Manned Vs. unmanned missions

[Luckless]

Yes, however this would require large bases, agriculture take lots of space you would be likely to send your first mission to Jool before you was ready to set up an base.

And agree that alarm clock is a must. in 0.22 I launched towards all planets as their windows came up. One ship dropped off four landers before doing the Laythe aerobrake, it was four polar probes two for Jool and two for Laythe. All completed their mission. this mission was entirely unmanned, and was an follow up mission to my large manned Jool mission in the same launch window.

It really doesn't have to be a hugely massive system to support a single person, especially if you don't really like them all that much. There are a few green/blue algae strains that can feed a human indefinitely in a closed loop system about the size of the person itself. The only real problem is that the slime it produces tastes an awful lot like slime, and what you produce after eating it isn't much improved.

Start off the tech tree with canned and freeze dried goods of non-renewable sources. Advance through more efficient renewable systems/factories that can be deployed.

Also it wouldn't be hard to go rather 'easy' on players with kerbal lives. Run out of food? maybe go soft and have Kerbals enter a natural stasis for a given length of time, but require another Kerbal there to revive them within a few months. That way a mission can become 'inactive', much like a probe running out of energy, but it is possible to recover from a critical mistake. Give ample warnings before food runs out on a given mission with clear count downs.

[Geschosskopf]

1. Life support is always consumed, so you will eventually run out: this is no fun.

You already deal with this.

No, we do not already deal with this. With all other resources, you only have to worry about them in the design phase. Look on the delta-V map to see how much you need, build that into the ship, never worry about it again. But with life support, you cannot shut off or even reduce consumption short of killing your crew.

Now, granted, if you have a base on every planet and like the ability to forget about all the other planets in the game while you focus on setting up a new colony somewhere else, you're going to lose that ability to effectively put all the other colonies "on hold" for the duration, so that kinda brings me to my next point.

No kidding. So, you admit that life support will ruin the fun of folks who do more than just plant flags and go home. Yet you want to force it on everybody. Why? If you want to inflict it on yourself with a mod, knock yourself out. But don't advocate making it mandatory for everybody.

2. Resupply micromanagement of a continuous chain of tankers is no fun unless you enjoy Eurotruck Simulator.

Absolutely agree, micromangement is no fun. We already have that though. If you're doing extended operations on Jool then you probably have a bunch of fuel resupply missions already. So you stick some life support tanks on there too. Job done.

Nope. Bases don't consume fuel at all and any ships hanging out there only consume fuel when you're flying them. Thus, you might not need a refueling mission for many years, or never if you've got Kethane. So no micromanagement at all. Add life support, however, and that changes. And yes, it would become a Eurotruck Simulator thing. To every base you've got. Constantly, without end.

If you're someone who likes Kethane and resource mining on-site, the same can be done for life-support. You require a bit more infrastructure, but the process is similar to a solution you already do.

"A bit more infrastructure." Really? You must not be a farmboy .

If the reason for you wanting life support is to be realistic, consider how many acres and its associated infrastructure it takes to feed 1 person for a year even in an environment where the food actually likes to grow. I think about 4 acres per person is about as good as that gets. And that just the real estate. You also need the equipment to plow, seed, fertilize, harvest, store, process, and cook all that. And of course the people doing all this as a full-time job (instead of doing science or flying rockets), who themselves need to eat. And if you're trying to do this anywhere except maybe Laythe, then the food also needs life support, in the form of airtight greenhouses (however many acres in size), water, temperature control, lighting, etc.

Now, the above is all humanocentric, which I doubt is applicable to Kerbals, but it's the only example we have at present, and it should give you some idea of a realistic scale of infrastructure for self-sufficient life support. Sure, there are icky ways of maybe getting by on less, maybe just for the trip out there, but that's not going to work over the long haul; the Kerbals will start eating each other instead .

Bottom line is, if the purpose of life support is realism, then realistic self-sufficiency is an unrealistic goal. Which means you either have to truck supplies out constantly, or you fudge on the realism so much as to make the whole life support concept absurd, or you just accept that fact that alien Kerbals aren't life as we know it so have very minimal needs, or it's already abstracted. After all, there are no farms on Kerbin (or cities, or towns, or Kerbals anywhere except inside the buildings of KSC).

3. Why bother if it's possible to engineer a solution to all these problems, can't we just assume it's abstracted away already?

Because the point isn't realism. The point is making a gameplay distinction between robotic exploration and Kerballed exploration, so that in some situations there's utility in sending a robot and in other situations there's utility in sending a Kerbal. And those situations may evolve over time: tech availability, launch windows, the mission objectives, the fun and challenge you want from the mission - they're all factors that mean that the "best" answer to the question changes.

What do you mean this isn't about realism? Don't you see that your desire to make probes useful in career mode is just you forcing your humanocentric concepts of realism on the Kerbals? Humans use probes extensively, humans send probes before they send people (if they ever send people there), so therefore you think Kerbals should do things that way, too.

So, you have this preconceived idea of a "realistic" progression of missions. You find that this preconception doesn't fit the game. Rather than adapt yourself to the game and roll with it, you instead try to change the game to fit your preconceptions, without regard for the people who have adapted and like things the way they are.

If having probes be useful in career mode is so important to you, get a mod that makes them so. All you have to do is remove the transmission nerfing of 0.23 and you can get all the science with 1-way probes. Or get one of those tech mods that has you start with airplanes, which is more "realistic" than starting with rockets.

[Luckless]

Think of how many acres it takes to grow low density crops.

Now think about how many acres (fractional, easier to think of m^2) are required for a hydroponics setup growing high density food stuffs to feed a single person.

You could even take life support a step further and include crew morale as a tracked factor. Doesn't really need a negative or positive to how well you are doing, just merely a stat that you can track and pose challenges to yourself. "I'm going to conduct a Jool mission and maintain 100% happiness among the crew!" They could grudgingly survive off 'mystery paste' generated by a part similar in size and mass to the Science Jr, be happier if they had access to something the size of a T800 fuel tank, and happiest with the something the size of one of the x200 tanks.

And as for the issue of design phase, people are looking up delta-v maps now, so instead they look up transit and stay tables to figure out how much canned tuna they need to pack, and those tables can even include the delta-v requirements right along with them.

[Geschosskopf]

Now think about how many acres (fractional, easier to think of m^2) are required for a hydroponics setup growing high density food stuffs to feed a single person.

All that changes is the amount of real estate. It does nothing to reduce the rest of the infrastructure and labor involved because you're still moving the same volume of food. And don't forget that the hydroponics thing is itself a life support system that constantly needs inputs. Sure, some of this can come from recycling stuff into it but that's only going to keep the system running for so long before you have to add something from outside, simply because you're not putting 100% of everything back in. Bottom line: you still have to run supply missions. And the scale of the whole thing is still going to be impractically big.

And as for the issue of design phase, people are looking up delta-v maps now, so instead they look up transit and stay tables to figure out how much canned tuna they need to pack, and those tables can even include the delta-v requirements right along with them.

First, this only works for short-term, unimaginative, flag-planting trips. And doing things this way makes the whole life support thing pointless. If the gameplay result is that you just add a few parts to your ship and never worry about it again, then why do it? It adds nothing to the game except more parts and more CPU cycles while not changing what you were going to do with the ship anyway.

Second, it does nothing for long-term, imaginative, colonies, other than define the schedule of the infinite number of soul-crushing, mind-numbing, repetitive supply runs you'll have to do instead of enjoying your bases. And meanwhile, you've got more ships in existence, more parts per ship, and more CPU cycles devoted to the bookkeeping.

[CaptRobau]

No, we do not already deal with this. With all other resources, you only have to worry about them in the design phase. Look on the delta-V map to see how much you need, build that into the ship, never worry about it again. But with life support, you cannot shut off or even reduce consumption short of killing your crew.

We're talking about playing the stock game here. Delta-v maps are not in the game itself. I myself for example don't use them. It's happened enough times that I ran out of fuel. So fuel can be limited.

Life support is definitely not "just another fuel/electricity type constraint". Electricity is no constraint at all, at least once you unlock your 1st solar panel.

Bad tech tree balance and few electricity sinks makes electricity not a constraint. Move up the solar panels until the node that most people will be at when they're starting to go the Mun and beyond and it'll be more of a constraint. And making solar power not practical beyond Dres, like RL, would add more electrical management. Although the latter would necessitate some extra (larger) reactor parts for manned missions.

Nope. Bases don't consume fuel at all and any ships hanging out there only consume fuel when you're flying them. Thus, you might not need a refueling mission for many years, or never if you've got Kethane. So no micromanagement at all. Add life support, however, and that changes. And yes, it would become a Eurotruck Simulator thing. To every base you've got. Constantly, without end.

Simple to solve the Eurotruck thing for Career:

Phase 1 - LifeSupport in pods. Can get you a few orbits.

Phase 2 - Unlock tanks with extra LifeSupport. Will let you do 'flag-planting missions' to Mun/Minmus. Want to do long Mun stays or go to other planets you'll need to bring more tanks or ship LifeSupport to your bases. This is impractical, which pushes you to use Unmanned probes to get science that will unlock further phases because you don't want to tedious stuff. Thus the game leads you to do more varied missions.

Phase 3 - LifeSupport recyclers. You won't get 100% efficiency, which means you're still limited in how long you can stay. So you can do Lunar bases, but you can't stay there indefinitely. 'Flag-planting' missions to other planets become practical.

Phase 4 (optional) - Mining allows you to generate LifeSupport from the soil of planets and moons (water and oxygen can be created from the lifeless Moon to the more Earth-like Mars IRL). But the mining gear is large and cumbersome, so there's still incentive to get Science to unlock Phase 5.

Phase 5 - Closed-cycle LifeSupport generators. Your hard work pays off, because with 100% efficiency you finally get to practically colonize the Kerbol System.

What this does is create a natural progression of exploration in Career mode. It's a Life Support system that doesn't need EuroTruck delivery lines, if you follow the logical progression. And if you want to go all crazy and still land on Tylo with only Tier 3 tech you can still do that, but it'll just be harder. The logical progression also adds several goals to Career and it makes Unmanned missions more useful.

[adge]

And fuel really isn't a constraint, either. It just sets how far you can go.

Erm, if that's not a constraint, then I have no idea what is.

[SirSnuggles]

I use TAC so they are very useful when you don't want to worry about sending more life support to a long-standing base.

[Luckless]

All that changes is the amount of real estate. It does nothing to reduce the rest of the infrastructure and labor involved because you're still moving the same volume of food. And don't forget that the hydroponics thing is itself a life support system that constantly needs inputs. Sure, some of this can come from recycling stuff into it but that's only going to keep the system running for so long before you have to add something from outside, simply because you're not putting 100% of everything back in. Bottom line: you still have to run supply missions. And the scale of the whole thing is still going to be impractically big.

What infrastructure? What volume of food are you moving between bases with renewable life support? It becomes another version of energy to manage once you can renew life support supplies with hydroponics. An item to get out there in tact and setup to run, such that it offers you something to manage.

A well designed hydroponics system needs energy, and not much else as input. You can even automate them and not need a human. (Seriously, do you have any idea how long a 20kg tank of dry ice is going to keep a colony of plants alive if you incinerate the plant matter after each generation? Hint, a VERY long time.)

If you have a crewman there to harvest it, then they will provide all the CO2 needed to keep the plants alive (More than needed actually, and you'll generally need secondary CO2 scrubbers or a HUGE bio-mass volume that would produce way more food than needed), and the plant matter gets recycled for each generation of plant growth. Last serious real world colony grade hydroponics paper I read set its viable materials depletion from its initial setup materials at around 600 years. After which it was expected to require approximately 2kg of materials or it would risk malnutrition for the plants, humans, and fish over the next few hundred years because recycling of a few trace elements is imperfect.

So, do you want long term bases? Then you need to invest in establishing a life support system there to keep it going, or put up with massive resupply missions to keep it going. It is a challenge and hurdle to over come, just as getting enough delta-v off the ground for long term missions is a challenge.

And you only have to ship the volume of food and air if you're not reusing it. Even a 90% CO2 scrubber drops your initial units for say a 200 day mission from 200 to 20 units (well, 21 for safety. Having your pilots go blue in the face as they land tends to make for bad photo-ops). So once you unlock the tech for high yield life support reclamation, then you only need a small initial supply that will last an insanely long time.

Rather than just establishing fuel depots everywhere to support your long term missions, you also establish life support supply dumps/production facilities. Sure, you can have 'fuel' for the hydroponics systems, but nothing says a basic RCS tank sized unit can't keep it running for a few years. And we could easily have a resource based system where you can mine everything you need for resupply out on other planets after you find suitable locations.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Luckless

[illusori]

No, we do not already deal with this. With all other resources, you only have to worry about them in the design phase.

Which I then went on to show as being the same for life-support. It's a design-time issue too.

So, you admit that life support will ruin the fun of folks who do more than just plant flags and go home.

No, I said if done as a micromanagement hell it wouldn't be fun. I then showed it didn't have to be done that way. I even said in the piece you're quoting that it was addressed in my next point.

'"A bit more infrastructure." Really? You must not be a farmboy .

Grew up on a farm actually. I didn't say build a farm in space.

If the reason for you wanting life support is to be realistic

Stop right there. You're replying to someone who has in repeated posts, including the one you're replying to, has said the point absolutely IS NOT realism.

What do you mean this isn't about realism? Don't you see that your desire to make probes useful in career mode is just you forcing your humanocentric concepts of realism on the Kerbals? Humans use probes extensively, humans send probes before they send people (if they ever send people there), so therefore you think Kerbals should do things that way, too.

What? No, it's a gameplay desire. To give a purpose to the difference between robotic and Kerbal exploration. To give the player more choices that have a strategic impact. Not to force them to HAVE to do things one way, but to provide an experience that has easier and harder paths to the same goal, but the freedom to choose between those paths and feel that those choices actually made a difference.

So, you have this preconceived idea of a "realistic" progression of missions. You find that this preconception doesn't fit the game. Rather than adapt yourself to the game and roll with it, you instead try to change the game to fit your preconceptions, without regard for the people who have adapted and like things the way they are.

Sorry if this is a little personal: but I think you've managed to ignore every single point I made in my post in that one statement.

I said specifically that realism isn't the point. I didn't say I wanted to force people into "my way or the highway", I said I wanted to give people more choices, and that life support could be implemented in a way that provided those choices without restraining the freedom to do what they currently already do. I backed those statements up with examples.

If having probes be useful in career mode is so important to you, get a mod that makes them so. All you have to do is remove the transmission nerfing of 0.23 and you can get all the science with 1-way probes. Or get one of those tech mods that has you start with airplanes, which is more "realistic" than starting with rockets.

I don't want all the science with probes. I want BOTH probes and kerbal missions to have utility and there to be situations in which picking one over the other is advantageous... in both directions.

And I will say it again, that is a gameplay consideration, not a realism one.

Having one branch of choices in the game be pointless except for cosmetic reasons is simply bad game design. That doesn't mean forcing people to HAVE to do both. It just means making the choice actually be a choice between options that actually have some merit.

We're not too far off the point, or maybe we're already there, where it's possible to make a life-support system that can get a manned trip to mars. That puts the tech within the themic range of KSP at the end of the tech tree. We didn't have that tech at the start of the space race. That makes it themically consistent to not be able to do it at the start of the tech tree. (Note I said "themically consistent" not "realistic", because the point is this is a game.)

This gives the opportunity for a mechanic to make life-support a constraint that diminishes over the career arc, like engine and fuel tank constraints diminish as a constraint.

To clearly spell that out: this means that getting to Jool early and building a colony early, is a challenge. If you don't want that challenge or don't even find it a challenge because it's a chore for you: you go later when you've unlocked the tech that is better suited to it.

"You go later", that bit is important. It isn't "go play another game", it isn't "go get a mod because I've forced my way of playing the game on you". It's "you can't do that YET, but you will if you do a couple more science missions instead".

That is a strategic choice: "do I go now and deal with the issues as they arise in the mission, or do I do some more preparation up front and either mitigate the issues or, with enough preparation, prevent the issues from ever arising?".

That doesn't force one way of playing on people. It makes it so people can choose to play your way or play my way. It expands the different ways to play, rather than constraining them.

Edited December 22, 2013 by illusori

[ArmchairGravy]

I don't want all the science with probes. I want BOTH probes and kerbal missions to have utility and there to be situations in which picking one over the other is advantageous... in both directions.

And I will say it again, that is a gameplay consideration, not a realism one.

Having one branch of choices in the game be pointless except for cosmetic reasons is simply bad game design. That doesn't mean forcing people to HAVE to do both. It just means making the choice actually be a choice between options that actually have some merit.

There already ARE situations where picking unmanned missions over manned missions is advantageous. I can probe Jool far, far easier that I can get a manned return from there. Same with Eve. YOU may think unmanned missions are pointless, but I think manned missions to the outer boonies are pointless. Maybe, just maybe with a fully unlocked tree I'd consider those places. However, I will gladly take the science hit and probe those places early in the game. You are creating a false dichotomy in order to justify your position.

We're not too far off the point, or maybe we're already there, where it's possible to make a life-support system that can get a manned trip to mars. That puts the tech within the themic range of KSP at the end of the tech tree. We didn't have that tech at the start of the space race. That makes it themically consistent to not be able to do it at the start of the tech tree. (Note I said "themically consistent" not "realistic", because the point is this is a game.)

This gives the opportunity for a mechanic to make life-support a constraint that diminishes over the career arc, like engine and fuel tank constraints diminish as a constraint.

To clearly spell that out: this means that getting to Jool early and building a colony early, is a challenge. If you don't want that challenge or don't even find it a challenge because it's a chore for you: you go later when you've unlocked the tech that is better suited to it.

"You go later", that bit is important. It isn't "go play another game", it isn't "go get a mod because I've forced my way of playing the game on you". It's "you can't do that YET, but you will if you do a couple more science missions instead".

But in the meantime, I'd be coping with managing life support on each and every manned mission everywhere. You want to add another constraint, I say no thanks, I have plenty as it is!

That is a strategic choice: "do I go now and deal with the issues as they arise in the mission, or do I do some more preparation up front and either mitigate the issues or, with enough preparation, prevent the issues from ever arising?".

That doesn't force one way of playing on people. It makes it so people can choose to play your way or play my way. It expands the different ways to play, rather than constraining them.

Wait, wait, wait. You want life support to be a stock component of the game. If that's not forcing me to play your way, what is? We already HAVE a choice to play with life support if we want. The answer IS load the mod.

You are trying to solve a problem that's in your head that's already been solved. I've no idea what you have against mods, but they are a solution that works.

[regex]

You are trying to solve a problem that's in your head that's already been solved. I've no idea what you have against mods, but they are a solution that works.

Huh, there are mods that provide an economy, missions, resources, and new science parts too. I suppose the devs should just call the game done since we have all the features we'll ever need and new ones can just be modded in.

[ArmchairGravy]

Huh, there are mods that provide an economy, missions, resources, and new science parts too. I suppose the devs should just call the game done since we have all the features we'll ever need and new ones can just be modded in.

I enjoy the challenge of playing this game using just my nose. Let's make everyone play using just their noses.

Two can play the sarcasm game.

[regex]

I enjoy the challenge of playing this game using just my nose. Let's make everyone play using just their noses.

Hell, we should just not play at all.

[Geschosskopf]

We're talking about playing the stock game here. Delta-v maps are not in the game itself. I myself for example don't use them

Well, that sounds like a personal problem. But does this give you the right to demand changing the stock game to suit your own self-imposed limits, regardless of what anybody else thinks? No.

What infrastructure? What volume of food are you moving between bases with renewable life support? It becomes another version of energy to manage once you can renew life support supplies with hydroponics. An item to get out there in tact and setup to run, such that it offers you something to manage.

By "moving" I meant producing and processed for consumption on site. I wasn't even considering using this extra-Kerbin base as a source of supply for ships in the neighborhood, just it trying to feed itself. The amount of food "moved" is a function of the number of mouths to feed.

A well designed hydroponics system needs energy, and not much else as input. You can even automate them and not need a human. (Seriously, do you have any idea how long a 20kg tank of dry ice is going to keep a colony of plants alive if you incinerate the plant matter after each generation? Hint, a VERY long time.)

And the oxygen needed to burn the plants comes from where? Do you have any idea how much oxygen is consumed by fires? And no matter how much of the stalks you plow back into the dirt, you're still taking stuff out of the system to keep the Kerbals alive, so further input is necessary. You can stave it off a while but you can't prevent it.

And seriously, do you have any idea how to convert raw plant produce into food? Sure, you can eat some things right off the bush, but most have to be extensively processed. Furthermore, plants have lifecycles, having to grow to maturity before bearing. And most plants we eat (sorry for the humanocentricity) only bear once then die. So, harvest comes once a year but people have to eat every day. So you need significant farmland, whether hydroponic or dirt, to produce a year's worth of food at harvest, and then some way of storing the produce for use during the rest of the year. And you have to save some of that for the next crop. Sure, you can speed the cycle up with artificial lighting and such, but you can't break the cycle. Plus, all this takes time to set up, and then for the 1st crop to grow. So you have to ship out enough food to start with to last until that time.

There are all kinds of tricks the boffins have come up with that can sustain a very few people for a while, like say the half-dozen sacrificial victims sent to Mars. But you can't sustain them indefinitely, and you can't really scale such systems up to handle dozens, much less hundreds, of people, because they're so finely tuned and thus highly vulnerable to the chaos inevitable at larger scales. Which is why you don't see such systems being built in the famine-plagued parts of the world, instead of shipping in boatloads of food from elsewhere.

Which I then went on to show as being the same for life-support

No, you didn't show that, or you'd have convinced me. But obviously I'm not going to convince you, so let's agree to disagree.

What? No, it's a gameplay desire. To give a purpose to the difference between robotic and Kerbal exploration. To give the player more choices that have a strategic impact. Not to force them to HAVE to do things one way, but to provide an experience that has easier and harder paths to the same goal, but the freedom to choose between those paths and feel that those choices actually made a difference.

You have a choice already. If you want to send probes, you can. If you want to play with airplanes instead of rockets, you can. Sure, it's not the most efficient way to unlock the tech tree, but it's challenging and you at least have a choice. Forcing life support on everybody would remove this choice, at least until you'd got enough science via probes to unlock "no worries" life support somewhere at the top of the tree. And by then, you'll have already have so much of the tree unlocked that there'd be no point in sending Kerbals anywhere, just finish off with a couple more probes.

So yes, you are advocating your way or the highway. Rather than just playing how you want to, or getting a mod that makes your way advantageous, you seek to change the game for everybody to suit yourself. And then you get upset when one of these other people takes exception.

And I will say it again, that is a gameplay consideration, not a realism one.

And where is the gameplay benefit over what we can already do? Gameplay has to be measured in something. If not realism, then what? Fun? Freedom? In both those categories, adding life support is bad for gameplay. It limits freedom, which people typically regard as less fun. Especially when it's unnecessary to impose this limit on everybody. There are life support mods already. If that's what floats your boat, go use one.

[CaptRobau]

Well, that sounds like a personal problem. But does this give you the right to demand changing the stock game to suit your own self-imposed limits, regardless of what anybody else thinks? No.

All I'm saying is that since Delta-v values are not an easily accessible value in the stock game (you have to calculate them or look them up with a fan-made map or mod). That means that Squad isn't designing the game around each player knowing exact Delta-v values and then designing craft to fit those values. So fuel is not something that you only have to worry about in the VAB. For those like you, who use Delta-v maps, it might be but for others (including stock KSP) this isn't the case. Also if I'm 'demanding' changes to suit my own self-imposed limits, then you're 'demanding' no changes to suit your own self-imposed limits. Not everyone plays like you, don't forget that. My playstyle isn't that of everyone, but neither is yours.

[Luckless]

Not to mention that something like life support systems is an easy check box away on the game creation screen to adjust difficulty once it is added to the game. Relying on Mods isn't an ideal solution to things like this. They potentially interfere with other mods, frequently are not well balanced against other features, and easily break from build to build. Dev supported features are far better than mods in the long run. People wanting a good feature doesn't mean we're shoving it down your throat. We merely want access to it from a reliable source that isn't going to get bored with the game or overly busy with life and stop updating it.

And Geschosskopf, you aren't really familiar with the idea of a material cycle, are you? If you use combustion to cycle excess plant matter (Something called for in some designs for sanitation reasons) then you generally won't just set fire to it as you would on earth. You would place it in a pressure vessel, super heat the material, and then inject oxygen. It reacts, you pull out the gasses, split them and dump the parts in their respective containers. If you have enough energy you can incinerate a rainforest on a litre of oxygen.

And yes, for long generational missions Everything goes back into the hydroponics. The dead crew get processed and eventually make their way back. A somewhat morbid and creepy circle of life, but anyway.

All I'm saying is that since Delta-v values are not an easily accessible value in the stock game (you have to calculate them or look them up with a fan-made map or mod). That means that Squad isn't designing the game around each player knowing exact Delta-v values and then designing craft to fit those values. So fuel is not something that you only have to worry about in the VAB. For those like you, who use Delta-v maps, it might be but for others (including stock KSP) this isn't the case. Also if I'm 'demanding' changes to suit my own self-imposed limits, then you're 'demanding' no changes to suit your own self-imposed limits. Not everyone plays like you, don't forget that. My playstyle isn't that of everyone, but neither is yours.

And all the information you need to figure out Delta-V is in game. If a user doesn't want to look the information up or use mods, then they are free to conduct experiments and figure things out for themselves. They can figure out delta-v, and they can figure out life support.

[zxczxczbfg]

I think you're right, and Squad should add more "tiny" (barometer-sized) instruments for probes and rovers, like spectrometers, gyroscopes, that scooping arm thing on the mars rovers, etc. I also think they should add camera-based probe IVAs so you can, for example, get good footage of Duna's surface through a camera like Curiosity's.

[Curiosity7907]

On 12/18/2013, 8:03:35, Themohawkninja said:

Once Squad implements life support, unmanned missions will take on the obvious "cheaper, faster, no risk of life and limb" roles that they do in reality.

That being said, for now... it's lighter, and that's about it.

Yeah so download tac life support !

[TrooperCooper]

Ugh, 2 years necro

[DoToH]

4 hours ago, TrooperCooper said:

Ugh, 2 years necro

But still interesting. I read the whole thread (again)

[Vermil]

Ah, a necro'd thread. Why did I involve myself then?
Anyway, you can still get my feelings and opinion. My whole purpose in KSP is the triumph of making the manned missions. That's what drives me, holds my interest.
And yet, I fly much more unmanned. So obviously I'm not in need of an incentive to fly unmanned.

I'm responsible for my Kerbals. Don't expect me to just send them out into the unknown (I suppose I did, the first rocket launches, but I was careful). I first learn what to expect. With unmanned missions.

As for unlimited life support and that. - I think unlimited endurance of the Kerbals have one positive effect on gameplay. Particularly early in the game. Many accidentally get a Kerbal marooned. What do they do then? Sooner or later, most try to do a rescue mission. And doubtless this is typically both very challenging and extremely rewarding. Satisfying. Fun. As a game should be. Adventure. Something to talk about. How many of these rescues would have been done, if the Kerbals expired after some time? Not many. Because the challenge is formidable for a player early in his game and will take a good deal of time. So a limited life support by default would IMO automatically seriously impoverish gameplay.

Maybe it should be done with a slider, set to 0 (unlimited) by default.

 

[Guest]

I think this thread is pretty much dead.  Let's leave it alone now.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

boo

Edited December 4, 2015 by I_Killed_Jeb

[Red Iron Crown]

If you think a thread should be left alone to die, don't post in it.

Locking this up.