Why is Life Support missing on the KSP2 Roadmap?

[darthgently]

Every player is acutely aware of their own preferences and playing style.  The dev team is likely acutely aware that they cannot practically accommodate all of these in stock.  Given the success of KSP1+ mods I imagine they are planning a solid foundation of common play in the game, with some settings to allow some accommodation for the more narrow normal range of player preferences while leaving the tails of the player preference and style curve to mods. 

They've made it abundantly clear that modding will be nearly central to the game and I think the wide variation in player preferences and demonstrated success of KSP1+mods makers it a no brainer.

tl;dr  Stop worrying if the stock game and default settings will be exactly what you prefer.  If your style is way on the tail of the normal curve, accept that you will need mods

Edited November 3, 2022 by darthgently

[Scarecrow71]

43 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Still applies. Can't make a well-balanced space exploration game about interstellar travel without "How long until these things die without food or water"

It still applies TO YOU.  Please try to remember that this is, first and foremost, a video game about space exploration, not a real-life simulator based on real world physics and timelines and such.  If you want to play as realistic as possible, that's up to you.  Your mileage may, and will, vary.  But at least take what I wrote into context instead of just telling me that I'm wrong.  I am fully aware that sending a manned mission to Mars in real life is wrought with hazards such as gravity sickness, lack of food/water/oxygen, part failures, etc.  THIS IS A VIDEO GAME AND IS NOT REAL LIFE.  I've said that multiple times; if you refuse to acknowledge that, then please don't respond.

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

It still applies TO YOU.  Please try to remember that this is, first and foremost, a video game about space exploration, not a real-life simulator based on real world physics and timelines and such.  If you want to play as realistic as possible, that's up to you.  Your mileage may, and will, vary.  But at least take what I wrote into context instead of just telling me that I'm wrong.  I am fully aware that sending a manned mission to Mars in real life is wrought with hazards such as gravity sickness, lack of food/water/oxygen, part failures, etc.  THIS IS A VIDEO GAME AND IS NOT REAL LIFE.  I've said that multiple times; if you refuse to acknowledge that, then please don't respond.

Games still need balancing, that's what I want you to acknowledge. Having to build interstellar scale rockets with enough resources to last generations won't work if you can just strap a pod to a load of high tech engines and use timewarp. Try to see it from both sides instead of cutting the other side out.

[obney kerman]

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

13 hours ago, Strawberry said:

It would be nice to have some sort of warning tab that catches things when a spacecraft is missing something like parachutes and it also has a heat shield, just to help with those messups involving forgetting parts.

Hard no to this. Trial and error means you have to learn how to do unit and integration tests and iterate on existing designs. It teaches you engineering method.

I have bad news for you about something that already exists in stock KSP1.

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

  THIS IS A VIDEO GAME AND IS NOT REAL LIFE.

There's a line in the sand between KSP1 and games like Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky or the upcoming Starfield.

I'm the first saying that gameplay comes before realism.

But without a gameplay loop of some sort to represent the distance and time taken by interstellar travel the game would be on the wrong side of that line.

Seriously if interstellar travel is just a matter of putting an external seat and timewarp for hundreds of years unimpeded then they may as well add FTL engines and wormholes.

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, GoldForest said:

I came to run a space program, not an administration program. 

The admin building in KSP1 never gets any love.

[darthgently]

5 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

The admin building in KSP1 never gets any love. 

 Maybe in KSP2 the Admin bldg is on Dres

[GoldForest]

13 hours ago, Strawberry said:

It would be nice to have some sort of warning tab that catches things when a spacecraft is missing something like parachutes and it also has a heat shield, just to help with those messups involving forgetting parts.

 

8 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Hard no to this. Trial and error means you have to learn how to do unit and integration tests and iterate on existing designs. It teaches you engineering method.

There's already a checklist feature in KSP 1. It's the Engineer's Report button at the bottom right. It won't push an alert, but it does tell you if you are missing something or don't have enough of something like solar panels to make enough EC to run the craft. 

The 'engineering method' includes checklists you know? 

Edited November 3, 2022 by GoldForest

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Games still need balancing, that's what I want you to acknowledge. Having to build interstellar scale rockets with enough resources to last generations won't work if you can just strap a pod to a load of high tech engines and use timewarp. Try to see it from both sides instead of cutting the other side out.

You are correct that games need balance.  The issue here is that KSP has already set the bar that life support is not a necessary component...but the modders came in and made that happen.  Which is perfectly fine; I still get to play the game I want (no life support) and you get to play the game you want (with life support).  But again, it's a video game, and there is no inherent detriment to not having life support turned on, whether it's at launch or down the road.  You may not like the lack of realism, and you very well may wish to have life support turned on because you want that level of resource management.  Me, I just want to launch stuff into space and not have to worry about my Kerbals dying because there is no food or oxygen.  If that's the case, I'm never going to launch anything but drones, and even then we may run out of electricity due to being too far from any stars for solar panels to be effective.

Now, I wouldn't be entirely opposed to needing a module on a ship that says "Ok, as long as you have this module and enough electricity, then you are ok"; that's no different than making sure you have electricity or comms.  But what I don't want is to have to account for an exact amount of food, water, oxygen, spare parts, radiation protection, gravity sickness, etc., for a hundreds-years-long journey.  That, to me, kills gameplay.  But, your mileage may vary.  You do you.

[regex]

14 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

That, to me, kills gameplay.

I mean, quite frankly colony management and "oil-rigs" sounds about the most snooze-worthy crap you could put into a spaceflight game but here we are... At least life support concerns are a very real consideration for spaceflight, the core gameplay. And honestly, who's to say that KSP2 has to follow the KSP1 formula exactly?

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

But without a gameplay loop of some sort to represent the distance and time taken by interstellar travel the game would be on the wrong side of that line.

KSP 1 has no life support and is not on the “wrong side” of that line. A good piece of gameplay to represent the distance and time of interstellar travel is the distance and time of interstellar travel. These things take years, decades, at incredibly high speeds and you will very clearly see the effects of an interstellar mission on your playthrough even without LS. Let’s not pretend that without LS, KSP2 is suddenly too unrealistic, and with LS it is suddenly fine. 
 

That said, the reason I think LS should be in the game is because it is a good gameplay mechanic. Not because it is the only thing holding the tenuous scientific reputation of KSP up. I would like a semi-punitive LS system on ships because it is fun to design craft that way for me, but people have expressed their concerns with a system like that. It will probably come in a mod. What is more likely is for boom events to be triggered by good LS delivery after the discovery events run out. If kerbals are receiving enough food, space, entertainment, whatever per kerbal (only in colonies), then their population will expand in periodic boom events. This way, players are encouraged to keep expanding their supply routes to accommodate increasing amounts of kerbals, and aren’t punished because the consequence of failing is just that the population stabilizes (if a lot of kerbals die, then the rest get more resources and can undergo population growth). It encourages the main gameplay loop, is technically optional, and is non-punitive. Consider whether ship-based LS is good gameplay for everyone before considering realism. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by t_v

[Guest]

58 minutes ago, t_v said:

KSP 1 has no life support and is not on the “wrong side” of that line. A good piece of gameplay to represent the distance and time of interstellar travel is the distance and time of interstellar travel. These things take years, decades, at incredibly high speeds and you will very clearly see the effects of an interstellar mission on your playthrough even without LS. Let’s not pretend that without LS, KSP2 is suddenly too unrealistic, and with LS it is suddenly fine. 
 

That said, the reason I think LS should be in the game is because it is a good gameplay mechanic. Not because it is the only thing holding the tenuous scientific reputation of KSP up. I would like a semi-punitive LS system on ships because it is fun to design craft that way for me, but people have expressed their concerns with a system like that. It will probably come in a mod. What is more likely is for boom events to be triggered by good LS delivery after the discovery events run out. If kerbals are receiving enough food, space, entertainment, whatever per kerbal (only in colonies), then their population will expand in periodic boom events. This way, players are encouraged to keep expanding their supply routes to accommodate increasing amounts of kerbals, and aren’t punished because the consequence of failing is just that the population stabilizes (if a lot of kerbals die, then the rest get more resources and can undergo population growth). It encourages the main gameplay loop, is technically optional, and is non-punitive. Consider whether ship-based LS is good gameplay for everyone before considering realism. 

Not talking about realism or "the reputation" of the game but about having some additional gameplay that differentiates a Mun or Duna mission from a Jool or interstellar one.

It doesn't have to be specifically life support, but something. Anything.

My point is that if there isn't some worthwhile gameplay element constraining the design of big interstellar ships (and maybe even the biggest interplanetary ones) you may as well skip the whole timewarping part and give the player FTL tech.

Because at that point it would be only a reputation thing.

[Bej Kerman]

58 minutes ago, t_v said:

A good piece of gameplay to represent the distance and time of interstellar travel is the distance and time of interstellar travel.

And time in this sentence is just a fancy word for "meaningless construct" without resources that pose a time constraint and give the word time a proper meaning. You can only properly represent interstellar distances with life support and, as I've suggested before, having tech trees take time to sync between colonies that are so distant that c presents a problem.

[K33N]

Its actually extremely good news and shows they know what they are doing. Life support is tedious and can be implicitly modeled by part weight.

[Pthigrivi]

31 minutes ago, K33N said:

Its actually extremely good news and shows they know what they are doing. Life support is tedious and can be implicitly modeled by part weight.

It doesn't have to be tedious. It can be quite simple. You can model some things with part weight, but what that doesn't achieve is consideration for flight duration when designing vessels or planning exploration of far away planets and stars. 

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

having some additional gameplay that differentiates a Mun or Duna mission from a Jool or interstellar one.

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

without resources that pose a time constraint and give the word time a proper meaning

The thing is that with colonies and supply routes, this is already in the game. You will probably never fully balance your resource chains, and you will be building stockpiles of some resources and depleting others, so when you go on such a long mission, your infrastructure experiences a massive shift in resource quantities as millions of tons of ore are processed into metal and turned into supply ships and millions of tons of fuels are dug up and used for supply runs. This is life support in a sense, but not on ships for individual kerbals, more on your entire save. Coming back to the Kerbol system and seeing how different everything is in the decades that you’ve been away is already a big effect, and I don’t think that life support is necessary to make a light year journey feel long. It might enhance it, just like having kerbals grow old cosmetically would, but it isn’t necessary. As I’ve said, I think it is good gameplay and should be included for that reason, not because it serves the purpose of making interstellar travel feel long. 

[Strawberry]

I want life support because it actually gives an incentive for making crewed missions faster, without life support having a crewed mission take a year is the same as having it take a week, life support means that the faster the go the less life support you need.

[darthgently]

I think LS would be great for parents also:

"No, you can't have a puppy until we know you can take care of it.  If you can get all your kerbals to DebDeb without killing them -- no quicksaves! -- then we can talk about a puppy"

[Ashandalar]

2 hours ago, Strawberry said:

I want life support because it actually gives an incentive for making crewed missions faster, without life support having a crewed mission take a year is the same as having it take a week, life support means that the faster the go the less life support you need.

And it further distinguishes kerbals from probe cores. A pilot in a command seat rivals most cores on mass, doesn't need a connection to the KSC, and would consume literally zero resources when not actively manoeuvring the craft (except maybe funds for hiring the kerbal in some sort of career mode). One of the only gameplay reasons (roleplay considerations aside, if you don't care about bringing kerbals back) I can think of to use a probe over a kerbal in stock KSP1 is for ultra-light craft with the OKTO2, since this is the only core that is both lighter than the kerbal in a command seat, and has decent SAS capabilities. If we don't have to think about keeping kerbals alive, they may as well be robots, which I think conflicts with the idea of increased kerbal characterisation in KSP2.

Edit: I suppose the command seat doesn't have any torque or antenna either, but you likely don't care about the small amount of mass needed to remedy this except for on the tiniest satellites.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Ashandalar

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, Strawberry said:

I want life support because it actually gives an incentive for making crewed missions faster, without life support having a crewed mission take a year is the same as having it take a week, life support means that the faster the go the less life support you need.

Exactly.

[darthgently]

On 11/2/2022 at 11:42 AM, Laikanaut said:

The simplest life support system would treat Mystery Goo as a form of photosynthesizing algae.

The BIOS experiments showed that algae can easily produce enough oxygen for a human, roughly 20kg algae was needed. Kerbals are smaller than humans and the Mystery Goo unit weighs 50kg, so each unit could support 3-4 Kerbals. The unit could be resized to reflect the BIOS experiments where the algae container had a much higher surface area, if that amount of realism was desired. This is a simple system that also provides educational value.

Certain strains of algae also have nutritional value and may be eaten by humans, and are eaten by marine animals. Chlorella is one example that is farmed for tablets for humans. Aquarium fish eat algae wafers. For simplicity we could say that the Kerbal diet is satisfied by the Mystery Goo (they're both green). During photosynthesis the algae grows, so it could provide enough food for Kerbals on long missions. This would create a full closed loop life support system, where players only have to figure out how many Mystery Goo units they need to support the chosen crew amount.

Water consumption could be ignored.

Is that 20kg including the mass of the water the algae occupy?  I'm finding this stat hard to believe as I recall it would take a bunch of crop plants to supply oxygen for one human

[Alexoff]

Judging by what we know about the life support system as much as about the multiplayer, this system is at the concept level and most likely no one deals with it when there are problems with the base game. If we get a raw game, then this is one problem, and if it also has a life support system with bugs, then many will simply abandon the game. Imagine that you send the first spaceships to Mun, and all your pioneers starve to death the next day because the calculator did not calculate correctly. Therefore, the life support system at the start is not worth waiting for.

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, darthgently said:

Is that 20kg including the mass of the water the algae occupy?  I'm finding this stat hard to believe as I recall it would take a bunch of crop plants to supply oxygen for one human

I know this is a for funzies calc, but as far as a real game goes these numbers need to not just be reasonably plausible but add up to gameplay mechanics that are easy to understand and graduate into and are also actually fun. To my mind the best way to think about it is O2 and Water are 100% recycled and all you're really considering is food mass--calories and nutrients. You also don't want players to have to worry about LS right away... more like on journeys in excess of 15 days. So offering some kind of consequence free grace period is smart. Let's pretend that Kerbals eat 1.25kg of food per day and its 50% water. With a 15 day grace 3 kerbals traveling to Minmus and back would need .025t of food, and for a 100 day asteroid mission they'd need less than .5t. That means for anything less than interplanetary you're just using simple food tanks, getting used to the idea of a simple consumption rate for stations, early bases, etc. Once the idea of a depletable resource is casually introduced though you want to give players ways to optimize it: extending its value with rehydrators. Conceptually rehydrators would be reusing the 50% water mass of the food, making it useful for twice as long. I would add basic food rehydrators in 1.25m and radial variants, which at 1t would break even mass-wise for 6 kerbals over 266 days, making long term stations and bases and interplanetary missions that much easier. 

Next in the progression I would start adding greenhouses and hydroponics bays. Let say these operate at 80% efficiency while just reprocessing compost, or could incorporate fertilizer to reach 90% efficiency, or could operate in 'growth' mode to work at 110%, (generating 10% extra food for future missions with more ISRU fertilizer). But for a 10 Kerbal mission to Jool you might pack a 4t greenhouse and 2t of fertilizer rather than 2t of recyclers and 10t of food. This would create mass incentives not just to make upgrades, but to think carefully about how long your flight was and what the breakeven points are, just like we do with ISP and total fuel mass now. 

In the lead up to interstellar missions I'd start including full-on food reprocessors that operate in the range of 99 or 99.5% efficiency. They might be large and heavy (maybe 8t at 3.75m?) but would greatly reduce food consumption on bases, colonies, and multi-decade interstellar missions. This way even late in the game you have those tantalizing tech options that greatly reduce mass penalties for very long missions. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

A whole lot of these ideas sound like something fun for a mod or DLC - or for people who want to Role Play their KSP2 experience.

Like - I get building a part of your Colony should have some kind of greenhouse; they've even shown similar in renders.  But I don't think that part of the game should be '1/2 of your Colony Died b/c Jeb fudged the landing'.  <Revert to Launch?>

I also don't think you should have 'MarionKerman, In Orbit Around Jool is Running Out of Oxygen' missions; 'You have 3 Months to Save MarionKerman' - Sadly, if that mission comes up in my game... Marion is buh bye.

[Pthigrivi]

14 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Like - I get building a part of your Colony should have some kind of greenhouse; they've even shown similar in renders.  But I don't think that part of the game should be '1/2 of your Colony Died b/c Jeb fudged the landing'.  <Revert to Launch?>

Again there should be no deadly consequences for any of this. If you have enough food kerbals stay happy and productive and your science returns and ISRU values go up. If you skip all that those rates fall. This is an entirely optional optimization, but one I think most players would pursue if they're interested in getting the most out of their missions and colonies. People like incentives. They're probably less excited about vessels and colonies full of dead kerbals. 

I fee like Im in crazytown sometimes in these discussions because half the people are saying “Its only LS if I have vessels full of dead Kerbals!” and the other half is saying “I wont use LS cause it means vessels full of dead kerbals!” None of that should happen yall. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Pthigrivi