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

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

TaranisElsu, I noticed in your calculations document that you were wondering about cost and mass balance of the recyclers, so I decided to crunch the numbers myself. The short version of my results is that, using both the oxygen extractor and water recycler, a mission that is running the recyclers at maximum capacity will make back the recyclers' cost in about ten (Kerbal Solar System) years. They are mass-effective a bit earlier, at six years. I say this in years and not Kerbal-years because each set of recyclers can only support so many Kerbals (which puts the large recyclers the slightest bit ahead of small ones, because they can service 12.5% more Kerbals for 8.5% more funds).

For a round-trip mission to Duna, it's best to just slap a few big life-support stockpiles onto the stack and be done with it, but recyclers start to become the better option for large round-trip missions to the outer planets, and they really get to shine for permanent installations like cyclers, space stations, and bases (especially where water is available to replace losses).

I also did a similar calculation for MKS/OKS, assuming that there are enough Kerbals involved that we can pay attention only to the per-Kerbal costs of additional habitation and agriculture modules, and got that they become mass- and cost-effective within a few years.

I have only done this analysis for "stock TAC-LS" and even then only for the Carbon Extrator and Water Purifier, because they have straightforward efficiency multipliers. I haven't touched the Water Splitter, Sabatier Recycler, or any of the third-party greenhouses (e.g. Munseeker Mk1) besides MKS/OKS, because calculating their efficiency is somewhat harder (though I bet if I made a transition matrix out of the whole system and, I don't know, took the inverse of the determinant, I could come up with a reasonable estimate). I doubt they would push recycling to be cost- and mass-effective too much earlier. On the one hand, they would have a multiplying effect on food -- even with a factor of 10 multiplication on water and 7.6 on oxygen, the new optimum point for the modular container didn't even double the number of Kerbal-days per container compared to the starting point. However, they would also increase the start-up cost to be overcome. Still, it would be interesting to see if recyclers become cost-effective as well as mass-effective for missions to Jool, so I'll work some on that in my spare time going forward.

My calculations are in a modification of your spreadsheet (starting at J240 and then to the right and down): https://github.com/Kerbas-ad-astra/Misc-KSP-files/raw/master/Life support resource amounts with Kerbas_ad_astra's recycler calculations.ods

Edited March 21, 2016 by Kerbas_ad_astra
Re-hosted from MF.

[Fieel]

Installing it for a new realism career. It seems awesome, thank you!

[munseeker]

Interesting! Very much looking forward to your further analysis.

When I created the greenhouse I never gave much thought to the price and just tried to match up with other similar equipment. I mostly made sure it uses a lot of electricity so that running the greenhouse becomes a proper challenge.

[Streetwind]

Hey all, I'm looking for assistance with tweaking the resource consumption values.

I spent almost an hour yesterday trying to simply double consumption across the board, but not only is the ingame interface poorly suited to work with these extremely tiny numbers, it also only ended up breaking things. For example, oxygen started draining four times as fast instead of two times as fast, despite the readouts in the VAB claiming that all resources would drain at the same rate. Meanwhile, an EVA'ing Kerbal suddenly gained resource storage in the high hundred thousands range for all six TAC LS resources and electricity to boot, which led to extremely wonky readouts and crazy alarms on every EVA activity because only the normal amount of life support was actually present.

The only part of the ingame configuration menu that I touched was the resource consumption rates tab. I did not change anything in the other two tabs.

So now I'm wondering, what exactly did I do to break things this hard? When I used to play with TAC LS in .23, I did the same thing (doubling of resource consumption) in less than 5 minutes via the ingame interface and everything worked just fine...

[TaranisElsu]

Hey all, I'm looking for assistance with tweaking the resource consumption values.

I spent almost an hour yesterday trying to simply double consumption across the board, but not only is the ingame interface poorly suited to work with these extremely tiny numbers, it also only ended up breaking things. For example, oxygen started draining four times as fast instead of two times as fast, despite the readouts in the VAB claiming that all resources would drain at the same rate. Meanwhile, an EVA'ing Kerbal suddenly gained resource storage in the high hundred thousands range for all six TAC LS resources and electricity to boot, which led to extremely wonky readouts and crazy alarms on every EVA activity because only the normal amount of life support was actually present.

The only part of the ingame configuration menu that I touched was the resource consumption rates tab. I did not change anything in the other two tabs.

So now I'm wondering, what exactly did I do to break things this hard? When I used to play with TAC LS in .23, I did the same thing (doubling of resource consumption) in less than 5 minutes via the ingame interface and everything worked just fine...

Would you post your LifeSupport.cfg file (from KSP/GameData/ThunderAerospace/TacLifeSupport/PluginData/TacLifeSupport)? Also, your log file so that I can see what other mods you have installed and check for errors & conflicts.

Nothing has changed in that GUI for a while, so it should have behaved the same as before.

Did you restart KSP after changing the values? It is best if you do that.

Since a restart is pretty much required (and is strongly recommended), I have been thinking of removing the ability to change those values in-game and require you to edit the config file instead. That also avoids the issue with the GUI only accepting well-formed numbers and not any half-typed ones .

[dlrk]

Could I get some info on how the values in the converters were chosen? What units, etc? I want to change the CFGs. and make some new converters, for a more realistic recycling system

[somnambulist]

Could I get some info on how the values in the converters were chosen? What units, etc? I want to change the CFGs. and make some new converters, for a more realistic recycling system

Taranis linked his spreadsheet somewhere in this thread. It's probably your best bet for actual values. You may also want to take a look at what Felbourn (Bob Fitch) has done with his

series. He's reconfigured TacLS to work more like a real world close loop lifesupport system. Everything you need is on his Git repository

[dlrk]

Specifically, what I'm trying to do is implement the CO2 extractors use of hydrogen, and the Sabatier reactors production of methane and use of hydrogen.

And, what rate is the converter run at? Is the input/output per second?

Edited November 21, 2014 by sal_vager

[Streetwind]

Would you post your LifeSupport.cfg file (from KSP/GameData/ThunderAerospace/TacLifeSupport/PluginData/TacLifeSupport)? Also, your log file so that I can see what other mods you have installed and check for errors & conflicts.

Nothing has changed in that GUI for a while, so it should have behaved the same as before.

Did you restart KSP after changing the values? It is best if you do that.

Since a restart is pretty much required (and is strongly recommended), I have been thinking of removing the ability to change those values in-game and require you to edit the config file instead. That also avoids the issue with the GUI only accepting well-formed numbers and not any half-typed ones .

My issues with the ingame GUI were mostly its incurable desire to randomly switch from decimal into scientific notation, as well as its tendency to not allow you to write a trailing zero or a decimal point at will. Considering the mod's working with excessively small numbers, both of these things were rather annoying, as you can imagine.

Still, I was using the ingame GUi because that would allow me to quickly check on the effects of the modifications as I was making them. Tweak a number, enter VAB, look at how long the currently loaded ship's supplies would last, exit VAB, tweak the number some more, and so on. That was very helpful, and I wanted to avoid having to reload the game after every config file tweak...

That said, I'm not sure if I actually restarted the game before launching a test flight. I thought I did, but going back into the game today to grab some screenshots ended up with everything working just fine. Yey demonstration paradox So yeah, it's possible that that was what I did wrong. Still highly amusing that it would break seemingly unrelated things to this extent

Request: If you do disable the ingame editing, can you in return make the default config file ship in wholly decimal notation, and not half decimal, half scientific like it is now? I mean, if I had a wish I'd ask for you to return to the sane and sensible number scales you used to have in older versions, but I'll settle for notation consistency. Decimal numbers are still easier to handle for laymen like me, even if they are excessively long, because you can more easily do math in your head with them and there's less room for notation errors.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Streetwind

[Hattivat]

As I'm currently updating some of the Realism Overhaul configs, I've realized that TACLS significantly underestimates the energy requirements of space station segments (due to their larger volume, which isn't taken into account). Is there any way to set BaseElectricityConsumptionRate seperately for each part? If not, then what other solution would you recommend?

[CodeFantastic]

So for some reason none of the stock or B9 command pods have life support or water, food, e.t.c

I've tried going into the files my self and adding them but that ends up deleting the part from the game, doing nothing or rendering the pod useless.

Any ideas on how to fix it?

[lemers_on_demand]

Just installed this and nothing is there. I have the recyclers, but nothing else. At this point, the only way I can get oxygen or water on the craft is with Universal Storage's tanks, and food through command pods.

Please help!

[CatastrophicFailure]

OK feeling a bit silly here... are the build aid, readouts, etc, in 6 hour KERBIN days or 24 hour EARTH days? Been looking thru everything & can't find the answer, but it certainly looks like 6 hour days. If so, is there any way to change that to 24 hour days? I just lost 3 Kerbals

[Aedile]

OK feeling a bit silly here... are the build aid, readouts, etc, in 6 hour KERBIN days or 24 hour EARTH days? Been looking thru everything & can't find the answer, but it certainly looks like 6 hour days. If so, is there any way to change that to 24 hour days? I just lost 3 Kerbals

I think it respects your settings.

[psyper]

I'm creating a basic greenhouse to replace all of the converters so it converts carbon dioxide in to oxygen, waste water in to water and waste in to food. I don't want it to be 100% conversion of course which i think the converters do anyway. Its basically all the converters and their weight and electricity needs in one single part (using the defunct lacuna greenhouse parts).

I googled around but can only find conversions for the old TACLS so I took the latest version converter files and 'mashed' all the values together - I think I basically got them all down but need someone to help check the maths:

MODULE

{

name = LacunaGreenhouseConverter

ShutterAnimationName = door

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

ConversionRate = 2.1

// 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)

CelssInputResources = CarbonDioxide, 261.78, WasteWater, 1.98, Waste, 0.56, ElectricCharge, 12960

// 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).

CelssOutputResources = Oxygen, 273.843, true, Water, 1.6182, true, Food, 0.288, true

}

// Resource stores

// Each greenhouse can theoretically hold one week of LS stores and/or waste,

// rounded off. Comes half-full.

RESOURCE

{

name = CarbonDioxide

amount = 0

maxAmount = 1800

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteWater

amount = 0

maxAmount = 10

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Waste

amount = 0

maxAmount = 4

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Oxygen

amount = 1100

maxAmount = 2200

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Water

amount = 6

maxAmount = 12

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Food

amount = 1.5

maxAmount = 3

}

[FreeThinker]

As I'm currently updating some of the Realism Overhaul configs, I've realized that TACLS significantly underestimates the energy requirements of space station segments (due to their larger volume, which isn't taken into account). Is there any way to set BaseElectricityConsumptionRate seperately for each part? If not, then what other solution would you recommend?

Idialy lifesupport should only be available when a station segment is powered (which would require a certain amount of power every second). But since the current lifesupport module doesn't support this feature, I would simply multiply the power requirement of every kerbal

Edited December 3, 2014 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

I'm creating a basic greenhouse to replace all of the converters so it converts carbon dioxide in to oxygen, waste water in to water and waste in to food. I don't want it to be 100% conversion of course which i think the converters do anyway. Its basically all the converters and their weight and electricity needs in one single part (using the defunct lacuna greenhouse parts).

I googled around but can only find conversions for the old TACLS so I took the latest version converter files and 'mashed' all the values together - I think I basically got them all down but need someone to help check the maths:

MODULE

{

name = LacunaGreenhouseConverter

ShutterAnimationName = door

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

ConversionRate = 2.1

// 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)

CelssInputResources = CarbonDioxide, 261.78, WasteWater, 1.98, Waste, 0.56, ElectricCharge, 12960

// 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).

CelssOutputResources = Oxygen, 273.843, true, Water, 1.6182, true, Food, 0.288, true

}

// Resource stores

// Each greenhouse can theoretically hold one week of LS stores and/or waste,

// rounded off. Comes half-full.

RESOURCE

{

name = CarbonDioxide

amount = 0

maxAmount = 1800

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteWater

amount = 0

maxAmount = 10

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Waste

amount = 0

maxAmount = 4

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Oxygen

amount = 1100

maxAmount = 2200

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Water

amount = 6

maxAmount = 12

}

RESOURCE

{

name = Food

amount = 1.5

maxAmount = 3

}

Is it you intention it requires about 2 greenhouses to feed every kerbal?

[tmikesecrist3]

oh green houses, do they work with RO/rss?

[Commandodiamond]

Options to disable the plugin for certain missions? Or Disable Certain Aspects like Food or Water?

[Wheffle]

Is the water purifier supposed to be running at 100% efficiency? I was doing some testing before I send out an interplanetary mission to Jool using 18 hours of both oxygen and water, and after about 5 earth days and 16 hours oxygen was about to run out while water was still nearly full.

I'm running two installs and I get the same behavior on both. I checked the part file for the water filter in both installs and nothing seemed off to my untrained eye. Is this known and/or intentional?

EDIT

I was poking around and I think it might have to do with the fact that kerbals output more wastewater volume than water they take in with the default configuration. I assume this has to do with the the wastewater containing some waste product along with pure water. Again, is this intentional? Are my consumption and production values off somehow?

Edited December 4, 2014 by Wheffle

[seanth]

I'm creating a basic greenhouse...

To risk hijacking, you may want to try out the BioMass mod. The threads need updating, but the latest release is on github

-3 greenhouse types

-Ability to make food

-Ability to make fuels from grown plant matter

-Can breakdown waste into gasses and wastewater for plants to use

-Can clean waste water

-Compressors for converting oxidizer into oxygen for kerbals (and plants)

-Designed to work with TACLS and Kethane (

There are 4 difficulty levels to choose from ranging from Classic (the original release), to Easy, Medium, and Hard. Hard is pretty close to how things work in the real world, and Easy, Medium and Hard should be mass balanced so things don't magically gain or lose weight.

[hab136]

Options to disable the plugin for certain missions? Or Disable Certain Aspects like Food or Water?

Sure, it's called a probe core

The mod can be enabled/disabled per save game, but per mission would just be cheaty.

[psyper]

To risk hijacking, you may want to try out the BioMass mod. The threads need updating, but the latest release is on github

-3 greenhouse types

-Ability to make food

-Ability to make fuels from grown plant matter

-Can breakdown waste into gasses and wastewater for plants to use

-Can clean waste water

-Compressors for converting oxidizer into oxygen for kerbals (and plants)

-Designed to work with TACLS and Kethane (

There are 4 difficulty levels to choose from ranging from Classic (the original release), to Easy, Medium, and Hard. Hard is pretty close to how things work in the real world, and Easy, Medium and Hard should be mass balanced so things don't magically gain or lose weight.

Thanks for that - I'll certainly take a look and see if they have updated it to be compatible with the new TACLS rates

[psyper]

Is it you intention it requires about 2 greenhouses to feed every kerbal?

It was my intention to have one greenhouse to feed 2 and a bit kerbals - did I do it wrong??

[lyons7486]

Not entirely sure what the problem is but when my kerbal dies i can no longer return to the space center and the game sorta locks up. Ive checked the log myself but i'm terrible at these things, but here is an edited version starting at the point the kerbal dies.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yvjfr1upw8pffgg/log.txt?dl=0