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

[TinyPirate]

Thanks for the tips, guys! I don't mind save-breaking updates, especially if you can provide tips on editing your save.

[Rabada]

How many people will kill me if I abandon the "1 unit per day" way of measuring resources? Squad complicated things for me in the new version by now offering the option to show the times in Kerbal days (6 hours) or Earth days (24 hours). And it sounds like Kerbal days will be the default. So which "day" should I use?

I can switch to "1 unit per liter" or something similar, which will make a lot of people happy because it will make compatibility with other mods a lot easier. Would the Build Aid and monitoring window make up for the less intuitive values?

This will be a breaking change if I do change it. You will need to start a new save or manually edit your save file to upgrade. Should I do that for 0.23.5 or 0.24?

May I suggest that if you change your unit of measurement to Liters, then you should apopt a naming system which indicates how long the resources in the part should last. I suggest ending every part with (0000 KEd) , the 0000 would be a number and KEd is Kerbal*Earthday.

Here's an example: "Water Container, Large (1920 KEd)" which would contain the appropriate liter amount of water. What the 1920 means is that 1 Kerbal would survive 1920 Earth days on the units in this part. Or 1920 Kerbals would survive 1 day on the water in this part.

This way I could tell at a glance in the VAB that the "Life Support Container, small (10KEd)" would give my Mk1 pod 10 days of life support.

If Kerbal days end up being the default, then you could just use (10Kd) instead of (10KEd)

[TaranisElsu]

Would it be difficult to keep the current consumption rate and toggle how it's displayed in the settings?

Unfortunately I cannot. The number of "units" is an arbitrary number, but that tells the game how to display it. It is also central to how the game deals with the resource. Note that the actual consumption, in kg per second, is not going to change. Just the way the game displays it might change.

The reason it is a breaking change is that all of your existing ships will no longer have enough supplies. Instead of needing 1 unit of Oxygen (which weights 0.429 kg) to last one day, a Kerbal will need ~304 units of Oxygen (still totals 0.429 kg). So the command pods that are supposed to have 1 day worth of supplies (1 unit) would end up with only 4.7 minutes of Oxygen (1 unit) instead. You will not need to worry if you do not have any active manned flights. Just tweak your saved ships before launching them and all will be good. But be careful if you have a ship with several Kerbals orbiting Jool.

May I suggest that if you change your unit of measurement to Liters, then you should adopt a naming system which indicates how long the resources in the part should last. I suggest ending every part with (0000 KEd) , the 0000 would be a number and KEd is Kerbal*Earthday.

Here's an example: "Water Container, Large (1920 KEd)" which would contain the appropriate liter amount of water. What the 1920 means is that 1 Kerbal would survive 1920 Earth days on the units in this part. Or 1920 Kerbals would survive 1 day on the water in this part.

This way I could tell at a glance in the VAB that the "Life Support Container, small (10KEd)" would give my Mk1 pod 10 days of life support.

If Kerbal days end up being the default, then you could just use (10Kd) instead of (10KEd)

I agree, all parts should list in the part's title and/or description how many days the supplies are intended to last.

[TaranisElsu]

So Taranis, have you looked into getting a modeler to give the TAC parts better models? IMHO that's this mod's biggest weakness; the parts look really out of place with both stock and modded stuff.

This brings up another strategy/design issue. I see the plugin that causes Kerbals to need resources as separate from the parts that contain those resources. Kind of like how an engine is separate from a fuel tank. If you chose to use my life support mod (the engine), you can choose anybody's supply containers (fuel tanks). There is no reason those have to be one thing. I need to revamp the OP to better highlight parts others have made.

I am also planning to separate the mod into multiple downloads:

• the core plugin
  
• the supply containers
  
• the recycling and greenhouse parts
  
• the resource gathering parts.
  

Feel free to mix and match as desired. Only the core plugin is not replaceable (otherwise why are you using my mod?).

[Paul Kingtiger]

I am also planning to separate the mod into multiple downloads:...

I like this approach, "here is the framework, go play". You'd still have to set the units though to ensure that other part mods all worked together.

[Jasmir]

How many people will kill me if I abandon the "1 unit per day" way of measuring resources? Squad complicated things for me in the new version by now offering the option to show the times in Kerbal days (6 hours) or Earth days (24 hours). And it sounds like Kerbal days will be the default. So which "day" should I use?

I can switch to "1 unit per liter" or something similar, which will make a lot of people happy because it will make compatibility with other mods a lot easier. Would the Build Aid and monitoring window make up for the less intuitive values?

This will be a breaking change if I do change it. You will need to start a new save or manually edit your save file to upgrade. Should I do that for 0.23.5 or 0.24?

I would say: Use generic units (liters/kg) and do it as fast as possible. However, I still don't see a coordinated ressource-chart out there. So there may be a further change pending.

But anyway: I strongly like to see every step that will raise the interoperability of mods.

The build Aid / monitoring should be able to toggle which days to show the covertimes.

This brings up another strategy/design issue. I see the plugin that causes Kerbals to need resources as separate from the parts that contain those resources. Kind of like how an engine is separate from a fuel tank. If you chose to use my life support mod (the engine), you can choose anybody's supply containers (fuel tanks). There is no reason those have to be one thing. I need to revamp the OP to better highlight parts others have made.

I am also planning to separate the mod into multiple downloads:

• the core plugin
  
• the supply containers
  
• the recycling and greenhouse parts
  
• the resource gathering parts.
  

Feel free to mix and match as desired. Only the core plugin is not replaceable (otherwise why are you using my mod?).

You're right: The logic and the different parts are different things. But for me it don't make much sense to tear these things apart from each other. Simply because that each of these downloads is not funktional as standalone. And it is easy to delete parts you not like as an user.

But if it makes less work for you to manage the whole thing in 4 different packages, do it.

[Crater]

First, please please please DO change to using standard volumetric units for supplies. It makes things way simpler for people who want to integrate with other mods (several now have water, for example), or use stretchy tanks, or modular fuels, or build service modules, or.... the list goes on.

Second, 0.23.5 is semi-save breaking anyway, in the sense that only new saves will have asteroids, so most people will be throwing out their old saves at that point anyhow.

Third, don't forget that units are storage units in the game, so if a Kerbal breathes 304 liters of oxygen in 24 hours, totalling 0.405kg, then that was at room temperature and pressure. Once you compress a gas and stick it in a tank, it doesn't take anywhere near that much space. For example, the density for Liquid Oxygen is 1,140kg/m3 which means that the 0.405kg mentioned above comes out at 0.356 liters, rather than just over 300, which is a HUGE difference.

[Paul Kingtiger]

Third, don't forget that units are storage units in the game, so if a Kerbal breathes 304 liters of oxygen in 24 hours, totalling 0.405kg, then that was at room temperature and pressure. Once you compress a gas and stick it in a tank, it doesn't take anywhere near that much space. For example, the density for Liquid Oxygen is 1,140kg/m3 which means that the 0.405kg mentioned above comes out at 0.356 liters, rather than just over 300, which is a HUGE difference.

I've been compiling information on this very thing. I need to write up a full blog post on it and share my spreadsheets but here is an example.

So you can see that a 14 liter oxygen tank can actually store 11172 liters of O2 gas (assuming Kerbals have the technology to store resources at their optimal rate).

This has the interesting effect that part for part you can store around twice as much O2 as CO2 and only a fraction of water.

[Virindi]

It would be nice if there were several tiers of resource storage. Compressed gas, liquid, etc, with the liquid 'gases' having boiloff that you can slow with refrigeration, similar to the cryostats in interstellar

[JeffreyCor]

It would be nice if there were several tiers of resource storage. Compressed gas, liquid, etc, with the liquid 'gases' having boiloff that you can slow with refrigeration, similar to the cryostats in interstellar

Ohh that sounds like an amazing idea! compressed forms can also give long duration resources without taking a lot of space.

[StoneTJwall]

Anyone test this with ARM yet?

[theSpeare]

How many people will kill me if I abandon the "1 unit per day" way of measuring resources? Squad complicated things for me in the new version by now offering the option to show the times in Kerbal days (6 hours) or Earth days (24 hours). And it sounds like Kerbal days will be the default. So which "day" should I use?

I can switch to "1 unit per liter" or something similar, which will make a lot of people happy because it will make compatibility with other mods a lot easier. Would the Build Aid and monitoring window make up for the less intuitive values?

This will be a breaking change if I do change it. You will need to start a new save or manually edit your save file to upgrade. Should I do that for 0.23.5 or 0.24?

If you had to do a breaking change, how difficult would it be and how long would it take? I'm just wondering if I should pick up TAC now or just keep my save file safe while you do your thing.

[sidfu]

tac works fine just doesnt track when u in tracking center or space center if u on a ship timewarping it works fine

[TaranisElsu]

From the testing that I have done, this works fine in 0.23.5/ARM.

There is one caveat though: be careful using time warp in the Space Center and Tracking Station scenes. There is no Monitoring Window to alert you that a ship is running low on supplies and it will not stop time warp when supplies become low or run out. Consumption is still calculated the next time the ship is loaded, just it's not showing the status in those scenes.

[Starstrider42]

It would be nice if there were several tiers of resource storage. Compressed gas, liquid, etc, with the liquid 'gases' having boiloff that you can slow with refrigeration, similar to the cryostats in interstellar

Please don't. I love TAC, but it and several other mods with storage containers have already bloated my VAB parts list. Adding even more variants will just make the game needlessly complex (i.e., it takes forever to find the specific part you want) without really adding much to the gameplay.

[crimsonknight3]

I'm not sure if anyone else has asked this already but is there a possibility to add "Space base" parts for stations or off planet bases, that can actually produce food and oxygen for our little kerbals? Maybe to be used in conjuction with the renewable bio-fuel mod? If anyone knows of anything like this let me know

[PringleMan]

I'm not sure if anyone else has asked this already but is there a possibility to add "Space base" parts for stations or off planet bases, that can actually produce food and oxygen for our little kerbals? Maybe to be used in conjuction with the renewable bio-fuel mod? If anyone knows of anything like this let me know

Take a look at this mod http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72706-WIP-Introducing-the-Modular-Kolonization-System

Also, weighing in on the question of which time scale to go off. If a Kerbal day is 6 hours, and an Earth day is 24 hours, why not balance it to be one unit per day in Earth Days, and then it will just last 4 times as long in Kerbal Days? See the problem is for some things it makes sense to have real units like liters when it comes to air or water. But with things like the food, it is probably more reasonable to keep it in terms of meals or a day's worth of rations.

For me, I picked TAC LS because it was much easier to figure out how long supplies would last precisely because it did not seem to use "real" amounts and units for supply and consumption, instead having a simple number that just related how many days it would last 1 kerbal. Because honestly that "real" measurement is completely arbitrary, what is more important is how long it lasts.

In that vein, like I said I would rather you try to keep things simple.

Edited April 2, 2014 by PringleMan

[crimsonknight3]

Take a look at this mod http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72706-WIP-Introducing-the-Modular-Kolonization-System

Also, weighing in on the question of which time scale to go off. If a Kerbal day is 6 hours, and an Earth day is 24 hours, why not balance it to be one unit per day in Earth Days, and then it will just last 4 times as long in Kerbal Days? See the problem is for some things it makes sense to have real units like liters when it comes to air or water. But with things like the food, it is probably more reasonable to keep it in terms of meals or a day's worth of rations.

For me, I picked TAC LS because it was much easier to figure out how long supplies would last precisely because it did not seem to use "real" amounts and units for supply and consumption, instead having a simple number that just related how many days it would last 1 kerbal. Because honestly that "real" measurement is completely arbitrary, what is more important is how long it lasts.

In that vein, like I said I would rather you try to keep things simple.

Thanks a bunch

[bonesbro]

Take a look at this mod http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72706-WIP-Introducing-the-Modular-Kolonization-System

Also, weighing in on the question of which time scale to go off. If a Kerbal day is 6 hours, and an Earth day is 24 hours, why not balance it to be one unit per day in Earth Days, and then it will just last 4 times as long in Kerbal Days? See the problem is for some things it makes sense to have real units like liters when it comes to air or water. But with things like the food, it is probably more reasonable to keep it in terms of meals or a day's worth of rations.

For me, I picked TAC LS because it was much easier to figure out how long supplies would last precisely because it did not seem to use "real" amounts and units for supply and consumption, instead having a simple number that just related how many days it would last 1 kerbal. Because honestly that "real" measurement is completely arbitrary, what is more important is how long it lasts.

In that vein, like I said I would rather you try to keep things simple.

Agreed - for TAC I prefer the displayed units to help me easily understand how long it will keep Jeb alive. I don't really want to have to divide the displayed units out each time just to learn how many days of resources I'm transferring. I don't enjoy a mod because of the math it makes me do, I enjoy it because of the options and decisions I have to tradeoff.

[mdapol]

Has TACLS been updated to reflect the new Kerbal clock? I've seen issues with Kerbal Alarm Clock. All the times of the alarms suddenly changed. And now my ships in flight don't have enough suppplies to get back.

[GavinZac]

The alarms have not changed. The displayed date has changed. If you watch a time in-game count down, and watch an alarm count down, you'll see they both reach a certain point in time at the same moment, just at different rates. This is because both are stored as seconds, but displayed in hours and minutes which are very different if you're on Kerbin or Earth. The same should apply for TAC, there is no decrease in the number of seconds a Kerbal will survive.

To fix this dissonance, you can switch back to Earth time in your General Settings until the mods have been updated to allow a Kerbin time option.

[GavinZac]

Agreed - for TAC I prefer the displayed units to help me easily understand how long it will keep Jeb alive. I don't really want to have to divide the displayed units out each time just to learn how many days of resources I'm transferring. I don't enjoy a mod because of the math it makes me do, I enjoy it because of the options and decisions I have to tradeoff.

The plan, I imagine, is a little display that still shows you how long it will keep Jeb alive, just like the window that already exists in TAC.

[Arrowmaster]

The plan, I imagine, is a little display that still shows you how long it will keep Jeb alive, just like the window that already exists in TAC.

Thats exactly what the original post about the switch said. The entire idea behind switching to liters was so that it could interact with other mods wanting to use the same water resource. More mods should try to standardize their units of measure around liters or whatever else makes sense for compability.

[twentysix]

So, I have been searching everywhere for an answer to this, (somewhere around three hours) but where does "Max Delta Time" fit into the LS equation? I would assume the electricity would be similar but the super-high vs 1 values are not making sense to me. Since this is customizable, I just want to know more about where this seeming miniscule variable comes into play.

[TaranisElsu]

So, I have been searching everywhere for an answer to this, (somewhere around three hours) but where does "Max Delta Time" fit into the LS equation? I would assume the electricity would be similar but the super-high vs 1 values are not making sense to me. Since this is customizable, I just want to know more about where this seeming miniscule variable comes into play.

The MaxDeltaTime is there because my mod does not actually track consumption while vessels are unloaded. It keeps track of the last update time, and when a vessel is loaded it calculates the consumption from the last update time to the current time.

So if you had a space station, and you flew another ship for a year and then returned to the station, it would calculate how much the Kerbals would have consumed during that year.

To avoid issues with immediately consuming a years worth of supplies, and to give the recyclers a chance to act, it limits the consumption per update tick to the MaxDeltaTime. So with the default of 86400, each update tick will be limited to one 24-hour day. So catching up after the year will take 365 update ticks (there are ~25 update ticks per second). You may have noticed that sometimes when you load a vessel, the resources go crazy for a couple seconds and then settle down. That is it catching up with what should have happened while you were gone.

The ElectricityMaxDeltaTime is set to 1 to effectively disallow consuming electricity while the vessel is unloaded. I had to do that because none of the electrical generators -- solar panels, RTG's, etc -- function while the vessel is unloaded so the vessel would quickly run out of electricity, the recyclers would stop functioning, and all your Kerbals would die . If someone can build some solar panels that generate electricity while unloaded, then I can take that out. The problem, of course, is determining if the panels are receiving any sunlight at any particular moment.