Why is Life Support missing on the KSP2 Roadmap?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

We are all literally just doing this to pass the time between now and Feb.  It's called quibbling!

[Pthigrivi]

Just now, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

We are all literally just doing this to pass the time between now and Feb.  It's called quibbling!

Oh, Im gonna quibble. I have not yet begun to quibble. 

[darthgently]

24 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

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.

As I stated in another reply, I fully expect and support the more grindy types of LS being mods, but I do think a basic "your astronauts aren't robots" is as educationally worthy as anything so would have no problem with a basic LS mechanic in the stock game. 

But the bottom line is that we all know that those who want no LS will have a setting to turn it off and those who want to stock repair kits for suction toilets, soylent  mealpaks, medicines, and jars of vitamins, along with helmet mounted EVA algae greenhouses, on their craft will probably find a mod that does that

[Guest]

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

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.

I don't like lethal LS because I think rescue missions are a greater source of gameplay than Kerbals dying.

In another topic (or two) I threw in the idea of having emergency hibernation devices, same reputation/money/morale loss as someone dying (an anti-"Boom Event" in KSP2?) but the crew simply gets frozen until they're brought back to Kerbin or to a colony with an advanced medical facility in which they take months to recover.

That way LS has a meaning but still it doesn't kill off rescue missions.

[MarcAbaddon]

The more I think about it the more I become convinced that the educational argument is a red herring. Survival in space is hard is just not much of an education. Contrast it with the orbital mechanics part of the game: you don't just learn that navigating in space is hard, but you learn how to solve those issues in some detail: Hohmann-transfers, orbital rendezvous, geostationary orbits and docking procedures. What makes it educational is that you are not just presented with a set of problems, but you learn concepts of how to solve those problems.

Now look at the same with life support and let's start with air as an example. I don't think simply needing CO2 scrubbers on your ship works. You can implement it as a part and require the player to bring sufficient CO2 scrubbing capability for the length of the trip, but it's really swallow since it won't teach you  *anything* about how a CO2 scrubber would work. A loading screen tooltip pointing out that in a real space mission you would need CO2 scrubbing has close to the same education value. You could even argue that this makes it seem simpler than it is in real life, since it simply boils down to bringing the real parts. It makes life support in space seem like a solved problem, when it isn't.

I'll do one step further and say that the fact that you learn how to solve the problems with orbital mechanics is also what makes the complexity and the educational aspect fun in the first place.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Laikanaut said:

only issue with algae is that it can't provide full nutritional requirements for humans, so other foods are needed

Fun fact: Noah and crew set off with 4 of every animal - but 40 days is a long time, and Noah had a big family. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

I'll do one step further and say that the fact that you learn how to solve the problems with orbital mechanics is also what makes the complexity and the educational aspect fun in the first place

Yup

That's the killer app / awesome sauce of the KSP experience. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

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. 

One idea some came up with was that kerbals would enter some sort of coma style hibernation if life support ran out, you would need to take them back to kerbin or an colony to restore them. 
So you don't kill kerbals, but it will ruin your manned mission. 

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

The research papers are linked from that article.

The only issue with algae is that it can't provide full nutritional requirements for humans, so other foods are needed

Thanks for the details, it is still hard to believe that 8 sq.m of algae could metabolically keep up with a human-sized mammal's need for oxygen and production of CO2.  This is going to take some pondering.

As for eating the algae, nutrition aside, it seems like one would need more than 8 sq.m to be able to harvest at the rate a human would consume.  But I'm probably wrong on that also, lol.  Algae is amazingly prolific

[Vl3d]

Another simple argument for LS: I disapprove of sending kerbals on basic one-way missions to get world firsts and farm science without moral penalties (they just stay there forever).

Edited November 4, 2022 by Vl3d

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

It's based on research papers from the BIOS experiments. If you'd rather ignore the research and insinuate that I'm lying, because I'm quoting them, there's nothing I can say to you.

Oh I wasn't referencing your post. That was my own 'for funzies' calculation. Nobody really knows what kerbals dietary requirements are so they could eat algea or freeze-dried ice cream or space bacon. All that really matters is that a) it adds some kind of consideration for flight duration and b) it doesn't make the game tedious. The reason I threw out adding rehydrators and food reprocessors was to reduce mass penalties on long flights and make LS upgradable over the course of progression. 
 

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Fun fact: Noah and crew set off with 4 of every animal - but 40 days is a long time, and Noah had a big family. 

Ackchyually Noah brought at least 2 of each kind, but 7 of each kind of clean animals and 7 of each kind of bird. I guess if they're clean you can pack em in tighter. 

Thats right. You done been quibbled.
 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

One issue with bio based LS in real life is that the LS system ends up having complementary requirements so if no one is on board, your algae need some other source of CO2 for example.  Or some way to make it dormant and wake it up as required that doesn't take too long.  It occurred to me there are frogs that can survive freezing and long term dormancy.  So maybe when crew is on board, the frogs are in the freezer, and when the crew is away, the frogs run and play

[regex]

FWIW I'm not opposed to a closed loop at all, paying the mass tax is my chief concern. Resupply runs are only interesting the first time and I'm all about trivializing life support in the late game provided the equipment exists.

36 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

Closed loop is less interesting for enthusiasts, but it's a simple addition that adds a bit more depth and realism compared to having nothing at all.

However, what happens if we don't have the closed loop installed on the craft? How does this work on Kerbin?

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Laikanaut said:

I would definitely avoid open loop life support for the average player, especially with the addition of interstellar missions. Many players find it difficult enough to deal with realistic orbital mechanics, so then pushing them to optimize trajectories by making them shorter in duration - purely for the sake of life support - is too complicated. This would also require calculations on how many supplies would be needed in advance, when most players will have no idea how long a mission might take, and would then be restricted from launch based on included supplies, potentially having to restart. Even experienced players who aren't flying these missions frequently may have to look it up on a chart or experiment just to accommodate a smaller side mechanic, or want some flexibility in their mission due to some mishap but find that they don't have enough supplies.

Well as discussed in a nearby thread we are supposedly getting a mission planner capable of assisting in interplanetary transfers and dV estimates, so its not crazy to think it could provide estimated flight durations as well. And for sure any LS system should calculate LS time for players and give a straight up "your food will last for x days" readout right there in the VAB, so all you're doing is making sure you have enough for the journey with some safety margin, just like we already do for dV. Making this easy to understand is the main reason you want just one main consumable resource. And I would say that understanding how long it takes to get places is really the central gameplay reason to add LS. If everything is closed loop then there's no difference between planning for a Mun mission and Jool mission. The equipment is the same. At that point you might as well not have LS, just pad out habitation module mass to cut down on part count.
 

1 hour ago, Laikanaut said:

The penalty of failure here is too high, there's almost no way to mitigate it or resolve problems on the fly (e.g. resupply runs are very complicated, and by the time you realize you need one there may not be enough time to get it there) and the rewards are minimal to none.

Closed loop is less interesting for enthusiasts, but it's a simple addition that adds a bit more depth and realism compared to having nothing at all. Simply figure out how many modules you need to support the selected population, launch them and they can survive indefinitely, go anywhere you want, run out of fuel and get stranded and need rescuing without dying, etc. This preserves all these interesting situations, without being too punishing.

Again though, the penalties can be whatever we want them to be. If all that happens is they get grumpy and you lose out on some science gains there's nothing that prevents you from sending a care-package to perk them up again. The devs have been really clear that they don't want the game to be punishing. All LS is really there to do is help players feel like the kerbals matter, that we're living off the land, and illustrate what it takes to keep them happy over different periods of time. The whole name of the game is to present players with open ended challenges that 6 different people will come up with 6 different strategies to complete. This creative problem solving is what makes KSP fun. So if part of the challenge is understanding how time factors into spaceflight, the options to solve that problem shouldn't be 1 size fits all. They should be flexible and forgiving enough for lots of creative options.
 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Vl3d]

19 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

The devs have been really clear that they don't want the game to be punishing.

You do realize it's actually more punishing to the player to have kerbals hibernate when out of LS waiting for you to plan and execute a rescue mission than it is to kill them?

[Pthigrivi]

2 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You do realize it's actually more punishing to the player to have kerbals hibernate when out of LS waiting for you to plan and execute a rescue mission than it is to kill them?

It's definitely more punishing to have kerbals die than to leave them in a rescuable state, but I don't personally think even hibernation is necessary on default difficulty. Cutting science collection in half should be incentive enough by itself. Hibernation might be a good difficulty setting for sandbox. 

[GoldForest]

7 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You do realize it's actually more punishing to the player to have kerbals hibernate when out of LS waiting for you to plan and execute a rescue mission than it is to kill them?

I disagree. I think killing the Kerbals is more punishing, because then you have to start the mission all over again, and you lose like 10 to 100 kerbals in the process.

If you put them into hibernation, the player will be able to rescue them, saving them from having to launch a whole other craft for the same mission. 

Both are learning experiences either way, but I feel rescue missions have even MORE to teach than simply, "Oh well, your kerbals are all dead, oh well. Learn from your mistakes. Add more life support." With a rescue mission, not only will they have to carry life support for the ship that's stranded, but they also have to take life support for the rescuers, assuming they send a manned craft and not a drone. If they use a drone to deliver the life support supplies, then it still teaches them a valuable lesson, because they are still going to need to learn how to rendezvous with a craft, that is possibly around Kerbol or on an interstellar trajectory. If they are on an interstellar trajectory, they have to now make a craft that can catch up to the ship BEFORE it reaches its destination, otherwise, the kerbals are doomed to float around space endlessly now. 

[Vl3d]

3 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

I think killing the Kerbals is more punishing, because then you have to start the mission all over again

But you have to start a new rescue mission anyway. Its punishing in actual real time and effort.

[GoldForest]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

But you have to start a new rescue mission anyway. Its punishing in actual real time and effort.

There's no rescue mission if the Kerbals are dead. 

Death is more punishing because, you don't get to have a reward. It's just, "Sorry, try again."

If the Kerbals hibernated, then you could launch a rescue mission. Yes, it's probably just as punishing, but there's a reward at the end, unlike death. A sense of accomplishment when you do rescue those Kerbals, so the punishment is worth it. 

[Vl3d]

3 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

A sense of accomplishment when you do rescue those Kerbals, so the punishment is worth it. 

[GoldForest]

2 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

[image snip]

I stand by what I said. It's more rewarding to rescue, then to lose, an entire crew.

And that image does not compare to sending a spacecraft to rescue another one. That image, they lost trucks, and rescue for the driver in the cab was literally feet away should something go wrong like getting stuck in the cabin. 

In KSP 2, rescue could be literally lightyears away, and no one will be able to rescue them within seconds. 

[Vl3d]

15 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

In KSP 2, rescue could be literally lightyears away, and no one will be able to rescue them within seconds. 

There are no interstellar rescue missions. Kerbals die all the time (blunt force trauma, burning, suffocation). They should also have other causes of death (freezing, hunger, old age etc ). I don't see what the problem is, I think it's fun.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

14 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

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. 

It's not rational to call the side-picking crazy after picking a side.

[GoldForest]

10 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

There are no interstellar rescue missions. Kerbals die all the time (blunt force trauma, burning, suffocation). They should also have other causes of death (freezing, hunger etc ). I don't see what the problem is, I think it's fun.

Yes, but if LS is added, I don't think it should cause death. 

Also, there are no IRL interstellar rescue missions. You could totally do an interstellar rescue mission. Hell, people do Mun rescue missions all the time, and IRL moon rescues are near impossible.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

It's not rational to call the side-picking crazy after picking a side.

"Picking sides" make it sound like we're talking about something already set in stone and not a possible idea that can be used to ad one or more gameplay loops that likely have nothing to do with the preconceived ideas LS mods gave us.

Completely ignoring that the last full page isn't even about discussing if LS should be there, not even if it should be lethal or not, but in the case of a couple of posts the pros and cons of different non-lethal approaches.