[0.23]asmi's ECLSS Mod (current version - 1.0.15) - Life Support Mod

[KhaosCorp]

Can you please do me another favor - go into config file for that mod, and remove all underscores from part name (name attribute), save it and try again. My guess is it will work just fine.

Well, everything loads fine, no lock ups...but the pod in question lost all its interior functionality. Maybe they will consider changing the naming in the plugin...till then I can do without...On to building my station YAY!!!

As far as adding resources and keeping it casual gamer friendly I really think greenhouses would go a long way toward creating that balance.

Here is how I see it, a manned mission involving a craft/ship is typicaly for a set duration, even if its a very long one. Ideally this type of mission should leave Kerbin (or Kerbin SoI depending) with enough supplies, or set refuel/restock points mid mission. This alone I dont think to much micromanagement, even for the casual gamer.

Its adding all that to managing resources for longterm missions...stations and bases on other planets/moons.

But with a greenhouse module for those stations/bases/giant interstellar ship build in orbit with no place to go (c'mon...we all make em...) the micromanagement could be cut down to an enjoyable amount.

Just making this off the top of my head, but say X amount of starting life support resources and a single greenhouse lab will keep 5 kerbals alive for 20 years...or something like that.

Edited November 14, 2013 by KhaosCorp

[Guest]

Note, I'm pretty much only including food consumption because of the greenhouse idea. It'd be consumed slowly enough not to need frequent resupplying, and taking a lot of it along shouldn't take too much space in case of long missions. Also, nobody says this stuff has be be continuously consumed/generated. Unless there's some difficulty in making the consumption/generation occur once in about 8h, I don't see why couldn't there be a "consumption event" 3 times a day (should've mentioned it, I suppose). TBH, it was mostly because BobCat's HOME features an awesome greenhouse and I wanted it to work properly.

Now, water is the real addition I wanted to propose. It'd be consumed more often, once about 3-4h. The biggest problem with it is it's that it's rather heavy. For a space station, resupply flights should take care of it, especially when they won't have to carry oxygen (remember, you can generate oxygen from Waste Water). For interplanetary expeditions, a closed cycle water system would be needed, with most of the Waste Water being recycled and O2 coming from a CO2 recycling system. Those are real challenges that interplanetary expeditions have to overcome.

Oh, and the toilet on Soyuz is in the OM, BTW.

Now, for balance, I'd use HOME as a basis. On-board food rations in a habitat should last for an average length of a journey to Jool. Water system should be closed cycle, with an emergency supply provided by the fuel cell running off the main tank. Oxygen should be closed cycle with a decent emergency supply. Such a pod would have to use a powerful energy source, I'm assuming the interplanetary bus would be able to provide that.

Upon landing, greenhouses would be deployed. One greenhouse should provide enough food to sustain population of one HOME pod (6 Kerbals, IIRC). Oxygen still in closed cycle, water would start to slowly be consumed by the greenhouse. Power would have to switch to the HOME power module, which should be able to keep up with two pods. That means you'd only have to worry about water if you do it right (a big if, which is what makes mod like this fun), which would either have to be delivered periodically (hassle on a Jool colony) or found on site.

Now, in-situ water:

-Stock system: Easy. Extract using HOME intakes, convert using HOME converter, feed into the fuel cell. You won't get net EC, but you're powering it with a HOME nuke anyway.

-Realistic system: Less easy, probably a long shot.

-Duna: This is a problem, since there's only CO2 ice on the poles. But that means infinite oxygen (via recycling system), which reduces your deliveries to lightweight H2.

-Vall: Has enough ice to last a lifetime.

-Eve: Lots of interesting elements in the air and oceans, hydrogen and oxygen would require some chemistry (and EC) to extract, but should be there somewhere.

-Minmus: Seems to have plenty of ice.

-Eeloo: There's a lot of frozen stuff in there. Some of it is probably water.

-Laythe: It's very Kerbin-like, so I assume oceans are water. If they're methane, then perhaps with some CO2 around you could the necessary hydrogen and oxygen.

-Rockies: You're out of luck, bring a big water cistern. Though colonizing a rocky planet/asteroid isn't really going to be too viable IRL, either.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Guest

[123nick]

honestly, i dont see why we need another life support mod. we already have TAC and Ioncross, so honestly in my opinon i dont see a reason for another oxygen mod.

[sirklick]

123nick: TAC and Ioncross are both nice life support options, however both have various issues which have taken a long time for their perspective authors to address. Options, redundancy, and competition are all necessary in community such as this (support goes away/different play styles etc), arguing that some arbitrary number of mods is enough comes off as both silly and petty. I for one prefer the UI of asmi's Life Support over the two you mentioned.

I am going to be very direct here because you are out of line. In general, forum comments such as this can be construed as "all your work is for crap, give up trying to improve our options". Hiding your offensiveness under a veil of directness ("honestly in my opinion") is cowardly and not helpful. It is also a ridiculous statement to begin with. What other opinion would you be speaking from other then your own? If you do not see the need for it or prefer another life support mod by all means CHOOSE another, but this snide off handed comment is detrimental to the KSP modding community. Any response to this other then an apology to asmi will be ignored by me, so please do not further derail this thread with a response.

[sirklick]

asmi: I am working on expanding support to B9 and BASE inflatables. What was your method of assigning storage values to stock?

[123nick]

123nick: TAC and Ioncross are both nice life support options, however both have various issues which have taken a long time for their perspective authors to address. Options, redundancy, and competition are all necessary in community such as this (support goes away/different play styles etc), arguing that some arbitrary number of mods is enough comes off as both silly and petty. I for one prefer the UI of asmi's Life Support over the two you mentioned.

I am going to be very direct here because you are out of line. In general, forum comments such as this can be construed as "all your work is for crap, give up trying to improve our options". Hiding your offensiveness under a veil of directness ("honestly in my opinion") is cowardly and not helpful. It is also a ridiculous statement to begin with. What other opinion would you be speaking from other then your own? If you do not see the need for it or prefer another life support mod by all means CHOOSE another, but this snide off handed comment is detrimental to the KSP modding community. Any response to this other then an apology to asmi will be ignored by me, so please do not further derail this thread with a response.

my bad, i just realized that was a bit harsh to say. sorry asmi, and the community.

[Lalwcat]

I too am running into the game hangs when trying to load a save using ECLSS

[Virtualgenius]

Try and provide the output_log.txt so asmi can narrow it down are you using the ASET lander mod by any chance

[Lalwcat]

Not using ASET lander.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90875823/output_log.txt

Mods:

KW Rocketry

RealChute

Kerbal Engineer

RemoteTech2

Kethane

DeadlyReentry

HexCans

TreeLoader

KSP Interstellar

MechJeb2

NearFuture Propulsion

FAR

KAS

TAL Spherical tanks

EDIT: So I "updated" the plugin to the 1.0.1 that's available in the Bobcat thread and it fixed the issue.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Lalwcat

[sirklick]

Yet another balance consideration has cropped up while attempting to find sensible values for mod support (B9 specifically). As per the resources configuration C02 and Oxygen have different mass/volume units (as they do irl) however this does give rise to a side effect. If a cockpit contains 400 units of O2 and 400 volume for wast C02 then the full CO2 tank will ultimately have a higher mass then the full O2 tank -a little over 200kg difference in this case. IRL the extra mass accounted for in the waste product would have come from the breathers (food in-carbon out) and thus the mass (unless the CO2 is scrubbed and released) of the vessel stays the same, but this is not what happens in KSP. I bring this up while doing the B9 compatibility cfg because the as modeled result of this discrepancy is parts that experience mass change for no obvious reason. For rockets, the effect has fairly negligible impact except for a likely minor dV penalty over a long haul, but for SSTO's or high flying aircraft mass changes (CoB) can be catastrophic. Setting the C02 tank capacity to a ratio of the O2 capacity fixed the mass increase, but would still complicate CoB as the CO2 tank fills up in a 1:1 ratio up until full. The overall effect of this is fairly minor and can probably be ignored for a while, but SSTO builders should probably be informed about possible CoB consequences.

[Fraz86]

Any chance of including config files to allow users to define their own life support resources (as in the ioncross mod)?

Every life support mod's discussion thread is full of debate regarding which resources should be included (e.g., food, water, waste water). Some players feel that additional resources are effectively just "different oxygen" that adds little to gameplay and simply requires additional parts. On the opposite end of spectrum, other players advocate for extremely complex resource systems, integrated with the Kethane mod to allow for mining of life support resources in various environments, with complex recycling/conversion dynamics. Ultimately, I think customizability is the best way to make the most players happy.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Fraz86

[KhaosCorp]

Try and provide the output_log.txt so asmi can narrow it down are you using the ASET lander mod by any chance

Its not just the ASET lander....its any mod with parts names that use _ in the name or title.

so far this includes:

Kethane, KAS, HydroTech, and not sure but possibly Foundations...these are just the mods I personaly run and have found this naming issue.

Hope its something that can be fixed...kinda makes it unplayable as is for me.

[asmi]

Ok, guys I've just uploaded version 1.0.3 which hopefully fixes these hangs. You can download it here: https://bitbucket.org/asmi/ksp/downloads/LifeSupportMod.1.0.3.zip

Just in case I'll screw something up even more, old versions are available here: https://bitbucket.org/asmi/ksp/downloads

Edited November 15, 2013 by asmi

[asmi]

Yet another balance consideration has cropped up while attempting to find sensible values for mod support (B9 specifically). As per the resources configuration C02 and Oxygen have different mass/volume units (as they do irl) however this does give rise to a side effect. If a cockpit contains 400 units of O2 and 400 volume for wast C02 then the full CO2 tank will ultimately have a higher mass then the full O2 tank -a little over 200kg difference in this case. IRL the extra mass accounted for in the waste product would have come from the breathers (food in-carbon out) and thus the mass (unless the CO2 is scrubbed and released) of the vessel stays the same, but this is not what happens in KSP. I bring this up while doing the B9 compatibility cfg because the as modeled result of this discrepancy is parts that experience mass change for no obvious reason. For rockets, the effect has fairly negligible impact except for a likely minor dV penalty over a long haul, but for SSTO's or high flying aircraft mass changes (CoB) can be catastrophic. Setting the C02 tank capacity to a ratio of the O2 capacity fixed the mass increase, but would still complicate CoB as the CO2 tank fills up in a 1:1 ratio up until full. The overall effect of this is fairly minor and can probably be ignored for a while, but SSTO builders should probably be informed about possible CoB consequences.

I didn't really paid too much attention to balancing at this moment as I fell it's more important to stabilize technology first, but to your point conversion O2 -> CO2 happens with 1:0.73 relation to maintain total mass (and obey the laws of physics )

[sirklick]

I am starting to wonder if having CO2 tanks in cockpits and capsules that don't have reprocessing capability makes much sense at all. Presumably all capsules contain some basic life support systems -heat (not concerned with this atm) and C02 separation. The only reason anyone would hold onto the CO2 is if they were going to do something with it, which the basic life support systems (as modeled in ECLSS) are unable to do. Why not remove CO2 tanks from capsules/cockpits and allow the player to choose to capture it or not via the supplied empty CO2 tanks. This remedies somewhat the phantom mass gain/shift that I mentioned earlier and removes a sometimes extraneous resource from the resource list.

[sirklick]

I didn't really paid too much attention to balancing at this moment as I fell it's more important to stabilize technology first, but to your point conversion O2 -> CO2 happens with 1:0.73 relation to maintain total mass (and obey the laws of physics )

Hah -very nice! You are steps ahead of me.

[asmi]

I am starting to wonder if having CO2 tanks in cockpits and capsules that don't have reprocessing capability makes much sense at all. Presumably all capsules contain some basic life support systems -heat (not concerned with this atm) and C02 separation. The only reason anyone would hold onto the CO2 is if they were going to do something with it, which the basic life support systems (as modeled in ECLSS) are unable to do. Why not remove CO2 tanks from capsules/cockpits and allow the player to choose to capture it or not via the supplied empty CO2 tanks. This remedies somewhat the phantom mass gain/shift that I mentioned earlier and removes a sometimes extraneous resource from the resource list.

The purpose of pods having CO2 is so they could at some point dock to station/larger vessel that would have regenerator, and dump CO2 there to be reprocessed. So it's basically a buffer tank.

[asmi]

Please somebody try new build with any of "problematic" mods and let me know it it works now or not.

[Lalwcat]

Ok, guys I've just uploaded version 1.0.3 which hopefully fixes these hangs. You can download it here: https://bitbucket.org/asmi/ksp/downloads/LifeSupportMod.1.0.3.zip

Just in case I'll screw something up even more, old versions are available here: https://bitbucket.org/asmi/ksp/downloads

Gave 1.0.3 a try, let me load my previous save, however frame rate is definitely lower. On a small vessel I always run 60 fps, but with a small vessel using this mod I'm at just about 11.

Also, what exactly is the intended setup here? With a 3-man capsule and the Oxygen Regenerator, I still don't have enough life support to make it out to Minmus. Just about 2 days or so. I saw once there was some kind of Resources button in the ECLSS window, but it's intermittent if it shows up. Should we be stacking on just a bunch of radial O2 tanks and hoping for the best?

EDIT: Quicksaving and quickloading brought the FPS back up to 30 for a time and it slowly went down. Some sort of leak, perhaps. The generator itself seems to be a source of framerate loss. Currently sitting at 31 with the generator off, 25 if I turn it on. Turn it off, back to 31.

If I stage my pod and disconnect from the entire assembly, I raise to about 50 fps.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Lalwcat

[asmi]

Gave 1.0.3 a try, let me load my previous save, however frame rate is definitely lower. On a small vessel I always run 60 fps, but with a small vessel using this mod I'm at just about 11.

Hmm. Can you please check your log file if there is something suspicious going on?

Also, what exactly is the intended setup here? With a 3-man capsule and the Oxygen Regenerator, I still don't have enough life support to make it out to Minmus. Just about 2 days or so. I saw once there was some kind of Resources button in the ECLSS window, but it's intermittent if it shows up. Should we be stacking on just a bunch of radial O2 tanks and hoping for the best?

Default amount of O2 in capsules is intended for suborbital to short orbital flights (to shuttle crew to/from the station for example). Anything beyond that requires additional tanks. Regenerator is only really needed for interplanetary trips and for off-world bases.

[KhaosCorp]

New build seems to have fixed it...droped it in my main mod heavy install and Im 3 test flights in, no lockups yet. Honestly I have not noticed any FPS drop between this and the last build.

Thank you for update asmi! Maybe I can actually play some kerbal yet today =)

[Lalwcat]

Hmm. Can you please check your log file if there is something suspicious going on?

Nothing in the log file stands out in terms of exceptions or other odd toss. Mostly just mods printing stuff, like for FAR.

I really wish the log file was timestamped, would make troubleshooting a lot easier, but otherwise I'm not seeing multiple repeats or anything that would indicate exceptions/looping.

[sirklick]

Separate issue: ECLSS Status dialog - "Estimated time" and "Est. time with Regen" always show the same time whether the ECLSS Oxygen Regenerator is functioning or not.

[KhaosCorp]

Separate issue: ECLSS Status dialog - "Estimated time" and "Est. time with Regen" always show the same time whether the ECLSS Oxygen Regenerator is functioning or not.

Working fine here

[asmi]

Separate issue: ECLSS Status dialog - "Estimated time" and "Est. time with Regen" always show the same time whether the ECLSS Oxygen Regenerator is functioning or not.

Can you please elaborate? My tests indicate that everything is OK. Please note that it's gonna show the same amount while in atmosphere.