How would you want to see life support handled?

[xrayfishx]

All of them and beyond, and at the same time none. When you create a new game, you choose how complex life support you want or if you want any at all. Depending on your choice it also hides some unnecessary parts.

[Nemrav]

I say, if you are to have life support at all, let it be oxygen and food/water.... and make it relatively easy to get to in the tech tree

[Anton P. Nym]

Nothing more complex than adding resources for "Air" and "Snacks" that get depleted/replenished. KSP isn't a NASA sim; it needs to be light-hearted and open to newcomers who are already struggling with the basics of orbital dynamics.

-- Steve

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

Let's start with the three basic resources in TAC Life Support:

Snacks/Rubbish (rubbish includes things like snack wrappers, broken board game pieces, toenail clippings, etc).

Water/Wastewater (wastewater includes water from laundry, washing, etc).

Oxygen/CO2.

Our initial life support model is as follows:

Kerbals consume snacks, water, and oxygen, and produce rubbish, wastewater, and CO2, at a fixed rate. In addition, command modules (and inhabitable parts like the hitchhiker) consume electricity at a fixed rate regardless of the amount of crew in them, representing climate control, lights, running video games, etc. EVA suits contain a fixed amount of snacks, water, oxygen, and electricity.

Of course, converter parts are available as well;

Air Scrubber: CO2 + Electricity -> Oxygen + Rubbish

Water Recycler: Wastewater + Electricity -> Water

Hydroponics Farm: Rubbish + CO2 + Electricity (sunlight) -> Snacks + Oxygen.

The problem is, even a basic capsule or EVA suit will be equipped with an air scrubber, so there isn't even a point to tracking CO2 and Oxygen: just include running air scrubbers in the capsule's electricity requirements. So, all we really need are:

Kerbals: Food + Water -> Rubbish + WasteWater

Command Modules: Electricity.

Water Recycler: Wastewater + Electricity -> Water

Hydroponics Farm: Rubbish + Electricity (sunlight) -> Snacks + Oxygen. (plants use water, but most of that ends up being lost via transpiration and reclaimed by water recycling equipment).

The water recycler and hydroponics farm would be heavy, power-hungry, and potential have conversion losses.

Now, before people complain that this will make career mode too hard before solar panels, I don't think electricity should be the limiting factor in career mode. The fourth satellite ever launched had solar panels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_I. Placing them so late in the tech tree is silly. Besides, operating your 20-kerbal space station with 4 of the fixed solar panels is ridiculous anyway.

[SpaceGremlin]

The essential gameplay change for a life support mechanic is that it puts a time limit on your flights. No more leaving a kerbal on Eve for eight years for rescue type deal. That can be easily expressed as a single consumable resource. Higher tech options should be similarly abstract such as trading electricity for lower consumption (simulating recycling), or extracting more of it on other planets.

[Headhunter09]

Looking at this from a game design perspective: what adds the most interesting new elements?

-First, consumables (air, water, food) place a time limit on missions, or require the planning of ISRU.

However, I don't think they should be clumped together, even though they fill a similar role. Depending on your destination, different resources can be topped up. For instance, Duna has a CO2 atmosphere which can be scooped up and turned into Oxygen. Oxygen can be turned into Water by combining it with LiquidFuel (or Hydrogen equivalent).

So if you are going to Duna, it might be beneficial to bring an Air Recycler and a Fuel Cell instead of a bunch more consumables (depending on the weight). This sort of mission planning is one of the core tenets of KSP, so it makes sense to keep those resources separate. I do think that Food should be irreplaceable. Having aeroponic farms and the like sort of break the entire balance.

-Second, heat management. I don't know if this should be classified under Life Support, but it is certainly one of the more critical aspects of spaceflight. Vital electronics and crew compartments will need to have heat pumped away, and radiated with panels. Depending on distance to the sun and craft orientation, different areas of the craft would heat up, and this would need to be balanced out.

There really isn't any mechanic like this in the current game, except perhaps solar panel orientation. On the other hand, adding coolant tanks and pipes may err on the side of micro-management too much.

-Third, crew space. This is often neglected when talking about Life Support, but it is a crucial component of keeping your crew alive and functioning. There should be some system for ensuring that long-duration missions give the crew ample living space. This, really, would be a big design consideration. Sticking two Kerbals in a single pod with a ton of consumables doesn't add much to the game, but having to also give them three Hitchhiker pods if you expect them to make a multi-month journey changes the mission requirements considerably.

-Fourth, power requirements. Not having power in space sucks, because you get cold really fast. Also, all of your equipment doesn't work. Right now, manned pods operate fine without power, which should be changed. If solar panels don't get moved down in the tech tree, it would be interesting to see Fuel Cells as an alternative to batteries. Since you are already adding life support to manned missions, sapping a little bit of consumables to cover the extra energy expenditure would work for short missions. Since it wouldn't work for longer missions, this would stop players from stacking up a bunch of consumables (which weigh a lot less than batteries for the same amount of time) and taking off to Eve before getting solar power.

At the end of the day, game design is subjective. While one person may think separating consumables into different resources is over-complicating it, another may believe it is the only reasonable solution. Depending on what skill-level you want to appeal to, and what aspect of gameplay you want to enhance, the pros and cons change.

[regex]

I don't think that new players is an appropriate way to gauge such matters. If something worthwhile seems too complicated for new players then don't simplify it, improve documentation and tutorials. Soon enough they won't be such new players and will appreciate the richer game experience. I would argue that in a sandbox game like this it's the endgame that merits the lion's share of the focus.

I like how you quote-mined a post of mine that had nothing to do with what you responding with, way to read bro, gg

I feel complexity in life support, after playing with mods for a few versions, is unwarranted. You don't need complexity to provide a challenge and complexity for complexity's sake is just terrible game design.

[Headhunter09]

You don't need complexity to provide a challenge and complexity for complexity's sake is just terrible game design.

Self-contained complexity is pointless, I agree. Nonetheless, the more multi-faceted a system is, the more challenging it is to design within.

As an example, let's reduce KSP ad absurdum. You need fuel and an engine. Having power requirements is pointless because people will add solar panels. Having parachutes is pointless because people will just add parachutes. In fact, having any sort of crew module is pointless, as are landing legs (just make them out of girders), and RCS (auxiliary engines and reaction wheels will do the trick). You don't really need control surfaces, as they can just be factored into wings, and there really isn't a point to adding aerodynamic stresses, since it just makes plane design annoying.

If Life Support is just "add three parts and forget about it", then yes, it's pointless. That's why it should be designed to be more integral to gameplay.

[regex]

If Life Support is just "add three parts and forget about it", then yes, it's pointless. That's why it should be designed to be more integral to gameplay.

This is why I feel electricity requirements are not good for life support because it is very easy to trivialize late-game electrical concerns. In a similar vein you can easily trivialize late-game life support by adding in recyclers (of any sort, people will find a way to launch whatever they want into orbit, look at what ferram4 has done with his RSS install) and with power so easy to come by it becomes a non-issue. This is how Ioncross played; slap on a recycler and a few solar panels and go explore the solar system like it doesn't matter. That is why I never bothered with recyclers when playing with TAC LS, it trivializes any late-game life support challenge or concern.

In fact, life support may not even belong in KSP to begin with since catering to "base builders" ruins any late-game challenge, catering to those who want simplicity alienates those who want complexity, and catering to those who want complexity confuses the newbie.

[Joonatan1998]

I think that we sould just have:

1. life support

2. used life support

(3. Maybe use electricity)

Life support comes in pods and separate containers, used life support can be stored or thrown away, there should be heavy (10t) part that converts used life support back into life support and consumes lots of energy. (Would be advanced tech in the tech tree)

You wouldn't need that part for short interplanetary missions (duna/eve) but it could be usefull for longer ones (eeloo), but mostly it should be used in bases/stations.

With money limits it would encourage the use of probes (That are useless at the moment)

[Atoning Unifex]

It seems there's (as always!) a wide variation in whether people want uber simple or more difficult setups.

Maybe, however many different resources there are included, there should be gameplay options to adjust the amount of resource used per time interval, like 1 air unit used per kerbal per day, rather than per hour, for example. Maybe even an option to disable a resource altogether.

[Legendary Emu]

I think it could be simple. Provisions, oxygen (or whatever Kerbals breath,) waste and heat. The trick is combining resources so that they don't clutter your resource panel.

For modules, you would have provision containers, oxygen containers, air conditioners, waste disposing systems and scrubbers as the base life support stuff. And of course they would all be in various sizes.

An optional thing would be crew state. Hard landings, high G's and assorted mishaps would injure the crew. Morale would also be affected with length of missions in tight spaces which would be solved with things like EVA's and radio contact and hitchhiker modules.

But that's just what I think.

[rkman]

To me, just one "life support" resource would be enough. It should use electricity to function.

You would not really want to be able to bring enough oxygen for a week, but snacks and water for only 3 days?

[Nathair]

I like how you quote-mined a post of mine that had nothing to do with what you responding with, way to read bro, gg

I feel complexity in life support, after playing with mods for a few versions, is unwarranted. You don't need complexity to provide a challenge and complexity for complexity's sake is just terrible game design.

Quote mining is the dishonest practice of taking a partial quote out of context in an attempt to make it appear that someone's position is actually other than it was. I did nothing of the sort and resent the aspersion. You said "Now imagine a new player having to not only deal with life support but with electricity being consumed by their Kerbals on a Mun flyby. Depending on the electrical consumption rate this becomes a big issue and drives a new player, who may just be exploring the tech nodes (and the game!), to get solar panels and batteries and nothing else until they have those." My response was, and is, that worrying about such (entirely hypothetical) new player issues is not a productive way to judge the inclusion or implementation of game content. If said "new player" does respond as you suggest, does make tech tree decisions in a less than optimal fashion... so what?

[regex]

You said "Now imagine a new player having to not only deal with life support but with electricity being consumed by their Kerbals on a Mun flyby. Depending on the electrical consumption rate this becomes a big issue and drives a new player, who may just be exploring the tech nodes (and the game!), to get solar panels and batteries and nothing else until they have those." My response was, and is, that worrying about such (entirely hypothetical) new player issues is not a productive way to judge the inclusion or implementation of game content.

No, your response was:

I don't think that new players is an appropriate way to gauge such matters. If something worthwhile seems too complicated for new players then don't simplify it, improve documentation and tutorials. Soon enough they won't be such new players and will appreciate the richer game experience. I would argue that in a sandbox game like this it's the endgame that merits the lion's share of the focus.

which really has nothing to do with new player issues, other than dismissing them, nor has anything to do with my concerns over the inclusion of electricity into life support which had nothing to do with complexity and were more about how it's not really a good mechanic, especially because it becomes something not worthy of consideration in the late game.

If said "new player" does respond as you suggest, does make tech tree decisions in a less than optimal fashion... so what?

I'd say it was a terrible mechanic because it reduces the player's choices.

E: Regarding "quote mining", I admit I mis-categorized your post while knee-jerking about you "putting words in my mouth".

Edited March 3, 2014 by regex

[peadar1987]

What I would be happy with:

A "life support" resource that is depleted by Kerbals. All pods and landers come with several days' supply as standard, so you can do all your Mun and Minmus missions without having to worry about life support. Once you start going interplanetary though, you will. You'd have two types of parts. "Tanks" that hold a fixed amount of life support, and "Life Support Systems", which are much heavier, but replenish life support at a certain rate. At a certain point, it becomes more economical in terms of mass to bring a life support system instead of just loads of supplies. The break-even point would ideally be located around the 150-200 day mark required to get to Duna and back. For an added layer of complexity/strategy, perhaps the life support systems modules could me more efficient on the surface of a planet to simulate resource-gathering.

I'd love a full resource system, having to manage power, food, water, waste, oxygen, topping them up from suitable places, purifying them, shaving Delta-V off my Jool trip my collecting the water for the return trip from ice on Val, but I think that level of complexity would put off beginners (and putting off your potential customers is no way for Squad to run a business.)

[NWM]

[DISCLAIMER: This is not suggesting life support, I'm genuinely curious how people -want- it to be handled.]

So I've been checking some of the life support mods, but it seems like the only options I can find are the 'amazingly complex' or the 'amazingly simple.' Therefore, I'm curious- what do you want?

a) Just Oxygen levels

Oxygen and CO2 levels

c) Oxygen, CO2, Food, Water, waste

d) Oxygen, CO2, Food, Water, waste, heat, et cetera?

definitely d. The kerbaled missions must have some extra difficulty in comparission to unkerbaled probes.

cetera: fun, (without fun, kerbals get depressed)

a stupid question: why did not you make vote?

Edited March 3, 2014 by NWM

[Alex_Leonardo]

I don't know. It depends on the kerbal's biology and anatomy.

I see them most likely related to green potatoes, (Because they are plants and also because they probably have cell walls instead of membranes in the cells they are made of, giving them plant-like characteristics.) Sea horses, (Smooth squishy, bendable, flexible armor-like exterior.) and insects. (Exoskeleton.)

Most likely, kerbals don't need air circulation, (potato char.) but need tons of water and/or light, no/some solid foods, but probably don't produce much waste and probably are extremely warm. (energy purge from body)

Edited March 4, 2014 by Alex_Leonardo

[peadar1987]

I don't know where the idea came from that Kerbals are plants, have any of the Devs ever said anything to this effect?

[Alex_Leonardo]

I don't know where the idea came from that Kerbals are plants, have any of the Devs ever said anything to this effect?

I think so.

Anyways, it's a conspiracy to explain why they're so dumb and green.

Really the reason why they are green is because the color of their skin, #84D455 (Hexadecimal RGB Value), Spells "Badass" in 133t5p34k. (Leetspeak or L33t.)

So, in a parallel universe, if the hexidecimal system was different, we could have purple kerbals.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Alex_Leonardo

[notfruit]

I don't want to have to micro-manage life support. All I'd like to see snacks, and sleep cycles.

Kerbals will steadily consume snacks throughout the mission. Without sufficient snacks they will die of hunger. Most pods that can hold kerbals like the hitchhiker will have a decent amount of snacks, and the amount of snacks stored could be tweakable. They could also have their own part for storage, and they would be transferred like any other resource.

Kerbals must have some sleep to do science, pilot ships, or go on EVA. They would sleep on their own unless told otherwise.

This system not only makes space station resupply missions actually worthwhile, but also could open up benefits for hypersleep other than role playing.

Edited March 5, 2014 by notfruit

[Paul Kingtiger]

I said earlier on that I would be happy with a single life support resource. I'd like to amend that to ad electricity as a requirement.

I've been playing with ECLSS (normally I use TAC) and I miss the fact that electricity is no longer a requirement. Not only does is add a much needed sink for power (currently 1 solar panel covers just about everything) but it simply makes sense.

If you could I would have the life support and power requirement scale with the number of kerbals in a craft so that stations required the sort of large solar panels they have in real life (and because it looks cool).

[CattyNebulart]

Oxygen (or simple life support resource) and heat, since heat management is critical for spaceships and it differs on where you are is relation to the star.

[Skyler4856]

O2 should be a concern on EVA and when out of power. We can assume that the Hab-modules can recycle CO2 into O2 using electricity.

[DocMoriarty]

I don't really like the idea of life support. If you play one safegame for a long time you end up with countless missions going on at the same time, bases on a lot of bodies, stations in orbit around a lot of bodies and so on. If lifesupport is added, then it's an absolute must to have recycling added for all life support stuff too so that not every station and base needs your attention. Recycling parts should then be heavy though so that it's not a good idea to add that to a simple lander or rocket. It should make most sense added to bases or stations where weight doesn't play that much of a role.

Other than that it should be simple. I'd simulate oxigen and food as abstraction for life support. And both can be recycled by HEAVY recycling units.