Life support?

[Periple]

7 minutes ago, regex said:

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.

This is actually the best argument against LS that I've heard so far!

[regex]

2 minutes ago, Periple said:

This is actually the best argument against LS that I've heard so far!

It sounds like a great argument for it IMO, but maybe I just want some actual difficulty in this game.

[Guest]

3 hours 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?

If the stress only affects the consumption rate of supplies simple redundancy takes care of it, and most stress sources are just a matter of ship design, radiation environment => radiation shelter on the ship, habitation needs => more space for the crew, and so on and so forth.

This sounds like Kerbalism if Kerbalism was a 1 resource 1 stat system, now, I've never played with it, but the 1k words of "this is all the stuff this mod simulates" essay at the begin of the wiki tells me otherwise.

 

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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.

If only I hadn't replied like, a thousands of times that gameplay comes first in basically every discussion since 2019.

 

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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.

This entirely depends on stock consumption rates and on how forgiving the whole system is designed to be. It looks to me like you're just using the harshest setting of the most hardcore LS mod as a baseline for your argument.

 

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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".

Only if you litter the whole solar system of poorly designed missions, and have the bad habit of never finishing a mission.

If you start parallelize missions too much, planned maneuvers and transfer windows you can't miss start playing a role a lot earlier than any any LS stuff. That's why an alarm clock system and transfer window planner are completely independent from LS.

 

KSP is a game about planning and executing missions. IMO you're just rejecting anything that requires the "planning" phase not to be a problem.

 

2 hours ago, Periple said:

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.

The kind of gameplay @Vl3d is trying to preserve is:

1. You look at the minimum possible required DV for a Duna Mission
2. You launch your Duna rocket, it has that exact amount of DV.
3. You timewarp 3 years in orbit to get to that window that saves 200 of DV.
4. You execute your transfer maneuver.
5. Do some other mission in the meantime.
6. You missed the encounter, spend 10 years in solar orbit to get another while using the minimum amount of DV possible
7. You finally enter Duna orbit.
8. You forgot the lander.
9. ...

As I said:

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

- 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.

1. The previous transfer window, you launch 2 twin probes, containing enough supplies for the roundabout trip.
2. You make the transfer ship a bigger and more powerful mother-ship than what you really need, at least double the DV you theoretically need. This is also useful so that you can reuse it for multiple missions to most of the inner system.
3. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. 2 landers in Duna orbit, both with enough DV for multiple docking attempt, the second one can double as a spare in case of a hard landing, or still wait in orbit for the next Duna mission. 
4. The mission planner already tells you how long the supplies are gonna last and what the transfer windows are, in the VAB during the planning phase.

 

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.

In my proposal, the one you were replying to, the Kerbals would have been hibernated in orbit, and you would have needed a rescue mission. This is exactly why I said, and most people replying so far seem to agree, that the LS system shouldn't be lethal at all.

As I said, you're just replacing other people proposals with your personal experience of playing hardcore LS mods.

Hibernation is a failure state that dooms the mission without dooming the kerbals and preserves the existence of rescue mission. How much is punishing can be minimized with good mission planning, redundancy and spaceship design, and that's a good thing because it rewards those aspects of the game.

 

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.

8 minutes ago, regex said:

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.

Hibernation effectively kills the mission, you can't land on Duna, you can't land back on Kerbin, and you can't move kerbals around from docked ship to docked ship, you need someone to get them and bring them home. You wouldn't even be able to control the craft if you're outside of commnet range or don't have a probe core. It's less punishing if it happens during the return, true, but you would still need someone to go up to Kerbin orbit to get the hibernation capsules back to the KSC.

"I'll keep the kerbal all in the landing capsule so I can return them to Kerbin" 

Good point, let's think of a solution... Well, when the Kerbals get hibernated, it happens in a random module that can be anywere in the ship. But why limit that to the hibernation thing? Let's have kerbals occasionally move around between all connected modules, give the player the ability to open/close hatches between modules to limit their movement. Only the accessible modules a kerbal can freely move in are counted for the habitation bonus/maluses to the stress levels.

 

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

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

The hardcore LS mods from KSP1? Nope, terrible idea.

But you're talking about Remotetech with all the hardcore settings turned on, and we're talking about Commnet.

Plus have you ever played games like Oxygen Not Included? Your first 10 games (no, not missions, entire saves) are gonna end with all your dupes either suffucating, starve, or even worse. It's the whole point of "Trial and error" games of this kind.

 

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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.

Any game with a sufficiently big modding community runs in the problem that everything was already done by a mod. What new ideas you propose that aren't already a mod?

I'm the first to be against LS to be limited to a mere "Kerbal-fuel" or a gameplay loop consisting in resource conversion rates and management, it has to be about mission planning and spaceship design, my proposal does that.

 

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

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.

You can't increase the depth too much?

Let me look at some other mechanically complex games:

• Factorio: The new expansion is gonna be the space expansion, one that makes the game several order of magnitude bigger. Those mega-factories you only see on Reddit? That's what you're going to need to finish the game after the expansion. 
• DSP: Adding a combat system and enemy IA on top of an already difficult factory sim.
• ONI: Added space exploration and radiation to an already very complex game.
• VTOL VR: The new 2 seater plane is going to be centered around electronic warfare.

And don't even get me started on 4X games or the absurdity that some good old modded Minecraft can reach...

Wherever I look there's a trend with niche complex games (like KSP), and that trend is always to make the game deeper and deeper and more complex.

And I'm not saying it as the hardcore player that has mastered the game and wants additional challenge, of the 3 games mentioned, I will only ever get to that additional gameplay for sure in one of them.

 

 

Just now, Periple said:

This is actually the best argument against LS that I've heard so far!

No matter how complex you make the LS system, you defeat it by just spamming supplies along the mission path. And redundancy. If you have double the DV and triple the supplies your mission really need than you can ignore LS.

Every other additional feature you add to it, from home sickness to exposure to radiation, it's either a time-sensitive thing or a mass cost. If you think about it everything a ship can do or need other than the fuel for the engines it's either a time-sensitive or mass cost feature.

 

[Periple]

7 minutes ago, regex said:

It sounds like a great argument for it IMO, but maybe I just want some actual difficulty in this game.

Yes, I think you do want more difficulty than the players the game targets. I'm sure you'll get it, too, with mods -- if there is relatively benign, even easy-to-circumvent stock LS in the game, it should be really easy to mod it harder!

Edit: I think I'll just check out of this thread, I'll just point to @Master39 and go "what he said!"

Edited November 13, 2023 by Periple

[regex]

4 minutes ago, Periple said:

Yes, I think you do want more difficulty than the players the game targets.

And I'll settle for far less. The problem is there's very little planning or pondering in this game and it doesn't look like it's going to deliver all that much in the future. If I can subvert my life support with a probe core instead of actual planning then that's not really a feature I'm interested in.

[Periple]

Just now, regex said:

If I can subvert my life support with a probe core instead of actual planning then that's not really a feature I'm interested in.

Only partly. If your LS runs out on the way wherever, you'll have to scrub the mission, probe core or no probe core. Best you can do is bring the crew back. 

I'm also expecting that CommNet won't even work over interstellar distances; if that's the case,  you will have to plan LS seriously for that.

But overall, yes I do think it needs to be pretty forgiving. If you're a veteran player it's easy to forget just how daunting those first missions are -- and that most KSP players have never left the Kerbin SoI. KSP2 does need to flatten out that learning curve. I think one of the main points of LS is that it could add additional challenge to the mid/late game which is too easy in KSP1 -- at that point you've unlocked most or all of the tech tree and you've figured out how to build rockets and plan missions, so the game loses its challenge. If LS pushed you to plan your missions better and added some mass tax, the game could maintain its challenge better.

[regex]

2 minutes ago, Periple said:

But overall, yes I do think it needs to be pretty forgiving.

Then why have it at all? It's a wasted feature at that point.

[Periple]

9 minutes ago, regex said:

Then why have it at all? It's a wasted feature at that point.

If it's so forgiving that it's effectively wasted and can be completely subverted by tacking on a light part or two, then yes indeed, there's no point implementing it! 

However, I don't think my proposed solution is that forgiving. Even under that solution, if you fail to take it into account for a simple Duna mission, you will run out of LS on outward leg, and even if you have a probe core, you will lose your crew into interplanetary space (or to a crash) if you haven't ensured that you have CommNet coverage, and once you arrive, you won't be able to accomplish any of the goals you set for your crew. Running out on return leg is more forgiving as you will likely be able to capture into Kerbin orbit even if lots of things go wrong.

A crewed mission to Jool will be a lot more complex -- you're further out, and your comms will be occluded by the moons or Jool at critical moments, and once again you have to have enough LS to keep your crew functioning until they're there and have accomplished their mission goals, even if you're able to bring them back in hibernation on remote pilot.

Finally, permanent stations and bases -- these will require you to set up regular supply runs to keep the LS supplies topped up. That's a whole another logistical dimension to consider. 

I've done a lot of probes-only careers, and even though I have thousands of hours in KSP, I still screw up occasionally so that I lose a probe because I lose comms at a critical point. I would end up in situations where I have to send out rescue missions. These would be fun challenges, and if LS killed the kerbals outright, I wouldn't get that.

And finally finally, there's interstellar -- if you have no interstellar CommNet, you will have to keep some kerbals aware and functioning when you arrive at your destination. So you can't ignore LS.

So in sum, I do think that even a relatively easy, non-lethal form of LS would give additional challenges that scale up the further you go, and would add an additional dimension of verisimilitude to the game.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Periple

[Pthigrivi]

15 minutes ago, Periple said:

So in sum, I do think that even a relatively easy, non-lethal form of LS would give additional challenges that scale up the further you go, and would add an additional dimension of verisimilitude to the game.

This is also why I think structuring LS as a non-lethal system that provides bonuses to science and ISRU is the best route for default difficulty. It's kind of optional because you can just collect the standard rewards without it, but it's not something you switch off at the beginning of a save and lock yourself out of those parts. People respond pretty well to incentives and if you can get 25% more science out of a mission with a little extra planning I think a lot of players will dig into it. If players want to flirt with the potential for hibernation or death those should be left to higher difficulties. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[VlonaldKerman]

I think there should be “oxygen” and “supplies,” and the fail state is fatal. MKS has it configurable so that kerbals either turn into colonists who can be rehabilitated or die depending on the user preference and it works well.

[Pthigrivi]

59 minutes ago, Master39 said:

If you start parallelize missions too much, planned maneuvers and transfer windows you can't miss start playing a role a lot earlier than any any LS stuff. That's why an alarm clock system and transfer window planner are completely independent from LS.

And yeah having a mission planner with transfer window calculator that lets you set alarms and establish dV budgets just needs to be in the game no matter what. Absent those tools we'll see very few players going interplanetary, and when they do they'll be doing it like Vl3d, launching to orbit and then time-warping for months or years waiting for phase angles at best or guessing arbitrarily at transfer maneuvers at worst. Once you have a proper mission planner, which we need anyway, estimating flight durations with a comfortable buffer is no biggie. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

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.

I don't disagree with you on this at all.  I also think that LS should even be considered until we get into Colonies (and maybe not until Interstellar).  But then what to do with multiplayer?  Do you enforce it for everyone if even 1 person is playing with it?  Do you turn it off for everyone if even 1 person isn't playing with it?  And as you said, how do you determine what is/isn't optional?  Checkboxes for everything, or is it a "one-size-fits-all" thing?

[Periple]

Just in case it wasn’t clear, I think a proper mission planner with transfer windows, mission time calculators, burn info, alarms, etc is a necessary precondition for any form of LS. 

My objection to lethal consequences for LS failure comes from gameplay. An irredeemably failed mission won’t produce any emergent gameplay; most of the time you simply won’t have enough time for a rescue mission. That makes failures not fun and simply a reload trigger for most players. A game like KSP should be designed for fail-forward whenever possible, and non-lethal LS would do that.

 Like @Master39, I’m not all that sympathetic to the realism argument. I’m all for realism overhauls but they should be left to mods. This is a game and its goal has to be fun and challenge; verisimilitude rather than realism. It’s the same reason we have a 1/10 scale solar system!

[Pthigrivi]

5 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I don't disagree with you on this at all.  I also think that LS should even be considered until we get into Colonies (and maybe not until Interstellar).  But then what to do with multiplayer?  Do you enforce it for everyone if even 1 person is playing with it?  Do you turn it off for everyone if even 1 person isn't playing with it?  And as you said, how do you determine what is/isn't optional?  Checkboxes for everything, or is it a "one-size-fits-all" thing?

I don't think it should be introduced till the resources update since players should really be able to produce it offworld. And to the latter question again I think it should always be on but apply to bonuses only. That way any player in a multiplayer group can either use it or not depending on their personal speed and preference. If players are on higher difficulties with hibernation I guess it would apply to their vessels only? There are probably a bunch of issues around difficulties and multiplayer that go beyond LS.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Vl3d]

Still I don't see any convincing arguments as to why we should slow the game down so much by introducing consumable time sensitive life support.

We all want to explore all the planets, build stuff and go interstellar, right? I want to spend my time in the game designing unique craft for a delivery route, not plan out how much life support I need for some simple flag planting mission. I really enjoy staying with my stranded kerbals for 10 years in Kerbol orbit when I get bored and want to do another mission without getting penalized.

IMO consumable time sensitive life support should be fatal and it's great for mods, but not for stock.

On the other hand, I believe a fatal radiation system and a bonus-based habitation system are great for stock - because, along with engines overheating, they increase gameplay complexity in a fun time-independent way and stimulate you too build better craft. Also, having heating, radiation and gravity as PvE mechanics.. I think that's enough for stock. Radiation is also a great system to encourage using probes.

I want to be able to play fast and build a lot of unique stuff.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Vl3d

[Periple]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Still I don't see any convincing arguments as to why we should slow the game down so much by introducing consumable time sensitive life support.

You still haven’t demonstrated that it will slow the game down much, or indeed at all!

4 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I want to spend my time in the game designing unique craft for a delivery route, not plan out how much life support I need for some simple flag planting mission. I really enjoy staying with my stranded kerbals for 10 years in Kerbol orbit when I get bored and want to do another mission without getting penalized.

I think your problem is that the game doesn’t give you the tools to do that planning! I thought interplanetary missions were horrible until I found out about KER and was able to plan dV and TWR per stage! LS would need similar planning tools.

 Also, with hibernation you could totally leave your kerbals in solar orbit for 10 years, you’d just have to do a rescue mission to bring them back — which would be fun!

 

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

We all want to explore all the planets, build stuff and go interstellar, right?

No. Planets are empty and boring even by the most generous definition of a game.

I want to build spaceship and design and execute planned missions, manage my very own space program.

If I just wanted to see cool looking planets I have dozen of games that can do that with much less effort and many more planets compared to KSP.

 

12 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I want to spend my time in the game designing unique craft for a delivery route, not plan out how much life support I need for some simple flag planting mission.

Well, I have half a dozen factory sims for logistics simulation and resource management. To use Factorio as a comparison, I don't want to manage the factory in KSP, I want to design build the locomotive for the trains.

Which links to my next point:

34 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I also think that LS should even be considered until we get into Colonies (and maybe not until Interstellar). 

On the contrary, I think that automating LS for anything moving from base to colony status it should be trivial to automate LS.

Early ISRU fuel-producing excluded, the LS should stop be a big consideration once a base gets big enough to start dealing with mining and producing stuff. The crafting chains should have the basic fuels at the very base, and LS automation at the very next tier.

As much as the Colonies are going to play a big part, the focus of LS should stay on Kerbals that are "On a mission" and not at home.

 

19 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

IMO consumable time sensitive life support should be fatal and it's great for mods, but not for stock.

It's kind of weird to argue against LS only to say that the only version should be the most hardcore possible one.

In that case I would even agree. No LS is better than Lethal LS.

If Kerbals die I'm gonna be the first one to disable LS, the emergent gameplay of rescue missions is more important than whatever LS may add.

The Martian is a way better book than "Chapter 1: He dies"

 

21 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

On the other hand, I believe a fatal radiation system

This is just trying to be original for the sake of trying to be original.

There's only 2 ways of of managing that:

1. Exposition over time: Which would have the same time-warp non-problems you're accusing supplies of having.
2. Anti-radiation mass costs, you need the magic anti-radiation module, end of any consideration for radiation.

Both of them would quickly turn into a mere "You can't go there!" occasional sign for most players.

 

25 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

long with engines overheating, they increase gameplay complexity in a fun time independent way and stimulate you too build better craft. Also, having heating, radiation and gravity as PvE mechanics.. I think that's enough for stock. Radiation is also a great system to encourage using probes.

There's literally nothing special in what you're proposing other than it not being LS. There's trying to do things in an original way, looking for new angles, and there's forcing the design to be something different from previous attempts at all costs. I don't think it needs to be said what is what in your proposal.

 

[Vl3d]

10 minutes ago, Master39 said:

There's only 2 ways of of managing that (radiation):

1. Exposition over time: Which would have the same time-warp non-problems you're accusing supplies of having.
2. Anti-radiation mass costs, you need the magic anti-radiation module, end of any consideration for radiation.

Both of them would quickly turn into a mere "You can't go there!" occasional sign for most players.

IMO the stock game should not have a time-sensitive radiation system like cumulative exposure. There should just be a system similar to heat, in which there's a fatal threshold of radiation for kerbals (like there is a heat threshold for parts).

This would mean you need to build shields and/or place your habitation modules far away from the radiation source (reactor or engine). It also means that you have to send probes into certain high-Sv environments instead of kerbals.

As for the habitation system, I think the bonuses it offers are implied - the more kerbals you take with you, the better the colony does.

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

But then what to do with multiplayer? 

A whole aspect that I didn't even consider while replying. So yeah, we basically agree. Design is tough. The devil is in the details. Cool addition to LS pro/con discussion. 

[m4inbrain]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

I think your problem is that the game doesn’t give you the tools to do that planning!

I think your problem is that  you don't seem to understand/accept that some people do not want to do that kind of planning.

And it really isn't that hard a concept to understand. I've tried a few life support mods in KSP1, it's not fun to me. Regardless of the tools you give me, unless it's a tool that automates literally everything and doesn't require a single click of intervention by me, at which point it's pretty pointless. 

Your argument is that "doing the dishes" is gonna be great fun if you supply a deluxe drying rack and extra soft sponge. It's not. It's "doing the dishes" that is the chore, not the manner you're doing them. That includes a dishwasher, btw, which reduces the time spent to do the chore, but still is a chore.

It's cool if someone wants to add chores to their gameplay, quite obviously i'd have no problem if you'd do that for yourself. The problem arises when these chores now also get forced on me. In other words, if it's toggleable, as with all things, have at it. If it's "mandatory", absolutely not. 

1 hour ago, Periple said:

 Also, with hibernation you could totally leave your kerbals in solar orbit for 10 years, you’d just have to do a rescue mission to bring them back — which would be fun!

And this points out the entirety of the problem here.

It's not. It might be to you, absolutely, but it isn't inherently. People have fun collecting stamps. Hell, people have fun playing golf. That's cool. That doesn't actually "make" these things fun, it's a rather subjective matter. I personally think that Golf is one of the most boring and pretentious sports humankind invented. I also think that collecting stamps is the equivalent of beige. And i also don't think of forced rescue missions to be fun, just to be able to "park a kerbal in orbit". 

But, to point out the obvious flaw here.. Look what you wrote in that same posting.

1 hour ago, Periple said:

You still haven’t demonstrated that it will slow the game down much, or indeed at all!

Now look again at the sentence i quoted prior. See the problem?

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

IMO the stock game should not have a time-sensitive radiation system like cumulative exposure. There should just be a system similar to heat, in which there's a fatal threshold of radiation for kerbals (like there is a heat threshold for parts).

This would mean you need to build shields and/or place your habitation modules far away from the radiation source (reactor or engine). It also means that you have to send probes into certain high-Sv environments instead of kerbals.

It's even worse than I predicted, it's just a "don't go there or you'll die" area. Not even gameplay, it's a conditional game-over screen that's just going to frustrate and punish player that didn't pay attention to the relevant tutorial.
Radiation is an inherently time-sensitive matter, if you're gonna remove things like exposure over time from radiation then you're better off with calling it the "Kerbal-killin magic field."

 

47 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

As for the habitation system, I think the bonuses it offers are implied - the more kerbals you take with you, the better the colony does.

Another non-gameplay system, just a small loading screen tip remembering players that the features that requires population to work, well, requires population to work.

 

4 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

I think your problem is that  you don't seem to understand/accept that some people do not want to do that kind of planning.

And it really isn't that hard a concept to understand.

But... This is a game about planning and executing space missions. If you don't want to shoot then don't play Doom.

 

5 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

I've tried a few life support mods in KSP1, it's not fun to me. Regardless of the tools you give me, unless it's a tool that automates literally everything and doesn't require a single click of intervention by me, at which point it's pretty pointless. 

Good thing the proposals here are not similar to KSP1 LS mods.

 

5 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

Your argument is that "doing the dishes" is gonna be great fun if you supply a deluxe drying rack and extra soft sponge. It's not. It's "doing the dishes" that is the chore, not the manner you're doing them. That includes a dishwasher, btw, which reduces the time spent to do the chore, but still is a chore.

It's cool if someone wants to add chores to their gameplay, quite obviously i'd have no problem if you'd do that for yourself. The problem arises when these chores now also get forced on me. In other words, if it's toggleable, as with all things, have at it. If it's "mandatory", absolutely not. 

Heat is a chore, electricity is a chore, fuel and DV is a chore, commnet is a chore, flying is a chore, shooting is a chore, clicking on the game to start it is a chore, and winning is a chore too.

Gaming as a whole is a chore, if you don't like it.

Point is, it's entirely subjective.

There's nothing magical that makes Kerbal-fuel inherently different than rocket fuel or EC. 

 

But, that made me realize a bit of the point in the whole discussion.

It doesn't matter what you think about LS, and how complex you make it, it can only work 2 ways: like Fuel or like EC.

You can mess with consumption rate, you can have 20 different resources, you can have a 20 tier of closed recycling loop, but the end of the day, it's either fuel you bring from the KSC (or colony) or fuel you have a special solar panel/reactor for.

If anyone has a third option I didn't think about, then I'd be happy to hear about it.

 

8 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

Now look again at the sentence i quoted prior. See the problem?

Only if you entirely miss the point. Because you don't have to rescue them.

You have 3 options here:

1. NO Life support: You can leave Jeb on the mun and rename the Eagle lander to Eagle City. Haha, it's a colony now!
2. Lethal Life support: Whatever you're thinking about, you can't.
3. Non-lethal Life Support: You can leave Jeb-Popsicle on the mun and forget about him, you can send a rescue mission to save him, you can go to the tracking station and delete the vessel.

 

 

45 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

A whole aspect that I didn't even consider while replying. So yeah, we basically agree. Design is tough. The devil is in the details. Cool addition to LS pro/con discussion. 

And the final aspect of all of this that the experience people have is with KSP1 LS mods, the most forgiving of which was designed with a bored KSP1 veteran in mind, not a new player.

It's like talking about Commnet when everyone only has experience with Remotetech.

[Periple]

17 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

I think your problem is that  you don't seem to understand/accept that some people do not want to do that kind of planning.

The game can’t please everybody! It just has to please the largest possible number of it’s intended audience.

18 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

Your argument is that "doing the dishes" is gonna be great fun if you supply a deluxe drying rack and extra soft sponge. It's not. It's "doing the dishes" that is the chore, not the manner you're doing them. That includes a dishwasher, btw, which reduces the time spent to do the chore, but still is a chore.

It's cool if someone wants to add chores to their gameplay, quite obviously i'd have no problem if you'd do that for yourself. The problem arises when these chores now also get forced on me. In other words, if it's toggleable, as with all things, have at it. If it's "mandatory", absolutely not. 

If LS feels any more of a chore than planning transfers and dV/TWR requirements, then the design or implementation will have failed!

19 minutes ago, m4inbrain said:

Now look again at the sentence i quoted prior. See the problem?

All I see is your pointing out the obvious — that different people have different preferences, and we’re here to talk about them. I don’t think that’s a problem. Do you?

[HighCaliber]

As a (somewhat) new player I think that life support would be a bit annoying. It would just be another thing that you have to worry about during missions and it would greatly deprive long-range deep space operations. I think that if it's ever added it should be toggleable or activated only if you select hard mode

[regex]

20 minutes ago, HighCaliber said:

As a (somewhat) new player I think that life support would be a bit annoying. It would just be another thing that you have to worry about during missions and it would greatly deprive long-range deep space operations. I think that if it's ever added it should be toggleable or activated only if you select hard mode

You don't need to worry, they're never going to add something like life support to the vanilla game. Most of the dangers of spaceflight, and the planning for those contingencies, are completely glossed over.

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, HighCaliber said:

As a (somewhat) new player I think that life support would be a bit annoying. It would just be another thing that you have to worry about during missions and it would greatly deprive long-range deep space operations. I think that if it's ever added it should be toggleable or activated only if you select hard mode

So, Im a pretty strong advocate for stock LS even for newcomers to KSP.  As Im sure you've experienced there are inherently tricky factors in the game because it's not Starfield, it's not NMS, we're contending with a simplified version of real physics. This comes up pretty early as players start to understand delta-v, rocket efficiency, TWR, + ISP, and gravity turns. Thats all coming at players in the first 10h of gameplay. There are more complex maneuvers after you've achieved orbit and start thinking about how to intercept and land on the Mun. I 100% agree up to this point players really shouldn't be worried about LS at all. There's plenty enough to think about. But if players have stuck with it this far and are looking at how much delta-v they'll need to go to Duna and beyond they've already shown a pretty keen appetite for cool engineering puzzles. Fortunately as part of KSP2's planned features there's going to be an intermediary stage building your first space station and establishing starter colonies. These are a kind of interim bridge where players are thinking about more complex kinds of delivery systems, probably sending their first exploratory interplanetary probes, etc. To me thats the kind of player space where you're considering long-term habitation--even 50 or 100 days or more--when the idea of not just traversing space but living in space could become a real gameplay element. Even then I disagree with many other commenters that lethality or even hibernation are needed as a consequence, certainly not on default-normal difficulty. It looks like we have a science system in which surface samples are a factor, possibly other roles for kerbals themselves, and since science is the central currency with which you buy access to parts I think its a strong incentive lever. I think the safest and strongest way to introduce LS is to say to the player--Kerbals are plants or whatever and they're resilient, but they're much happier and more productive if they have food over long journeys. We can assume that oxygen and water are being recycled by the capsule, but food is a different story that requires a little bit of thought and planning. This becomes like most other elements of KSP--a simplified, toy version of real considerations in space exploration and long-term colonization, and like those other elements it can be considered in engineering terms. You could provide greenhouses and rehydrators to produce and extend the amount of food available and thereby keep your kerbals happier for longer. And if you don't, no biggie! It's just a points bonus that allows you to unlock tech and mine resources faster than you would otherwise. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Pthigrivi