Why is Life Support missing on the KSP2 Roadmap?

[Vl3d]

On 8/2/2022 at 10:26 AM, Vl3d said:

The hard limits of space exploration are related to the balance between mass to orbit vs how long life support lasts. There's no way around this in real life.

One thing that has always frustrated me in KSP1 is how easy it is to just send kerbals in space. It takes out a big part of the engineering incentives and messes up game balance.

The lack of life support means arbitrary thoughtless usage of time warp. It means distances and time lose their gameplay value.

I feel like the fact that the KSP2 Road Map does not mention Life Support is very worrying.

I profoundly do not agree with being able to send kerbals on long deep space missions wearing only their suits. It messes up the whole game balance and it just feels exploity. It is absolutely unrealistic and cheapens the whole engineering challenge of sending crew into space (as I mentioned in the OP).

We need at least radiation protection, living space and temperature, snacks, (clean) water and (clean) air. The game is incomplete without this.

[Bej Kerman]

5 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I feel like the fact that the KSP2 Road Map does not mention Life Support is very worrying.

The Mk2 Cockpit is not present in the roadmap despite being seen in earlier screenshots. Does that mean it's not appearing in the game at all?

If life support is appearing in KSP 2, it will most likely be a basic feature present from day one that is not worth using to pad out a timeline for more important things.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[intelliCom]

10 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

The Mk2 Cockpit is not present in the roadmap despite being seen in earlier screenshots. Does that mean it's not appearing in the game at all?

If life support is appearing in KSP 2, it will most likely be a basic feature present from day one that is not worth using to pad out a timeline for more important things.

Not necessarily. The Mk 2 Cockpit is an individual part already present in KSP1. Life support is a complex and very new feature for KSP, one that has seen no mention in any feature video or show and tell.

Given that initial release is sandbox alone, and they want things to be familiar for old players while being easy to pick up for new players, including life support from day one seems unlikely.

Edited November 2, 2022 by intelliCom

[GoldForest]

Life support has been asked about before, and Nate has always said "No comment." to the questions, so there's a high chance that life support will be in game in some form or fashion, though, imo, it shouldn't be added and left to modders, and if it is added should be VERY basic. I.e. just 'snacks' and possibly oxygen. Even then, an option to turn off life support altogether would be nice. 

Life support might come with the Colonies update, Interstellar update or the Exploration Update. 

Or it might even be further down the roadmap. As I have pointed out in other threads, the roadmap does not end at multiplayer, it simply shows up to multiplayer. We can clearly see an unknown roadmap... er... tab? Section? ... er... for lack of better word, 'tab' will be used. Anyway, yeah. We see up to the multiplayer tab, and then a tab right after that which is cutoff. There's a lot more we are not seeing. We'll have to wait and see roadmap part 2 to see.

[Ashandalar]

I agree that a basic Kerbal life support system should be in the game, but should not be that punitive by default.

My suggestion would be a simple resource (I'll call it "provisions", but it can be called "snacks", "oxygen", or whatever else seems appropriate) on craft that kerbals slowly deplete over time. Think of it as an "electric charge" resource that only kerbals use. When kerbals deplete their provisions, they'll be rendered uncontrollable (they fall unconscious, go into stasis or hibernation, whatever you want to call it), like a probe that runs out of charge. If a rescue mission arrives with provisions, all present kerbals would fully-recover, and there would be no adverse effects beyond this. Colonies could have buildings which provisions for kerbals on site, and missions launched from colonies can take provisions with them, so you don't have to ship them all from Kerbin.

This would be simple to control by a difficulty toggle: you can turn it off entirely with something equivalent to the "ignore electric charge" cheat, and it would provide a good foundation for mods to configure more complex life support systems, with multiple different resources required, or kerbal illness and death rather than hibernation. This would also be separate from whatever radiation systems are in the game.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Ashandalar
typo

[MarcAbaddon]

I don't agree that the game needs to simulate life support for rockets.

There's two ways you could go with this: one is to keep it very simple such as suggested by Ashandalar. But done that way it's really only a mass tax to increase the expiration date of your vessel. It feels punitive if you fail, but not really rewarding if you manage it.

Alternately you could make it very realistic and detailed in which case it could simply become overwhelming to new players. It'd become an issue starting when trying to go to Duna, and newer players have enough on their hand at that time planning their first mission of that length and their first interplanetary transfer.

In general, I feel that one of the things behind the success of KSP was that it did focus strongly on core aspects of gameplay instead of trying to add every major consideration that real rocket designers would have to struggle with. In the end KSP is not about showing all engineering challenging or simulating everything - it's a game with (roughly) accurate orbital mechanics with a lot of the other stuff being abstracted away for the sake of fun. It doesn't have you design rocket nozzles, handle 10+ different types of fuels which detract from the main experience. The orbital mechanics should remain the centerpiece of gameplay, especially at the start.

Sure, you could hide it behind a difficulty toggle but it'd still take valuable developer time. 

However with colonies and colonists I could see it become a valuable aspect of game play - if you want to make self sufficient colonies elsewhere then it is something that the late game could focus on. It'd introduce it at a much later point in a typical playthrough, at which point the player is better equipped and has at least mastered the basics of flying rockets.

Other than that I would be perfectly fine with this feature being left up to mods. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by MarcAbaddon
clarification

[Superfluous J]

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Life support has been asked about before, and Nate has always said "No comment." to the questions, so there's a high chance that life support will be in game in some form or fashion, though, imo, it shouldn't be added and left to modders, and if it is added should be VERY basic. I.e. just 'snacks' and possibly oxygen. Even then, an option to turn off life support altogether would be nice. 

Life support might come with the Colonies update, Interstellar update or the Exploration Update. 

Or it might even be further down the roadmap. As I have pointed out in other threads, the roadmap does not end at multiplayer, it simply shows up to multiplayer. We can clearly see an unknown roadmap... er... tab? Section? ... er... for lack of better word, 'tab' will be used. Anyway, yeah. We see up to the multiplayer tab, and then a tab right after that which is cutoff. There's a lot more we are not seeing. We'll have to wait and see roadmap part 2 to see.

Life support is probably part of either colonies or more likely resources. 

[darthgently]

The fact that we are dealing with kerbals and not humans opens up the possibility to keep the game streamlined while still educating on life support. 

Kerbals could be cannoned to be somewhat like tardigrades and very tough, able to withstand harsh conditions by going into a dormant state naturally, but not immortal and not immune from damage.   So far, not much different than the current game.  

By putting limits on how long they can remain dormant and a basic snack, oxygen, and water requirement to prevent dormancy, an educational aspect could be added without removing any fun.  

I'm thinking that if balanced right, journeys around the Kerbin system could easily be done with no LS if dormancy is relied upon (let's assume all crewed parts have some built-in oxygen and scrubbers), while the inner Kerbol system could all be done with light LS requirements, and the outer Kerbol system would need moderate LS with more player required when building and planning unless they want their kerbals comatose the entire mission.

There could be balancing mechanisms, like maybe individual kerbal experience only increments when not dormant.

[Guest]

A single-resource life support mechanic would be nice for this game (I much prefer "provisions" or "supplies" as opposed to something silly like "snacks"). Make it able to be regenerated with specialty gear and able to be completely sidelined with late-game equipment; kerbals on interstellar voyages (or even multi-year in-system trips) could be put into hibernation pods or something.

And of course it's a mass tax, that's the price you pay IRL for shipping people around. It's a very real consideration, keeping people alive, and it absolutely deserves a place in the puzzle of successful spaceflight.

E: Natch this resource should be completely ignored on Kerbin, We should be able to fly around and do random stuff there without a care, assume there's a thriving civilization and a taco truck on every corner even if there's no evidence of such beyond the spaceport.

Edited November 2, 2022 by regex

[GoldForest]

5 minutes ago, regex said:

A single-resource life support mechanic would be nice for this game (I much prefer "provisions" or "supplies" as opposed to something silly like "snacks"). Make it able to be regenerated with specialty gear and able to be completely sidelined with late-game equipment; kerbals on interstellar voyages (or even multi-year in-system trips) could be put into hibernation pods or something.

And of course it's a mass tax, that's the price you pay IRL for shipping people around. It's a very real consideration, keeping people alive, and it absolutely deserves a place in the puzzle of successful spaceflight.

E: Natch this resource should be completely ignored on Kerbin, We should be able to fly around and do random stuff there without a care, assume there's a thriving civilization and a taco truck on every corner even if there's no evidence of such beyond the spaceport.

"Provisions" or "Supplies" doesn't really fit the kerbal nature though. "Snacks" are ingrained in Kerbal culture. It's been a meme of the game since the early days. Calling life support 'snacks' would be paying homage really.  And it's easy for the younger people to understand. 

[Guest]

Just now, GoldForest said:

"Provisions" or "Supplies" doesn't really fit the kerbal nature though. "Snacks" are ingrained in Kerbal culture. It's been a meme of the game since the early days. Calling life support 'snacks' would be paying homage really.  And it's easy for the younger people to understand. 

Not going to argue the point beyond this but I am completely against dumb memes regardless of how much they're beloved by the community. I'd love a bit of seriousness in the game to contrast the absolutely stupid exploding kerbal meta.

[Pthigrivi]

At around 10:40 in the EA announcement video it sounds a like Alexander Martin mentions 'life support' among coming features but the cc says "mod support" so? hmm. Maybe Im mishearing? Or they don't want make promises on that right now? Honestly a simple life support system is one of my biggest dreams for KSP2. I think most people have it right that there should be one main consumable resource, whatever you choose to call it. To keep things simple you could pretend that O2 and water are being recycled at 100%, and if they are resources they could go into the build-cost of some habitation modules as a static thing. I also think you could support a byproduct like 'compost' and mineable 'fertilizer' that go into greenhouses to generate new 'snacks' or 'food' or whatever you choose to call it. The important thing is when you're preparing for a long journey it should be really simple to look at your vessel in the VAB and in flight and see a single number for how long before they ran out, not multiple potential failure points. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[fragtzack]

My understanding is that Kerbals don't need O2, heat or food. Unlike the weak Earthlings.

[Scarecrow71]

9 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I profoundly do not agree with being able to send kerbals on long deep space missions wearing only their suits. It messes up the whole game balance and it just feels exploity. It is absolutely unrealistic and cheapens the whole engineering challenge of sending crew into space (as I mentioned in the OP).

Keep in mind that your experience of game play may very well not match the experience and expectations of others.  Your mileage may vary.  For every person that wants life support, there is another who doesn't.

Me, personally?  I will NEVER play with life support mods.  To me, it's not all that game-breaking to send Kerbals off on missions into deep space with nothing but the suit on their back.  Why?  Because it's a game about space exploration, not a game about "How long until these things die without food or water".  When it comes to (eventually) colonies, I'm sure resource management is going to come into play.  And even then, I'll turn off the part that forces me to feed and water them because it's just not why I'm playing this game.

Again, this is me.  You are free to do you.  Just keep in mind that your frustration over not getting life support day 1 out of the box does not necessarily mean that the game is damaged or flawed for everyone.

[MechBFP]

58 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Keep in mind that your experience of game play may very well not match the experience and expectations of others.  Your mileage may vary.  For every person that wants life support, there is another who doesn't.

Me, personally?  I will NEVER play with life support mods.  To me, it's not all that game-breaking to send Kerbals off on missions into deep space with nothing but the suit on their back.  Why?  Because it's a game about space exploration, not a game about "How long until these things die without food or water".  When it comes to (eventually) colonies, I'm sure resource management is going to come into play.  And even then, I'll turn off the part that forces me to feed and water them because it's just not why I'm playing this game.

Again, this is me.  You are free to do you.  Just keep in mind that your frustration over not getting life support day 1 out of the box does not necessarily mean that the game is damaged or flawed for everyone.

Indeed. Given that this game is being developed to be played by a large audience, it is going to designed to make the experience pleasant for the majority of their customers. Given that they likely have swaths of data from KSP 1 in terms of what mods people use, feedback gathered online, and likely through other data collection methods, they know what direction they should take.

But regardless of all that, one their primary design pillars is to let players do what they want, when they want, which completely and unavoidably conflicts with pretty much any implementation of life support. As such if there is life support it will be VERY basic and will likely have little to no consequences that would impede the player directly.

[Truebadour]

I tried to play with life support mods and I think it makes the game tedious : constantly monitoring two space station saround Mun while waiting for a probe to arrive at another planet was boring. Plus launching crafts regularly for crew rotations which took forever, hoping the kraken wouldn't destroy my complex surface bases, etc... I spent at least 50% of my playtime babysitting kerbals.

In short, I'm personaly against life support systems that punish the player.

However, I'm all for having a life support system that grants a boost to bases. Something like : every life support module on your base gives a bonus to population growth, to resource extraction, to fuel refining, to vehicle construction speed, to research speed, etc...

Edited November 2, 2022 by Truebadour

[Pthigrivi]

32 minutes ago, Truebadour said:

However, I'm all for having a life support system that grants a boost to bases. Something like : every life support module on your base gives a bonus to population growth, to resource extraction, to fuel refining, to vehicle construction speed, to research speed, etc...

This is what I'd hope to see. Automated supply runs should help quite a bit as well. The main opposition most folks have is they don't want to worry about a vessel full of dead kerbals if they screw something up, and I'd strongly advocate against death or even touristification as the default consequence. Its enough if they just get grumpy and have reduced science collection, resource harvesting, etc. The point is to help folks understand how flight duration and living off the land will affect the colonization of space. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[SciMan]

If Nate has said "no comment" every time, everyone's gonna see what they want to see in that. The people who want life support are going to see it as a confirmation of life support, and the people who don't want it (probably because of past negative experience) are gonna see that as Nate saying that it's not in the game.

Me? I see it as [error data not available].
No comment is just that. A comment that doesn't exist.
In other words, it's the same as saying "I can't confirm or deny 'thing XYZ'".
Gotta remember to take off your rose-tinted glasses and look at the thing objectively.

So do we know if life supports in the game yet or not? NO!
After considering all the data available about the subject (which is nothing), I'm 100% certain that I have no idea if life support is in the game or not.
This is very much a "known unknown".

Now that that's out of the way, I can start discussing the topic like the rest of you have been.

If life support IS in the game, I expect there are 2 potential locations on the timeline where it would be introduced.
LS is in the game from day 1.
Or LS is introduced into the game along with the colonization mechanics, either because the majority of LS is focused on "making sure your colonies can supply a habitable environment for the kerbals that are living there", or that it's for both ships AND colonies, and it doesn't make sense for one to exist without the other if they're eventually both going to be in the game.
 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

I’d like to see life support: air, snacks, radiation, temperature, and on the longer missions, living space.  With running out of air and snacks, and too much radiation and too much or not enough heat being fatal.  Space is hard, and life support failures are every bit as lethal as crashing, burning up on re-entry, rapid unplanned disassemblies and so forth.

I’d even argue making it the default is the way to go, with option to switch it off.  Initially I found comms a bit challenging, but now I really enjoy it.  The slight added complexity and challenge adds a lot of fun, I find.

[Vl3d]

1 minute ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I’d like to see life support: air, snacks, radiation, temperature, and on the longer missions, living space.  With running out of air and snacks, and too much radiation and too much or not enough heat being fatal.  Space is hard, and life support failures are every bit as lethal as crashing, burning up on re-entry, rapid unplanned disassemblies and so forth.

I’d even argue making it the default is the way to go, with option to switch it off.  Initially I found comms a bit challenging, but now I really enjoy it.  The slight added complexity and challenge adds a lot of fun, I find.

Amen!

[Wheehaw Kerman]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

This is what I'd hope to see. Automated supply runs should help quite a bit as well. The main opposition most folks have is they don't want to worry about a vessel full of dead kerbals if they screw something up, and I'd strongly advocate against death or even touristification as the default consequence. Its enough if they just get grumpy and have reduced science collection, resource harvesting, etc. The point is to help folks understand how flight duration and living off the land will affect the colonization of space. 

Thing is, we wind up screwing up and killing vessel-fuls of dead Kerbals on the regular.   Even most of the time until we get the hang of things.  We’re all fine with crashes and bad re-entries and explosions killing Kerbals; they all add value pedagogically and gameplaywise.  I don’t see life support as being any different.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, SciMan said:

Or LS is introduced into the game along with the colonization mechanics, either because the majority of LS is focused on "making sure your colonies can supply a habitable environment for the kerbals that are living there", or that it's for both ships AND colonies, and it doesn't make sense for one to exist without the other if they're eventually both going to be in the game.

The trick here is that resources and ISRU aren't being introduced until after colonies and interstellar in the 2nd new star system update, so even if you can build colonies and can use colonists to do science stuff and maybe work out the population boost pacing you aren't yet harvesting raw resources to make new rocket parts or fuels or, hopefully, LS. Here's as much as we know at the moment from the 2020 PC Gamer article: 

Quote

The campaign is “explicitly designed to be non- punitive” so you’ll never reach a fail state where you’ve run out of money and have to start over. Colonies won’t require tons of micromanagement. If you leave one in a dangerous state, without enough power or food, it’ll simply underperform.

So Im reasonably hopeful that some kind of very simple LS system will exist in some form, but I expect it'll more likely be introduced when resource harvesting and processing chains come into being later in the EA process. I do agree with you though that ideally there would be consistent internal gameplay logic between colonies and vessels, and that you could if you wanted add greenhouses to deep space colony vessels and everything would perform in a reliable way. 
 

7 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Thing is, we wind up screwing up and killing vessel-fuls of dead Kerbals on the regular.   Even most of the time until we get the hang of things.  We’re all fine with crashes and bad re-entries and explosions killing Kerbals; they all add value pedagogically and gameplaywise.  I don’t see life support as being any different.

The main difference is flight duration when you've got lots of concurrent missions going on. It's one thing to goof a launch and lose some fine people. Its another thing to meticulously plan your first Jool mission with a dozen kerbals and multiple landers and then realize too late that your launch window wasn't as efficient as you thought and it arrives 100 days too late and the whole vessel is bricked. That would be much too frustrating for most players. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Wheehaw Kerman]

32 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

The main difference is flight duration when you've got lots of concurrent missions going on. It's one thing to goof a launch and lose some fine people. Its another thing to meticulously plan your first Jool mission with a dozen kerbals and multiple landers and then realize too late that your launch window wasn't as efficient as you thought and it arrives 100 days too late and the whole vessel is bricked. That would be much too frustrating for most players. 

I don’t see it as any more frustrating than realizing you forgot the parachutes when you get to destination, or forgetting to deploy solar panels or losing comms on an unmanned probe, or staging errors, all of which nobody would want to nerf?

[Pthigrivi]

31 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I don’t see it as any more frustrating than realizing you forgot the parachutes when you get to destination, or forgetting to deploy solar panels or losing comms on an unmanned probe, or staging errors, all of which nobody would want to nerf?

The difference is the correlation between long-duration missions and larger, more complex vessels that require more irretrievable time-investment on the part of players. Many of the things you mentioned are reversible by short-term revert, which is much more punitive on very long-duration missions, exactly the kinds of missions on which imperfect transfers can result in big errors between planned flight duration and actual flight duration. If you're at the point where you have a multiple colonies and vessels going here and there it's one thing to go back a day or so and repeat a docking maneuver to undo a coms loss, but it's something else entirely to revert weeks worth of player-time to redo a complex interplanetary mission that itself took 10-20 player hours to plan and deploy. This creates a compounding problem for LS as players get deeper into the game, where the greatest risk and the greatest punishments occur when players have the least flexibility to go back and solve problems. I mean I guess Im fine for permadeath to exist on hard mode but I'd never use it, and I think it would discourage new and even moderate players. There's no real need for it if you've created other compelling gameplay incentives.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Pthigrivi