An optional, difficulty-based, non-fatal, Snacks-like life support implementation

[DibzNr]

Obviously members of the development team have said before they don't enjoy life support, and that's perfectly understandable, a lot of people don't enjoy the prospect of needing to deal with such extra constraints in a game that's already very heavy on resource management, but there's also a large potion of the community (Myself included) who enjoy the additional challenge offered by imposing life support requirements quite a lot, simultaneously of course forcing life support requirements on the side of the community that doesn't enjoy it would be tremendously bad in a large multitude of ways (As the development team has highlighted before).

My suggestion is to take a sort of "best of both worlds" approach; adding simple single resource non-fatal life support mechanic and making it only enable with Hard mode, with the option to make it fatal not being enabled until Rocket Scientist difficulty.

It being behind Hard mode means that newer players just starting the game won't immediately default to having life support requirements enabled, which prevents it from interfering with the game's initial learning curve while also giving users who wish for the extra challenge the option to enable it, furthermore making it non-fatal allows for it to factor into gameplay without being a significant source of frustration for players, at least until they feel ready to subject themselves to that experience with the Rocket Scientist difficulty.

You may be asking; "But Mr. DibzNr, if the life support is non-fatal then what's the point of it?"

That'd be an interesting problem,  the original Snacks mod for KSP1 simply made Kerbals fall unconscious and thus lose vessel control when they ran out of food, I don't think the player's first experience managing life support resources should be so punishing through; instead my idea is that you could impose a number of smaller penalties like, for instance, tying it into the G-Force mechanics such that Kerbal's G-Force tolerances get scaled back the hungrier they are, you could also take a Minecraft approach and make it so that they can't sprint on EVA if they're out of food, incentivising the player to keep their Kerbals fed without imposing too tremendous of a penalty for failing to do so.

Simplifying it all down to a singular resource (Instead of many interconnected resources) also helps to keep things simple overall, and also lets you implement a singular bold "Are my Kerbals suffering" bar that could go right alongside the other "Are my Kerbals suffering" bar, which aids in UI readability, and could also integrate well into colony mechanics.

Much like most KSP1 life support mods, the rate at which Kerbals consume food could also be determined by a slider in the difficulty, with it being laxed on Hard difficulty to not make things too overwhelming overall, and then stepped up for the Rocket Scientist difficulty.

[Guest]

I don’t think the game should have difficulty modes, and I think LS ought to be designed well enough that it’s an enjoyable challenge at all levels. You get to set your own difficulty by choosing where you want to go, how, and what you want to do there.

I would like a LS system like that and I think it would be possible, but I also think it would be a pretty complicated thing so I don’t blame them for cutting it. But a big NO to optional LS from me!

[Bej Kerman]

That sounds good to me. Key word, to me. An obvious flaw of the "best of both worlds" compromise (barring optional difficulties) is that you'll get extreme pro players complaining that the feature is too light, and if you then nudge the compromise in their favour, you'll get newer players who don't feel as invited to improve their ability to play. This is a convo that has happened a million times before, so I'll just advise you that this is a road that's been walked down before and that the devs themselves have likely had hundreds of conversations about this very balance.

[GluttonyReaper]

As with many things in KSP2, the trickiest bit of life support is bridging the gap between interplanetary and interstellar - how do you deal with the fact that decades might suddenly pass as you're time-warping to another solar system, and your space station that needs resupplying every six months runs dry after half a second?

It's not an unsolvable problem (automatic resupply missions comes to mind) but it's a heck of a large development investment for an optional feature. I personally would actually like to see some kind of more full seperate 'hardcore' mode with a more complex life support system (with lots of interesting solutions!) that's fully integrated into other parts of the game such as resource mining and science, rather than a milder solution that can toggled on and off. Perhaps as something to be developed after 1.0 eventually releases, like the survival modes of other games  

Edited October 23, 2023 by GluttonyReaper

[Barrackar]

Mods are optional. I am fairly certain many people will be making various flavors of life-support mods.

Personally, I want to see how colonies are implemented before considering adding a life-support layer on top. Colonies are just going to effect too much to consider how something else would be added on top.

[Lowi_Sace]

Life support would be cool but it requires a lot to properly implement. The implementation needs to work from short moon trips to interstellar trips. Implementations will also need to work for colonies as well and not require to much background progressing. Also predictability and advanced planning options will then be needed. In the forum (could not find it) was a topic were someone described a good way for this and which parts are needed for this. I think a LS implementation can be done when the road map is finished, so it can be properly implemented