Life support system

[KerbolExplorer]

2 hours ago, ZL647 said:

Kerbals photosynthesize. That's why they are green, they are plant people. 

so frogs do photosintesis to?

[KerikBalm]

On 10/29/2018 at 7:09 PM, ZL647 said:

Kerbals photosynthesize. That's why they are green, they are plant people. 

So when we send them to Eeloo, they should die from lack of sunlight? A sidereal day on Moho is 102 kerbin days... should they die if they land on the darkside of Moho?

Do they just consume electricity to power cabin lighting?

This is a terrible argument against it. You could argue that it adds needless complexity, that it will increase part count- that all it does is require a bigger payload packed with supplies, that it will just punish players if they do their maneuvers wrong and plot courses that take longer than what they initially planned/if they forget to leave during a departure window and want to wait for the next one, etc...

but to say no because kerbals are green?

Despite my above statements, I play with TAC-LS, with some modifications of my own (mainly changing efficiency of recyclers, and adding greenhouses)

[ZL647]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

but to say no because kerbals are green?

It's a joke stretching back to pre-release version of KSP. Honestly surprised with your 2013 date that you don't remember the jokes about Kerbals being plant people. 

[KerikBalm]

I do, but its not an argument against implementing life support (although I can't tell if you actually agree with @The Dunatian or if you're just interjecting in a conversation for lulz

[Kroslev Kerman]

i disagree adding life support system because you are limited in what you can do in KSP like if you wanna go to dres but your carrying too much water and food and so you cant do that and you can only do short duration missions i used TAC life support but i removed it because its no fun and i dont get to explore for long term

[Tyko]

23 hours ago, Kroslev Kerman said:

i disagree adding life support system because you are limited in what you can do in KSP like if you wanna go to dres but your carrying too much water and food and so you cant do that and you can only do short duration missions i used TAC life support but i removed it because its no fun and i dont get to explore for long term

The same argument could be made for any system in the game “I disagree with having electricity in the game because people have to remember to add electrical generators” or “there shouldn’t be fuel in the game because having to pack enough fuel limits a player’s ability to explore.” 

Life support is just as core to crewed missions as fuel or electricity. Yes it adds a layer of complexity, but if you’re creating a game about crewed space travel with any degree of realism life support needs to be modeled in some way. Even if it’s simplified to Snacks or Supplies. 

It makes sense to disable it for easy mode, but to ignore it entirely is leaving an important element out of the game. 

[Pthigrivi]

The other thought I had about this is USI is great for stock BUT I might encourage simplifying the Habitation mechanic into a single value rather than Habitation vs Homesickness. I like the Kerbal-month w/ multipliers setup, but I think for simplicity homesickness could be eliminated if Habitation reset on docking or on landing or liftoff from any particular body, not just Kerbin. Kerbals are adventurous folks, after all. So long as a space kept them happy on the way to say Duna, then kept them happy for the duration of their time on the surface, and then again for the duration of the return journey I'd think it was an adequate space. 

I also think the default part stats could be weee bit more forgiving. The greenhouses could be more productive and the 2.5m recycler really should serve 8-12 kerbals rather than 3 for the size and energy consumption. There could be a 1.5m inline recycler that served 3-4 kerbals, and the science lab could serve 6. That would balance out the curve, reduce part count and give more vessel-design flexibility.

Edited November 16, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[Angelo Kerman]

Snacks:

When I took over and rebuilt Snacks, I envisioned it along the same lines as the design goals for KerbNet: enough to get in the way but not enough to brick your mission or save. So when you run out of snacks, you incur penalties like fines for treating your kerbals badly, lost science, losing reputation, and fainting (similar to loss of consciousness due to high g forces). There is a death penalty but that's optional and off by default. It's a simple life support mod so you can produce snacks from ore, but other mods provide greenhouses and such.

[Gargamel]

4 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

Snacks:

This is what I was envisioning when I made my first comment.   It should be stock alike, so a simple LS, single resource over time, with a waste product, and simple ways to handle both.    Nothing complicated, just another element to consider when planning missions. 

[KerikBalm]

Meh, I find TAC-LS to be fine. Water, food, O2, not super complicated, particularly since it has all in 1 parts with them in perfect ratios.

I further mod it with greenhouse parts (and tweak the recycler stats) so that its relatively easy to make a near lossless closed cycle system that can last for several years with only a small input of supplies. Then I allow surface bases to (assuming the right resources are present) to produce surpluses.

Thus my Duna colony for example might have recyclers+greenhouses in space and on a surface base, and the surface to orbit shuttles have just one small life support supplies part.

A smaller setup may lack the ability to make a surplus of any resource, in which case I add waster storage to the smaller craft, so that taking the craft on an excursion doesn't result in loss of irreplaceable life support supplies.

For intermediate size payloads, I recycle the air and water, but carry along extra food supplies. Likewise my early Mun bases and stations often lack food production, and simply need extra food supplies from time to time.

I like TAC-LS, and wouldn't mind a modified version of it becoming stock

[Pthigrivi]

7 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Meh, I find TAC-LS to be fine. Water, food, O2, not super complicated, particularly since it has all in 1 parts with them in perfect ratios.

I further mod it with greenhouse parts (and tweak the recycler stats) so that its relatively easy to make a near lossless closed cycle system that can last for several years with only a small input of supplies. Then I allow surface bases to (assuming the right resources are present) to produce surpluses.

Thus my Duna colony for example might have recyclers+greenhouses in space and on a surface base, and the surface to orbit shuttles have just one small life support supplies part.

A smaller setup may lack the ability to make a surplus of any resource, in which case I add waster storage to the smaller craft, so that taking the craft on an excursion doesn't result in loss of irreplaceable life support supplies.

For intermediate size payloads, I recycle the air and water, but carry along extra food supplies. Likewise my early Mun bases and stations often lack food production, and simply need extra food supplies from time to time.

I like TAC-LS, and wouldn't mind a modified version of it becoming stock

I'd been considering using TAC for my next save but was worried about greenhouse/recycler balance. Where have you been pulling those from? 

Another thing I respect about USI is there's an attempt at making LS into a real game mechanic. There's a clear set of mass trade-offs between straight supplies, using recyclers, adding in greenhouses and ISRU based on the number of crew and how long they need to stay alive. The other nice thing is its scalable--you don't have to worry about it much at all at first, but as you delve deeper into the kerbol system you need to think more and more carefully about your LS strategy. As mentioned the balance in USI isn't quite as nice as I'd like but a good overall baseline. 

Forgive me, Angel, I haven't tried Snacks yet but might soon

[KerikBalm]

Tac-LS by itself has no greenhouses. First I was using those from Kerbal Planetary Base systems. In those the greenhouses need an ore input, and can't sustain kerbals nearly indefinitely in a closed cycle system in space (at the least it would need ore shipments from the surface).

Then I just took the input and output values in a spreadsheet, and made the returns like 99.999% instead of something like 95% or 99%... so that 1 day's worth of supplies lasts several thousand days if you've got all the recyclers and stuff.

I just made my own simple greenhouse mod so I could work without KPBS (its a nice mod pack, I have absolutely nothing against the mod... but I wanted my designs to be stock, or easily convertible to stock by removing/replacing life support parts... including surface bases).

One example is here:

Spoiler

Its the "lab" on the left with a slight green tint

and a better view of it, being loaded in space... also with recolored ore drills that are water drills in this case.... tbh, I forget how one gets surplus water with basic TAC-LS... I think you needed to collect hydrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere and then use them in a fuel cell

Basic TAC-LS has a carbon extractor (CO2 > O2 + waste) and a water purifier (Waste water > water + waste) that can take care of your oxygen and water needs for long duration missions with only modest stocks, but it has no way to regenerate food, so basically for short durations, you take the all-in-1 life supplies packs. For longer ones, take a modest amount of all-in-1 life supplies packs, throw on a water purifier, a carbon extractor, and then pack food (it has a tool in the VAB/SPH to show how long the supplies last without recycling... with recycling you can easily multiply those values by 20 (or if you tweak it like I do... multiply by a thousand)