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

[jrandom]

In case any of you want this, I have basic Realism Overhaul support for TACLS done now.

[jrandom]

Feature request: The ability to alter the rate of the recyclers (set for 1 kerbal, 2 kerbals, ... max kerbals) and have the energy usage adjust accordingly. So if the conversionRate is 8, that would be the highest setting and use its full ElectricCharge consumption. Setting it to 1 in-game (via right-click context menu) would run at 1/8th conversionRate and 1/8th power usage. This would allow for fine-tuning the energy generation and capacity of missions and bases.

[panarchist]

Actually, you don't need *any* electricity for cabin heating. Even in Earth/Kerbin's shadow, the heat produced in the spacecraft by the electronics and the crew is more than sufficient to heat the cabin. Most heat systems use a flash boiler for those situations where the spacecraft is exposed to sunlight and the heat load exceeds the ability of the system to shed heat.

I'd love it if TAC Life Support had a heat mechanic, and light/shadow is definitely an important part of that, just not in the respect of electricity, since ECLSS heating would never require it. (cooling would need a small amount for the pumps in most cases, since in the lack of gravity, passive systems are far less practical.

Incidentally, that's also one of the problems with KSP Interstellar - they *do* have a heat mechanic, but the only things generating heat are the reactors and engines, not the cabin itself.

BTW, since I haven't posted to this thread before, I just want to say that I really enjoy the TAC mods, and it's been great watching them develop. I like the TAC LS mod a lot, and have been messing around with it on a number of my game saves.

[Eadrom]

Just downloaded this mod today. Been reading up on which of the big three life support addons and finally decided on TACLS. Some thoughts...

No noticeable performance decrease, at least that I could tell with all the other mods I'm using. I like the three resources to manage. I enjoy that I can set up facilities on Laythe to manufacture oxygen supplies for crewed expeditions. I would like to be able to get water from Laythe while splashed down in its oceans. Maybe add a splashed down conditional to the water purifier?

Speaking of recyclers, it would be great if a note on how much the recycler parts extend supplies. I read a post a bit back in this thread that said they have 90% efficiency so 140 water would effectively work as 1400 water over enough time. It would be nice if this info was in the part info pane instead of in one post buried in the middle of this thread.

I'm considering changing the water splitter's .cfg to making oxygen and liquid fuel instead of oxygen and waste. I play with the Interstellar plugin and LF is considered hydrogen for the purposes of mechanics. What are ya'lls thoughts on this? I'm assuming that the resulting H2 would be pure enough to be able to be cooled and used as liquid hydrogen. Maybe increase the EC usage to 1000 instead of 100 if I make this change? Increased EC usage to represent cooling the H2 from a gas to a liquid.

I do like very much that units of resources have been standardized to 1 unit per day. This makes it very easy for me to quickly do math for missions in my head. I like that the game does the math for me in the background as far as the different masses per unit. I hope this stays that way.

Hexcans containers work fine for me. I would rather mechanics and new features be the primary focus and better models come in as/if they do. I'd rather have a hydroponic system implemented than pretty water containers.

Overall, great mod! Thank you for your work.

[Ninenium]

Hey everyone, This is my first post here:D

I like this mod, Taranis. So I decided to make some parts for it:) (see screenshot below)

One is supposed to resemble something like the orbital module of a Soyuz type spacecraft. And the other is a 2.5 m container for stations.

The textures of the orbital module are not included in the download. Because they are the same as the mk1 command pod, and I don’t think I have the rights to redistribute those. So you have to copy them over manually. (Instructions can be found in the readme.) You might also want to check if the specs in the part.cfg are suitable if you plan on using these parts. I just put some estimated values in for the mass and supply amounts.

I made the parts in blender using the tools: mbm2png by krupski and the Blender .mu import/export addon by taniwha.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Ninenium
updated part.cfg files for 0.23

[rosenkranz]

I have been working on fixing bugs and other issues, and have had some time to test it, so I think Release 0.6 is now ready. This is still a Work In Progress (WIP) though.

Download: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/tac-life-support/

Changes since v0.5:

• Fixed issue with EVA'ing before launch
  
• Fixed issue with turning off resource flow. All calculations and estimates will ignore any parts with resource flow turned off.
  
• Added a placeholder part that can extract Oxygen from IntakeAir. You will need an Intake part to get the air. Only works on Kerbin and Laythe because those are the only two that have Oxygen in their atmospheres.
  
• Added a placeholder part that splits Water into Oxygen and Waste (hydrogen).
  
• I found and fixed the bug that Shimmy ran into on his live stream that caused twice as much resources to be consumed when switching vessels. What was happening: when switching between vessels in the Map View, the Flight scene would get reloaded but the old instance of my class was not destroyed until after a new instance was created. For a brief moment, two instances existed and it would consume twice the resources that it should have based on the amount of time since you last loaded the vessel. So if you were gone for 4 hours, it would consume 8 hours of supplies . It's fixed now though !
  
• The consumption calculations and the converters no longer use ElectricCharge while the vessel is unloaded. Unfortunately, the game does not seem to track ElectricCharge very well while the vessel is unloaded. I have seen some strange jumps in the amount on a vessel even without my mod installed. So things will only require ElectricCharge if on the active vessel or anything within the load range (2.4km).
  
• Various other bug fixes.
  

Note that the new converters are not balanced yet (the old ones weren't really balanced yet either). I plan to use the numbers eggrobin gave to better balance the output rates and energy requirements, but I have not had a chance to do that yet.

@Beetlecat and @WafflesToo and @rosenkranz: please try the new version and see if that has the problem that you talked about. It should work better now.

@Jasmir: I will try to recreate that problem when I get a chance.

And thanks @WafflesToo for working on the textures.

finally got around to testing this. The recylers arn't using any electricy but they aren't recycling either. If left alone for awhile the wastewater and co2 build up or arn't caught up on reload.

[Aknar]

To the water splitter should be added oxygen to water converter. They have both on the ISS. They bring up water and transform it into oxygen if necessary but also do it the other way around by keeping the Hydrogen from the water splitter. I don't think much waste is produced in those to processes. Hyrdogen could be introduced as a background resource, or as a waste resource as it can allow you to keep track of these converters and eventually use it as propulsion (even if it is very ineffective, this is a problem solving game though (Apollo 13 style as they reminded us during kerbalkon), where every small thing can make a difference)

[eggrobin]

To the water splitter should be added oxygen to water converter. They have both on the ISS. They bring up water and transform it into oxygen if necessary but also do it the other way around by keeping the Hydrogen from the water splitter. I don't think much waste is produced in those to processes. Hyrdogen could be introduced as a background resource, or as a waste resource as it can allow you to keep track of these converters and eventually use it as propulsion (even if it is very ineffective, this is a problem solving game though (Apollo 13 style as they reminded us during kerbalkon), where every small thing can make a difference)

I had not heard of their existence on the ISS, but hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells were in the Apollo and STS spacecrafts. I computed some specifications for fuel cells (and better specifications for the electrolyser) on page 33 of this thread, so it should be fairly easy to make this part yourself while waiting for Taranis to add it.

Edit:

Actually, the hydrogen on the ISS is vented, so I'm quite sure they don't use it to turn oxygen back to water (that would be a great way of throwing power out the metaphorical window).

Edited December 15, 2013 by eggrobin

[Aknar]

so it should be fairly easy to make this part yourself while waiting for Taranis to add it.

Yup already done. Might add hydrogen as a resource but i'm waiting a bit to see how Taranis, if he planned on implementing this, how he would do it.

Actually, the hydrogen on the ISS is vented, so I'm quite sure they don't use it to turn oxygen back to water (that would be a great way of throwing power out the metaphorical window).

They did before but not long ago they started keeping the hydrogen in case of dire need.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Aknar

[ddenis]

Are there any plans for adding space farm for producing food?

Because it's the only resource which cannot be reproduced now.

It could take oxygen, water and electricity to grow something. It can have low rate of producing food comparing to the Oxygen/Water (about 0,1 - 0,2), so kerbals will need 5 of such farm, to live or get 1/2 of food they need.

[Chris_W]

@ddennis: Ceck out BioMass, might be your thing.

Tweakable TacRessources.cfg

\GameData\ThunderAerospace\TacLifeSupport\TacRessources.cfg

http://pastebin.com/ERXPmLjR

[Lucien]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzk6XcNO9ow&feature=youtu.be

Since .23 getting this same bug with the TAC life support lifesupport containers and only the lifesupport containers, the water and food are fine. Just mouse over them and it they expand to fill your screen. The same thing happens with the refinery in the KSPI mod and with the Biomass hubs in the Biomass mod. I've tried all 3 of these mods by themselves on a clean install to see if it was a bad interaction but it still happens. I cant figure whats wrong, any help appreciated.

[Eadrom]

According to the Interstellar dev, this is an issue with parts having four or more resource modules in the .cfg. His initial testing has lead him to conclude this is a stock issue. Apparently the graphical issue in the VAB is not affecting the parts' actual function once launched. I'm still trying to download .23, so I can't confirm.

[gl0ryh0und]

According to the Interstellar dev, this is an issue with parts having four or more resource modules in the .cfg. His initial testing has lead him to conclude this is a stock issue. Apparently the graphical issue in the VAB is not affecting the parts' actual function once launched. I'm still trying to download .23, so I can't confirm.

It didn't affect mine. but then the gui seems laggy or to have trouble populating the information at times. similar to how the gui for Engineer and Mechjeb wouldn't populate, except that it actually works after a few moments.

[Eadrom]

I had a tiny bit of time to do some quick testing last night. I was also getting the "mouse over and the model gets bigger on the screen" issue. It was not affecting the actual functionality of the parts once launched. My work around was to just leave the mouse over the part on the left side of the screen until it had expanded then disappeared. And this was only on parts with 4 or more resource modules.

I'm working on a change to Interstellar's resource system to change their LqdWater to TACLS's Water so that both mods use the same resource. Doing this will allow for mining of ice and water from several locals in the Kerbol system so I can set up water and oxygen manufacturing and resupply points off of Kerbin. I'm almost done making the tweaks needed and then I'll make a Module Manager config to share, probably sometime this weekend.

[arsenic87]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzk6XcNO9ow&feature=youtu.be

Since .23 getting this same bug with the TAC life support lifesupport containers and only the lifesupport containers, the water and food are fine. Just mouse over them and it they expand to fill your screen. The same thing happens with the refinery in the KSPI mod and with the Biomass hubs in the Biomass mod. I've tried all 3 of these mods by themselves on a clean install to see if it was a bad interaction but it still happens. I cant figure whats wrong, any help appreciated.

Figured out that the bug appears on all parts that has more than two resources, and doesn't have a descriptive module attached.

Why exactly it happens like this I have no idea. Strange KSP code for the tooltips.

Anyway, added a fix for this bug, and integrated it into ModuleManager (best place for it since many mods use it). It searches all the loaded parts after loading screen, and adds a "Dummy description" to the parts that need it. Somehow fixes it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/unqr7kyli8m6auy/ModuleManager_1_5.zip

edit:

removed the link. will make a plugin to fix the issue. Will post it here

Edited December 19, 2013 by arsenic87

[C4pt.Miles]

May i reccomend to add the Lifesupport for the Toolbar-Plugin.

It would be nice to have the buttons all organised...

And it would be great if you can add it also for the Fuelbalancer...

Edited December 18, 2013 by C4pt.Miles

[Lucien]

Thank you arsenic, I'll give it a go now.

[WafflesToo]

Quick question, what units are the conversion rate stats for the air and water purifiers in? 0.84... what? Need to know for mission planning purposes.

[jrandom]

1 unit == 1 day's worth of resources per kerbal.

[metroidman63]

What happened to the fix? Moved or deleted?

[KerbMav]

Deleted, MM dev asked for removal to not have two different files with the same name around.

[metroidman63]

So can we get the fix anywhere then?

[WafflesToo]

1 unit == 1 day's worth of resources per kerbal.

I know that; I'm talking about the air and water purifiers. They have a conversion rate of 0.8 for the small and 0.84 for the large units, but without knowing the per-time unit measurement there's no way to know how quickly they process waste and thus no way to know how many Kermans each unit can support.

[jrandom]

I know that; I'm talking about the air and water purifiers. They have a conversion rate of 0.8 for the small and 0.84 for the large units, but without knowing the per-time unit measurement there's no way to know how quickly they process waste and thus no way to know how many Kermans each unit can support.

It's the same. 1 == one day's worth. 0.84 == 0.84 of a day's worth.