Is Squad ever going to add stock life support?

[tutrakan4e]

Suggestion for an Easter egg: Make it so Kerbals don't need food on Minmus, only water. Actually, there's water in icecream and there's oxygen in water so let's make it so they don't need any life support on Minmus, nobody will notice anyway

[CaptRobau]

Yummy methane ice.

[Red Iron Crown]

I figured a single, lossless, generator would play like that anyway above a particular level; it'd be cheaper for larger ships to have a generator than to carry non-regenerative life-support.

Biodomes and ice machines, on the other hand, are encouraged to stay put, thus encouraging surface bases instead of orbiting fuel depots for landers. Furthermore, said bases can act as local gas stations so that your Joolian missions, for example, can explore the system without reliance on resupply from Kerbin.

I'm imagining a very massive (>50t) generator, so that for all but the largest ships/stations and longest missions it would be more efficient to carry a pantry instead. Cost would be a balancing factor, too. Though maybe limiting them to surface use has its benefits, too.

I figure Laythe should have reduced or non-existant life support requirements, it seems to be very Kerbin-like and would make a good choice for a colony world.

[Kasuha]

I gave this another thought.

First thing of course is the hypocrisy in the "life support" name because it does not introduce any improvement to current Kerbal life, it brings them just multiple ways of slow and painful death. Which can be averted if they pay the ransom in the form of a lot of extra mass and precautions in their ships. Or the player does.

Next thing to introduce could be "long life", making Kerbals die by aging, and "sane life" making Kerbals go crazy if they spend too much time alone in their pods. But I digress.

One thing I was thinking about is all the extra weight. Current "life support" mods usually go with EVA suits and command pods supporting certain limited time, but why should we assume that? Kerbals are all eager to go to space, couldn't the reason be that they actually found a way how to recycle their metabolic products using a small machine integrated within each command pod and EVA suit?

Of course that recycler needs to be powered, most likely by electricity. So we could just make command pods and EVA suit to consume electricity over time (EVA suits would need a battery for that), killing Kerbals inside when the resource becomes depleted. I believe it would work as a "slow-and-painful-death lite" quite well IMO.

And the next thought of course is, since even humans used nuclear-powered pacemakers all the way back in 1970s, why can't we expect Kerbals to develop a small nuclear power device for their life support recycler? We all know they have no fear of radiation (not mentioning our pacemakers were perfectly safe with exception of intentional misuse).

Which brings us to the current state, safe and sound.

I have no problem with things staying as they are. Kerbals have more than enough opportunities to die even at current state.

[Vindelle_Sunveam]

I agree with Kasuha on the fact tha Kerbals do not need more ways to die.

On the other hand, supplies management could be interesting as a stock feature.

I think that the outcome of a supplies shortage proposer by Valley is interesting because it would just make them go dormant (on strike ?), but not die, just like our favourite space pet, the isopode, but better, since Kerbals do not have a life span.

Besides, it fits some of the proposals we had here as far as game mechanics goes : ressource tank (sorry Valley, I "blended" the cofee maker and the water under this abstract ressource), waste tank and recycle unit.

[thorfinn]

One of the problems with how life support is often implemented in mods is a disconnect with living space. [...] My idea would be to make Life Support and Living Space the same thing. Only parts with CrewCapacity would produce Life Support, but only half of the number of Kerbals [...]

I like this idea. A LOT. Care to implement it in your mod?

I would make it just a bit more complicated maybe, to kill the "1 man pod to Eeloo" missions: capsule parts have a finite lifesupport amount, generous enough to allow Minmus missions with relative ease, while "habitat" parts regenerate it in the manner you describe. The Hitchhiker would be the first habitat part, so capsule+hitchhiker to Duna and beyond would be possible in otherwise-vanilla KSP.

What I would like best would be having a system that abstracts away resupply runs, so that we could plan a launch manifesto for fuel/life support/parts delivery and have stuff arrive where we want it without flying every single mission; but that would require upgrades to the core game that I suspect will never happen... even though maybe multiplayer could actually be the foundation of such a system, now that I think of it...

[phoenix_ca]

It wouldn't require anything of the sort. Davon's Supply Station (or whatever it's called) already abstracts away resupply missions, and RoverDude is working on a more advanced sort of resource transfer in MKS.