Life support - a hard or soft limitation?

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

but it's pretty certain that the "simulation gameplay" part will be simplified as far as they can without betraying too much the "grounded in real world/physics" premise.

And, if they keep any kind of orbital mechanics as part of the gameplay this will be 100% wasted effort.

 

Orbital mechanics make KSP an outlier among space games, it's the sole thing that puts KSP into the "niche, hardcore" kind of games and keep it nailed there.

No amount of simplifying or cartoon goofiness is going to change that.

 

The casual masses aren't going to suddenly want to learn orbital mechanics just because the Kerbals have goofy expressions.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Master39

[MechBFP]

3 minutes ago, Master39 said:

And, if they keep any kind of orbital mechanics as part of the gameplay this will be 100% wasted effort.

 

Orbital mechanics make KSP an outlier among space games, it's the sole thing that puts KSP into the "niche, hardcore" kind of games and keep it nailed there.

No amount of simplifying or cartoon goofiness is going to change that.

 

The casual masses aren't going to suddenly want to learn orbital mechanics just because the Kerbals have goofy expressions.

The fact that KSP 2 exists seems to be a direct counter to your assumption. 

[t_v]

18 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

Not only because such systems are getting in the way of the core gameplay loop, but also because they are very difficult to design, program and balance, especially if you want to satisfy the whole player base.

Agreed on the difficulty of balance; there will never be a system that satisfies more than… I’d say 80% of players of KSP 2. Still, that doesn’t mean that the devs should leave out those systems entirely. 
 

Im just wondering: what do you consider the “core gameplay loop” of KSP to be? Because different people see it much differently. Is it just flying rockets along trajectories? Plus maybe putting something together with a dV budget? Does aesthetic design of ships get in the way of that pure “orbital simulator” gameplay loop? Or maybe a harder one: does the ISRU system get in the way of that core gameplay loop? Just like LS, it entails spending time thinking about more than just trajectories and dV. Does the electricity system distract from the core gameplay loop? It means you have to design your crafts beyond just taking dV into account, and it forces you to fly differently to conserve that resource. Do colonies distract from that core gameplay loop? They might feed back into it for sure, but you also have to spend time thinking about kerbals, just like with LS. What I’m trying to get at here is that if LS distracts from “core gameplay,” which, as far as I know so far, is restricted to building and flying hunks of fuel and engine for you, the what makes other systems that I consider “core gameplay” (EC, thermals, kerbal professions, pods holding kerbals, ISRU, EVA reassembly, sat networks, etc.)more worthy of being included?

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

The fact that KSP 2 exists seems to be a direct counter to your assumption. 

There are several games not pandering to the casual masses that have success.

The idea that anything more complex than a battle royale F2P fails is just in the heads of players.

There's plenty of money to be made in niches.

 

And there's plenty of games that are cartoonish and goofy without being any less hardcore or niche. ONI is a great example of that.

 

If you look at the list of Private Division published games you won't exactly find a lot of casual-oriented cash grabs.

[Pthigrivi]

Guys it can be both things.

1 hour ago, Gotmachine said:

Exactly, that's why any kind of LS system is very unlikely.

The central point of a LS mechanism is to introduce a new constraint in the form of max crewed mission time, and gameplay loops revolving around mission planning, manned vs unmanned choices, supply and ISRU. Those can be interesting gameplay elements, but they are in direct opposition with the core intended gameplay loop which is to freely and goofily assembling vastly overpowered rocket components to play with the rocket equation, playing around with orbital mechanics, and landing on unreachable worlds. I'm quite confident that people expecting KSP 2 to have more in depth simulation/gameplay mechanisms than KSP 1 are going to be utterly disappointed. If anything, they will be vastly simplified.

I might have agreed with you 2 years ago, but some of the glimpses we've gotten have suggested to me that mission planning, supply and ISRU are likely much more complex in KSP2 than in KSP1. We've seen a deep resource scanner and 4 different types of fuel factories and reactors. Nate has mentioned that MH engines come in 2 variants, one that uses water for atmospheric flights and another thats doped with Cesium. Nate has also said in interviews they're interested in LS in some form, but it won't result in ships full of dead kerbals, only colonies that don't perform as well. We've seen greenhouses from a very early stage in development. Presumably they have some function. Given all that I would only suggest that they may be setting their sights a little higher than wacky-goofy explosions and that it would be odd to have 15 different resources and systems for fuel and none that dealt with LS.

I say this especially given the huge value-add that a simplified LS system brings by adding 1-2 resources and a dozen or so parts. Its not just that it solves a series of potentially game-breaking exploits brought on by time-warp, or that it creates a number of interesting strategic decisions that opens up a whole world of creative design solutions. Its mainly that it makes spaceflight feel like spaceflight and makes kerbals themselves central to gameplay. In KSP1 the game balance on science returns is so wildly off that the kerbals themselves are basically squishy dead weight. I think if we're getting a game thats delving into colonies with potentially hundreds of inhabitants and interstellar flights where you really feel the vast emptiness of space you really want to feel like you're living off the land and keeping the little guys safe and healthy on long and perilous journeys. Having a simple LS system means you're spending maybe 5% of your time thinking about their wellbeing. Without an LS system the game looses a very important emotional thread that's every bit as effective a teacher about time and space-travel as is heat management or the oberth effect. Probably more so. 

 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[t_v]

40 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

it makes spaceflight feel like spaceflight and makes kerbals themselves central to gameplay.

This really hits the core of it. I’ve been arguing that LS is valid mechanically, mostly because the criticisms have been that the mechanics are bad for gameplay, it is annoying mechanically, it is not humorous or free form or interesting beyond the design phase. But none of that means anything if it doesn’t fit the game.

As a silly example, you could get a lot of gameplay out of designing your engines with every pipe and turbine and plumbing (?) your engine in-flight to change its properties, but it wouldn’t get the point across of how vast the distances and times of space flight are, how majestic it is, and how crazy it can become. LS does all that and anchors kerbals as people exploring space as opposed to just little animated tokens that you can move around the world to perform actions. 

[Gotmachine]

12 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Orbital mechanics make KSP an outlier among space games, it's the sole thing that puts KSP into the "niche, hardcore" kind of games and keep it nailed there.

No amount of simplifying or cartoon goofiness is going to change that.

Then you have clearly no idea about what makes a game a commercial success or failure. The success of KSP 1 comes from those factors :
- Being the first.
- Very low initial financial risks / investment.
- A handful of modders and hardcore users generating hype (and significantly contributing to the game development).
- The hype making tens of thousands of casual players buying the game because the goofy kerbals makes it not look like a hardcore simulation whose value as a game is basically non-existent past the initial discovery and first hours of gameplay.

KSP 2 is made in a completely different context, this is NOT an indie game like KSP 1. And given the circumstances, they very likely need the game to be an immediate financial success for the studio and the creative people in it to stay vaguely in charge.

So far, the people actually deciding what KSP 2 is / will be are making the right choices to make such a miracle happen in the current game market : maximize the hype factor (visuals, interstellar/epic content, multiplayer...) and ensuring the game get good reviews  and reputation by doing everything they can to provide a smooth learning curve and steady progression for the average player. 100% of what we heard is backing that, especially in the press interviews and promo videos, but also to some extent in the so-called "dev logs".

17 minutes ago, Master39 said:

There's plenty of money to be made in niches.

No. That was somewhat true 10 years ago. Now for every vaguely commercially successful niche game, there are a few barely recouping costs and dozens of failures. The studios managing to survive in niche markets are either well established ones or small and agile independent teams. Intercept Games is neither.

55 minutes ago, t_v said:

EC, thermals, kerbal professions, pods holding kerbals, ISRU, EVA reassembly, sat networks, etc.

Well, I don't have a crystal ball, but almost sure all of that will be either quite simplistic, mostly cosmetic or not present at all.

But don't misunderstand me. Yes, I don't expect stock KSP 2 to have in depth gameplay mechanisms. I think stuff like colonies, ISRU, resource and thermal management or life support will be very low complexity, casual game level of abstraction systems. Outside of the audience demographics argument, I doubt they have the manpower to deliver anything else.

What I hope they deliver is a good game that attract as many buyers and players as possible with an engaging but quick and simple progression system. I think the core creative and dev team are passionate, actually hardcore niche players at heart that want all those fancy systems. The way they can deliver that in the long run is by doing their best to ensure the core technical foundations are solid, so either them or the modding community can pick up over time with the actual "niche" content we are all longing for as long time (frustrated ?) KSP 1 players.

The worst that could happen is if instead of pouring all resources in a financially successful and technically viable long term product (that they actually end up delivering, something they obviously have been struggling with), they start dispersing efforts around niche features that won't get anywhere near enough resources to be good.

All I ask of KSP 2 at launch is to not be a bugged mess that suffer from the same chronic technical issues of KSP 1 and to deliver actually enjoyable, polished gameplay. And trust me, if they manage to do that, it will be a huge achievement. And once that's done, we can start to think about life support and other fancy features.

Personally, I'm pretty sure I won't like the stock KSP 2 content. Playing with speculative technology to perform even more speculative interstellar travel to establish science fiction colonies is something that I can't relate to in any way and that simply doesn't talk to me. But I hope it is something I will enjoy to play casually, as those other games that I enjoy but never touch again after a few dozen hours. Then hopefully, with time, either Intercept Games or modders will deliver what I'm actually waiting for as a hardcore, niche player.

[MechBFP]

25 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

Then you have clearly no idea about what makes a game a commercial success or failure. The success of KSP 1 comes from those factors :
- Being the first.
- Very low initial financial risks / investment.
- A handful of modders and hardcore users generating hype (and significantly contributing to the game development).
- The hype making tens of thousands of casual players buying the game because the goofy kerbals makes it not look like a hardcore simulation whose value as a game is basically non-existent past the initial discovery and first hours of gameplay.

KSP 2 is made in a completely different context, this is NOT an indie game like KSP 1. And given the circumstances, they very likely need the game to be an immediate financial success for the studio and the creative people in it to stay vaguely in charge.

So far, the people actually deciding what KSP 2 is / will be are making the right choices to make such a miracle happen in the current game market : maximize the hype factor (visuals, interstellar/epic content, multiplayer...) and ensuring the game get good reviews  and reputation by doing everything they can to provide a smooth learning curve and steady progression for the average player. 100% of what we heard is backing that, especially in the press interviews and promo videos, but also to some extent in the so-called "dev logs".

No. That was somewhat true 10 years ago. Now for every vaguely commercially successful niche game, there are a few barely recouping costs and dozens of failures. The studios managing to survive in niche markets are either well established ones or small and agile independent teams. Intercept Games is neither.

Well, I don't have a crystal ball, but almost sure all of that will be either quite simplistic, mostly cosmetic or not present at all.

But don't misunderstand me. Yes, I don't expect stock KSP 2 to have in depth gameplay mechanisms. I think stuff like colonies, ISRU, resource and thermal management or life support will be very low complexity, casual game level of abstraction systems. Outside of the audience demographics argument, I doubt they have the manpower to deliver anything else.

What I hope they deliver is a good game that attract as many buyers and players as possible with an engaging but quick and simple progression system. I think the core creative and dev team are passionate, actually hardcore niche players at heart that want all those fancy systems. The way they can deliver that in the long run is by doing their best to ensure the core technical foundations are solid, so either them or the modding community can pick up over time with the actual "niche" content we are all longing for as long time (frustrated ?) KSP 1 players.

The worst that could happen is if instead of pouring all resources in a financially successful and technically viable long term product (that they actually end up delivering, something they obviously have been struggling with), they start dispersing efforts around niche features that won't get anywhere near enough resources to be good.

All I ask of KSP 2 at launch is to not be a bugged mess that suffer from the same chronic technical issues of KSP 1 and to deliver actually enjoyable, polished gameplay. And trust me, if they manage to do that, it will be a huge achievement. And once that's done, we can start to think about life support and other fancy features.

Personally, I'm pretty sure I won't like the stock KSP 2 content. Playing with speculative technology to perform even more speculative interstellar travel to establish science fiction colonies is something that I can't relate to in any way and that simply doesn't talk to me. But I hope it is something I will enjoy to play casually, as those other games that I enjoy but never touch again after a few dozen hours. Then hopefully, with time, either Intercept Games or modders will deliver what I'm actually waiting for as a hardcore, niche player.

The game will at a minimum keep the same complexity that KSP 1 does, because as you mentioned the game needs good reviews and backlash from “dumbing it down” would be significant enough to be a cause for concern.

Otherwise I agree that anything new will likely be limited such that it won’t liquid off the more casual players.

[LHACK4142]

AAAAAH just wanna have incentive to build large habitats, gotta make you understand

 

 

Seriously, I've always been so annoyed that kerbals are fine with sitting alone in a tiny capsule for 100 years, and that there's absolutely no reason to make awesome, huge space stations and motherships

[t_v]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

The game will at a minimum keep the same complexity that KSP 1 does, because as you mentioned the game needs good reviews and backlash from “dumbing it down” would be significant enough to be a cause for concern.

I agree with this, and while I’m not going to go point-by-point talking about how KSP 2 can be a huge financial success while having lots of complexity, I definitely think that on top of that, dumbing it down would be a huge financial mistake. You can take a small slice of a large market, or you can take essentially an entire small market. And if your fan base is actively going to diminish your chances in the large market, take the small one. 
 

Gotmachine is right though that these complex systems resulted in a huge fraction of players quitting early or getting annoyed early in KSP 1 (alongside with the difficult UI). But just like KSP 2 could be dumbed down to oblivion outside of travel, it can also avoid the mistakes KSP 1 made with the progression. The most important part is this:

1 hour ago, Gotmachine said:

doing everything they can to provide a smooth learning curve and steady progression for the average player.

This is vitally important for the success of the game, and I personally would like to see this employed in the end-game so that I am not hit with a tidal wave of new systems as soon as I finish the « KSP 1 » section of the game. This doesn’t mean cutting all endgame systems out; I still want to put radiators on my Daedalus. Rather, it means these systems need to be introduced in an intuitive and simple way, and slowly build up. EC starts with solar panels, and you learn to add batteries when you start needing comms and ion engines. This staggered approach is great and means you don’t get the full complexity of a system at once. Now if only those hurdles weren’t placed at already relatively difficult steps in learning how to fly… See where I’m getting at? Tutorials will make things much easier to understand, UI will be designed to not scare people away and help people do things intuitively, and systems will be introduced methodically and in steps. Smooth learning curve and steady progression doesn’t mean flat learning curve and superficial progression. Let LS be a part of the game, and it will actually help sales if the team does it right. 

[Pthigrivi]

With all the hyped and hinted content I fully agree you could end up with too much complexity and a bogged down, glacial game pacing. Life support just isn't the thing I would cut though because its got a really high qualitative bang for buck and it works on all the same principles the game is built on. I'd be happy to see them strip out all contracts, kerbal skill leveling and specialization, everything in the administration building, and greatly simplify science and communications, etc. to make room for better resource scanning and life support. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

Then you have clearly no idea about what makes a game a commercial success or failure. The success of KSP 1 comes from those factors :
- Being the first.
- Very low initial financial risks / investment.
- A handful of modders and hardcore users generating hype (and significantly contributing to the game development).
- The hype making tens of thousands of casual players buying the game because the goofy kerbals makes it not look like a hardcore simulation whose value as a game is basically non-existent past the initial discovery and first hours of gameplay.

KSP 2 is made in a completely different context, this is NOT an indie game like KSP 1. And given the circumstances, they very likely need the game to be an immediate financial success for the studio and the creative people in it to stay vaguely in charge.

I don't know what or who you're replying to here but this has exactly nothing to do with anything I said.

 

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

by doing everything they can to provide a smooth learning curve and steady progression for the average player.

Which is:

• Step 1: Provide a learning curve for new players.

The end.

KSP 1 learning curve is:  "Close the game and come back after some hours on youtube".

 

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

Well, I don't have a crystal ball, but almost sure all of that will be either quite simplistic, mostly cosmetic or not present at all.

But don't misunderstand me. Yes, I don't expect stock KSP 2 to have in depth gameplay mechanisms. I think stuff like colonies, ISRU, resource and thermal management or life support will be very low complexity, casual game level of abstraction systems. Outside of the audience demographics argument, I doubt they have the manpower to deliver anything else.

You probably missed quite a lot then.

We already know that:

• Power generation goes quite a bit further compared to KSP1 and it's one of the main constraints for colonies and big interstellar motherships.
• Thermals are going to be the other big design constraint of big interstellar motherships.
• IRSU is going to be quite a bit more complex than KSP1's "single ore to rule them all" system.
• The game is going to have multiple fuels and being able to produce one fuel and not the other at some location is going to be part of the game.

Every single aspect we know about the game is going to be more complex compared to their equivalent (if it exists) in KSP1.

 

A well thought, complex, game-play loop doesn't necessarily mean the spreadsheet monster than most resource and life support mods usually end up being. There's an abyss between having to count the oxygen molecules you need for a 10 years journey along with other 200 different resources and a colonization ship to another solar system on a 50 years long journey consisting of an orange tank, a mainsail and 200 external seats strapped to every free surface.

 

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

But I hope it is something I will enjoy to play casually, as those other games that I enjoy but never touch again after a few dozen hours. Then hopefully, with time, either Intercept Games or modders will deliver what I'm actually waiting for as a hardcore, niche player.

I think you have a distorted notion of what is a casual experience. For most people anything more complex than NMS flight system is already too hardcore.

KSP will always be a niche game for as long as it has actual orbital mechanics in it.

If their financial success depends on the game being a mainstream hit then the game already flopped. Even in the best case scenario we're talking about a niche side game from a the side studio of a big publisher. It's a Private Division game, not a Rockstar one.

 

52 minutes ago, t_v said:

Gotmachine is right though that these complex systems resulted in a huge fraction of players quitting early or getting annoyed early in KSP 1 (alongside with the difficult UI). But just like KSP 2 could be dumbed down to oblivion outside of travel, it can also avoid the mistakes KSP 1 made with the progression. The most important part is this:

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

doing everything they can to provide a smooth learning curve and steady progression for the average player.

This is vitally important for the success of the game, and I personally would like to see this employed in the end-game so that I am not hit with a tidal wave of new systems as soon as I finish the « KSP 1 » section of the game. This doesn’t mean cutting all endgame systems out; I still want to put radiators on my Daedalus. Rather, it means these systems need to be introduced in an intuitive and simple way, and slowly build up. EC starts with solar panels, and you learn to add batteries when you start needing comms and ion engines. This staggered approach is great and means you don’t get the full complexity of a system at once. Now if only those hurdles weren’t placed at already relatively difficult steps in learning how to fly… See where I’m getting at? Tutorials will make things much easier to understand, UI will be designed to not scare people away and help people do things intuitively, and systems will be introduced methodically and in steps. Smooth learning curve and steady progression doesn’t mean flat learning curve and superficial progression. Let LS be a part of the game, and it will actually help sales if the team does it right. 

It's not the complex systems, mainstream RPG routinely come out with magic or crafting systems that are more complex than any of the LS system proposed here, it's the lack of an explanation.

KSP is a game that requires you to understand orbital mechanics to enjoy it but never teaches it to you.

Even something as simple as Minecraft was severely crippled by the lack of an internal source for recipes and game mechanics, when they added those the game became incredibly more casual-friendly and way less frustrating despite the overall difficulty remaining the same.

People don't want to put in the time to discover the recipe for a pickaxe in Minecraft by trial and error, let alone figuring out the laws of actual IRL orbital mechanics.

 

As you said the game has to gradually introduce you to things, and offer plenty of explanation for new systems and resources, sure enough I hope that gradual introduction of new things expands back in the "KSP 1 section". As an example, the Dawn and similar early-game ion engines (especially if nerfed back to the original values) can teach you how to deal with low thrust high efficiency engines burning under warp and in the background and high EC usage at a smaller scale, serving as a training ground for when you'll move huge motherships with the same tech.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Master39

[t_v]

1 minute ago, Master39 said:

It's not the complex systems, mainstream RPG routinely come out with magic or crafting systems that are more complex than any of the LS system proposed here, it's the lack of an explanation.

This is what I meant; thanks for the external clarification. Making sure people can use complex systems is more important than the inclusion or lack of those systems. 

[SciMan]

On 8/9/2022 at 5:58 PM, Pthigrivi said:

My feeling is if you boil things down this far you kind of don't have LS anymore, not as a game mechanic anyway. Even if it's simple (and it should be) there aught to be some kind of clever puzzle there or resource that depletes that adds some kind of design process, otherwise why bother?

OK yes, you're pretty much right that "you don't have LS anymore" that was my intention. I don't like the current version of LS mods that are available for KSP 1. Too much micromanagement, and from what I've seen, LS is one of those "only stick, no carrot" types of things.
What's the reward for having a functional life support system? Your crew doesn't die. Last I checked, there's a whole lot more than "not dying" needed before you start experiencing the feeling known as "Fun".

Also, You'll note I did mention "if the recyclers aren't procedural" in there. My main complaint about "it's gonna take too many parts" goes away entirely if you're able to make the recycler just one part that's the right size and mass and power draw for the capabilities you need.
Perhaps you add some safety margin on top of that, but that's something "you" the vessel designer have to do when designing the craft, rather than the safety margin being incorporated by the mechanics of the game when you punch in how many crew you want it to support indefinitely.

And no matter how else the life support works, there SHOULD be a single-part solution for "indefinite duration life support just add power", independent of the other considerations you may have about life support and its various converters and recyclers.

Because I want life support to be a problem that I can make go away, with enough technology.
Let me close the loop, aside from electricity and waste heat.

Now that I mentioned it, there's another factor I'd like to talk about. Waste heat.
Waste heat from life support is very different from waste heat from something like a reactor or nuclear engine of some sort
Yes, it's still "heat energy", but the difference is that the output temperature of the life support waste heat is much much much lower than that of a nuclear reactor or nuclear engine.

This means something when you're placing the radiators for the craft. It means you're going to need either one or more heat pumps in a chain (to pump that heat energy up the heat gradient to the higher temperature of the main reactor radiators), or you're going to need a separate radiator array that only deals with waste heat from the life support and any other low-grade waste heat sources, in addition to the radiator array you need to handle the heat from the main reactor(s) and/or nuclear engine(s).

EDIT:
Another thing, since I've seen a few posts claiming that greenhouses should only be a colony part, and not a vessel part.
I respectfully disagree with that idea, as well as the idea that crew would go "space crazy".
Neither idea is viable when the travel time to another star could be on the order of 10 years. You're not going to go interstellar by building a series of stops along the way.
No, you're going to go from "home system" to "destination system" with no stops in between. So your crew must be able to stay sane and supplied for likely DOUBLE that time at the minimum, because you're going to need more time at the destination to find a planetary body where it's both possible and worth it to set up a colony.

And if that takes 10 years, there is no substitute for a completely closed cycle life support system and some way to mitigate the crew going insane or becoming bored.

Now on to the greenhouse thing. Greenhouses don't have to be big. Humans aren't herbivores, and genetically-engineered vat-grown steak (pretty much the only option for a morale-boosting protein source on a long duration mission since "cows" would be far too heavy) doesn't eat grass.
Oh and greenhouses don't even need sunlight to work. Well, not "real" sunlight anyways.
Light is indeed needed, of a similar spectrum and intensity to that of the home star, but the photons do NOT have to come from a gravitationally contained fusion reactor using the triple-alpha process.
What I'm saying is that the right kinds of electrically-powered lights can do the job just fine. Usually they're called "grow lights".
And with grow lights, water, and the right mix of fertilizer chemicals (nearly always able to be derived from crew waste), you can make a hydroponic garden, which doesn't even need dirt! Combine this with genetic engineering and you can get high-yield crops that provide an excellent source of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.
But I suppose if you want to provide protein as well (and don't like the idea of vat-grown steaks), you could have a garden growing a crop of something like peanuts as well (crew screening would include instant and non-negotiable disqualification for anyone allergic to peanuts in that case, naturally).
If it needs gravity, that's fine too, you can still do it on a vessel.
We have centrifuge parts, remember?
All that is needed is to take the guts out of a centrifuge and dedicate the space to hydroponic gardens instead of crew habitation spaces. It probably doesn't even need as much gravity as crew does, so you could even have it be in another ring inside the crew habitation ring, with them either connected or counter-rotating.

My point is that engineering is extremely flexible. It's the coding of the game that is (potentially) not (well without mods at least).

I do like the idea of life support on vessels, but it should VERY MUCH be a problem that can be made to "disappear with the proper planning". If that means putting the right sized recycler and maybe a greenhouse centrifuge on the vessel, then so be it. But it shouldn't require dozens of single-resource tanks or single-function converters.
If you have a bunch of different resources and always need all of them, COMBINE their storage tanks and/or converters and recylcers into ONE unit that stores some amount of all of them, in the right proportions needed for use, otherwise you're just wasting my time and CPU resources with all these extra parts that wouldn't mean anything if the life support "just took electricity and nothing more". It should be a "one part solves all your problems" solution.

I can't stress how easy you have to make the life support problem for me to be on-board with having it in my game. If it requires any more interaction than me remembering to turn on the recycler when in the VAB, I'm not gonna play with it.

Edited August 13, 2022 by SciMan

[Brofessional]

I like the idea of kerbals only have a single "happiness" stat that is then affected by a multitude of other stats, each with their own penalties and bonuses. Like for example instead of running out of oxygen completely the ship/colony could have an "air quality" stat. 0% air quality wouldn't kill/incapacitate the kerbals but it would give a large penalty to happiness, and if happiness gets low enough they refuse to work or whatever. Maybe your colony has poor air quality or high gravity or something that's incurring a happiness penalty, but you're negating that penalty by having luxury snacks or an entertainment facility.

You can of course adjust the difficulty to be more or less punishing, but that kind of system offers a lot of flexibility and gives you incentive to build things that may not be strictly necessary, like entertainment facilities. It may not be totally realistic but I think it fits the Kerbal theme.

 

I'm sure by this point the devs already have a pretty good idea of what they want to do, so really we'll just have to wait and give feedback when the game is released. I won't be surprised if life support is absent/barebones at release, and then expanded in the future.

[Pthigrivi]

On 8/13/2022 at 10:49 AM, SciMan said:

OK yes, you're pretty much right that "you don't have LS anymore" that was my intention. I don't like the current version of LS mods that are available for KSP 1. Too much micromanagement, and from what I've seen, LS is one of those "only stick, no carrot" types of things.
What's the reward for having a functional life support system? Your crew doesn't die. Last I checked, there's a whole lot more than "not dying" needed before you start experiencing the feeling known as "Fun".

I think this, like folks’ feelings around stock career mode, is one of those "this is all I've experienced and I can't imagine a better system" problems. Better systems certainly are possible, especially if they're tied into other better gameplay dynamics like better tech research and resource processing. Off the bat lets recap some critical features that eliminate 90% of the common concerns about life support mechanics:

1) Consider water and O2 100% recycled so long as modules are powered. Now you're down to a single consumable resource: food.

2) Incorporate a 10-20 day grace period in which no negative consequences are levied even without food. This means all early orbital and Munar flights require no consideration for life support beyond steady power, which you need anyway for control. Players can be slowly introduced to the idea as they establish permanent stations and colonies, and perhaps while exploring Minmus and local asteroids. 

3) No permadeath and no loss of flight control on normal difficulty.  All default consequences for lack of LS should be focused on research returns and ISRU extraction bonuses. Again: this about rewarding players for doing things well not punishing them for mistakes.
 

On 8/13/2022 at 10:49 AM, SciMan said:

Also, You'll note I did mention "if the recyclers aren't procedural" in there. My main complaint about "it's gonna take too many parts" goes away entirely if you're able to make the recycler just one part that's the right size and mass and power draw for the capabilities you need.
Perhaps you add some safety margin on top of that, but that's something "you" the vessel designer have to do when designing the craft, rather than the safety margin being incorporated by the mechanics of the game when you punch in how many crew you want it to support indefinitely.

We don't have procedural engines and are unlikely to have procedural reactors, and I think LS can be even simpler than those problems. As we've all experienced there's a tradeoff between thrust and ISP and when you know your projected TWR and dV budget you can approximate a minimized total mass for your drive system, and that minimum is what you're optimizing for. When you boil it right down life support can produce a similar dynamic based on crew size and elapsed flight duration. 

I began some napkin math on the previous page but let's dig a bit deeper. I'll continue with the assumption that Kerbals eat 1.25kg of food per day (half what humans eat) and that its 50% water. For most KSOI missions you're better off just packing a tank of snacks. 3 kerbals traveling to Minmus and back are going to require just .075t of food--or a quarter of that with a 15 day grace period. Likewise 4 kerbals traveling for 100 days to an asteroid and back would need less than half a ton of food to keep them happy. So far we're in pretty negligible mass territory all things considered. At this stage players are just being introduced to the concept of LS without any real penalty. Where things change is when you start building your first orbital stations, colonies, and crewed missions to Duna. I'd propose introducing a 0.5t radial snack rehydrator and a 1t, 1.25m inline rehydrator that would reduce food consumption by 50% for 3 and 6 kerbals respectively. Mass-wise these would breakeven for 6 kerbals over 266 days, so if you had a long-term station or colony or a well-staffed mission to Duna you'd probably want some combination of these, although rare-resource and power costs should be considered. 

Things get more interesting with the option for greenhouses, hydroponics, and ISRU. By the time you're starting to think about this you've probably built a station or two and began building colonies on the Mun or Minmus and are thinking about how to make them self-sustaining. At this stage mass doesn't matter so much, but let's pretend that vessels and colonies all use the same basic principles and set our benchmark based on the first time regenerative LS might matter--a 10 kerbal Jool mission. Now we're talking 20t of food without recyclers, and 12t even with rehydrators. Again I'd suggest a 2t radial greenhouse and a 4t 2.5m in-line hydroponics bay that operate at 90% efficiency for 6 and 12 kerbals respectively to make it worth it. That is to say all water is being recycled at 100% and nutrients are being recycled at 80%, leaving just 10% supplemental mass. Let's call this nutrient supplement "fertilizer" and make it produceable via ISRU. Now instead of 2t of recyclers + 10t of food you're packing a 4t hydroponics bay + 2t of fertilizer for the journey. Quite a savings! For colonies and bases with larger populations I might include 3.75m greenhouses and Hydroponics bays that reduce ISRU loads and generate new LS for ongoing missions. If these produced enough food for 20 Kerbals each a colony with 70 inhabitants would need 4 of them, utilizing 8.7kg of refined fertilizer per day to sustain the local population, and if you wished using the extra capacity to turn 6.25kg  each of fertilizer and water into fresh food.

This, I think, gets us through the first and second act. But next is interstellar. We don't yet know the kinds of velocities or optimal crew-compliments for interstellar journeys but at 4ly at 10%c  thats a 40 year journey. Let's say for fun we're going to bring 50 kerbals to Debdeb. Now we're talking nearly 100t in raw food, and 25t even with hydroponics bays. I understand the desire for a 100% efficient, closed loop technology, but as a game dynamic you still want that time-pressure, even on long scales. At this stage I'd recommend an 8t 3.75m molecular food reprocessor that operates at 99.5% efficiency for 60 kerbals. Now you have a total LS tonnage at 12.5t vs 25t without. 

This is the kind of level-up efficiency I'd love to see to make LS a really compelling, long-term gameplay mechanic. With fuel-switch tanks we're talking maybe 3-5 tank types, 2-3 recyclers, 4-5 greenhouses/hydroponics bays, and 2 interstellar food reprocessors--12-15 parts total. As a player all you're concerned about is tonnage, and what level of tech you have access to. In the early game it's nothing. In the pre-interplanetary stage its just kerbals x days, and this is calculated for you using flight-planning tools. At the interplanetary scale you're digging into mass/duration tradeoffs, and at the interstellar scale you're doing some tighter optimization using nearly 100% efficient recyclers to sustain larger populations over larger timescales. This all seems like a pretty manageable while robust mechanic over the full scale of progression with very little cost in terms of asset and resource development. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[JadeOfMaar]

My take on the poll questions:

1. Running out of life support should absolutely be lethal. But, since not everyone will agree with that, this should be optional and switchable for a fainted/hibernation state. In keeping with the kids cartoon vibe that kerbals have, you could have the "death" progression be they go comatose then turn brown (like plants) then after some amount of time they poof into dust/ashes (leaving something behind to put in a coffin). If you've played The Sims you get the idea.
    
2. That's quite a lot to think about but I'm particular to radiation, living space, temperature, partial pressure of Oxygen, partial pressure of toxins.
    
3. It's actually a pretty nice idea to require a medic class. I don't see it having much use in a stock game but in the case of Kerbalism and Kerbal Health where radiation, microgravity, mental breakdown, air toxicity and pathogens are a thing, it will have plenty value. On the side the medic can have a greater ability to go without food as its diet could be much healthier or would have a bit of "privilege" in the form of access to snacks in the form of condensed (and likely tasteless) nutrient pills and extra water for those pills.

Edited August 14, 2022 by JadeOfMaar

[jimmymcgoochie]

From what I’ve seen in the KSP2 dev blogs etc., colony “life support” is more likely to be ‘feed the colony x amount of this thing and it’ll work y% faster than the baseline’ than ‘feed the colony x amount of this thing or EVERYBODY DIES AND THE COLONY IS RUINED’. Give them nice snacks instead of dehydrated rations and they’ll build your new spaceship faster.

On ships, probably nothing at all- interstellar flight would make life support unmanageable even without having to worry about radiation exposure over such a long timescale and with some form of nuclear power and/or propulsion system.

[The Aziz]

50 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

On ships, probably nothing at all- interstellar flight would make life support unmanageable even without having to worry about radiation exposure over such a long timescale and with some form of nuclear power and/or propulsion system.

On long distance ships you probably could have self sustainable systems. If you can put a greenhouse in a colony, what's stopping you from doing the same on a interstellar ship? Even if they need more than just electricity to work, I'm guessing water, it's still easier to fill one of those huge spherical tanks with water for LS/cooling/whatever than packing tons of snacks. Especially since I assume water usage wouldn't be that big. Then again, if it's only to keep things running better, there's little point of doing that on a ship, unless you plan to do some research on the way.

[Stephensan]

i can just totally seeing this being an option just like "plasma blackout" in ksp 1... enabled just by an option to fit both peoples needs

 

• Soft limitation makes it take longer to do stuff (reduced efficiency) Stock KSP 2
  
   
• Hard limitations will REQIURE life support items such as Food, Liquids, Kerbal Accommodations like living space even for the most simplest things for things like ISS like places, or long distance traveling. Ofc way more complicated, and more enjoyable for long term fulfillment for building large locations, or longer term flights. etc

 

 

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Stephensan said:

i can just totally seeing this being an option just like "plasma blackout" in ksp 1... enabled just by an option to fit both peoples needs

 

• Soft limitation makes it take longer to do stuff (reduced efficiency) Stock KSP 2
  
   
• Hard limitations will REQIURE life support items such as Food, Liquids, Kerbal Accommodations like living space even for the most simplest things for things like ISS like places, or long distance traveling. Ofc way more complicated, and more enjoyable for long term fulfillment for building large locations, or longer term flights. etc

The reality of "Optional system off by default" is that they're not going to be more complex given they aren't mandatory, they're just going to put the minimum amount of effort to make it work.

If there isn't any life support for the "default" gamemode then whatever hardcore option is going to be lacking.

 

A soft system that's default for everyone is going to provide way more gameplay than a hardcore optional one.

[Max.10.07]

Perhaps let the players choose in difficulty settings?

[magnemoe]

On 8/10/2022 at 9:16 PM, theJesuit said:

If Life Support happens i suspect it will be closer to snacks making tourists when they run out.  

Take2 have a history of release the 2xDLC then new release.  See Civilization series. They probably already know what dlcs they will release. 

IMHO kerbalism would have made an excellent dlc.  Still modable.  Gives lifesupport, changes science, adds an additional way of dealing with multiple vessels through background processing.  

Adding stuff modders will use a lot to an DLC is pretty smart  for the developers as it get more people to buy the DLC to use the mods. 
Probably less of an problem in KSP than other heavy modded games like Fallout as KPS mods often depend seamlessly with other mods. 

[magnemoe]

On 8/10/2022 at 9:16 PM, theJesuit said:

If Life Support happens i suspect it will be closer to snacks making tourists when they run out.  

Take2 have a history of release the 2xDLC then new release.  See Civilization series. They probably already know what dlcs they will release. 

IMHO kerbalism would have made an excellent dlc.  Still modable.  Gives lifesupport, changes science, adds an additional way of dealing with multiple vessels through background processing.  

Adding stuff modders will use a lot to an DLC is pretty smart  for the developers as it get more people to buy the DLC to use the mods. 
Probably less of an problem in KSP than other heavy modded games like Fallout as KPS mods often depend seamlessly with other mods while in Fallout and Skyrim they could not refer to other mods or dlc if they was not present. 
Ran into that for an Skyrim faming mod I made who used plant growing models from the homestead dlc. 

[magnemoe]

I played with life support mods most of my time in KSP mostly TAC life support. 
I would never go interplanetary without 4 year of life support at least for initial run, for stuff like Moho I can go lower. 
My main problem has been in early Mun missions there I forgot it and here I just reverted. Then I start to land I have the service bay with an probe core and LS as standard. 

Had one very memorable mission, rescue an kerbal in retrograde solar orbit outside of Dress. 
So I build an very high dV rocket to intercept, match velocity, then change orbit to pro grade with an Pe between Eve and Kerbin and let the heat shield handle the rest. 

more than 20K dV with the chemical full as I would refuel in LKO.
Yes its an SLS core then 1+8 asparagus and an 180 fuel tank and an spark as upper stage who was my standard recover small capsules module. 
One problem I had packed around 200 days of life support and found that waiting for the return burn and the flight time would be over two years. 
So almost 100 days later then I realized this I realized my only option was to reach Kerbin withing the 120 day life support I had left. I would still be retrograde and Pe would be close to the sun. 
However I launched an second of the high dV rockets in fact the one in the image above setting up an intercept outside Minmus orbit. 
After this I would match velocity with the other ship. it would release the capsule and the new ship would grab it set up an Kerbin intercept and then brake then getting closer, still had over 2K dV then getting close so did an mostly powered landing. 

Edited August 23, 2022 by magnemoe