Habitation, Happiness, and Life Support

[Pthigrivi]

Usually I like to have a fully open theoretical conversation about these things but I've been thinking about this a while and I cant help myself so Im just gonna dive in. Im sure by now this is all moot cause Intercept has its own plan but I find this fun so I tried to think through a way that habitation and life support could work in KSP2. LS especially is a bit of a controversial topic so Im going to do my best to convince people why it should be part of the game and how it could be implemented in a simplified, non-punishing fashion. First, a few principles:

1) Any habitation/LS system should have by default deathless, non-punishing consequences. As suggested by Nate if players screw up and don't manage things perfectly it shouldn't result in killing a whole crew or colony. Doing things right should give players bonuses to things like science and resource extraction rather than punishing players for less than efficient designs. 

2) Habitation and LS should result in minimal fuss and management. After all, KSP is first and foremost a building and flying game, not a management sim. Systems should be as often as possible set-it-and-forget-it, and when moving vessels and supplies around players shouldn't be bogged down manually pumping a bunch of resources from place to place. The best way to do this is to limit the number of LS resources to begin with, ideally to 1.

3) Habitation and LS should have a consistent logic throughout the game, applicable both in vessels as well as colonies and stations. There will be differences of course because of access to ISRU and relative changes in population, and there might be added bonuses that only larger stations and colonies can take advantage of, but the bedrock logic and functionality should remain the same. They should also be easy to assess at a glance with one value that could be displayed as a color coded flag in map mode or in a single-line per vessel list.

4) Habitation and LS should come with a built-in grace-period with zero consequences so that players early in the progression don't need to worry about it at all. It should only start to matter over longish periods in space, and then gradually, so that it becomes phased into more and more self-sufficient colonies and missions. 

This begs the question though, why do we need habitation and LS to begin with? There are lots of reasons it could be important: it adds a sense of realism, it could balance other time-based mechanics, it makes players care about kerbals’ well-being and makes them more central to the game, but those aren't the most important reason. The most important reason is that all parts should have a function. Any part or module in a colony that doesn't have a direct value within the mechanics of the game is a waste of mass and resources and only exists for the purpose of role play. Now, role play is fun, most of us do it, and parts can have role play value too, but they shouldn't have role play value only. Every part of a vessel or colony should be an integrated component of a working machine with some function either structural, mechanical, or as a part of a resource chain. That same process of careful engineering that we apply on vessels in the VAB to manage fuel and power and maneuverability and optimize DV should feel similar to designing well-oiled colonies. Otherwise things like big hab domes and greenhouses are just empty window dressing. They'll be little more than non-vital, non-functional fluff.

Happy Kerbals are productive Kerbals:

The first goal I think is to boil both habitation and LS down to one manageable value: Happiness. If Kerbals have space and food and company they stay happy, and when they're happy they get a big bonus to science rewards and to resource harvesting and processing--lets say 2x.  If they run out of food or are cooped up too long in tiny quarters their happiness begins to fall, eventually down to zero at which point they become 'miserable' and receive no bonus at all. This should probably come with an additional grace period of 10 days or so with no consequences so players don't have to worry about it at all on early journeys to the Mun and Minmus. Each active vessel would come with a Happiness value (100-0) and a timer for when it would begin to fall--when habitation or food would run out, whichever was less--and this value could easily be seen in the VAB so players could tweak up vessels and instantly see the resulting gains or reductions. To reset the vessel would need to dock with an adequately supplied colony or station. 

Habitation Value: 

The first component to keeping kerbals happy for long periods of time would be adding habitation modules. Most of the modules we currently know--command modules, science labs, etc.--would have hab values less than 1 and sometimes 0. You'd have to add special living quarters or rings to support larger numbers of kerbals. They should be combinable in any way you wish to give players flexibility so long as the Hab value exceeded the number of crew members. The same would be true on stations and colonies, so you always need enough space to keep your population happy and productive. 

Staving off Loneliness:

But why would you bring more kerbals on longer missions? Because company keeps the blues away. If all your Kerbals have adequate habitation each additional kerbal doubles the length of time they'll remain happy. So 1 kerbal will be happy for 100 days, 2 for 200 days, 3 for 400 days, 4 for 800 days, 5 for 1600 days, etc. I think you can keep it loose like that, especially as you get into long journeys to Duna, Jool, and Eeloo. You'll also see that on a station or colony with 12+ Kerbals your hab would essentially be indefinite, in fact it might as well read "infinite" after 10. 

Snacks for the Journey:

With that taken care of there would be just one more variable: food. You could call it snacks or LS or whatever you wanted but there would be a single resource that ticks down over time based on the number of crew members, and when it runs out Kerabls enter their 10 day grace period and then start to become grumpy, angry, and finally miserable. They still function, you can still move them about and do EVAs, but they receive no bonuses and essentially perform half as well.  I've personally played a lot with USI-LS and I think its great. A lot of what I've written here is similar. Honestly it's really easy to set up missions with plenty of supplies and I rarely worry about it. But it is slightly fussy, and though I love the mulch/fertilizer mechanic I think you could make it even easier. Any colony or vessel with ISRU could use greenhouses to convert a basic resource (ore, volatiles, whatever) into LS, which can then be pumped into tanks and loaded onto vessels in off-world VABs. The rate at which LS is consumed can be decreased with larger and heavier recyclers with more efficiency and greater capacity. There should even be some really heavy ones that are 100% efficient so you never really have to worry about depletion. They'd be great for colonies and stations with big crews, but would be too heavy for most players to lug around on exploration missions where lighter recyclers would do the trick. This creates some interesting trade-offs and break-even points in design, but still gives players broad leeway in how they approach the problem of long-duration missions. 


So thats my stab at it. Im sure there are issues and things I haven't thought of, but I think its a manageable, understandable, punishment-free way of handling this whole thing. 

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[JedTech]

I enjoy a  light weight life support system for the extra gameplay, but in no way do I want to deal with Kerbal emotions and health. I have enough of that in real life. As far as I'm concerned, Kerbals live for space travel and have evolved to thrive in a spaceship environment over long periods of time.

[shdwlrd]

Yes, LS shouldn't be punishing nor a hassle to plan. Basically it should only apply to colonies beyond a basic level. Most craft designed for space, everything related to LS should be built in and accounted for. No additional parts required. Just add the amount of supplies you need, and that's it.

Habitation is as simple as adding extra space to a craft or colony. Basically some place to get away during the long trips to Jool or the many years stuck in orbit somewhere.

 

[The Aziz]

Just let it be a simple resource like any other. No food, no work. (But for the love of gods, don't apply this to ship control, I'd hate to miss an important maneuver only because my pilot ran out of snacks, like it happened many times when I was trying to play with LS mod) If your base doesn't produce food, when you bring it from another place, you simply see for how long it will last and when you have to resupply to keep things going. If you have active hydroponics module, it should simply tell you how many Kerbals it can feed, simple production vs consumption calculation. And if population exceeds capabilities of food production, you simply need to build more. 

[Pthigrivi]

8 hours ago, JedTech said:

I enjoy a  light weight life support system for the extra gameplay, but in no way do I want to deal with Kerbal emotions and health. I have enough of that in real life. As far as I'm concerned, Kerbals live for space travel and have evolved to thrive in a spaceship environment over long periods of time.

I hear you, and there are a lot of ways to handle this. In this case though happiness isn’t an additional thing to worry about, its just the metric by which LS’s effects are measured. Rather than Kerbals instantly dying or becoming uncooperative it creates a soft cushion of effect, and gives players a simple one-stop number to understand resulting bonuses.

And I quite agree with both @shdwlrd and @The Aziz that we can probably get this down to one resource with a producer like greenhouses or hydrophobic bays. The only thing Id add to that are optional recyclers to improve efficiency reduce mass on long journeys. You wouldn’t need them on trips to the Mun or Minmus, but depending on the size of your crew they might pay for themselves mass-wise on a transit to Duna or Dres. 

Keep in mind too because it really only gives bonuses (albeit big ones) players can absolutely ignore all this and pack them into landercans with no supplies. They’ll still be able to make maneuvers and land and do science, just the results and rewards and mining efficiency will be less. 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Yark-aki]

I think it should be able to turn on/off like KSP1's Kerbonouts' Level or sandbox/science/career mode.

Even I've never played career mode I love KSP because its science mode is enough exciting for me.

[Ahres]

I'm with you, @Pthigrivi. My preferences for LS appear to be quite in line with your own.

[AtomicTech]

Yeah! 

It's sounds like a great combo of many different LS mods!

[Pthigrivi]

Thanks yall.  I mean its silly cause Intercept has really smart people and they probably have it sorted by now. And yeah @Yark-aki I think because its non-punishing this level is plenty manageable for the default setting on Normal difficulty, but it could toned down or turned off on easier modes. 

And since I stirred up so little controversy I'll take it another step: the whole reason for the class system is to encourage players to bring more than 1 Kerbal on their journeys, but you can replace pilots with probes and engineers are seldom needed so you really ever only need 1-2 kerbals on any vessel. I think making additional crew the central hab-time modifier does the job of encouraging larger crews more efficiently and effectively and you could actually remove skills and classes entirely. The thing is we're not just going to the Mun anymore, we might have hundreds of kerbals to deal with and the less we have to individually manage them the better. Either they're popping up randomly which leads to imbalances, or you have to individually assign them which could get old quick after the first 50 or so. Im kind of okay with all kerbals being Kerbonauts with the same set of skills that you can plug and play anywhere. You could split it between colony crew who run generators and greenhouses and processors... but, why? It seems like it could just be one big pool. Id be interested if people disagree on this point.

The one caveat Id make is that there is this supposed population boom mechanic to think about. I'd love if colonies had nurseries that would fill with little Kerbaling mud-puppies after boom events. They wouldn't require additional LS or habitation right away, but as you increased capacity they'd move into the general population and give players more personnel to work with. That way players wouldn't need to have a bunch of extra hab space in anticipation of Boom events, they could grow into it after the fact.  

Edited January 12, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[mattinoz]

Seems to me this combination would make 2 simple but effective hooks for mods to extend without needing to reimplement that core game function. 

Supplies is a single resource you either have enough or not and things happen. Mods could break this down to water, food, 3d printer ribbon and make a failure in anyone flick the switch to say not enough supplies. Other mods might look at qualities and introduce more subtle effects as supples become limited. Neither would need to know about each but could be better if they do. 

Habitation hook is similar. A health mod might tone the multiplier down over time due things happening. A radiation mod might be more immediate in it's effect. Again they could potential do this without knowing about each other.