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

[munseeker]

I'm about to download this mod, but can somehow make Base on Dun without worrying about oxygen food and water? I mean, can I somehow get the oxygen from the air, food from plants and water from soil. And one more questio is it compatibile with interstellar?

Even without regular resupply missions it is relatively easy to bring enough food/water/oxygen for an extended stay. TAC LS comes with oxygen filters and water recyclers, so two large water and oxygen containers plus recyclers will last three Kerbals through several years. Food is a bit more tricky, which is why I made my own greenhouse (see signature).

It becomes a big problem if you warp at max speed a lot during gameplay to advance Jool missions for example - then it's critical to make sure you have your Duna resupply flights scheduled and on the way in time.

Personally, I can't play KSP without TAC LS anymore - I enjoy having to care for the well-being of my Kerbonauts, it really adds another dimension to the gameplay.

[munseeker]

Had a few people drop me a PM with requests to texture the recyclers and other parts (thanks, nice to have the encouragement), so I figured I'd clean the whole set up.

This is the first time I've attempted part re-texturing, so I'm still learning. But, overall, I'm happy with the result.

Hopefully, someone else will get some use out of them.

Download Link: http://beta.kerbalstuff.com/mod/28/TMS_TAC_Life_Support_Retexture

http://imgur.com/a/aBaOD

TMS, first a big Thanks for these textures - the best I've seen for TAC LS. Did you ever promote them with their own Add-On Showcase thread? I had to re-download them and had a pretty hard time finding them in the middle of the TAC LS thread... :-)

Great work!

[rabidninjawombat]

TMS, first a big Thanks for these textures - the best I've seen for TAC LS. Did you ever promote them with their own Add-On Showcase thread? I had to re-download them and had a pretty hard time finding them in the middle of the TAC LS thread... :-)

Great work!

Oh man those are some nice textures! I've had what seems to be an earlier version of those for a while now (couple months i think), without hex can textures. this update is real nice snatching them right away!

[Rayder]

Just be aware that stock TACLS uses the same texture for two of the recyclers, so you need to go into the cfg and tell it to use the new texture.

[smart013]

Will there a new version after .24 hits?

[Donziboy2]

"sound of magic 8 ball shaking"

Maybe......

[munseeker]

Will there a new version after .24 hits?

I so hope there will be...

[VelocityPolaris]

I hope you don't mind, but I modified the z_greenhouse from an unknown mod to produce food.

[TaranisElsu]

Will there a new version after .24 hits?

"sound of magic 8 ball shaking"

Maybe......

I so hope there will be...

If all goes well, there should be a new release right before or after 0.24. *crosses fingers*

After that, not another release. Ever. Just kidding.

[Olympic1]

I hope you don't mind, but I modified the z_greenhouse from an unknown mod to produce food.

It comes from this post: The greenhouse module

[zilfondel]

I guess that would depend highly on the waste in question. That being said, whether it purifies the water or not, a greenhouse should be a consumer of water and not a producer. Based off my extremely limited experience growing plants, it would be waste, carbon dioxide, water, and electricity as inputs and you'd get food, oxygen, and waste water as outputs, with the system loss being less water output than input and a very low level of food generation, something on the order of 0.75L - 1L / day (using the new system and still and probably will always be working on human values).

Why such a low number? This is because the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is quoted on this page as stating that the absolute minimum land required to sustain one person is about 0.07 hectares, which works out to 700m. Assuming a standard 2.5m x 5m greenhouse, you're presented with 39.2699m² of surface on which to grow, which I'm going to say could be made into 80m² by using the outer walls as well as an inner growth structure. That 80m² comes out to about 11.5% of the 700m² minimum, meaning that a single part of this type should provide about 11.5% of the food intake for a single CM-d. I'd say there is a little leeway here for advanced aeroponics horticulture techniques, but the ultimate result is that you'd need at least 9 2.5m x 5m greenhouses to realistically support a single person.

This all isn't to say that a greenhouse or two wouldn't be a great addition to a long duration mission. The reality is that it would be a great CO2 scrubber as well as providing at least some supplemental food. In addition, if this or any other mod starts tracking kerbal general well being, the inclusion of some greenery should have a positive effect on that.

Bioremediation of wastewater to purify and remove pollutants using plants is a well known function of ecosystem, and is in fact well used in living machines. Many plant types can break down pollution using either photosynthesis or other biological processes. Bacteria play an important role as well. The same plants that produce food however may not be the ideal ones for a biological water treatment system, but would still be at least somewhat viable.

It would, however be very heavy. Good for use in very large stations or bases, especially if you can combine it with in situ resource utilization. Ie, get rocks, make soil, harvest CO2 and H2O.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_machine

[Sentmassen]

TaaaDAAA!

I've made my own TAC containers.

! Comes in all flavors !

And they stack well!

Download

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15214821/RRTacLifesupport.zip

I'm also working on some Side containers

WIP

[munseeker]

TaaaDAAA!

I've made my own TAC containers.

And they stack well!

Those are great! I really like the way you can stack them - I think I haven't seen that before in those kind of modules. Is there any indication on the outside of what's inside other than the label on top?

I'm also working on some Side containers

That's some cool modelling going on there. This is going to be great!

[Sentmassen]

Those are great! I really like the way you can stack them - I think I haven't seen that before in those kind of modules. Is there any indication on the outside of what's inside other than the label on top?

I wanted to, but when stacking them you have to flip them, and that struck me as maybe not looking so hot with the symbols flipping back and forth. Thinking about it now though, I could just do something minimal, like the white dash I have on them for no reason. Ill cook up something today.

[Btown1717]

I'm sorry if you've already included this but i didn't see it in the description and havent used it yet, however I noticed you had parts that allow for the recycling of wastewater, C02, etc... however I didn't see something for food. Perhaps include a hydroponics part that allows you to grow food in the capsule (or extraterrestrial base)

[BudgetHedgehog]

I'm sorry if you've already included this but i didn't see it in the description and havent used it yet, however I noticed you had parts that allow for the recycling of wastewater, C02, etc... however I didn't see something for food. Perhaps include a hydroponics part that allows you to grow food in the capsule (or extraterrestrial base)

A greenhouse part is in the works but until then, there's various add-ons that close this loop, including the Munseeker or marce greenhouses.

[Tahvohck]

Alright, so I'm looking to seriously integrate this into my game but... I've run into a snag. In a way, the same snag I ran into last time I tried to plug in a life support mod (Ioncross back then). I'm going to be using the Universal containers because a) it's listed on the front page (even though it's not technically supported yet) they provide nice functionality on their own for other bits and bobs and c) they look pretty.

Here's the snag though. Universal Containers is designed with real-world values in mind, in most cases in terms of kg/L (well, metric tons/L in the raws, but let's ignore the specifics for a little). TACLS is balanced for, as far as I can tell, simplification: 1 unit equals the amount of a resource used per day. (With the exception of electricity consumption, which I'd really appreciate a unit for: 2400 EU per day is a bit absurdly high at first glance, though I haven't done any of the math. Getting an idea of what that's supposed to represent would very much help).

Now, this wouldn't be so much a problem... if UC wasn't aggressive about its stance and didn't use ModuleManager to patch values for density. And if it didn't assume things like liquid oxygen in its tanks. End result: one UC wedge of O2 is something like *checks* 46234 Kerbal-days of O₂. Which ends up weighing something like 83 kg structure + 66 kg O₂ = 149 kg. Which is... quite a bit OP, no?

Now... I happen to like dealing with real-world values. So I'm making a MM patch myself to bring as much as I can in line. But I'm wondering how much effort was put into the balance in the first place, so I know what I'm throwing a monkey wrench into.

(The actual snag by the way, roughly, is that the moment you add life support to the game, balance becomes stupidly paramount and finicky and dependent on personal taste, and that last one ruined Ioncross for me enough that I started making my own. Never finished, but... )

PS: I can't wait till I finally start using Realism Overhaul and get to make all of those things play nice together all over again either... or more accurately, get it to play nice with the things I have already. Balancing is hard, you guys. (Not to put down the amazing work people have done on RO. More to put down my own hodgepodge of mods)

Edit for the millionth time, and not a typo this time: Y'all might get a kick out of this. Just don't be eating when you read it.

Edited July 6, 2014 by Tahvohck

[Gnipu]

Now... I happen to like dealing with real-world values. So I'm making a MM patch myself to bring as much as I can in line. But I'm wondering how much effort was put into the balance in the first place, so I know what I'm throwing a monkey wrench into.

You can adjust resource consumption to your liking. As to the what the EU actually is spent on, I have no idea if it's too high or low EU/day. I think it's supposed to represent internal operations like waste handling and O2 balancing.

[StevenJ]

This is probably a dumb questions since I believe you also made TAC fuel balancer but if I send up a module up to a pre-existing craft that is low on life support, can I transfer food water and oxygen using tac fuel balancer between life support segments? I should just try this and find out the answer the hard way but oh well.

[TMS]

Yep, life support resources are like any other resource.

[eempc]

Hey, is it possible to make a moisture condenser that uses intake air and makes water?

How could one modify the AirFilter.cfg to generate both air and water?

Would the line in the code look this?

outputResources = Oxygen, 1.0, false, Water, 1.0, false

[eempc]

Also, what is a good ratio of food to oxygen to water to pack assuming you also bring a water purifier and carbon extractor?

I took 4160 food, 800 water and 800 oxygen. But because I can convert waste water and CO2 back, does this mean if I activate the converters 6 times (after water and oxygen are depleted), I will have in effect about 4173 water and oxygen?

Edited July 8, 2014 by eempc

[TaranisElsu]

Yay! I finally got my changes close enough to completion to post a pre-release build.

Note: This release is not compatible with previous releases.*

This is a pre-release. I have not been able to test it as much as I would like so there probably are some bugs or things that do not quite work as intended. Please do not use this unless you know what you are doing.

Change log

• Includes performance improvements contributed by angavrilov
  
• Now uses the textures made by jfjohnny5
  
• Uses fixes to the model contributed by Ninenium
  
• Respects the length-of-day game setting (Kerbin 6-hour vs Earth 24-hour)
  
• The current vessel's status is now always displayed and is at the top of the monitoring window
  
• The Build Aid can now be used in the Editor even when the mod is turned off
  
• No longer adds the LifeSupportModule part module or resources in code. Instead it uses a ModuleManager config file.
  
• Bug fix: was not using enough electricity at high time warps.
  
• Bug fix: should not have been requiring Oxygen for craft flying below a reasonable altitude. The check no longer requires the vessel to have electricity or be landed.
  
• Added tweakables so the TAC Converters can be toggled on and off in the editor
  
• TAC Converters can now be "alwaysOn"
  
• TAC Converters config files are now in units per second.
  
• Rebalanced for "1 unit = 1 liter"
  

Note: This release is not compatible with previous releases. Because of changing the definition of a "unit" to mean "1 liter" instead of "1 day of consumption," existing ships' supplies will last for a very different amount of time. Most will have way too little Oxygen (Kerbals now consume ~304 units of Oxygen per 24 hours instead of 1 unit). Also, the mass of supplies has changed in all parts, so your dV and TWR will be very different. These are not horribly breaking changes, but it means you will need to either: (1) edit the amount of resources in existing ships or (2) launch a lot more resources to any existing ships before upgrading. If you have no existing ships with Kerbals aboard, then you do not need to worry and should be safe to upgrade.

I recommend you delete the existing directories before installing the new version. Anything in {KSP}/GameData/ThunderAerospace/TacLifeSupport*/

Download from: https://github.com/taraniselsu/TacLifeSupport/releases/tag/v0.9-pre

Edited July 9, 2014 by TaranisElsu
Added the download link. D'oh!

[BudgetHedgehog]

Good stuff - I have no current missions (that I care about...), so I shall grab these and tentatively update. You mention that they now consume litres, rather than 1 unit per day - is there a list of how many litres 1 kerbal consumes per game day? The only mention is 304 units of oxygen per 24 hours (76 per 6 hours) - is it the same for food and water too?

[RoverDude]

Awesome! Plugging this into the current MKS dev version, will let you know if weirdness occurs.