Life support?

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On 11/12/2023 at 4:32 PM, Royalswissarmyknife said:

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.

Don’t forget about asphyxiating when the air runs out, or freezing when the power runs out, or explosive decompression, or…

Sign me up for that!  Burning up on re-entry or crashing do more than tickle.  Life support shouldn’t be any different.

[Kalessin1]

In my opinion, life support should be in stock game. Game difficulty level could control how many LS resources are in game and how severe game will punish for not proper taking care of kerbals. We already know that there will be automated resources transfer after colony update so supplying even far end of Kerbolar system stations won't be a problem. It could be similar to WOLF mod from KSP1.

[regex]

16 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Sign me up for that!  Burning up on re-entry or crashing do more than tickle.  Life support shouldn’t be any different.

It seems pretty crazy to me that planning to have enough ablator or a good reentry trajectory, or to have enough fuel to land or brake before reentry, and the consequences of not taking that into account, are considered perfectly fine and reasonable situations where kerbals can be allowed to die, but not adding enough life support supplies or taking into account mission time is considered "too hard" or unforgiving. People happily kill kerbals wholesale with crazy contraptions but having to make sure they're well-fed or able to breath is apparently a real burden.

Edited November 14, 2023 by regex

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, regex said:

People happily kill kerbals wholesale with crazy contraptions but having to make sure they're well-fed or able to breath is apparently a real burden.

Killing one of the most fun emergent gameplay loops in all of gaming would be a real burden, yes. Putting a hard time limit in the same boat as not having enough ablator or fuel is a false equivalent.

Plus, as Vl3d said earlier, there's a difference between actually thinking out how this affects gameplay and if it'd be more annoying than fun, and simply having an emotional desire for realism. As far as I can tell, you've not yet explained how exactly  you'd want this implemented, besides in a manner that completely prevents you from doing Blunderbirds style missions.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Bej Kerman

[shdwlrd]

There's 3 different camps for LS.

One where the player doesn't want LS in any shape or form.

One where LS is even more punitive than screwing up your DV, TWR, or EC calculations.

One where LS is present, but not a hindrance but a boon.

We know that IG is leaning more to the 3rd camp.

Having to worry about life support is for the survival genre of games, not a light hearted but difficult space exploration game. Some of you want LS to be a nasty game mechanic without thinking of the game play. I understand that some of you think KSP is too easy. Good for you. But for the rest, it's difficult enough without having to worry about tanking a mission because you forgot to click a button.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, regex said:

It seems pretty crazy to me that planning to have enough ablator or a good reentry trajectory, or to have enough fuel to land or brake before reentry, and the consequences of not taking that into account, are considered perfectly fine and reasonable situations where kerbals can be allowed to die, but not adding enough life support supplies or taking into account mission time is considered "too hard" or unforgiving. People happily kill kerbals wholesale with crazy contraptions but having to make sure they're well-fed or able to breath is apparently a real burden.

The difference is that many errors in the other kinds of planning are recoverable — if you run out of dV for example you’ll get stranded somewhere, but you can mount a rescue mission, which is self-directed emergent gameplay.

Or if you forget a parachute you can park in orbit and do the same. But if you screw up lethal LS, your crew is just dead since it’s really unlikely there will be time to send a rescue mission. That’s just not fun for most people.

[regex]

7 minutes ago, Periple said:

The difference is that many errors in the other kinds of planning are recoverable — if you run out of dV for example you’ll get stranded somewhere, but you can mount a rescue mission, which is self-directed emergent gameplay.

I don't see how having a limit based on life support removes this emergent gameplay. Imagine trying to mount a rescue mission with a time limit. That's some real stakes, not "I'll just leave them in orbit until I feel like it" easy-mode.

18 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

We know that IG is leaning more to the 3rd camp.

[citation needed] please.

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, regex said:

Imagine trying to mount a rescue mission with a time limit. That's some real stakes

"I have one day to rescue X and no torch drives" is not stakes, just annoyance.

[regex]

3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

"I have one day to rescue X and no torch drives" is not stakes, just annoyance.

That's just terrible planning on your part. Git gud.

[Periple]

6 minutes ago, regex said:

I don't see how having a limit based on life support removes this emergent gameplay. Imagine trying to mount a rescue mission with a time limit. That's some real stakes, not "I'll just leave them in orbit until I feel like it" easy-mode.

How often have you been in a situation where a rescue mission could get to a crew running out of LS in time, even in theory? It’s just the nature of LS that that’s going to be a rare occurrence. Most of the time your crew is just dead, end of.

As for the other types of rescue missions, it’s going to be rare that they’re Apollo 13 style tense. Most of the time it’ll be pretty clear that you can do the rescue with margin to spare, or it’ll be impossible.

I understand that you and a lot of the hardcore crew prefer that. I just think that the great majority of KSP’s actual and potential audience doesn’t. The relatively small fraction of players who use the excellent LS mods that exist are a testament to that!

[Bej Kerman]

7 minutes ago, regex said:

That's just terrible planning on your part. Git gud.

That's the point. Deadly life support makes poor planning boring.

[regex]

1 minute ago, Periple said:

How often have you been in a situation where a rescue mission could get to a crew running out of LS in time, even in theory? It’s just the nature of LS that that’s going to be a rare occurrence. Most of the time your crew is just dead, end of.

Several times, but usually I just over-prepare so I never run into that sort of situation. That does incur a hefty mass penalty but I'm always willing to pay to ensure I bring them back home.

In LS scenarios without kerbal death I'd just end up deleting the craft so I could simulate their death but that robs me of the chance to come back at a later date and revive the hardware. No "emergent gameplay" there.

2 minutes ago, Periple said:

I understand that you and a lot of the hardcore crew prefer that. I just think that the great majority of KSP’s actual and potential audience doesn’t.

Yes, which is why we're probably never getting life support in this game to begin with. No one wants to actually plan a mission in-depth.

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, regex said:

No one wants to actually plan a mission in-depth

We absolutely do

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

Yes, which is why we're probably never getting life support in this game to begin with. No one wants to actually plan a mission in-depth.

Would you rather have no stock LS at all than non-lethal stock LS that would be trivial to mod to replace hibernation with death?

[PDCWolf]

10 minutes ago, Periple said:

Would you rather have no stock LS at all than non-lethal stock LS that would be trivial to mod to replace hibernation with death?

If that's the argument then we'd rather just keep it at sandbox and leave it to mods to implement literally anything past a basic selection of parts, the VAB, and the physics integrator.

[regex]

37 minutes ago, Periple said:

Would you rather have no stock LS at all than non-lethal stock LS that would be trivial to mod to replace hibernation with death?

No stock LS. I guaran-effing-tee you it won't be trivial at all to modify it if Intercept implements a life support system.

Edited November 14, 2023 by regex

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 hours ago, Periple said:

The difference is that many errors in the other kinds of planning are recoverable — if you run out of dV for example you’ll get stranded somewhere, but you can mount a rescue mission, which is self-directed emergent gameplay.

Or if you forget a parachute you can park in orbit and do the same. But if you screw up lethal LS, your crew is just dead since it’s really unlikely there will be time to send a rescue mission. That’s just not fun for most people.

It is, however, completely lacking in verisimilitude and utterly breaking of what immersion the game manages to create.  Without the need for life support, The Martian would have been two hours of Matt Damon twiddling his thumbs in a spacesuit while waiting for his lift to arrive.

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, Wheehaw Kerman said:

It is, however, completely lacking in verisimilitude and utterly breaking of what immersion the game manages to create.  Without the need for life support, The Martian would have been two hours of Matt Damon twiddling his thumbs in a spacesuit while waiting for his lift to arrive.

We're back to a desire for realism without much thought into gameplay impact. Life Support is not going to turn your game into a big budget Hollywood drama a la The Martian, it's outright going to prevent you from playing out The Martian from NASA's perspective. It'll just be a timer that goes down too quickly to mount any kind of rescue beyond LKO.

Out of genuine and sincere curiosity, would you have watched The Martian if it was just Mark Watney sitting completely still for two hours before succumbing to a lack of snacks? Because that's what LS would do if it were deadly.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

We're back to a desire for realism without much thought into gameplay impact. Life Support is not going to turn your game into a big budget Hollywood drama a la The Martian, it's outright going to prevent you from playing out The Martian from NASA's perspective. It'll just be a timer that goes down too quickly to mount any kind of rescue beyond LKO.

Out of genuine and sincere curiosity, would you have watched The Martian if it was just Mark Watney sitting completely still for two hours before succumbing to a lack of snacks? Because that's what LS would do if it were deadly.

It depends on what sort of game you’re into.  I lean hard into realistic simulations.  Right now, if I have a mission suffer, say, a staging error that strands the crew, I’ll terminate the flight in the Tracking Station because the crew is basically already dead (or would be if the game had life support/should be if Squad had completed the game).   I know enough about spaceflight to make the lack of consequences for that sort of thing to really freaking annoy me.  If “gameplay” doesn’t make at least a hard nod if not bowing before reality I want no part of it - it isn’t (as) fun for me.

The last time life support reared it’s head on the forums, during those bygone nostalgic innocent halcyon days before the EA dropped, I was arguing for something I called “Cartoony Verisimilitude(tm)” - the same level of nodding to reality that the game takes in other areas, while not going into so much detail that it takes a degree in aerospace engineering to understand.  IMHO lethal life support has the same level of Cartoony Verisimilitude as the rest of the game.  I’d be perfectly happy with it implemented as an option - I get that some people don’t want to get that realistic.

[Vl3d]

The main point of contention is if we want to be able to time warp at will or not. I, for one, think that if you prevent players from time warping arbitrarily when landed or in orbit, you break stock gameplay (as it is today, lacking a mechanism to parallelize sequential missions).

Lethal radiation and heating fulfills all your player stories for life support.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Vl3d

[Periple]

8 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Lethal radiation and heating fulfills all your player stories for life support.

It doesn’t, and asserting that it does doesn’t make it so. Master39 points out the flaws in this approach in some detail elsewhere ITT.

[Periple]

9 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

If “gameplay” doesn’t make at least a hard nod if not bowing before reality I want no part of it - it isn’t (as) fun for me.

Then it sounds like stock KSP (1 or 2) just isn’t for you! Realism never was an objective, it was always about sufficient verisimilitude and fun gameplay. Complaining about that is like being upset that McDonald’s doesn’t have a wine list and a sommelier!

9 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

IMHO lethal life support has the same level of Cartoony Verisimilitude as the rest of the game.  I’d be perfectly happy with it implemented as an option - I get that some people don’t want to get that realistic.

Making a large and complex gameplay system that directly impacts core gameplay (vessel and mission design) optional is a terrible idea. 

Edit: However, I think it would be a great  idea to make the consequence of running out of LS (hibernation or death) a difficulty option. How would you feel about that?

Edited November 15, 2023 by Periple

[Superfluous J]

My 2 Funds:

Making the penalty too bad won't make the game harder. It'll just make reverting more common. If my Jool 5 fails due to Life Support failure, I'll just restart with moar life support. Same as with dV or any other thing it was lacking.

I like the need for room (and maybe mass) per Kerbal per ... time unit I guess. The penalty for going over the time limit based on how many Kerbals and room you have, it could be that a random Kerbal on the mission either dies or goes into hibernation. Or, you can pick who hibernates/dies/whatever. Either way works. Could be a difficulty setting for all I care.

In this idea, a single Kerbal in a ship can last forever with any amount of available room, so early flights will never be affected and later flights can limp along with just the pilot (or scientist or cook or janitor or telephone sanitizer or whatever other jobs they have in KSP2). Or maybe one Kerbal will eventually hibernate (say after a year in a mk1 command pod or something). In that case you hopefully brought along a probe core. Again, seems like difficulty settings could handle that.

Sample settings screen:
Kerbals: ■ Die     o Hibernate    o Diebernate*
Room Needed Per Kerbal Per Time Unit: Low |---------■--| High
Solitary Kerbal Immunity: o Yes     ■  No

*I made Diebernate up. I have no idea what it means but I wanted to imply an option or set of options I couldn't think of

Edited November 15, 2023 by Superfluous J

[Periple]

About difficulty options and more nuance -- you could always plug those in, and add a few . For example:

• Kerbals on EVA die / hibernate when suit LS runs out
• Kerbals in command modules die / hibernate 
• Kerbals in dedicated crew modules die / hibernate
• Kerbals in dedicated hibernation modules always hibernate

Additionally, kerbal revival can be behind difficulty options too:

• Hibernated kerbals can be revived by any other kerbal / only at KSC or colonial revival facility
• Kerbals in dedicated hibernation modules can / cannot be revived on a timer / by remote command

Interstellar missions will be a lot harder if hibernated kerbals can only be revived by another kerbal!

Edited November 15, 2023 by Periple

[Pthigrivi]

I don't know I just feel like all of these problems are being created by an insistence that the mechanic relies on overly harsh stick-based punishments that mostly only very hardcore veteran players want. If life support is more about bonuses and carrots its no different from science experiments or resources being harvested over time--its just a time-based reward with engineering implications. That seems perfectly sensible and doesn't create all of these other gameplay problems. Permadeath especially either creates some weird grisly questions about what happens to dead kerbals and the vessels they're in or they just go poof, in which case players will come back to find their vessel simply empty and be confused about what went wrong. For me--maybe hold hibernation for hard mode because others are right there is some rescue-mission utility there for those who want the challenge. Leave permadeth to very hard or mods. 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Pthigrivi