Life support and/or habitats?

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

The idea of an automatic resupply mission that record the player's actions is pretty interesting, since it would have to (in the sandbox spirit of KSP) go beyond that. The problem is that, well,  let's say you have an orbital station and you change the orbit. The exact same flight is not going to be possible. The game would have to be pretty smart to scale the players' actions and repeat the mission. But at the same time, a few of the core game mechanics in KSP2 would help facilitate this, as multiplayer means the game will already be built for multiple vehicles being controlled at the same time.

 

Maybe such a flight recorder could be advanced enough to somehow be integrated with a mission builder style thingy.

 

But... at this point, dare I say it, it sounds  like this is becoming a pretty big feature. One that could actually work better as... a future DLC. Yes, I said it. They have made it kind of clear that they want to make DLC's for this game much like what we've seen in KSP1. And life support combined with flight recorder stuff (neither on its own would be enough, just like the robotics and new science in Breaking Ground or the history parts and the mission builder in Making History go together) would be the perfect amount of content for a DLC. With the mentioned help from multiplayer code and the focus on colonies where such life support is important, this would make more sense as a DLC for KSP2 than KSP1.

Edited August 25, 2019 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[nikokespprfan]

7 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

[life support] would be the perfect amount of content for a DLC. With the mentioned help from multiplayer code and the focus on colonies where such life support is important, this would make more sense as a DLC for KSP2 than KSP1.

now you say it, I think you are right, this would be very well suited for a DLC

 

....

 

Well damn, it is strategic as well. Every feature we know the game to have with regards to colony building is in the vein of what I described, no bad stuffs there, and anyone who complains that Life support shouldn't be in the game is satisfied because a DLC is not necessary to have, there you have a very hot community issue resolved.

12 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

The game would have to be pretty smart tom scale the players' actions and repeat the mission

well, the point is mainly to tell the game that the directed transfer of materials, crafts and kerbals just happens. The rest is for aesethic purposes, and making your colony feel alive. It's not really necessary, but a very nice to have.

[Guest]

This is a bad idea to put into a DLC. Life support should be a core mechanic, and station gameplay should be built around it. Otherwise, it's kind of boring. Running resupply missions is OK, as long as you don't need to do that too often. There should be functionality in place to reduce requirements. 

Fully closed loop off planet life support would probably be necessary for interstellar flight, and colonies should be fairly straightforward to make self-sufficient (otherwise, it's not really a colony, just an extraplanetary base).

[nikokespprfan]

ignore this post

Edited August 25, 2019 by nikokespprfan

[Cyborg_delta1]

I want to make and design the interior not just an empty hollow exterior 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

16 minutes ago, nikokespprfan said:

well, the point is mainly to tell the game that the directed transfer of materials, crafts and kerbals just happens. The rest is for aesethic purposes, and making your colony feel alive. It's not really necessary, but a very nice to have.

The problem is you could, say, launch your starter orbital colony into LKO, send up a sample resupply, then, say, take the space station to Jool and the game wouldn't know the difference.

 

P.S.  another very important gameplay mechanic that KSP has been confirmed to have that will be useful here is burning during time warp. This  will allow the autopilot recorder thing here to make adjustments while on rails. The alternative would be to just teleport the craft instantly, but I think this would allow for a much more immersive system with a much more... "alive" feel to it. You'll see what I mean, I go into way too much detail on this idea below:

What about a kind of "maneuver node editor" where you start with an origin (or orbit around origin, if the origin is on land), then plot a bunch of maneuver nodes (with enhanced maneuver node functionality that lets you change the orbit relative to the target destination) up to a given destination?  If that destination changes orbits, then the fancy modified maneuver node things adjust to reach the same point in space (maybe they could have, like, some kind of "rigidity" value to determine how much each maneuver node will stretch to match the orbit). You could even have multiple destinations. At each origin and destination, you could set up how resources should be transferred. If one of the origins or destinations changes SOI, then the game will make you plot a new "mission."

Once the mission is plotted, the player will have to do a launch for "testing". This will establish the staging sequence, performance, etc. of the chosen spacecraft for the game to follow. It should be required for all recordings, but it will be especially important in . If the launch is from a surface, the player will have to get into the sample orbit mentioned earlier first. Then, well, the player just follows the maneuver nodes. The game would then automatically repeat the mission on an assigned frequency. It would first detect if the orbital positions mean that the craft does not have enough delta-v (easy to determine, since it already does this for maneuver nodes) or if a gravity assist would mess up the trajectory, send out a push notification, and delay the launch. If it can launch, it would do everything on-rails, including (if the origin was on a surface) the ascent. With the code in place for engine burns during timewarp, this shouldn't be a problem. It could follow the same ascent profile as the player, stage at the same times (leaving debris, yes), all while on-rails, so there wouldn't be a lot of lag. Resources would be consumed as usual, etc. Docking or land would be automatic (once it reaches the destination, just snap into a docked vehicle or landed vehicle while transferring before taking off again).

But we can go a step further than this, possibly with the help of multiplayer-related code. Remember that 2.5km physics limit? Well... why not actually perform the maneuvers off-rails when with 2.5km (or when focused on the vessel)? This would be really cool if you're doing something at, say, a ground base, and a spacecraft loads into view, automatically lands (using a mix of pre-recorded actions and perhaps just a bit of simple AI to account for corrections) and then automatically takes off again after a minute or so of refueling and unloading life support stuff. That would add so much atmosphere, I think, to the game.

And it wouldn't just apply to colonies, either. You could set these up anywhere. This would be another place where the community could run wild with imagination. With a flexible enough system, you could also start one of these auto-launches on stage separation, allowing RTLS boosters and the like.

 

...I put way too much effort into this, maybe it should be its own thread. Oh well.

[Bartybum]

I really can't see KSP 2 without life support. That being said, it absolutely needs to have some sort of user-controlled automation, expecially for orbital spaceports and stations that can't resupply themselves like a colony can.

3 hours ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

The idea of an automatic resupply mission that record the player's actions is pretty interesting, since it would have to (in the sandbox spirit of KSP) go beyond that. The problem is that, well,  let's say you have an orbital station and you change the orbit. The exact same flight is not going to be possible. The game would have to be pretty smart to scale the players' actions and repeat the mission. But at the same time, a few of the core game mechanics in KSP2 would help facilitate this, as multiplayer means the game will already be built for multiple vehicles being controlled at the same time.

Regarding automatic SP supply missions, what if for a given station/orbital spaceport:

• the game calculates the dV required for a resupply mission using a launch window from either the KSC or the nearest sustainable launch-capable colony (Mechjeb can already do these calculations with porkchop plots),
• it tasks you with constructing a resupply vessel that satisfies the dV and resupply requirements.
• you instruct your KSC/colony/etc. when to launch the mission, and the game then executes a simulated launch that adds the resources to your station after the mission duration has passed i.e. the simulated resupply ship has made it to the station.

This way there's no physical ship being launched; it's all just numbers in the background.

Bear in mind though that this is user-controlled automation and therefore it's entirely optional - you're still free to fly your own resupply missions if you want to tackle all that. The idea is to help take a lot of the burden off players that don't want to perform the repetitive and menial task of constantly resupplying large stations.

Colonisation and life support go closely hand-in-hand, and I think something like this could (in theory) work.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Bartybum

[mattinoz]

2 hours ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

The idea of an automatic resupply mission that record the player's actions is pretty interesting, since it would have to (in the sandbox spirit of KSP) go beyond that. The problem is that, well,  let's say you have an orbital station and you change the orbit. The exact same flight is not going to be possible. The game would have to be pretty smart to scale the players' actions and repeat the mission. But at the same time, a few of the core game mechanics in KSP2 would help facilitate this, as multiplayer means the game will already be built for multiple vehicles being controlled at the same time.

 

Maybe such a flight recorder could be advanced enough to somehow be integrated with a mission builder style thingy.

 

But... at this point, dare I say it, it sounds  like this is becoming a pretty big feature. One that could actually work better as... a future DLC. Yes, I said it. They have made it kind of clear that they want to make DLC's for this game much like what we've seen in KSP1. And life support combined with flight recorder stuff (neither on its own would be enough, just like the robotics and new science in Breaking Ground or the history parts and the mission builder in Making History go together) would be the perfect amount of content for a DLC. With the mentioned help from multiplayer code and the focus on colonies where such life support is important, this would make more sense as a DLC for KSP2 than KSP1.

This could also be part of the reason the game will be multi-player from the start. In that it will be multi-actor by nature how better to handle that than push those actions to background process and add one process to co-ordinate it all for map view and interactions, keep them out of the way of what the player wants to be doing. 

Multi-player then opens another option for resupply mission. Contract it out, open it up to the less experienced players in your live/server be part of the game. Once contracted it gets done as long as the player has funds to pay for it.

Still it would become a repetitive in game play terms. I still think it would be great if Kerbals could be trained and would train each other to do repetitive things. Higher skill more adaptable.  How much automation a player has to work with would then be a factor of how many Kerbals they can keep alive and why having live-support becomes important.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

Oh, hang on. Just found this:

(Translated from a German interview by @nikokespprfan. To be clear, they translated it, they weren't interviewed. I would reword the original sentence but I'm lazy and bad at words so oh well)

Quote

Interviewer: Will there be such a thing as life support systems so you have to ensure oxygen supply, water supply and food supply for the Kerbals.
Nate: I can say so much that the need to keep Kerbals alive is a feature we're going to introduce now. But I can not say more about that at this point, but I can say somuch. In case you tried mods on life support systems; it will not be so detailed, but as I said I can not say too much because there are a few secrets.

So, it looks like the answer to the life support question is yes, there will be life support, but it will be more basic and according to another description of this interview "low-maintenance."

 

Given that they say it's different from mods  I'm guessing it has to do with those "habitat" parts from earlier.

Edited August 29, 2019 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[magnemoe]

On 8/25/2019 at 1:54 PM, klgraham1013 said:

I consider this one of the biggist missteps in KSP's original design that was never addressed.  One of the most visible challenges of manned space flight completely nonexistent in a game that purports to teach about real space flight.

Yes, it put constrains on missions and also favors larger ships on long trips since their life support system can be more advanced. 

It was stated it will be some sort of life support but simpler than most mods, probably something like snacks 
It might also simply put the kerbals in hibernation if out of resources.
yes this let you cheat by using an probe and simply unlock food then you reach target  

Now I assume colonies at least above some size are totally self dependent with life support. This is harder than producing fuel but not a lot harder. 
Again stated that you should not have to babysit them. 

Assume large colonies can also support ships, this might be something you have to build for say having more greenhouses than you need for your own needs.




 

[nikokespprfan]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

It might also simply put the kerbals in hibernation if out of resources.

If you want consequentail life support that is not punishing, this is a no-brainer. I'm willing to put my bets on it that, unless the devs really did not think about it, this will be a feature.

 

7 hours ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

(Translated from a German interview by @nikokespprfan.

heyheyhey, I merely translated it checked its accuracy in Youtube Automated Subtitles and Google Translate. The true source is SpielbaerLP

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

1 hour ago, nikokespprfan said:

If you want consequentail life support that is not punishing, this is a no-brainer. I'm willing to put my bets on it that, unless the devs really did not think about it, this will be a feature.

 

heyheyhey, I merely translated it checked its accuracy in Youtube Automated Subtitles and Google Translate. The true source is SpielbaerLP

That's kinda what I meant to say there, that you translated the German interview... I'll have to rephrase that a bit, I guess

[nikokespprfan]

2 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

That's kinda what I meant to say there, that you translated the German interview... I'll have to rephrase that a bit, I guess

I meant this as a jokey comment, just a little jab, that's all.

 

[nikokespprfan]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

What type of depth will the resource system have? (Like factorio, few basic resources but a lot of processing, or like astroneer, a lot of resources, but little processing.)

We didn't discuss this specifically, but we did touch on the idea sort of tangentially, and it sounds like the answer is "not a lot".  Specifically, they said they want this game mainly to be about building and flying rockets-- the phrase they used was "We're not trying to build Kerbal Cities: Skylines".  They don't want to take emphasis away from that and make the player worry too much about logistics.

Why do I mention this. I mention this because it means the devs have another consideration.This will be useful for any speculative or fantasy LS system designs we make in this thread. Not only does one need to heed micromanagement and the severety of failure, you also need to keep track of the fact that the game keeps being about flying rockets, not logistics. You should be doing restocking missions constantly.

Edited August 29, 2019 by nikokespprfan

[shdwlrd]

13 minutes ago, nikokespprfan said:

Why do I mention this. I mention this because it means the devs have another consideration.This will be useful for any speculative or fantasy LS system designs we make in this thread. Not only does one need to heed micromanagement and the severety of failure, you also need to keep track of the fact that the game keeps being about flying rockets, not logistics. You should be doing restocking missions constantly.

The question was geared for gathering materials for in situ construction and fuel manufacturing. Not so much life support related.

Life support should be in the hands of the modders, not stock. 

It's no fun when you spend 90% of your time in the game running supplies to this base, rotating the crew from this station. It really sucks when you have to abandon a mission because what was shown in the planning screen doesn't match what is actually happening.

I've used TAC:LS and killed the whole crew on the 1st dark side transit because I didn't have enough power. That wasn't fun, I was very livid about that. It wasn't fun to kill multiple crews to learn that I needed 10x the power reserves just to keep the LS running, how long the food, water, O2 lasted, how well the recyclers actually worked. In the end, I found it wasn't worth it. I don't like killing Kerbals, especially in this manner.

I've used USI:LS, see above for that failure. One thing I've learned was to always have a probe core on the ship, and once the Kerbals became tourists, you can only return them to Kerbin to fix the issue. It's no fun to plan a mission and only complete a portion of it because of bad info from the in game planner.

Life support shouldn't be stock. I was willing to deal with it when I had 12+ hrs a week to play. Now I only have 2-3 hrs, if I actually have time and want to play KSP. I don't want to deal with it. I just want to do my mission, and not have to worry about it.

If star theory wants to add life support, it's their game and they can. But it should be optional. If it's forced, I can see some modder writing something to turn it off very quickly. (I highly doubt the ST would force LS on the player. Just making a point.)

The only way I will deal with life support again is 1) the LS planning tools are accurate to within 1% to what will actually happen in the game. 2) they don't add many parts to the craft. I don't want to add a half dozen parts just to gain 2 weeks. 3) anything marked as a colony, base, or station I don't have to manually resupply. I want KSP to feel like a game, not a job. I already have one of those. 4) it's non lethal and the Kerbals are recoverable in situ. (Again, it's a game, not a job.) I do believe in penalties for miss managing LS, but they should be as severe as the player chooses. 5) it doesn't detract from the aspect that KSP is a game, not a full fledged space simulator.

[Drakenred65]

The problem is, what the heck are Kerbals anyway.

 

there green...why? Are they supposed to be plant people like oh say...

Piccolo , Groot, Zhaan, seriously there are way too many variation on Dryads and Ents and plant people in earth mythology and fiction to even start to list them.

 

If they are plants or evolved from plants, they may or may not need much in the way of actual life support. 

 

Granted if there not, then who knows.

Edited August 30, 2019 by [email protected]

[nikokespprfan]

3 hours ago, [email protected] said:

The problem is, what the heck are Kerbals anyway.

 

there green...why? Are they supposed to be plant people like oh say...

Piccolo , Groot, Zhaan, seriously there are way too many variation on Dryads and Ents and plant people in earth mythology and fiction to even start to list them.

 

If they are plants or evolved from plants, they may or may not need much in the way of actual life support. 

 

Granted if there not, then who knows.

Poeple think they are plants because the kerbals are green. Now that anything green we asociate with plants is our thing, but there is no reson why (green ==> plants) must be true. In other atmospheres, plants might have diffent colors (although the atmosphere and plantlife of kerbin is very similar to earth) and biospheres might have evelved differently.

6 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

It's no fun when you spend 90% of your time in the game running supplies to this base, rotating the crew from this station. It really sucks when you have to abandon a mission because what was shown in the planning screen doesn't match what is actually happening.

Life support doesn't imply this per se. It could only matter for colonies, it could put kerbals in hibernation when deprived of stuff, you could have it so that colonies become "magically" self-sufficient if you reach a certain point. It doens't have to be punishing.

[shdwlrd]

8 hours ago, nikokespprfan said:

Life support doesn't imply this per se. It could only matter for colonies, it could put kerbals in hibernation when deprived of stuff, you could have it so that colonies become "magically" self-sufficient if you reach a certain point. It doens't have to be punishing.

With that thought in mind, what if the "colony" is there just to mine resources? You want it small and don't want to grow it any farther, but you need it continue mining. If the colony goes into hibernation, will it still mine resources? No, as per the definition of hibernation. That means you will still have to run supplies to them to keep them active. That's a hard no from me.

If you mandate that you need a greenhouse or such per x number of Kerbals, that's doable as long as the colony doesn't grow beyond the hard cap. But that can also cause other problems when you actually visit the colony after the max population has been reached. That is another can of worms that will have to be dealt with.

There's no easy way to work LS into the game at any level. To many variables, too many different opinions on what will work and how hard it needs to be. 

I believe that LS should be a consideration in a space type game, but it needs to add a value to the game, not create another headache to deal with or force you into only one style of play, especially with KSP.

[nikokespprfan]

59 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

With that thought in mind, what if the "colony" is there just to mine resources? You want it small and don't want to grow it any farther, but you need it continue mining. If the colony goes into hibernation, will it still mine resources? No, as per the definition of hibernation. That means you will still have to run supplies to them to keep them active. That's a hard no from me.

If you mandate that you need a greenhouse or such per x number of Kerbals, that's doable as long as the colony doesn't grow beyond the hard cap. But that can also cause other problems when you actually visit the colony after the max population has been reached. That is another can of worms that will have to be dealt with.

There's no easy way to work LS into the game at any level. To many variables, too many different opinions on what will work and how hard it needs to be. 

I believe that LS should be a consideration in a space type game, but it needs to add a value to the game, not create another headache to deal with or force you into only one style of play, especially with KSP.

There are many little things I have to say about this. Regarding the need of supply missions, there are things you can do, for instance automated control (principles currently in game), or just letting the base keep mining even when in hibernation. Since you mention the definition of hibernation, you might be referring to my Hibernating Stable-State LS design earlier in the thread, where indeed all operations will be cut in hibernation, but that plan had automated recurring resupply missions (that you only fly once) built in. So I guess that could mean that stable-state =/= self sufficiency, and you could get a colony stable at any size by automatically shipping in goods (as opposed to making it all yourself, which would be self-sufficiency). Also, the HSS plan only works for craft that are big enough, so small bases ala KSP1 could still be made, exactly what you want, but I digress....

 

Also, from what we know about bases, they will not grow past a hard cap. You need to enable it to grow to a new cap by meeting requirements, otherwise the kerbals have no reason to celebrate, and the devs have said there will be no new kerbals without reasons to celebrate. So that is one worry less, as the requirements can be build to fit any model necessary.

[shdwlrd]

20 minutes ago, nikokespprfan said:

Also, from what we know about bases, they will not grow past a hard cap. You need to enable it to grow to a new cap by meeting requirements, otherwise the kerbals have no reason to celebrate, and the devs have said there will be no new kerbals without reasons to celebrate. So that is one worry less, as the requirements can be build to fit any model necessary.

Yes I understand that. But, answer this, what game play value does having LS just for the colonies and not anything else? If you're going to implement LS for colonies, why not do it for everything?