Comparison of the various Life Support Mods?

[Espatie]

I was wondering, is there an easy overview anywhere of the pros/cons, dependencies and varying hardness/complexity of the various Life Support Mods? I'm looking to go heavy on Life Support for my next career play through, but I don't have a good idea of which would suit me.

[Friznit]

In short, ordered from simples to not simples:

Snacks - Food/Waste; optional Air/Bad Air and a Stress mechanic that impacts Kerbal skills (no "Touristification")

Kerbal Health - Habitation mechanic + Radiation that impacts Kerbal overall health

TAC LS -  Food, Oxygen, CO2, Waste; configurable difficulty (starved Kerbals die by default but this can be changed to Touristification).

USI LS - Food + Waste + Habitation + Homesickness; highly configurable.

Kerbalism - 'total conversion' gamemode that includes food, habitation, radiation plus a whole lot of other stuff not directly related to life support.

There may be one or two other variations on the theme kicking around but these are the main ones that are relatively mature, up to date and well-supported by mods such as Universal Storage.  Snacks is a nice lightweight approach and works very well with other Wilde Blue Industries mods such as Pathfinder, MOLE and DSEV.  TAC LS is widely supported and the multiple resource types provide some interesting balancing challenges.  USI has the advantage of the full integration with MKS and the habitation mechanics demand a fresh approach to ship / station / base design.  Kerbalism is by far the most sophisticated but can be a daunting place to start your life support career.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Friznit

[goldenpsp]

aside from the other thread @Friznit posted and his great TLDR, another key consideration is which mods support what LS.  Not every LS mod has the same level of compatibility with other mods.  So for example if you also wanted to use MKS for its colonization parts it works best with USI-LS.  It has compatibility with TAC-LS but the support is community supported so not official.  I'm not even sure if there is a compatibility patch for snacks.