACLS version 0.12.8

Log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8yp7z1vy5w0mmgr/output_log.zip?dl=0

 

Its the same error: https://github.com/KSP-RO/TacLifeSupport/issues/63
My kerbal die on EVA in Minmus.

Help!!!

Edited February 12, 2017 by Phoenyx

[overkill13]

2 hours ago, Phoenyx said:

My kerbals for rescue are dying!

So, landed rescues only?  All rescues?  Rescue and recover?

Had a look at the log, looks like Hayanne Kerman was landed.

I had a problem that was only showing up with rescue and recover contracts, but I haven't seen a landed rescue yet in any of my playthroughs.  Repo said he/she had a fix ready for the next TAC-LS update.  I'm currently hyperediting a ship with just a pod, supplies and power over to the rescue Kerbal until I can get a rescue ship to him/her properly.

Edited February 12, 2017 by overkill13

[Phoenyx]

23 minutes ago, overkill13 said:

So, landed rescues only?  All rescues?  Rescue and recover?

Rescues in EVA only. In pods its ok.

I thought about using cheat but would have to substantially regress my career mode.
Is it possible to disable the TAC in my current save for these cases maybe, at least until the problem is actually fixed?

Edit: And from what I understood the Kerbal died for lack of eletric charge to filter the CO2 and not exactly the other items, such as food and water.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Phoenyx

[aluc24]

Hey, @JPLRepo , I wanted to ask something. In VAB, TAC Build Aid does not account for greenhouses, filters, etc. I want to make a Duna base, but since I'm very unfamiliar with TAC, I don't know how to figure out how long my Kerbals will last with the current combination of supplies, fertilizers, filters, greenhouses, etc. Theoretically, it should be possible to calculate it manually, but it is very tedious. Is there a simpler way? How do you people do it?