Life support?

[Pthigrivi]

It was pretty interesting to see life support emerge as one of the most popular requests for unannounced features. A number of folks seemed to want to chat about it and rather than clog up the Top 10 thread I thought I'd start new topic. I've written my own proposal on how it could be done but this is a community and Im not an N of 1 kind of person. What are your thoughts? I know some of the devs are skeptical but I think there are some really cool opportunities here. 

[The Aziz]

Yet another* topic on LS. Not the first, not the last.

For me it's extremely simple. Like Snacks! but more forgiving. The estimates of consuming (one or two resources at most) should be accurate without randomness, assuming I have a working mission planner so I know how long the mission is going to take. So they don't run out. Self sufficient modules as an addition to habitation modules for [large] ships and colonies. Require crew to operate. When food runs out, the productivity of Kerbals drop significantly, but that's about the only penalty.

And bring the radiation back, they've had it on old footage. 

[Royalswissarmyknife]

6 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

When food runs out, the productivity of Kerbals drop significantly, but that's about the only penalty.

Maybe when you turn on hard mode they die after you run out of food.

Just for the small percentage of players who like to suffer when playing games.

[regex]

I want actual life support in the game so that if it runs out the kerbals die and the mission ends. I don't think it needs to be overly complicated but at a minimum I'd like to see two resources. One for "air" or whatever, which can be recycled early in the tech tree, and another for "food" which can't be recycled or generated in situ until much further down the tech tree.

But in all honesty I'll take pretty much anything so long as it doesn't have a stupid name like "snacks". I think life support, and the very real consequences thereof, add a great element to mission planning and execution. Not having it is kind of disrespectful of the perils of space travel.

Edited November 13, 2023 by regex

[Bej Kerman]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

Not having it is kind of disrespectful of the perils of space travel.

Out of genuine curiosity, this isn't hyperbole or some kind of joke, is it?

[regex]

16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Out of genuine curiosity, this isn't hyperbole or some kind of joke, is it?

What would the joke be if it were one?

KSP, historically and even now, misses in so many areas on making spaceflight "spaceflight" and while I'm pretty much over it, and willing to let this new crew cook to see what they come up with, if we're talking things that I want in the game I'm almost always going to fall on the side of making things more realistic, or at the very least true to life.

[Bej Kerman]

17 minutes ago, regex said:

What would the joke be if it were one?

KSP, historically and even now, misses in so many areas on making spaceflight "spaceflight" and while I'm pretty much over it, and willing to let this new crew cook to see what they come up with, if we're talking things that I want in the game I'm almost always going to fall on the side of making things more realistic, or at the very least true to life.

I'd say making life support negligence outright fatal would only slip into "more annoying than it's worth" territory.

[regex]

32 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'd say making life support negligence outright fatal would only slip into "more annoying than it's worth" territory.

I was asked my thoughts, not to speculate what would be fun for others.

[Bej Kerman]

14 minutes ago, regex said:

I was asked my thoughts, not to speculate what would be fun for others.

"Disrespectful to the perils of space travel" is kind of a leap though.

[Periple]

My preferences:

Hibernation as failure condition. I think this would fit the game better than death. You will be running multiple missions in parallel and you won’t be planning your missions as carefully as IRL, and it is pretty easy to inadvertently warp past the failure condition. It would create an opening for rescue missions which would be exciting emergent gameplay; recoverable mistakes usually make for more fun gameplay than irrecoverable ones. It would be easy to justify through unique kerbal biology too — hibernation could be a natural state for them. (There could be a hardcore mode with death for those who want it; I expect that would also be trivial to mod in.)

Ignorable for Mun/Minmus. Crew capsules should have enough built-in LS for comfortable missions around Kerbin. New players have a hard enough time to learn rocketry, let’s not burden them with LS just yet… unless they maroon their kerbals, in which case they will learn about rescue missions.

Linked to resource and logistics systems. LS should become a significant design consideration when resources come online — with the colonies. You would need to plan LS for longer round trip missions and set up supply routes to your permanent outposts, whether they’re colonies or just KSP1 style stations and bases. Once set up, this would let you warp freely as you do stuff that takes years or more.

Not an optional system. It should integrate deeply with other game systems, be easy to learn, and be fun to engage with, so it’s an integral part of the game. There could be difficulty options that make consequences of failure more or less punishing, but the system itself ought to be there and a part of how the kerbal universe works.

In sum, it should inform your vessel and mission design, be easy to learn, not become a chore, and help maintain challenge through the mid and late games.

I won’t go into how exactly I’d try to meet these goals, but that’s where I’d like to land however it’s done.

[Vl3d]

I'm on the side of including a radiation and habitation management system instead of consumable life support on craft, the latter which generates frustration for stock gameplay because it limits your ability to time warp.

I like to play KSP fast. I want to be able to switch between missions at any time, time warp an arbitrary amount at any time and not deal with hidden variables that create conditions for failure at the end of the mission.

Radiation and habitation can be pass / fail by craft design and location, independent of time.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Vl3d

[cocoscacao]

5 hours ago, Periple said:

Crew capsules should have enough built-in LS for comfortable missions around Kerbin. New players have a hard enough time to learn rocketry, let’s not burden them with LS just yet

I'm kinda torn apart with LS. If you can ignore it around Kerbin, then the next major step (inteplanetary) becomes even more hard. You now need to know when the return launch window is gonna happen, and plan according to that as well.

Many players never left home planet SOI, this would just discourage them further.

[Periple]

2 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

I'm kinda torn apart with LS. If you can ignore it around Kerbin, then the next major step (inteplanetary) becomes even more hard. You now need to know when the return launch window is gonna happen, and plan according to that as well.

Many players never left home planet SOI, this would just discourage them further.

I think that's a matter of tutorializing, UI, and sufficient alarms. I think it's almost inevitable to run into the system even when puttering around the Mun and Minmus -- the difference being that it'll be very easy to resupply or rescue. Then you'd also know what you need to plan for when you want to take Jeb and Val to Duna.

It might require a decent mission planner -- launch on this date, take the transfer window to Duna on that date, take the return window on the next date, see the total mission time, and see the total LS requirement for it and whether you've packed enough resources for the trip. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Periple

[Guest]

I agree with most of what @Periple is saying, and partially with @Vl3d's angle.

First, I wouldn't want a whole Factorio worth of resource management, 3 resurces to deal with is already two and a half too many. I like the Snacks lore and simplicity, but that would leave questions like: "What about water, oxygen, fertilizer..." 

That's why I'd go with something more generic, like "supplies". For the gameplay loop around those I'd keep it simple too, 2 kinds of modules, greenhouses and similar to generate supplies from raw resources, and recyclers  stuff to lower the consumption rate of "supplies". The fact that "supplies" are generic helps a lot with the perceived realism there: if you have a greenhouse but no oxygen reclaimer those supplies are going to be mostly oxygen in your head-canon. That way the different parts are not part of a pure resource-driven gameplay, but part of a ship design one, as energy consumption and weight are going to be more important.

For the sake of interstellar travels the player should have access to a series of modules that, combined together, reduce the consumption rate of supplies to almost 0%, allowing for decades long missions.

 

Second part, the lethality of the system. It shouldn't be lethal, period. Maybe as an hardcore setting, but not in the designed gameplay loop. Rescuing stranded Kerbals is a good source of emergent gameplay and should be preserved at any cost.

As I've proposed before, an emergency hibernation capsule, the hibernation can only be reversed back at the KSC or at a colony which has reached the maximum possible tier and has a dedicated building for it. This makes failing with LS increasingly punishing the farther you go from Settled Space.

First interstellar trip? Pay attention to LS or the second one is gonna be a rescue mission. Return trip or trip to an established max-tier endgame colony? You can trigger the hibernation intentionally knowing that you can recover the Kerbals on the other side.

Also, I think it's obvious, but when all Kerbal are hibernated the craft reverts to probe control, if any is present.

 

Last, and here is where I partially agree with @Vl3d, habitation and environmental hazards should be a part of any LS system.
Not something complex. Give Kerbals a stress meter, make them get more stressed based on set and easy to control conditions, and have them consume up to 50% more supplies if they're stressed. 

If you want to use this to create an additional gameplay loop, give every Kerbal an "Acclimated to space" stat, the more they stay in space orbit while their stress is below a certain threshold (let's say 50% of stress) the more they get acclimated to it and their stress level increase slower.

This would also make simple orbital stations, along with crew rotations and resupply missions, a viable gameplay loop to train better Kerbals for longer missions. You can add a layer to this if you make it so that the farther from the KCS/KSC-level colony you are, the faster is training.

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Master39

[Periple]

1 minute ago, Master39 said:

Give Kerbals a stress meter, make them get more stressed based on set and easy to control conditions, and have them consume up to 50% more supplies if they're stressed. 

I really like this idea!

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Periple said:

I really like this idea!

I always found the ability to make a tour of the solar system in a Mercury capsule (or an external seat) more immersion breaking than the game ignoring food and water. With stress you can encompass a whole lot of hazards, from radiation, to the effects of confined spaces and isolation for long periods of times without having to go down to having to simulate and micromanage all those aspects.

[Periple]

17 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I always found the ability to make a tour of the solar system in a Mercury capsule (or an external seat) more immersion breaking than the game ignoring food and water.

Same! I would have hitchhiker compartments for the crew in my interplanetary missions just for the roleplay!

[Vl3d]

5 minutes ago, Master39 said:

First interstellar trip? Pay attention to LS or the second one is gonna be a rescue mission.

Interstellar rescue missions? What are we taking about..? In my mind you need to "marshall all the resources of your civilization" (quote from a feature video) to undertake an initial interstellar mission, so I just can't imagine how absurd it would be to run out of LS during the journey, have your kerbals enter hibernation.. then have to send another interstellar craft to resupply or rescue those stranded kerbals.

11 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Give Kerbals a stress meter, make them get more stressed based on set and easy to control conditions, and have them consume up to 50% more supplies if they're stressed. 

So now not only put a consumables LS system and a localized radiation system in the game, but also a consumable stress resource? That sounds just like Kerbalism. And I love Kerbalism, but it prevents arbitrary time warping and slows the game down to a snail's pace. Do you really want new stock players to spend 50 hours just to reach Duna with kerbals?

Besides, IMO most of the proponents of adding consumable time-sensitive LS to the game have not thought it out in gameplay practice, they're just expressing an emotional desire for more realism.

You cannot have on-vessel consumables if you don't also add a system which, after finishing a mission segment, allows you to go back to the start of another segment of that said mission so you can start another parallel missions. Without this you will never be able to play a mission start to end without interruptions like in stock KSP 1. And I for one do not want to have an alarm that tells me "oh, stop what you're doing, you have to design and launch a resupply mission right now or else your kerbals are out of LS - and by the way, you can't use time warp to get to your destination". Please, think through what you're proposing.

Also, IMO advanced players want a game that is just like KSP 1 with mods but better. If you look at most feature requests, they're not new ideas.. they're actually things that have been added to KSP though mods.

Again, IMO, the fact that KSP2 will have colony and orbital VABs, resources and delivery routes means that the game will have a lot of new stuff for the player to learn, focus on and play with. If the complexity of the game is increasing by width, we can't have stock gameplay also increase in depth too much. We already have a new heating system which will destroy engines and parts, we will probably have a radiation system.. we can't just completely freeze gameplay by adding consumable LS and taking away the possibility to time warp at will. This would kill gameplay and you can forget about interstellar, most players would never even land on Duna.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

So now not only put a consumables LS system and a localized radiation system in the game, but also a consumable stress resource? That sounds just like Kerbalism. And I love Kerbalism, but it prevents arbitrary time warping and slows the game down to a snail's pace. Do you really want new stock players to spend 50 hours just to reach Duna with kerbals?

Come now, it wouldn't be that hard. You'd just need the tooling support for it. 

Imagine you're planning a Duna mission. You look up the next transfer window in the mission planner. Then the return windows. You pick the first return window. The mission planner shows you a good approximation of mission duration. As you crew up, the mission planner will show you the LS supply requirement and display if you've met it. 

When you launch, you can set up the alarms from the mission planner. 

You fly the mission, you fly back. If you don't want to warp between the alarms, you can fly other missions in the interim. How does this take 50 hours or slow down the gameplay in any way? I bet even planning the mission would take less time than it does in KSP1 that doesn't have these tools.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Periple

[The Aziz]

Yeah I don't see the problem either. If you know how long the mission is going to take, and you should with proper mission planning, you prepare enough resources plus something spare just in case, period.

And again, for any multiyear mission, so really anything beyond inner planets, will require onboard production. Also doable.

[Scarecrow71]

As long as it's a toggleable option, I say include it.  But don't make it mandatory.

[Vl3d]

I'm really starting to doubt that people asking for life support have actually played KSP 1 with a consumable life support mod.

1. What mission planner?

2. For a mission to land on Duna with consumable LS and time sensitive gameplay you have to account for:

- launching at the appropriate transfer window, so that means no loitering / warping in orbit;

- doing exact injection and correction burns so as to replicate the transfer trajectories and planned timings;

- take into account for the lander LS on board resources the time needed to intercept and dock with the orbiter (you take too long to dock, you fail);

- (my favorite) after all of this, you should have calculated precisely how many time sensitive resources you needed for the return trip, which includes waiting for the return transfer window and any margin of error caused by sub-optimal burns or trajectories.

Yes, I played KSP 1 with LS once. I sent a 2 crew mission to land on Duna. It took me hours to design and execute it. Know what happened? The kerbals died of hunger 2 days before Kerbin reentry. But not simultaneously, no. Bill had to sit next to Jeb's corpse in the capsule for about 4 days before also expiring. We found 2 little green heroes on board, with clear signs of mental breakdown and possible cannibalism.

Does this sound like fun stock gameplay to you for a KSP beginner?

And if you don't kill them and just put them in hibernation, then LS is just useless for gameplay, might as well not have it at all.

Not to mention that you can't arbitrarily time warp during the mission and you can't do other missions freely, as I've previously stated.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Vl3d

[cocoscacao]

27 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

As long as it's a toggleable option, I say include it.  But don't make it mandatory.

That's the problem. What would LS include then? Additional parts? You would render them useless if the checkbox is unticked? I understand their hesitation. From game design perspective, it ain't that simple.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

1. What mission planner?

The mission planner that supports the LS feature (and other stuff too) of course!

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

2. For a mission to land on Duna with consumable LS and time sensitive gameplay you have to account for:

- launching at the appropriate transfer window, so that means no loitering / warping in orbit;

- doing exact injection and correction burns so as to replicate the transfer trajectories and planned timings;

- take into account for the lander LS on board resources the time needed to intercept and dock with the orbiter (you take too long to dock, you fail);

- (my favorite) after all of this, you should have calculated precisely how many time sensitive resources you needed for the return trip, which includes waiting for the return transfer window and any margin of error caused by sub-optimal burns or trajectories.

A Duna mission's duration is about two and half years. If the LS was balanced according to how I described it, a capsule or lander module would have built-in LS supplies for about 30 days (a typical Minmus round trip with a bit of safety margin). All you need to do is allow for enough safety margin so you can afford to be a bit sloppy. Say, pack enough supplies for three years rather than two and a half.

Meaning, you don't have to be any more precise than calculating the dV requirements for the trip.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Yes, I played KSP 1 with LS once. I sent a 2 crew mission to land on Duna. It took me hours to design and execute it. Know what happened? The kerbals died of hunger 2 days before Kerbin reentry. But not simultaneously, no. Bill had to sit next to Jeb's corpse in the capsule for about 4 days before also expiring. We found 2 little green heroes on board, with clear signs of mental breakdown and possible cannibalism.

Does this sound like fun stock gameplay to you for a KSP beginner?

Absolutely not! It sounds like the LS system was much too punishing and lacked sufficient planning tools for you to execute it properly. The way I envision it, you could have stuck a probe core onto the capsule, Jeb and Bill would have gone into hibernation, and you could have guided the capsule back remotely to a safe landing. Plus you wouldn't have made that mistake to start with, since the planning tool would have alerted you to the too-thin safety margins you're running.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

And if you don't kill them and just put them in hibernation, then LS is just useless for gameplay, might as well not have it at all.

On the contrary. If you end up having to hibernate your kerbals on Duna, or on the way back and you didn't pack a probe core, you'll have to send in a rescue mission. That's fun, emergent gameplay. 

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Not to mention that you can't arbitrarily time warp during the mission and you can't do other missions freely, as I've previously stated.

You can't arbitrarily time warp on any mission. You'll miss your transfer window, your encounter, your correction burn, or your capture. LS doesn't change this in any way.

[regex]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

I'm really starting to doubt that people asking for life support have actually played KSP 1 with a consumable life support mod.

I used to play with TAC LS, great mod. A bit early in the modding scene but it did the job well.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

1. What mission planner?

While I would definitely love an in-game porkchop plot and proper shipbuilding tools, all we'd really need for LS is an alarm clock, a feature that got introduced to vanilla KSP1 a bit later in life but was there as a mod since LS was a thing. I'm pretty sure it'll be reintroduced since it's so helpful for gameplay.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

2. For a mission to land on Duna with consumable LS and time sensitive gameplay you have to account for:

For a lot of this stuff you really don't have to worry too much. KSP's small solar system and performant parts mean you can be pretty sloppy all around and add additional mass as needed. LS doesn't take up a whole bunch of mass so you can pile on extra with little care. Ultimate precision in time shouldn't be something you strive for anyway due to how imprecise KSP's gameplay actually is.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Does this sound like fun stock gameplay to you for a KSP beginner?

The game trailers merrily kill kerbals all the time, this should be nothing new. They are meant to suffer, it's their lot in life.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Not to mention that you can't arbitrarily time warp during the mission and you can't do other missions freely, as I've previously stated.

Clearly you've never actually played KSP 1 with a consumable life support mod. Set appropriate alarms (an alarm clock should be considered a feature of the LS "package") and allow for slop in missions by packing extra supplies which KSP graciously makes very easy by virtue of the "easy mode" solar system.

Besides, as I understand most players just run one interplanetary mission at a time so a lot of this is moot.

8 minutes ago, Periple said:

The way I envision it, you could have stuck a probe core onto the capsule, Jeb and Bill would have gone into hibernation, and you could have guided the capsule back remotely to a safe landing.

ugh, I'm sorry, this just sounds like sidelining the whole idea of life support. There are zero consequences in that scenario. There's literally no point in having it if you can subvert it that easily.

Edited November 13, 2023 by regex