[1.0.5] TAC Life Support v0.11.2.1 [12Dec]

[Starstrider42]

Could someone give me a opinion about this mod? It looks really awesome but i'm afraid im more busy at giving the kerbals food, water etc then actually exploring planets.

Also if I have kerbals on laythe (example), which is pretty far away, the food and water will run out after a while or you can also get frood and water from there? otherwise you need to send a cargo ship to laythe which is pretty hard to do.

Thanks

It won't keep you busy. A good-sized life support module can keep a small crew alive for years. Just do the math beforehand and you'll be fine.

As for your second question, the stock mod does not allow food or water to be replenished on-site. I believe there are some part packs in the OP that do it, though.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Starstrider42

[CaptainKipard]

Author, you need to fix the stack node sizes of your larger parts to get them working with the new attachment system.

[ANWRocketMan]

@TaranisElsu: Will you still be working on this mod? if so, there are two very critical things I would like added to the mod for proper RSS integration, and 1 just a usability one.

1. I would like to be able to set how many of each resource a Kerbal takes when going on EVA. [CRITICAL]

2. I would like to set the mod to be able to handle resource consumption rates with at least 2 decimals. [CRITICAL]

3. It wuld be nice to be able to change the consumption rates etc. through a .cfg rather than in-game, preferably through the use of ModuleManager.

Sorry if I sound demanding...

Kind regards,

ANWRocketMan

[CoolBeer]

@TaranisElsu: Will you still be working on this mod? if so, there are two very critical things I would like added to the mod for proper RSS integration, and 1 just a usability one.

1. I would like to be able to set how many of each resource a Kerbal takes when going on EVA. [CRITICAL]

2. I would like to set the mod to be able to handle resource consumption rates with at least 2 decimals. [CRITICAL]

3. It wuld be nice to be able to change the consumption rates etc. through a .cfg rather than in-game, preferably through the use of ModuleManager.

Sorry if I sound demanding...

Kind regards,

ANWRocketMan

You can adjust all of those in the cfg file that is generated(GameData\ThunderAerospace\TacLifeSupport\PluginData\TacLifeSupport\LifeSupport.cfg) after you start up the game for the first time.

1. The EVA resource amount seems to be based on the EvaDefaultResourceAmount variable(looks to be in seconds).

2. Mod handles it fine as far as I can tell, the in-game settings is the one stuck at integers(as far as I can tell from looking at the code it is loaded from the cfg as a double).

3. Modulemanager handles parts only as far as I can tell, so that's out. At least we got a cfg to play with.

-

Kolbjorn

[ANWRocketMan]

You can adjust all of those in the cfg file that is generated(GameData\ThunderAerospace\TacLifeSupport\PluginData\TacLifeSupport\LifeSupport.cfg) after you start up the game for the first time.

1. The EVA resource amount seems to be based on the EvaDefaultResourceAmount variable(looks to be in seconds).

2. Mod handles it fine as far as I can tell, the in-game settings is the one stuck at integers(as far as I can tell from looking at the code it is loaded from the cfg as a double).

3. Modulemanager handles parts only as far as I can tell, so that's out. At least we got a cfg to play with.

-

Kolbjorn

Where on Earth is the .cfg containing the consumption rates? I cannot for the life of me find it. The only .cfg I can find is the one containing the resource densities. Nothing else. ModuleManager can edit any module as far as I can tell. Including resource modules, I even edited RealFuels tank types with it and the TAC fuels to realistic densities etc. etc.

EDIT:

Ah, I found it. It's only created after the mod is loaded. And does not seem to use the standard KSP partmodule structure. That does not help what I'm trying to do... At least not if I can't get permission to release a custom .cfg file.

EDIT 2:

"EvaDefaultResourceAmount = 43200" does indeed(it seems) set the amount of resources an EVA Kerbal takes, but it does not seem to work as far as I can tell. All my testing it took a certain amount of units(1 unit for Food/Oxygen/Water[which at the time equaled 86400 seconds of usage] and some random amount of electricity that only gave me 30 minutes of electric charge).

Edited April 17, 2014 by ANWRocketMan

[Kerbies_are_my_Minions]

ANWRocketMan, When changing the amount of units, make sure that you are fully restarting the game each time.

[NathanKell]

That cfg, since it's in plugindata, is not loaded automatically by KSP (all files in PluginData folders are skipped by the GameDatabase loader; that's why, for example, I stuck textures in there for RSS). So you won't be able to change it via MM patches.

This mod is licensed CC-BY-SA, so you're fine; and I can't imagine TaranisElsu would have a problem with releasing a customized cfg anyway...

[Jashin]

Hi everyone ! I'm happy to post here the first message in the KSP board Thank you Taranis for the mod, and everyone involved in this thread.

I thoroughly read the last pages, especially CoolBeer's post about converting the units to liters : I used his patch to modify Taranis original configuration, but I stumble upon an issue which I haven't been able to resolve yet. The conversion to liters/kg has been successfully applied to every stock part, but I can't figure out how to patch the consumption : a MK1 command pod in orbit around Kerbin (for test purposes) has about 7h30 worth of food, 43h of water and....7300+h of oxygen. Obviously, it should be 24h for each of these three resources.

The amount of resources in the pod show that the Module Manager patch works, since it is set to change the max amount of each resource in the stock parts to reflect the changes in consumption (before the patch, everything was set to 1/2/3 depending on the size of the pod, now food is 0.317, water is 1.798 and oxygen is 304.27).

The problem is that the consumption rates are still the same as Taranis' original configuration (still visible in the toolbar UI ingame), and the updated rates never apply. The file with these settings is located in GameData/ThunderAerospace/TacLifeSupport/PluginData/TacLifeSupport/LifeSupport.cfg

Each time I load the game, these settings do not work, and it seems that they are overwritten by the original configuration : what can I do to make these work properly ?

[phoenix_ca]

Could you please add to the part descriptions info on how many Kerbals the recyclers and filter can support? Looking at the part.cfg for each is a kinda roundabout way of doing it. I can tell that the small ones can support 8, while the large ones support...8.4? Is that right? It seems kinda off that the ones that are substantially larger only have a 0.4/day advantage.

In any case having that info in the description would be far more useful than it being solely in the part.cfg.

[Scootaloo]

Just ran into a problem that killed Bill. Not sure if its a glitch or a feature of TAC.

I'm on the dark side of Minmus and the battery power ran out of my habitat. He was in a Hitchhiker under the Goodspeed CMG-20 robotic command pod. It ran out of power. I had a craft with power nearby (its a small colony), and I was gonna move him to that. The problem is that there was no eva option. Not on his little screen in the bottom right, nor by clicking the hatch.

Is this related to power depletion, or is it a glitch? Once power runs out do hatches not function and the kerbal is effectively trapped inside?

TBH if it is a purposeful implementation due to electrical depletion, TBH I think it's a little overboard. Hatches are (it seems) completely manual, so tying it to electricity seems a bit too much IMO.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Scootaloo

[Brucey]

This add-on would be supremely awesome if you setup some parts for ISRU on other planets, with parts providing better sustainability as you work your way up the technology tree. That would give people playing career mode a very interesting goal to work towards: an independent base on another planet.

[Jashin]

Brucey,you might be interested in another mod that requires TAC Life Support (as well as Kethane, if you don't mind that) : it's called Modular Kolonization System, and it's awesome. It has a series of modules based on Nasa's design and the goal is to set up an autonomous base on another planet, capable of producing fuel, food, oxygen, water and everything provided you do well in terms of planning and logistics.

Here's the link : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72706-WIP-0-23-5-Modular-Kolonization-System-v0-14-(ALPHA)-04-12-2014

Here's an illustrated manual : http://imgur.com/a/kzqlY

Hope you have fun with it, it's really nice.

[mdapol]

This add-on would be supremely awesome if you setup some parts for ISRU on other planets, with parts providing better sustainability as you work your way up the technology tree. That would give people playing career mode a very interesting goal to work towards: an independent base on another planet.

Also, KSPI has an ISRU part that can do resource extraction on other planets. There is a mod that allows the resources from TACLS and KSPI to be compatible. With these three mods I have a moon base that is extracting water that can be either electrolyzed into LiquidFuel and Oxidizer or can be left as water for Life Support. Aside from food resupply missions, my moon base is pretty much independant.

[mdapol]

I'd like to report a bug I found with TAC LS. My (above mentioned) moon base was getting a resupply and ran out of water during my final approach to the base. After I got everything hooked up I attempted to resupply water but -all- right-click-menu buttons for -all- mods on -all- parts were unresponsive. I could not do anything except EVA the Kerbals. Pushing alt-F2 revealed that literally -hundreds- of "out of resource" warning messages being spammed to the error log per second. I think that all the error messages were swamping the game and creating a situation where I could not do anything.

I had to exit the game and edit the save file to basically put in a little bit of water so TAC would no longer think there was no water. After restarting, all the menu buttons worked normally and I could finish the resupply.

[BlackFang]

I'm trying to get into modding KSP and I downloaded your source to try and compile it myself. I followed a tutorial on setting up VS, but I have the dreaded red squiggles on all the log function calls.Is there something else I need to add to the solution as reference besides the Assembly-CSharp.dll and UnityEngine.dll?

[Scootaloo]

Does anyone else have rapid unplanned disassembly issues when they place hex cans in symmetry? I had this problem a few iterations of this add on ago and it still seems to be an issue. Here's the current ship I am trying to build. You can see in this pic the placement of the TAC pieces in the stack, which also is composed of Goodspeed and stock elements.

Something seems to go wrong once the piece is unrestrained. When it's on the launch vehicle and strutted down it seems to hold together, it seems to hold together fine (which is an improvement since the last time, when it would RUD right on the pad), but as soon as I attempt to free it from the upper stage, it starts to shake more and more violently (the hex cans), before ripping itself apart.

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Anyone else have this problem? If so, how can I fix it?

[eqfan592]

First, just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work on this amazing mod!

I think I came across a bug that is somewhat annoying. I had a Munar mission that lacked the delta V to make it all the way back and ended up in a high orbit over Kerbin. I sent a rescue ship up with plenty of supplies to get the crewman, as well as to attempt to nudge the Munar lander back into an orbit that would cause it to land. I decided to have the crewman stay on the rescue ship until we were close to doing the correction burn to save the resources on board (only about 10 hours of life support were left and they would have ran out prior to the burn). When I sent my crewman back into the ship, he was instantly killed because the ship registered that there was no food, water or O2 left on board.

I figure he should at the very least have had whatever he brought with him from the other ship to at least keep him from dying instantly, not to mention given that with nobody on board the ship, I would have thought the supplies would have gone untouched. Did I mess something up along the way?

Sorry if this has been addressed, and thanks again!

[jinks]

I has made a part!

I was never quite happy with the available food production options. BioMass at the moment is a convoluted mess with no clear direction, and it requires to muck around with TAC-LS' consumption rates. MKS is getting there but also quite complex.

So I made a simple single-part greenhouse that can support up to 4 Kerbals with food at the "expense" of a bit of water, CO2 and waste. The model was made by the awesome zzz and all his models are in the public domain. All I did was tack on a basic TacGenericConverter.

Here's the download: TACGreenHouse.zip.

Screenshot:

The relevant part from the part.cfg:

//TAC Greenhouse
MODULE
{
    name = TacGenericConverter
    converterName = Greenhouse
    conversionRate = 4
    inputResources = Water, 0.25, CarbonDioxide, 1, Waste, 0.25,
    outputResources = Food, 1, false, Oxygen, 0.9, true
}

@TaranisElsu: I'd be grateful if you'd consider adding this to the OP

Edited April 21, 2014 by jinks

[jinks]

Some more stuff:

I didn't really like the KESA config that changes KSPI LqdWater to TAC Water, KSPI is quite complicated and I'm a bit wary of the change conflicting with future updates.

To give me the option of extracting water on certain bodies, I made a ModuleManager config that adds a LqdWater to Water converter to the two existing Water Purifiers (called "Industrial Water Purifier")

Here's the config:

@PART[TacWaterPurifier]
{
    MODULE
    {
	name = TacGenericConverter
	converterName = Industrial Water Purifier

	// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
	conversionRate = 8

	// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
	// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
	// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
	inputResources = LqdWater, 1, ElectricCharge, 1000

	// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
	// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
	// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
	outputResources = Water, 0.9, false
    }
}
@PART[TacWaterPurifierLarge]
{
    MODULE
    {
	name = TacGenericConverter
	converterName = Industrial Water Purifier

	// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
	conversionRate = 8.4

	// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
	// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
	// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
	inputResources = LqdWater, 1, ElectricCharge, 1000

	// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
	// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
	// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
	outputResources = Water, 0.9, false
    }
}

Caution: LqdWater is a STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH resource, so you will need fuel lines from a LqdWater container to a purifier. (ProTip: In the latest KAS version KAS-pipes can function as fuel lines.)

[vcordie]

Quick question: How much water, oxygen, and food does a kerbal consume in units/per hour? How much carbon dioxide, wastewater, and waste do they create per hour?

[Donziboy2]

Quick question: How much water, oxygen, and food does a kerbal consume in units/per hour? How much carbon dioxide, wastewater, and waste do they create per hour?

Currently its 1/24 units per hour.

[Moon Goddess]

I has made a part!

I was never quite happy with the available food production options. BioMass at the moment is a convoluted mess with no clear direction, and it requires to muck around with TAC-LS' consumption rates. MKS is getting there but also quite complex.

So I made a simple single-part greenhouse that can support up to 4 Kerbals with food at the "expense" of a bit of water, CO2 and waste. The model was made by the awesome zzz and all his models are in the public domain. All I did was tack on a basic TacGenericConverter.

The relevant part from the part.cfg:

//TAC Greenhouse
MODULE
{
    name = TacGenericConverter
    converterName = Greenhouse
    conversionRate = 4
    inputResources = Water, 0.25, CarbonDioxide, 1, Waste, 0.25,
    outputResources = Food, 1, false, Oxygen, 0.9, true
}

@TaranisElsu: I'd be grateful if you'd consider adding this to the OP

I like the idea of greenhouse but I'd hope you could be talked into changing the values on the cfg, especially if it's going to go into the OP. Right now your violating the laws of physics with mass being created. The mass of .25 waste, and .25 water and the remaining carbon from the oxygen conversion just don't add up to 1 food. I don't have the opportunity to do the math right but even making it a simple, Waste 1 becomes Food .9, would be better, really needs to be some loss.

[RoverDude]

A couple of considerations when adding to a LS mod (based on my time building MKS as well as some mods before that for my own use)

On the one hand, you want to make sure you do not have an instant 'I Win' button. If the mod is too overpowered (and making food by adding a single part that only weighs a few tons qualifies) then it kinda negates why folks install TAC-LS - i.e. to add in both realism and the real logistical challenges of keeping Kerbals alive for long journeys (I've been reading tons of papers on food generation for NASA mars missions, and it's an interesting problem space). As an example, a part I had modded to do the Waste/CO2 to Food/Oxygen conversion came in at about 10 tons per Kerbal - so it was pretty non-trivial and you had a high breakeven point vs. just sending food.

The other, for those making bases, is (in my opinion) to have some kind of path to a closed system, so that there's an end game where you can just set it and forget it. this is what MKS does, it just makes it REALLY expensive to do so, so in a lot of cases, it makes more sense to just send in the supplies unless you're making a permanent base.

Just my $0.02

[RoverDude]

And more a question for Taranis - is there a current plan to revise TAC numbers / mass / etc. (I know there are some community patches, etc. out there) as part of the official package? Reason I am asking is that I want to make sure all of the MKS numbers make sense given the next version of TAC before I move it over to an official release.

TIA

[akman]

I would love to see this mod adding some sort of health system.Each kerbal will have for example its own health bar and as they get hurt(by re entry heat or high speed collisions) they loose health, and when they do they use the ships medical supplies automatically.And when they are out and they loose all of their health, well, they die.Also it would be awesome if they are at a low gravity environment they slowly loose health unless they receive artificial gravity by things like a centrifuge.