No life support in KSP2

[LoSBoL]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

The Kerbal/Human differences is a double edged sword. You can't use it to explain both similarities and differences without becoming inconsistent, and given there's more things in common with human spaceflight than differences, it kinda should then be the other way: precisely because Kerbals are so similar to humans, that we'd need at least some basic implementation of life support.

1. They build rockets the same way.
2. They manage space programs in almost the same way.
3. Bodies are similar.
4. They approach rocketry and space exploration in the same way.

They're more similar than not, with differences being mostly because of gameplay choices/limitations rather than conceptual.

The crew of Soyuz 11 died in space, almost immediately after undocking from Salyut 1, after a cabin vent valve failed, decompressing their spacecraft, they're so far the only fatalities to happen above the Karman line. Another 16 people have died below the Karman line in flight crewing a spacecraft, and another 11 have died as the results of testing spacecraft or their equipment.

There are no inconsistencies in my opinion. Like I said, I think the game is done with Kerbals instead of humans because we don't put humans in capsules for decades, we don't use them as crashtest dummies or strand them somewhere. If we would play with humans the game becomes more realistic, but if you do we wouldn't be able to go very far past the moon, because we haven't been farther then the moon irl, because of what I already mentioned above (next to technical barriers which prevent us at this point in time. 

I'd argue there is much less  similarities between KSP and real space programs, the inconsistencies between real life and Kerbals are there, and most probably, because of these inconsistencies Kerbals are what we shoot into space. 

And if you look closely, we don't build rockets in the same way, we are far from managing spaceflight in real life the same way, and we are definitely not able to approach exploration in the same way. Because we're humans and not able to do it like we are able to do with Kerbals. 

(which all doesn't mean I'm arguing against life support in KSP,  'we need it in KSP because of real life' just isn't an argument to get in the game for me, because the rest of KSP is far from real life. ) 

Thanks for the update on real life casualties, I've learned something new today. 

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

There are no inconsistencies in my opinion.

Not your opinion, the general argument that Kerbals are different from humans. Yes, they are different in some aspects, but they're also very similar in other aspects. Using that to justify one or the other thing is moot, you can pretty much tag anything as a similarity or difference:

Vertically integrated, chemical rockets that stage dead mass away, Spaceplane SSTOs, Big Dumb Rockets, Asparagus/Onion/Standard staging, all of that is born from human design first, and Kerbals do nothing we humans don't or have designed already, the only difference is the technological barrier. Space programs on Earth are divided between publicly funded scientific endeavors, and commercial programs that sell launch services to customers, all KSP does is combine them and let you play either or both, or neither in sandbox.

This is why the argument in general is pretty subjective at best, and plain dumb at worse. You're stretching the "differences" side of the argument to justify lack of LS, for example, whilst brushing away the clear similarities in an unjustified way. If we go further than that, there's only nitpicking.

[RocketRockington]

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Not your opinion, the general argument that Kerbals are different from humans. Yes, they are different in some aspects, but they're also very similar in other aspects. Using that to justify one or the other thing is moot, you can pretty much tag anything as a similarity or difference:

Moreover Kerbals are fictional so coming up with rules that say XYZ must apply because they're Kerbals and not humans is silly.  Life support is not off the table just because they're Kerbals - it's off the table because that's what the developers want to do.

[Wetzelrad]

Personally I'm in favor of a single-resource life support system with parts to store and generate it. As a career option. I also favor death for kerbals lacking life support. Anything less would be a cop out.

Why? Because the difficulty level falls off a cliff once you go interplanetary. Even when you make mistakes, there's often no penalty since you can simply fast forward to an opportune transfer window, or go through a month of aerobrake manuevers, or send a rescue mission five years later. It's much too forgiving for experienced players, although I wouldn't wish to force life support on new players.

There is also potential to push the player into more interesting flight plans. Probably everyone reading this is used to waiting for the ideal planetary phase angle to perform an interplanetary burn. I doubt whether a real-life trip to and from Mars would do the same, because, if I'm not mistaken, it would more than double the trip's length. If implemented well, LS would encourage the player to sometimes use something other than the ideal hohmann transfer.

And what of multiplayer? Nate has indicated that incorporating multiplayer with all new and existing features is on the back of his mind. This may be his reason for leaning away from the implementation of LS. It would be a serious annoyance to fly a long mission to meet up with another player, get into a near orbit, only to realize that he is (now) playing 35 years in the future while you only brought enough snacks to last 25 years.

[LoSBoL]

6 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Moreover Kerbals are fictional so coming up with rules that say XYZ must apply because they're Kerbals and not humans is silly.  Life support is not off the table just because they're Kerbals - it's off the table because that's what the developers want to do.

 

6 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

  12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Not your opinion, the general argument that Kerbals are different from humans. Yes, they are different in some aspects, but they're also very similar in other aspects. Using that to justify one or the other thing is moot, you can pretty much tag anything as a similarity or difference:

I'm not arguing  that because 'we have Kerbals instead of humans' life support shouldn't be in the game.  I'm not debating at all if LS should or should not be in the game. 

What I keep trying to get across is that KSP does not lend itself to mimic real life, and because we can't we are shooting Kerbals up in space, which we can happily strap into a chair for decades without dealing with real life issues. That's not an argument to not have Life Support but it keeps being seen as such.  

13 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Kerbals do nothing we humans don't

KSP is a game, a game which is a game because of Kerbals. It wouldn't be a game if we'd use Humans. it wouldn't be a game anymore because we'd have to mimic real life, and for space travel it would end quickly because we as humans have to factor in real life issues that are involved in that. Again, this is not an argument to not have Life Support.  Kerbals enable us to not deal with Real Life and have a game. Kerbals can do everything we can't do with Humans.

What is the only thing that KPS mimics from real life?  Orbital Mechanics, other than that nothing in KSP resembles Real Life.  

We can't build contraptions like we do in the game irl
We can't strap humans into command chairs and leave them in there for decades.
Kerbals however, can, and we do so so we have a game.

Edited April 7, 2023 by LoSBoL

[pandaman]

5 hours ago, Wetzelrad said:

 

And what of multiplayer? Nate has indicated that incorporating multiplayer with all new and existing features is on the back of his mind. This may be his reason for leaning away from the implementation of LS. It would be a serious annoyance to fly a long mission to meet up with another player, get into a near orbit, only to realize that he is (now) playing 35 years in the future while you only brought enough snacks to last 25 years.

That is a very good point.

It doesn't change my opinion that LS should be implemented (I think it should have toggles and difficulty settings anyway).  And I don't want 'Because MP' to be a reason to not include it.

If it does prove to be impractical for MP then just disable it by default whenever an MP campaign is started, with options (and appropriate 'health warnings') to activate it of course.

 

[RocketRockington]

2 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

What I keep trying to get across is that KSP does not lend itself to mimic real life, and because we can't we are shooting Kerbals up in space, which we can happily strap into a chair for decades without dealing with real life issues. That's not an argument to not have Life Support but it keeps being seen as such.  

I completely disagree - KSP very much does lend itself to mimicing real life - the reason it feels good to go to the Mun is because you get this sensation of accomplishment that wouldn't be the case if it had no connection to the complexities of  real-life space exploration.     Kerbal is the closest we have to real world space exploration most players will ever experience unless you play Orbiter.  Virtually every other title that does some sort of space gameplay - whether it uses humans or something else as the characters - does something less realistic.

How CLOSE to real life is up to the developers.  The developers decided to make fuels more realistic in KSP2 - switching from 'liquid fuel' to actual named chemical fuels.  I don't see you arguing against that.  Modders have certainly made the game closer to real life, in a variety of ways, and people happily play those mods though obviously they're not for everyone.

Further, many people in this thread who want LS are not arguing to do LS because of realism reasons, but for gameplay reasons - to make missions more challenging or interesting.

So overall your point of  'It's Kerbals so the game should be unrealistic' doesn't make sense to me.

Edited April 7, 2023 by RocketRockington

[LoSBoL]

3 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

So overall your point of  'It's Kerbals so the game should be unrealistic' doesn't make sense to me.

That's not my point, at all, I don't know how many times I have to keep repeating that. 

 

4 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

KSP very much does lend itself to mimicing real life - the reason it feels good to go to the Mun is because you get this sensation of accomplishment that wouldn't be the case if it had no connection to the complexities of  real-life space exploration.

If KSP would have mimicked life, we would only be sending probes and rovers beyond the mün. Not much game in that, so the devs choose very wisely for us to be playing with Kerbals instead of humans, so we can have a game that allows us to go beyond what we as humans are capable off. 

And I'll repeat again, I'm not arguing that because we use Kerbals, we shouldn't have life support. 

[PDCWolf]

8 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

What I keep trying to get across is that KSP does not lend itself to mimic real life, and because we can't we are shooting Kerbals up in space, which we can happily strap into a chair for decades without dealing with real life issues. That's not an argument to not have Life Support but it keeps being seen as such. 

8 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

We can't build contraptions like we do in the game irl
We can't strap humans into command chairs and leave them in there for decades.
Kerbals however, can, and we do so so we have a game.

Your argument is confusing to other posters as well because it makes no sense You're drawing squiggly lines around imitations, similarities and differences, clearly ignoring the list of similarities because it doesn't fit whatever view you're trying to justify.

We can absolutely build anything Kerbals have, barring things like funding and the interest of politicians. Every single lego piece the Kerbals have to build with comes from a real-life inspiration that was built or at least designed by humans first.

5 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

If KSP would have mimicked life, we would only be sending probes and rovers beyond the mün. Not much game in that, so the devs choose very wisely for us to be playing with Kerbals instead of humans, so we can have a game that allows us to go beyond what we as humans are capable off.

This bit makes even less sense. KSP being a game is the exact reason why we should be able to do stuff we're currently unable to in real life, whilst simulating the perils of spaceflight we face in real life, which the game already gets mostly right, except for life support.

Realistic doesn't mean it should strictly follow reality and end where reality ends. In fact, once again, the only reason we aren't colonizing the solar system is the passing, uneducated interests of politicians not favoring that. The designs, mission profiles and technology is all already there, and it is exactly what KSP employs. KSP follows real life much more closely than you're willing to admit, and bending that to justify your view is why most posters are unable to understand your point.

[LoSBoL]

36 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

the only reason we aren't colonizing the solar system is the passing, uneducated interests of politicians not favoring that. The designs, mission profiles and technology is all already there

Now if only we can find humans which we can strap into a command seat for decades. Humans are not held alive with just food, water, waste management and oxygen. That's just fulfilling in their primary needs and won't keep people alive for long. It's not just mission profiles and technology (I don't think we are there yet, but that's just my 'uneducated' opinion) which are barriers in colonizations, it's humans themselves. 

 

We've exchanged views, up to the point were running in circles, and like I already mentioned, we almost share the exact same opinion on what KSP is, and what it allows us to do. We just argue from a different startingpoint which I don't know how to get it across to you, so this will be my last post on this. 

Edited April 7, 2023 by LoSBoL

[Periple]

9 hours ago, pandaman said:

If it does prove to be impractical for MP then just disable it by default whenever an MP campaign is started, with options (and appropriate 'health warnings') to activate it of course.

I don’t think a system as central as life support ought to be optional! If it’s done in a way that’s at all more complex and interesting than just a dry mass tax, it’s going to affect everything, from vessel design to mission plans to gameplay, and the effects will be different for multiplayer. 

In my opinion, it’s only worth doing if it can be done well, and in that case it will be too tightly bound with other gameplay systems that switching it off would throw them out of balance.

I also think it makes sense to kick it forward, once multiplayer is in, it could be added in a big gameplay update with a lot of rebalancing so it works well. That would invalidate a lot of designs though which would upset people so I’m not sure how viable that is either. It’s complicated!

[DerkyJerkyWreaksHavoc]

On 4/5/2023 at 10:00 AM, larkvi said:

Just another broken promise and huge disappointment to add to the pile that KSP2 is.

Since when did KSP2 promise life support?? [snip]

Edited April 7, 2023 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, LoSBoL said:

Now if only we can find humans which we can strap into a command seat for decades. Humans are not held alive with just food, water, waste management and oxygen. That's just fulfilling in their primary needs and won't keep people alive for long. It's not just mission profiles and technology (I don't think we are there yet, but that's just my 'uneducated' opinion) which are barriers in colonizations, it's humans themselves. 

 

We've exchanged views, up to the point were running in circles, and like I already mentioned, we almost share the exact same opinion on what KSP is, and what it allows us to do. We just argue from a different startingpoint which I don't know how to get it across to you, so this will be my last post on this. 

There are multiple proposals for Life Support solutions for deep space exploration, and designs for interstellar flights as well, from multiple proponents like NASA, ESA, and private sources as well. Here's a few examples of individual systems and/or general plans.

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/5826/chapter/4

https://www.nasa.gov/content/life-support-systems

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Research/Life_support

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19670036516

The only circle here is yours. We have not exchanged anything.

Seemingly, to you, we can't have a realistic game about humans that allows deep space exploration, for unjustified reasons, nor can we have a game about Kerbals that properly portrays the challenges of space exploration because of unexplained "differences". When we mention similarities between Kerbals and Humans, you jump back to Humans being magically incapable, or just say "they're different". That's an arbitrary view you've failed to explain and thus your real point remains indecipherable to posters.

 

[Snark]

Some content has been redacted and/or removed.  Folks, we understand that folks are passionate about space travel and also passionate about the game, and it's fine to argue passionately... but let's keep things civil, please.

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

I think a mod like snacks is a good way for a stock life support system to be approached. The mod only adds 3 new parts and 2 new resources simply for storing large amounts of snacks and soil (the waste product), but otherwise works perfectly with the stock game since it uses existing crew modules and the MPL for recycling waste and using ore to make more snacks. There's plenty of options per save file for tweaking the consumption rates of snacks, the penalties for not feeding kerbals, and the effectiveness of soil recycling.

I'd also like to point out why I think life support is important for the stock game; an incentive to think more with crewed missions. As it stands currently, it's a better idea gameplay-wise to simply send kerbals on one-way trips to planets instead of using probes, since probes need continuous power and comms signal to work. For upcoming content in KSP2, there wouldn't be an incentive to use high-tech parts to get to other planets faster or build large habitats on ships since you could just timewarp for years with a crew that has zero extra living space (this would be within a given star system, since even timewarp would take too long to skip through millennia of going interstellar on chemical rockets). Obviously some players don't want to care about that, and that's fine; just make it a toggleable feature like commNet. But I really think there is a place for a stock life support system, even a simple one, in KSP2.

[LoSBoL]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Seemingly, to you, we can't have a realistic game about humans that allows deep space exploration, for unjustified reasons, nor can we have a game about Kerbals that properly portrays the challenges of space exploration because of unexplained "differences".

 

On 4/6/2023 at 5:03 PM, LoSBoL said:

(which all doesn't mean I'm arguing against life support in KSP,  'we need it in KSP because of real life' just isn't an argument to get in the game for me, because the rest of KSP is far from real life. ) 

 

13 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

I'm not arguing  that because 'we have Kerbals instead of humans' life support shouldn't be in the game.  I'm not debating at all if LS should or should not be in the game. 

 

9 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

That's not my point, at all, I don't know how many times I have to keep repeating that. 

 

9 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

And I'll repeat again, I'm not arguing that because we use Kerbals, we shouldn't have life support. 

 

 

[Wetzelrad]

6 hours ago, Periple said:

I don’t think a system as central as life support ought to be optional! If it’s done in a way that’s at all more complex and interesting than just a dry mass tax, it’s going to affect everything, from vessel design to mission plans to gameplay, and the effects will be different for multiplayer. 

In my opinion, it’s only worth doing if it can be done well, and in that case it will be too tightly bound with other gameplay systems that switching it off would throw them out of balance.

It doesn't have to be "tightly bound". In KSP1, there are difficulty sliders for reentry heating and comm range. You can set them to 0 or 100, which frees you to build vehicles without heat shields or antennae. This makes these features effectively optional, and I doubt anyone took serious issue with that. They are still important features that integrate with other systems. Many other features can also be toggled on or off, without even getting into cheats and mods. There's no reason life support can't be the same.

Perhaps you're imagining something much more complex than I am. I'm not sure what it could be that would not ultimately boil down to added weight and EC consumption. Lack of imagination on my part. Maybe requiring living modules to be directly connected?

I do wonder whether KSP2 will include difficulty options at all.

[Periple]

5 hours ago, Wetzelrad said:

Perhaps you're imagining something much more complex than I am. I'm not sure what it could be that would not ultimately boil down to added weight and EC consumption. Lack of imagination on my part.

If it really is just a mass penalty then I’d be pretty disappointed. Where’s the fun in that? You might as well roleplay by adding a bunch of empty crew modules and pretend they’re LS.

If it’s a non-renewable resource that is consumed over time, that will affect mission planning and resupply. That would need a really good mission planner. It would also tie into the resource and colony systems because they would need LS too plus presumably the consumables would need resources to produce them. All that would need to be considered.

This would have a big impact on game balance. Engines and other parts are currently balanced for payloads as they currently exist. If life support parts are thrown into the mix, that balance will change and something will need to be done about it.

Also, I really don’t like optional systems to start with! They make balancing everything even more of a headache than it is already and make playtesting much more complicated too because you need to do that with the systems enabled and disabled. In this kind of game a lot of the fun comes from the way the different systems interact, and designing some of them to be optional makes that harder.

I also think the optional systems in KSP 1 (CommNet and heating) shouldn’t be optional in the first place! They’re probably only optional because they were added later and the developers didn’t want to break the players’ craft and save games. Playing without them just isn’t as interesting!

I think life support could give an interesting new dimension to the gameplay but it’s hard to do it in a way that’s fun all through a career without becoming a chore, and works with multiplayer too! So I don’t blame IG for deciding just not to do it, they have a lot on their plate anyway!