[0.20] Ioncross Crew Support Plugin ([0.22] dev build)

[GavinZac]

It's sad that this isn't working fully but at least I now have an explanation as to why my reasonable maths had crew after crew dying on the way to Jool. Bah.

[Donziboy2]

Yongedevil, any plans to update or maybe incorporate with TAC Lifesupport?

[Beeman]

I would really like to see the creator of this come together with the creator of TAC and make a really amazing and perhaps customizable life support mod

[Donziboy2]

I would be more interested in seeing the creator come back period.

[jrandom]

I've been in contact with the author. He's about... I think halfway through a new version that fixes various bugs, adds resource consumption for non-active ships, EVA's, etc.

[Donziboy2]

awesome!!!!!!

[bwheatley]

So i too was having problems after installing B9? Or something who knows. Using JSGME it should have been easy to fix but no dice. Anyway I eventually found and fixed it. Found MMSarbianExt.dll next to ModuleManager.dll and it can be found here

https://github.com/sarbian/MMSarbianExt

Not sure what does as a ModuleManager extension or which mod of mine installed it. But removing it caused the IonCross stuff to start working again. Just trying to possibly save someone else frustration.

[bwheatley]

Ahh it was mechjeb 2 that's i get for wanting to try it out.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/47317-MechJeb-2-Patch-test-bed-release-%28September-9%29?p=632524&viewfull=1#post632524

That post explains those 2 files but with the MMSarbian file ION doesn't work. I can live w/o mechjeb for now i'd rather have Ion.

Edited September 13, 2013 by bwheatley

[bwheatley]

Btw I'm rebuilding my stations as FusTek just because they look better. I am going to locally mod the Utillities Module that says it handles waste etc. To have a large recycler & a large support tank. The mass of both parts is 2.9. So it seems like it should be easy enough to mod with Module Manager and then not have any break in the look of the space station.

[vedrit]

Wheatly, please edit posts rather than triple-posting

[yongedevil]

My apologies for not being able to keep up with the thread. I think I have something like 7 pages to read through now. I'll try to get to that when I have some time.

Of late I've had a bit more time and interest to work on Kerbal some and so I've been focusing on fixing the time warp bug, which I think may actually have been fixed. Because this has been such an annoying bug I decided it would be worth posting an update. Unfortunately over the summer I started a number of other changes that aren't done yet and will still take some time to finish so I'm not willing to make this an official update.

Also, this will very probably not work with existing saves, and with the changes to the config file setup I advise deleting the old version before updating to this one. With saved ships you should probably delete and replace any Ioncross crew support parts, including crewed parts with the Ioncross module on them, to ensure they're updated properly.

v1.11 dev build 1

What is working:

• New config file setup
  
  • configuration nodes for setup can now be in any .cfg file that Kerbal will load allowing easier customization
    

  [*]Better loading system that allows dynamically added pod generator to be accessed with action groups

  [*]Revamped generators and collector systems

  • fixes to generators not remembering their on/off state and bugs with the calculations at high time warp
    
  • generators will now check all resources and scale their rate to the most limiting resource
    
  • atmosphere collectors are now built into the recycler parts and simple oxygen atmosphere collectors are in all crewed parts
    

  [*]Rebalanced oxygen and carbon dioxide density and capacities on tanks

  • kerbals now consume about 0.5 kg of oxygen per day and produce about 0.5 kg of carbon dioxide
    
  • oxygen capacities has been increased on tanks and lowered on pods
    

What is sort of working:

• Inactive vessel resource calculations. Seams to be working but is very very slow. Expect a noticeable delay when switching to a vessel. Still have to test and see how much it can be sped up without losing too much accuracy.
  

What isn't working:

• EVA support. It has been fighting with the new loading system and I haven't gotten around to figuring it out yet.
  
• Warnings when out of resources. Currently the mod will kill time warp once a critical resource runs out, and prevent you from raising it again.
  

[StainX]

I tried the dev version... and im starting on the launchpad without electric power and oxygen, so i have to timewarp a bit to fill em up

[GavinZac]

Oh man, I had *just* uninstalled this because of the warp thing. Thankfully I left the parts in so my ships wouldn't break.

Also, this will very probably not work with existing saves, and with the changes to the config file setup I advise deleting the old version before updating to this one. With saved ships you should probably delete and replace any Ioncross crew support parts, including crewed parts with the Ioncross module on them, to ensure they're updated properly.

Oh. Bah, I'll wait until 0.22 I guess.

[rottielover]

Really wish we could get you and TaranisElsu talking (TAC LifeSupport). You have peices of the puzzle he doesn't and he has peices you don't. Combined you guys would rule the lifeSupport front, hands down.

[Starwaster]

Oh man, I had *just* uninstalled this because of the warp thing. Thankfully I left the parts in so my ships wouldn't break.

Oh. Bah, I'll wait until 0.22 I guess.

Or you could just roll up your sleeves and hack on the save files to insert the bits that need inserting and removing the bits that need removing.

[KeithStone]

I Agree on getting this mod merged with TAC. With your powers combined, this would RULE

[jrandom]

Wish I could have helped (I've been diving through the code), but there's too much to learn for me to be able to make any headway in any reasonable amount of time.

Edited September 15, 2013 by jrandom

[yongedevil]

I tried the dev version... and im starting on the launchpad without electric power and oxygen, so i have to timewarp a bit to fill em up

That would be what happens when the last time the ship was active variable defaults to 0. That is a quick change though so dev build 2 is available to fix that.

[StainX]

That would be what happens when the last time the ship was active variable defaults to 0. That is a quick change though so dev build 2 is available to fix that.

alright, thank you sir!

also, so far no other bugs occured

[yongedevil]

May I request a .cfg file that has compatability also with Bobcats Historic Spacecraft thread? I feel it's the only thing missing in the ModuleMangager files.

Those mods contain parts with spaces in the their names, which I have not been able to get work with ModuleManager. Reportedly it is not a bug with ModuleManager as much as an error in the part file. I had to remove the ModuleManager configuration for Bobcat's H.O.M.E mod for the same reason.

Hi, just started using this mod and I really like it. Adds a new element of design and challenge.

I've found an odd issue and when searching this thread I couldn't find a mention of it. I was attempting to deliver a life support module to a base, just the large recycler and a large oxygen tank as a single unit. I was planning to just plonk it on the ground next to the base and connect it up using the KAS mod. However when I winched the module out of the delivery craft and lowered it onto the ground it just sunk into the terrain! I thought that maybe it was a KAS related problem so I did some tests. I made a small craft with stock parts that just held the life support module under it, when I decoupled the life support module it sunk into the ground. I did this test at KSC and on the Mun with the same result. I then replaced the life support module with two standard fuel tanks and did the same drop action and those rested on the ground just fine.

So there seems to be an issue with these parts not being able to be placed on the terrain.

The other odd thing I noticed, not sure if this is intended function was that when I hit critical CO2 levels and a kerbal 'died' he just reappeared back in the available crew at KSC. Didn't actually seem to die, just got teleported home. I was expecting a more permanent death (not that I'm bloodthirsty or anything).

Anyway, just thought I'd mention those two. I really like this mod and what you've done with it, very cool stuff!!

I've seen that too but never really noticed it since I only ever drop stuff on the ground without gear during testing and I'm usually looking for something else. Thanks for pointing that out.

I've noticed that they don't show up dead in the flight log either. Perhaps this could be fixed, in an update.

Yup, it's been fixed. The change causes dead crew to show up as K.I.A. Now. They'll be cleared from the crew portraits one you leave and come back to the ship.

First of all - this is a great mod. I especially appreciate how it's really a generic resource framework, and not just some hard coded resources.

However - I'm having some interesting "issues" regarding how the Mod treats Carbon Dioxide.

---

Background: I've been trying to develop a hydroponics/aeroponics bay part. To that end, I:

• Created two additional pair of of custom resources: Food,Waste,Water, and WasteWater, in the \Resources\IonCrewSupport.cfg
  
• Added these resource in the \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg file, as ION_SUPPORT_KERBAL_RESOURCE, with consumption rates (1 Kerbal consumes 1 unit of Food and Water, and produced 1 Unit of WasteWater and Waste, per day or 1/85600 per second).
  
• Copied a small inline RCS tank model under a new name, and added new resources storage capabilities to it.
  
• Copied a large inline tank model, and gave it a new name
  
• Created a file for ModuleManager in the Mod's root folder (with all the others), for the new large inline tank name (Hydroponics Bay) adding an IonModuleGenerator MODULE to the part, specifying INPUT_RESOURCE and OUTPUT_RESOURCE entries in the MODULE block. Waste, WasteWater, CarbonDioxide, and a lot of power go in - Food,Oxygen, and Water come out. Rates are ~10% higher than 1 Kerbal will produce. All resources are required for conversion. This means that the hydroponics bay's output may fluctuate up and down a bit as it runs out of waste to convert, but overall the hydroponics bay works to keep one Kerbal alive.
  

This worked quite well for Food/Waste and Water/WasteWater. Under 100K time acceleration, rounding errors would cause resources to "leak" out of the system, but that seemed to add a bit more realism; a small closed life support system wouldn't be perfect, and it took hundreds of days to draw down resources significantly, so deep space missions were still practical.

However, carbon dioxide acted weird. Whenever I would come out of time warp, carbon dioxide would suddenly and very quickly deplete. Oxygen was maxed out, so it looks like there was very rapid O2 conversion going on, and I hadn't added a recycle converter.

I went into \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg and removed the built-in Carbon Dioxide scrubber in ION_SUPPORT_POD_GENERATOR. No change. Carbon dioxide would still disappear rapidly, coming out of warp.

Thinking that there was some sort of "hard coded" treatment of CarbonDioxide/Oxygen going on, I created a new pair of resources O2/CO2 and defined them like I had Food/Waste - using the consumption rates built in for Oxygen/CarbonDioxide.

I then removed the entries for Oxygen and CarbonDioxide from \Resources\IonCrewSupport.cfg and \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg. AFAIK, this should have removed it as a resource, and removed any "resource check" from the life support system.

I also then altered both my edited "resource tank" and "hydroponics bay" to use O2/CO2 in place of Oxygen/Carbon dioxide.

This worked OK - CO2 did not spontaneously convert like CarbonDioxide had, and O2 behave inversely to CO2.

However, the game still dropped out of warp every hour, and eventually the Kerbal pilot died, just as if the Mod was still checking for oxygen and carbonDioxide, which I removed from \Plugins\PluginData\IoncrossCrewSupport\IoncrossCrewSupport.cfg.

---

So - does anyone have any ideas what is happening? It almost looks like there's some hardcoding going on with Oxygen/CarbonDioxide.

Or, am I missing a crucial configuration file somewhere?

There should only be one place where resources are hardcoded; the calculations for inactive resource usage are hardcoded to ignore ElectricCharge as a required resource. So don't know yet what might have cause the crew to die in your situation. There have been errors with the generator code though and these results with the generator at least aren't very surprising.

I really enjoy using this mod. I was playing KSP and also watching the FireFly episode "Out of Gas" and it just happened that the alert from Serenity "Life support failure, check oxygen levels at once" sounded at the same time as I was dropped out of timewarp with a life support issue. That made me think it would be really cool if there was a sound warning but even better would be if it could be a user customisable one, by replacing the default .wav file. Then I could actually have that sound byte from Firefly sound when I had life support issues.

How possible is that to do?

That is a good question. I'd love to have that sound play when running out of resources too. I don't even have a basic warning system yet though.

Nah, I ran into the same issue a few weeks back on a trip to Moho. To see what was causing it I did a few tests.

Setup:

Test procedure was to time warp till the clamps completely stocked the craft on O2 and then stage. From there I'd run the tests.

Test 1: Straight up timewarp at maximum speed with the capsule scrubber enabled. Result: 25 days and 12 hours before dropping out of time warp.

Test 2: Recycler enabled from the start at maximum capacity. Result: 25 days and 16 hours before dropping time warp.

You can quite clearly see that the recycler isn't doing much...

My first hypothesis was that because the CO2 tank stayed empty during time warp this was messing with the calculation (because it didn't have the juice on a iteration to iteration basis or whatever).

Test 3: Time warp at maximum until the CO2 tank was half full. At that point I switched on the recycler and fiddled with the capacity until it was consuming 1.6 CO2 per hour (so it wouldn't drain the CO2 tank). Result: 25 days and 14 hours before I was both out of O2 and CO2.

So yea, that wasn't it. So I decided to check if timewarp itself was the issue.

Test 4: Time warp at maximum until the CO2 tank was half filled. At this point I switched on the recycler at maximum capacity and timewarped at x1000. Once my CO2 tank was empty I switched off the recycler and time warped at maximum until I had a decent supply of CO2 to recycle at x1000. Rinse and repeat until I was out. Result: 35 days and 22 hours before I was out. So not the 2 times duration you would expect, but a significant step up.

So it seems that time warp messes up the calculations for recyclers. Probably floating point errors (space kraken but with time). I suspect that you'd actually get the full duration increase when you stick to slow time warp (or physical time warp). But I don't feel like running the game for a month to test this

Seems we just have to drag big O2 tanks around and avoid the recyclers for now.

I found two issues that led to errors with high timewarp:

Generators would continue to consume inputs at full rate until encounter one that was low. If later inputs or outputs were low the earlier inputs would be lost. This was a trade off in my code of accuracy for speed that was costing far too much in accuracy.

With simultaneous adding and subtracting resources keeping tanks near empty or full, the request resource function doesn’t return the requested amount. This is an issue with Kerbal that probably has a minimal impact on normal operator where resources are being consumed in one direction only, but causes problems when I was adding and subtracting in the same cycle.

Yongedevil, any plans to update or maybe incorporate with TAC Lifesupport?

Apparently there's quite a bit of interest in TAC Lifesupport. I've only read the description on it at this point though.

[jrandom]

Apparently there's quite a bit of interest in TAC Lifesupport. I've only read the description on it at this point though.

I was about to switch until I found out you were fixing the timewarp bug and adding non-active ship support and (eventually) EVA. I don't really care about having things like food/water/waste management so long as those aforementioned functional areas are covered.

[jrandom]

Just a head's up, in the latest dev version the info text for the LS-32C recycler still says that kerbals consume 1.0 oxygen per hour instead of the new 0.5 per hour rate.

[Subcidal]

The dev update won't break a save if you haven't got any manned pods/whatever in orbit thats using Ioncross right? I've got quite a few satellites in orbit but i have yet to do anything with manned pods besides build some planes that can only get to about 30 KM in altitude. I've never actually used the mod yet and have nothing in flight currently using it, So I should be fine right?

I don't see why it would break a save like this, figure I should double check though.

Edited September 16, 2013 by Subcidal

[Demon_82]

You should be right. I did update with a higly breakable savegame, and only the manned pods did brak. Espectacularly, I must say. I got space debris of my space station travelling at 25000m/s further tan Eelo, after a massive explossion, but hey, I wanted to remake it xD

[Subcidal]

Just popped it in seems to work fine if you had no manned pods in flight in your save. Though i think i've found a bug you probably overlooked while prepping the file. Jrandom mentioned that the recylcers still say their oxygen consumption is 1/hr. But as far as I can tell, everything says that their consumption is 1/hr. And they indeed are all using 1/hr oxygen rate. Started it on a new save even just to make sure it wasn't something screwy with the old save.

Can anyone else confirm?

Edit : BTW not sure if intended but the .cfg file in plugin/plugindata/Ioncrosscrewsupport is just an empty text file.

2nd Edit : You can fix the oxygen consumption rate manually via editing the .cfg file in Gamedata/Ioncrosscrewsupport/Config, changing the first two modules, Oxygen and CO2. Edit the ratePerKerbal = line and change the number to ratePerKerbal = 0.000138889. Make sure you keep the - in the CO2 text field, or You'll turn into a CO2 breathing monster. I must say all of the new stuff in the .cfg files looks rather exciting youngedevil =D Once you're done this mod will reign supreme as the must have life support mod, no doubt.

Edited September 16, 2013 by Subcidal