Life Support Discussion

[Regiampiero]

Hello Everyone! I've been looking to add another element of difficulty to my KSP game-play (career mode), but there's a lot of information out there and more than half is outdated. I've so decided to start a new thread for the various mods to be discussed. 

I personally am looking for a nice mod that adds an extra layer of difficulty, but in a matter that makes sense. I've looked into TAC (the most popular), but a lot of aspects just don't make sense to me. The tonnage of food vs. the time it last is off. The necessity of having a special module on aircrafts to convert air to O2 makes no sense, and it feels forced. The fact that Kerbels will die after 60 days of not having food, but only 2 hours of not having O2 or electricity is very contradictory. One aspect is too lenient and the other is too drastic. Lastly, the textures and sizes of the each compartment is just too off for me. I've seen space stations that are taken over by the sheer amount of stuff needed to keep things running, I mean if the boys and gals at the ISS needed the same amount of food the ISS would be twice the size. 

Other mods like Snacks, USI just don't seem deep enough, but provide a nice starting platform to which you can other mods to round-out the experience. I think I'm going to try SUI in combination with Ioncross and some sort of greenhouse mod next. What do you guys think?

[Guest]

You can configure TAC to be more harsh or lenient as desired, and the stuff you need to keep Kerbals alive doesn't take as much space as you'd think.

USI can be configured to be deadly if desired.

As for depth, there isn't that much depth to LS as you'd think, just more or less detail. Could just be my thoughts on it, though.

Edited October 14, 2016 by regex

[Regiampiero]

11 minutes ago, regex said:

You can configure TAC to be more harsh or lenient as desired, and the stuff you need to keep Kerbals alive doesn't take as much space as you'd think.

USI can be configured to be deadly if desired.

As for depth, there isn't that much depth to LS as you'd think, just more or less detail. Could just be my thoughts on it, though.

By depth I'm referring to creating ecosystems where re-stocking isn't necessary, but at the cost of perfectly tune the in/out of the life cycle. I like USI because it plays well with some greenhouse mods, but I'm not sure if there's the same support for TAC. Also combining Ioncross with USI you essentially get a more detailed version of TAC, but I need to really give all of them a try. 

Just wondering what everyone uses and why they like it. 

[Tyko]

Each of the life support mods is attempting to offer a balance of playability with "realism". In the end, it's not necessarily about offering precise realistic values for any one metric. Instead, it's about challenging the player to plan for keeping their kerbals alive. TAC offers a very high level of detail in terms of the number of resources you have to manage while Snacks is on the other end with only one (now 2 with Soil) resources. USI-LS/MKS is somewhere in the middle plus tracks kerbal claustrophobia. Kerbalism is another "in the middle" option that also incorporates radiation exposure and a host of other considerations.

For myself I chose the one that offered a nice fun/challenge balance for my play style. With regards to specific numbers you may not agree with, it's very likely that you can go in and edit those.

Edited October 14, 2016 by tjt

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Regiampiero said:

Just wondering what everyone uses and why they like it. 

I usually use TAC because it's what comes with RO by default. I never bother trying to create an ecosystem because, to me, that just defeats the purpose of planning and deadlines while adding additional parts. If you create a perfect ecosystem (power, LS, extraction, replenishment) every time you can easily create it for every random number of crew, begging the question of why you're using LS in the first place since it essentially has no meaning beyond a few extra parts; there is no risk of danger in that case beyond a busted craft. Of course, with RO I can create a service module tank that contains all my LS resources and waste plus my RCS and main propulsion fuels, making it a single part for multiple things, but I'd probably add procedural tanks to vanilla if I used LS in vanilla for that reason alone.

Anyway, the choice of LS really boils down to how much detail you want, the logistics are roughly the same in any case.

[Terwin]

I like USI-LS, particularly when combined with USI-MKS.  This gives you everything you need for self-supporting bases assuming you have the right resources available.

Have not had a good look at the recent revamp, but I expect that for someone who has not used it yet, the differences are non-obvious.

[magnemoe]

41 minutes ago, Regiampiero said:

By depth I'm referring to creating ecosystems where re-stocking isn't necessary, but at the cost of perfectly tune the in/out of the life cycle. I like USI because it plays well with some greenhouse mods, but I'm not sure if there's the same support for TAC. Also combining Ioncross with USI you essentially get a more detailed version of TAC, but I need to really give all of them a try. 

Just wondering what everyone uses and why they like it. 

TAC-LS is interesting in that it has a way to recycle oxygen and water this is heavy, other mods like MKS and planetary bases adds greenhouses but this is also bulky and might require ore to be fully self sufficient. 
So you need to find an balance. My tylo mission in 1.13 needed resupplies as the miner SSTO miner so slow and was about to run out of life support. 


 

[Vanamonde]

Modding question moved to the modding subforum.