Why is Life Support missing on the KSP2 Roadmap?

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

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

Oh its not the side-picking, its that the underlying assumption at the heart of the argument is wrong. 
 

2 hours 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, old age etc ). I don't see what the problem is, I think it's fun.

I mean I basically never kill kerbals cause I feel bad haha, but this isn't even about that. If they do hibernate you can just leave them there or terminate the flight. All it does is preserve the option for those who want (or feel deeply personally obligated) to save them. 

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

If they do hibernate you can just leave them there or terminate the flight. All it does is preserve the option for those who want (or feel deeply personally obligated) to save them.

True, it's probably going to be a lethality option. But the most important thing is that we get life support.

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, GoldForest said:

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

LS = Life Support.   Not supporting life can only logically result in death in the extreme case.  Life being defined as not-dead.

[mcpattyp]

Life support is probably not going to be in the game. There’s a reason it’s been completely omitted from that roadmap, and the only evidence for it is little shreds like one developer saying “bring plenty of snacks” in a feature video (or something along those lines)

[Wheehaw Kerman]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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

Thing about rescue missions now is that I think: “oh, geez, Jeb is stranded on the Mün in a lander can again.  Realistically the time to procure and build a rescue craft, plan the mission, train the crew and launch and fly it is going to mean that the little spud will have run out of air and food a year before we can rescue him.”  

Those of you who watch For All Mankind will remember the Apollo 11 episodes in S1; there simply wasn’t any way to rescue a crashed Apollo crew.  It still gives me goosebumps after multiple rematches.  And The Martian would have been a completely different movie if Damon’s character didn’t need to eat and breathe.

The thing about pulling off a rescue mission is that I (heck, we all) know that I’m exploiting a design gap in the original game that’s every bit as glaring as omitting aerodynamics (which Squad fixed) or reentry heating (which Squad fixed) or comms blackouts (which Squad fixed).  I expect that Squad would have fixed the absence of LS, too, given better initial game design and coding and a bigger budget.  I’m fine with casual players being able to turn all that off if they want, but coming at the game as a spaceflight history nerd with a preference for realism, lack of life support is IMHO a worse flaw than, say, infinitely restartable engines with 100% throttle range.

LS is as essential to manned spaceflight as rocket engines.  It’s been central to the plot of a hell of a lot of bad SF and some of the best.  A new and much improved KSP with an educational vocation should aim to address KSP1’s failings in that respect.  Leaving it to the modders would be a failure and a copout.

[t_v]

56 minutes ago, darthgently said:

LS = Life Support.   Not supporting life can only logically result in death in the extreme case.  Life being defined as not-dead.

Then ‘death’ for kerbals can be defined as a temporary state, as long as the body is left in relatively good conditions (such as in a closed capsule). Semantics aside, the decision for permanent death or hibernation should be made on which one benefits the game more. I think that we are not even clear on whether life support is good gameplay to begin with (because we haven’t agreed on how it should be implemented) But between being punished by losing time and investment, and being punished by having more gameplay and the chance to continue an important mission, I know which one I’d prefer. 

[darthgently]

Just now, t_v said:

Then ‘death’ for kerbals can be defined as a temporary state, as long as the body is left in relatively good conditions (such as in a closed capsule). Semantics aside, the decision for permanent death or hibernation should be made on which one benefits the game more. I think that we are not even clear on whether life support is good gameplay to begin with (because we haven’t agreed on how it should be implemented) But between being punished by losing time and investment, and being punished by having more gameplay and the chance to continue an important mission, I know which one I’d prefer. 

We will *never* arrive at an agreed upon "what is good for the game".    The closest we can get is to allowing the game to be configured to suit the player by way of stock settings and mods. 

With MP, each group will have to agree on their local settings to some degree and compromise will certainly be  required as in all group activities.

We don't have to decide or agree upon what is the best way to do it.

If anyone wants to play a hard game, try the terminal based game nethack.   It can take weeks to play it through and if you die, you die.  No respawn.  But many have beat it.  Not me, my char usually starves to death before level 10 or so after being robbed naked by succubi

[t_v]

13 minutes ago, darthgently said:

We don't have to decide or agree upon what is the best way to do it.

I agree with this, and I don’t think there is a single best way to do anything; it always depends on the context. However, the question is: what should the default experience for KSP 2 be, and what additional options should be coded? We don’t have to agree on that; that is what the discussion is for. But one form of LS with death is going to end up very different from another form of LS with death. Instead of just saying that death or hibernation is better, consider why it is better gameplay in context with the LS system that you are envisioning. Or if you truly think that death is better than hibernation under all contexts, then why?

[i dont know how to forum]

I think life support should be encouraged, but not required, still allowing the kinds of insane bare-bones missions we saw in KSP1. The idea of an interstellar craft consisting of just an external seat strapped to an engine was mentioned earlier in this thread. In keeping with the Kerbal spirit, I think this should absolutely be viable for interstellar travel, but it should never be the most efficient method.  Reward good life support planning rather than punishing players for not packing enough food. Pthigrivi brought up productivity as an impact of life support, and I think that's a great idea. Kerbals arriving in a new solar system after spending a hundred years in an external seat aren't going to be very productive; science and mining yields and ISRU speeds will be low, but the player won't be locked out of anything or have their efforts wasted, they'll just have to work harder to recover. Kerbals who have been given proper life support for the entirety of their journey, on the other hand, could give bonuses in these fields, making science collection and colony building much more efficient. This encourages players to put in the work and planning ahead of time, but still allows them plenty of leeway if they underestimate what they need, or even overlook it altogether. Personally I wouldn't even support the hibernation idea, except possibly on hard difficulty.

In terms of the actual form the life support system would take, I like the idea of players striving towards a perfect closed loop system, but realistically settling on something that can maintain full life support for a long time without needing huge stores of some life support resource. These systems could also require a significant amount of power, encouraging the need for things like nuclear reactors on long-term missions, as electricity in KSP1 is mostly just needed during actual maneuvers rather than passively during long periods on the float. Personally I think most life support should be self-contained in crew modules, rather than requiring external parts. Crew modules could have various levels of life support that can be toggled on the fly, in case a craft needs to conserve power or has a greater life support capacity than is necessary for the mission. Crew capsules on their own would provide sufficient life support for missions within Kerbin's SOI, while interplanetary missions and beyond may require larger or additional crew modules. Some modules, such as the centrifuge we've seen in older KSP2 videos, could be significantly more efficient, to encourage their use for long-term and interstellar missions. This could also potentially lend itself well to hydroponics modules and the like. I feel like there aren't many reasons to need lots of crew space in KSP1, and I'd love to see more benefit for large craft with more than just a single crew capsule.

[darthgently]

5 minutes ago, t_v said:

Or if you truly think that death is better than hibernation under all contexts, then why?

1) it makes the game more challenging and adds a touch of drama 

2) nothing and no one is really dying as it is just a game

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, t_v said:

I agree with this, and I don’t think there is a single best way to do anything; it always depends on the context. However, the question is: what should the default experience for KSP 2 be, and what additional options should be coded? We don’t have to agree on that; that is what the discussion is for. But one form of LS with death is going to end up very different from another form of LS with death. Instead of just saying that death or hibernation is better, consider why it is better gameplay in context with the LS system that you are envisioning. Or if you truly think that death is better than hibernation under all contexts, then why?

As written in a previous post, I think hibernation as well as mortality would play a role in my ideal game.  But hibernation cannot last forever as we know of no creature that can do that.  Just my view on it

[DwightLee]

Life Support was never a part of the original Kerbal, but was in several mods, I believe KSP 2 is fully supporting modders, so ... we will have that soonish

[tstein]

On 11/2/2022 at 5:22 AM, GoldForest said:

 

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

 

I woudl dare to say  colonies make no sense at all without some level of life support. Colonies would either have zero reason to exist (judt refuelling? that does not need a colony system) or be too simplistic to be called a feature (hey I have a crashed ship  in Duna, I shall call it a COlony)

[Fullmetal Analyst]

if you guys knew more about kerbals you would know that they only need sunlight to survive and they can be frozen and thawed like cabbage so they dont need any LS

[SSTO Crasher]

We know that colonies will need food, Nate confirmed it in the PC gamer article years ago

[Fullmetal Analyst]

8 hours ago, SSTO Crasher said:

We know that colonies will need food, Nate confirmed it in the PC gamer article years ago

cabbage needs nutrients too

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 hours ago, SSTO Crasher said:

We know that colonies will need food, Nate confirmed it in the PC gamer article years ago

This will probably be nothing more than building a 'something' - which requires a certain number of 'somethings' to support another bunch of somethings that make up the colony. 

So... you want to build a launch pad on Minmus.  First you need an outpost (base).  So you send a ship there and unpack the something that builds the base.  Then you need power.   So you send a ship there to unpack that.  Then you need food.  So another mission brings that.  (Presto-whammo, you place it where you want it and it gets built - presumes you have the right mix of resources plus maybe a 'seed part').  Then you can build an ISRU facility.  Same thing.  Then you can build a basic manufacturing (low level VAB?), then you need new food, and etc to keep expanding.

Presumably at some point you've built the 'base' up enough to automate bringing in resources and then its really a management game to expand the Colony.

With Interstellar; you probably need to build a ship big enough to build a bunch of colony parts (seedparts?) and then start dropping them on a likely place.   Like one giant ship per Interstellar attempt should create the basic Colony that lets you explore the new system.

/speculation

[nascarlaser1]

Answering original question: Not sure if its already been said, but it wouldn't surprise me if their lumping LS under Colonies or Exploration, since LS and Colonies go together thematically, and Exploration specifically includes the introduction of "resource gathering", which seems like it may be an important function of LS in general.

Opinion about life support: I personally would welcome an in-game life support system, if it was togglable in difficulty. While I do sometimes share the mood to play a game where I need LS to go on long distance journeys, other times I love that I can just launch a fella into space and not have to worry about feeding him while he remains in Munar orbit for a couple years. I definitely don't want LS to be a no choice sorta feature. It should be a difficulty option. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, nascarlaser1 said:

an in-game life support system, if it was togglable in difficulty.

That would be the only way I'd like it.

I've always presumed some parts of ship building and missions were 'automated' or 'behind the scenes' - like I don't have to create a wire diagram to build a ship, or add snax... so why should I have to futz around with LS?

I get that some people would like even more granularity - so for them, a togglable LS setting would be nice.  For me?  Nah.

[Pthigrivi]

3 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

That would be the only way I'd like it.

I've always presumed some parts of ship building and missions were 'automated' or 'behind the scenes' - like I don't have to create a wire diagram to build a ship, or add snax... so why should I have to futz around with LS?

I get that some people would like even more granularity - so for them, a togglable LS setting would be nice.  For me?  Nah.

I think what would make this much easier would be tying it into the mission planner, so when you set your destination as Duna and pick your window it gives you both the estimated dV and the flight duration. If LS is really just one main resource it should be easy for the game itself to calculate how long your snacks will last so you can compare those two numbers just like we do with dV. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think what would make this much easier would be tying it into the mission planner, so when you set your destination as Duna and pick your window it gives you both the estimated dV and the flight duration. If LS is really just one main resource it should be easy for the game itself to calculate how long your snacks will last so you can compare those two numbers just like we do with dV. 

Look - for most players that's a bridge too far.  I'm one of those folks.  We're already operating on a very flimsy idea of how orbital mechanics works, don't have the maths background to calculate anything for ourselves and are going off of forum posts and YouTube videos.  Just building a ship that can do *whatever* is pretty much the limit of what we're capable of... I like the idea of building a rover to do my destination work - and then building a ship with MOAR POWER to get it there; it's an easy crutch.

If on top of that I had to also figure out snax and water and gasses to keep my Kerbals alive?  "Yes, ship can get there - no Kerbals will not survive the trip" isn't really adding anything to my gameplay enjoyment.

But for you SSTO Grand Tour guys?  I won't begrudge you the added joy of having yet more limitations against which to work.

(Thus, toggle difficulty)

[Ashandalar]

Regarding toggles, of course I agree life support should be toggleable in KSP2, but in the same tier of toggleable that "infinite electricity" is in KSP1. That is, if you really want to play without batteries, solar panels, and RTGs, you can change the setting whenever you like, but it's on by default, and is a core component of spacecraft design that's assumed to be active for all balancing. That's how core I think life support should be.

[Pthigrivi]

25 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

If on top of that I had to also figure out snax and water and gasses to keep my Kerbals alive? 

No no, just one: snacks. If you've got enough snacks you're good. We can assume water and O2 are being recycled. That way you're just comparing two numbers: how long will it take to get there (and back) and how long will your snacks last. I think getting it down to one is really important exactly for this reason. And though others disagree I think no dead kerbals on normal difficulty. They can either hibernate or preferably just get grumpy and have reduced science and mining outputs. The consequences can be super soft and still provide the incentive. 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Wheehaw Kerman]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

That would be the only way I'd like it.

I've always presumed some parts of ship building and missions were 'automated' or 'behind the scenes' - like I don't have to create a wire diagram to build a ship, or add snax... so why should I have to futz around with LS?

I get that some people would like even more granularity - so for them, a togglable LS setting would be nice.  For me?  Nah.

I remember when aerodynamics came in; things got a little more realistic and a bit harder, but also more fun.  And when I couldn’t just slam returning interplanetary vehicles into the atmosphere anymore but had to add heatshields and re-enter on more realistic trajectories, the difficulty increased, but I learned to deal with it, and had more fun.  Comms?  Again, the increase in difficulty and realism led to more fun.

KSP gets more fun the more realistic it gets, and the less it abstracts: the more it teaches us and the more difficult it gets, the more I enjoy the game (and I don’t think I’m alone in this - in fact, I’d bet that most of us feel the same way).  It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun played with all the “Space is hard” stuff switched off, and I expect LS will be no different.  In fact, I’d bet that if KSP2 adds LS, inside of a month we’d have it figured out, be enjoying it, and wouldn’t want to play without it.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I remember when aerodynamics came in; things got a little more realistic and a bit harder, but also more fun.  And when I couldn’t just slam returning interplanetary vehicles into the atmosphere anymore but had to add heatshields and re-enter on more realistic trajectories, the difficulty increased, but I learned to deal with it, and had more fun.  Comms?  Again, the increase in difficulty and realism led to more fun.

KSP gets more fun the more realistic it gets, and the less it abstracts: the more it teaches us and the more difficult it gets, the more I enjoy the game (and I don’t think I’m alone in this - in fact, I’d bet that most of us feel the same way).  It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun played with all the “Space is hard” stuff switched off, and I expect LS will be no different.  In fact, I’d bet that if KSP2 adds LS, inside of a month we’d have it figured out, be enjoying it, and wouldn’t want to play without it.

I can't actually argue with that.

I'm not entirely against it... just leery.

[SciMan]

I think I can sum up the core reason behind why some people don't want life support in the game.

The mods.
Generally, the life support mods we've had, have been "trickle down" type things from the RSS/RO/RP-1 group, adapted for use in standard KSP.
And they always suck the fun out of the game, because they track every tiny little thing you aren't doing right and punish you for it severely (and only tell you about something bad happening or about to happen sometimes, and even then it's off in some usually unnoticed menu that you have to watch a tutorial to figure out that the button for it even exists).

Basically, the whole thing can be boiled down to a load of bad and poorly communicated gameplay mechanics, with a layer of not-so-great UI heaped on top of it, and someone forgot to spice it with that essential thing called "rewarding gameplay".

And that leads to things that have a very skewed "realisim vs game" balance, strongly in favor of "more realism and less game".
This usually leads to needing a lot of different resources to keep a crew member alive, as well as overly complicated recycling simulations that make it much simpler to just use an open-cycle life support system for all but the missions that are either too long or too far to have any hope of anything but a closed cycle life support system working (and you run into the slowdown that is introduced by having 50 different resource converter modules on your vessel to handle all those different intermediate resources that you just don't have a use for in an open cycle system).

That's not fun. The reality is that it's almost impossible to live in space indefinitely, but we don't want to have to acknowledge that because this is a video game and we want to put boots on the surface of a planet orbiting another star. So something has to give, and that "something" is how realistic and complicated the life support system is.

As for mortality or tourist or stasis or what have you, let's not focus on that right yet. Let's focus on the other side of it for a moment.
What exactly do you GAIN from having a functioning life support system on your vessel, other than the "lack of a negative"?
Point is, "Not dying" is not a sufficient reward, because vanilla KSP gives you that by default. That's just "I didn't hit you this time, aren't you happy?" You can probably see why that's not fun.
You need to get something BETTER than what the vanilla game gives you, in order for me to want to install a life support mod.
Like, each engineer counts as 2 engineers for the purposes of running ISRU gear when the life support system is working properly. Or scientists process data in the science lab even faster than normal.
IDK what you'd get for pilots. It can't be increased fuel economy or better thrust, because that's already dictated by the hard-and-fast rules of physics.

Boiling it down to one main resource is a good start. We'll probably need to also have a way to create that resource with things we can find on most if not all planets, and for sure in every solar system.
And maybe a way to recycle it, so that we can have mostly-closed-cycle life support which will be absolutely essential for journeys  as long as that needed to travel to another solar system.

But the main thing that it will have to do is REWARD you for doing the life support right, it can't ONLY give you game overs. A win is a WIN not a DRAW. Draws don't count towards wins OR losses, and the human mind doesn't get any satisfaction from "just surviving" something usually, unless that mind has already been abused.
You have to "win" the game, you can't just "draw" your way to victory.

And because literally every time I use the "reward me instead of just punishing me" argument, someone says it, I'm going to say it right here:
No, you can't use the same argument against orbital mechanics. No, this doesn't turn the whole game into something you can reduce to a "push button, screen with i win pops up" either.
I've had enough of that particular reducio ad absurdum argument, and so I'm judging it invalid.
In my mind, it doesn't agree with my philosophy.
And in any case, that whole line of counter-argument strikes me as a "no true scotsman" argument, which is another logical fallacy.