[WIP] .25 - PaladinLabs Dev Thread - DeepFreeze cryonic crew storage - v.14

[scottpaladin]

Unfrozen (hehe) Mod Here.

A pretty simple mod that Cryogenically freezes your kerbonauts for long term storage.

Additional Download at KerbalStuff

Most recent screenshots of the cryonic unit:

External:

Internal:

What DeepFreeze will add to the game:

• One resource: Glykerol. This will be consumed during the freezing process and not recovered later. Limiting the number of kerbals who can go into storage per journey.
  
• Two parts: One large 2.5m diameter module (WIP pictured above) which will store 10 kerbals. And a 0.625m pod for a single Kerbal
  

What will DeepFreeze do for me?

If you are playing stock? No much.

However alongside any other mod that affects a vessel's crew it will effectively remove the frozen kerbal from being tracked or modified. Life support mods, for example, will not consume resources for frozen kerbals.

Changelog:

v0.14 - 2014-11-19
[LIST]
[*]Fixed freezing failing to abort when EC is depleted 
[*]Added part.cfg values for ChargeRate and ChargeRequired to allow for future parts using different EC values. 
[*]THIS IS A SAVE BREAKING UPDATE: Please see [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92806-WIP-25-PaladinLabs-Dev-Thread-DeepFreeze-cryonic-crew-storage-v-14?p=1550330&viewfull=1#post1550330"]THIS POST[/URL] for instructions/further info. 
[/LIST]

v0.13 - 2014-11-11
[LIST]
[*]KSP-AVC support added. 
[*]Version numbering changed to support AVC 
[/LIST]

v0.012

[LIST]
[*]Initial Release 
[/LIST]

Source on github.

DeepFreeze is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Share-Alike Attribution Non-Commercial license.

Edited June 8, 2015 by DuoDex

[phezman]

Like the idea of this. Is there not a problem in that you seem to be able to add as many kerbals as you like to the hitch-hiker can as once theyre frozen the capacity returns to 0?

[scottpaladin]

Like the idea of this. Is there not a problem in that you seem to be able to add as many kerbals as you like to the hitch-hiker can as once theyre frozen the capacity returns to 0?

Not shown in the video but I've already implemented a max storage capacity to the test part so you can't just load every kerbal in the game in to the freezing chamber. The big container (which the hitchhiker is standing in for until my modeler finshes the exterior) will hold 10 frozen crew and have one seat that's accessible even when the frozen storage is full. The little pod will hold just one kerbal, frozen or thawed.

[DerpyHoovesX]

oh my....prometeus ....what are you doing...stop make that with bill ))

[DerpyHoovesX]

[scottpaladin]

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131013111026/ru.starwars/images/6/6b/HanPopcicle.png

Silly Fett,don't you know that Karbonite is highly volatile?

[RoverDude]

I like it Saves me the trouble of building this

[scottpaladin]

I like it Saves me the trouble of building this

You can't make all the mods.

Well, probably.

[Angelo Kerman]

This is cool! How tall is the module? I guess it's about as tall as a mobile processing lab (3.75m by my estimates).

[RoverDude]

You can't make all the mods.

Well, probably.

You should see my to-do list

[scottpaladin]

This is cool! How tall is the module? I guess it's about as tall as a mobile processing lab (3.75m by my estimates).

3.75m is precisely correct. Or it's what I told my artist to go for, at least. I wanted it to be a large enough to justify a significant storage capacity (10 crew).

[nli2work]

http://i.imgur.com/cgVMep2.jpg

I got this box sort of thing lying around if you wanna use it for this. I have a frozen texture already made. just don't know enough code to write a plugin myself.

[scottpaladin]

http://i.imgur.com/cgVMep2.jpg

I got this box sort of thing lying around if you wanna use it for this. I have a frozen texture already made. just don't know enough code to write a plugin myself.

I'd love to take a look at the model/texture files, at least, maybe pass it to my artist.

[WaRi]

Check this out

Jeb In Karbonite

I can make a "Demolition Man" or a "Fry" model too

[eygc]

Love it! However, I must say it looks very heavy on the inside. Is all of the detail necessary?

[scottpaladin]

Check this out

Jeb In Karbonite

I can make a "Demolition Man" or a "Fry" model too

I love the Jeb in Karbonite, but wouldn't that be like encasing someone in C4? Current plan is to use assets generated by the same artist who's doing the main unit for the small pod for the mod's release, but if you want to create a variant part it will be easy as punch to make a cfg file for it and I can link it as an optional download. It's really important to me to keep the number of required parts added to as low as possible for people who already have crowded parts catalogs and hefty memory load. (i'm sort of considering releasing the big and little pods separately).

Love it! However, I must say it looks very heavy on the inside. Is all of the detail necessary?

Heavy is not a word that had previously come to my mind. I really like the visible pods and big scary medical arm thing, seems fitting.

On another note, DMagic was able to point me on the right path to fix the onrails recovery problem, so now when you recover a vessel with frozen kerbals from the Tracking station, the kerbcicles inside get revived properly and put back to work at the astronaut complex. Knowing what I know now, the final onrails problem (vessel destruction) should just be the same tune, different verse.

Next up is to set up resource utilization properly and do a balance pass. Current plan is thus: the cryonic chamber will take a very large amount of electric charge and a decent amount of glykerol whenever you freeze a kerbal. Keeping frozen kerbals in stasis is currently not planned to require any resources (frozen kerbals stay frozen forever until recovery, vessel destruction, or thawing). Finally, thawing takes a similar amount of electric energy as freezing does, but obviously no glykerol, and will probably be more forgiving to amount of power capacity you need (it can draw less power for longer). The effect on gameplay I'm shooting for is, because glykerol is a non-renewable resource (baring someone making a mm config to make a generator), you only have a limited number of times you can take an active kerbal and freeze them, but the amount of time their frozen or what happens to the ship in the interim should be immaterial. I'd be happy to hear people's thoughts on this.

Finally, I have an updated demo video.

These are dull, my next mod needs to be exciting to watch.

[scottpaladin]

Updated the OP to add the github link.

[rabidninjawombat]

Updated the OP to add the github link.

Put any thought into adding a sound effect for the thaw and refreezing process? Im sure there are plenty of royalty free effects that could fit the bill.

edit: https://www.freesound.org/people/urupin/sounds/192415/ <--- example

Edited September 5, 2014 by rabidninjawombat

[scottpaladin]

Put any thought into adding a sound effect for the thaw and refreezing process? Im sure there are plenty of royalty free effects that could fit the bill.

edit: https://www.freesound.org/people/urupin/sounds/192415/ <--- example

You know, I hadn't but it's a good idea. Adding an item to my design doc.

[scottpaladin]

Something I'd like to get some opinions on is our new resource, glykerol (pronounced with the first syllable rhyming with "fly"), and how it's consumed by the chamber to store kerbals. Glykerol is supposed to be based off real world glycerol/glycerin, so it's about 20% denser than water and like CRP water, we measure it in litres per KSP unit. Here's the updated cfg file:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
   name = Glykerol
   density = 0.012
   flowMode = ALL_VESSEL
   transfer = PUMP
   isTweakable = true
   unitCost = 0.8
}

I'm assuming that we'll be filling up the whole cryopod with glykerol whenever we freeze a kerbal. The volume of the pods works out to be about 220 litres. But that's based on external dimensions and we're shoving a kerbal in there which will displace some fluid. Let's make the math easy and say you need 100 units of glykerol to put a kerbal into suspended animation. That works out to 1.2 tons of resource per freeze. The big chamber planned for the mod has 10 cryopods (which double as glykerol storage) so we can reasonably assume that it can hold 1000 units. With the weight of the chamber itself (at the moment, same as the science lab), a fully loaded cryochamber is 15.5 tons.

As things stand now, that only gets your crew frozen once. That seems like a lot of weight.

I'd like to keep glykerol as the principal limiting factor for how many freeze/thaw cycles you can handle on a journey. At the moment, you don't get any of the glykerol back when you thaw a kerbal out, but that doesn't need to be the case. If we allow a 90% return rate, our 1000 unit will now let us fill the 10 pod chamber up, then empty it and freeze 9 of the 10 crew again. So instead of needing to pack 1000, extra glykerol for the return trip we only need 100 units extra. My only hesitance for this solution is that it makes the math more annoying the more freeze/thaw cycles you're planning, which could make figuring out how much glykerol to pack a chore if you're planning, for example, a grand tour of the Kerbol system with 6 crew.

So I have a couple of questions for the community:

1. Is the example 15.5t payload too heavy to favourably compare with the alternative? (life support or whatnot for 10 kerbals for a trip to Jool, for example)

2. Would the % return solution make planning tedious enough to reduce the fun?

[E.Nygma]

First of all: Thank you for making this mod!

It's the only one thing missing to make a realistic attempt to recreate an "accurate" Discovery-1 -Mission to Jool and beyond

I have a few questions/thoughts regarding the proposed cycle of Glykerol:

- to me, it does not seem necessary to fill the whole cryopod with glykerol, FAIK, current experiments regarding suspended animation seem to aim at modifying the DNA/encymatic systems of the suspendee to make him or her tolerate cold storage without significant tissue damage, alongside injecting deep cooled substances (I think some alcoholbased compounds) into the emptied blood vessels of the suspendee to initiate the freezing process then actually cooling down a cryopod via liquid gas (e.g. helium) based closed-cycle heat sinks so to me it seems we only would need a rather tiny amount of actual cooling substances

- regarding your question about the weight: I played with TAC and now with IFLS and Snacks! but I've not been outside of Kerbins SOI yet. I planned on doing a trip to Eeloo in the near future using TAC 9.1 and would have brought around 12 tons of LS-Supplies. Don't know if this will help you though...

Just my 2cents

Regards

Edited September 5, 2014 by E.Nygma

[scottpaladin]

First of all: Thank you for making this mod!

It's the only one thing missing to make a realistic attempt to recreate an "accurate" Discovery-1 -Mission to Jool and beyond

I have a few questions/thoughts regarding the proposed cycle of Glykerol:

- to me, it does not seem necessary to fill the whole cryopod with glykerol, FAIK, current experiments regarding suspended animation seem to aim at modifying the DNA/encymatic systems of the suspendee to make him or her tolerate cold storage without significant tissue damage, alongside injecting deep cooled substances (I think some alcoholbased compounds) into the emptied blood vessels of the suspendee to initiate the freezing process then actually cooling down a cryopod via liquid gas (e.g. helium) based closed-cycle heat sinks so to me it seems we only would need a rather tiny amount of actual cooling substances

- regarding your question about the weight: I played with TAC and now with IFLS and Snacks! but I've not been outside of Kerbins SOI yet. I planned on doing a trip to Eeloo in the near future using TAC 9.1 and would have brought around 12 tons of LS-Supplies. Don't know if this will help you though...

Just my 2cents

Regards

I'm definitely open to reducing the amount of glykerol needed per freeze event. Adopting the methodology you propose would probably put us in the range of 5 or so liters per freeze (Humans have about that much blood. Kerbals are smaller than humans, but let's assume we're replacing some other fluids as well). This would cut total weight of the payload significantly. I may need a better idea of how much weight in life support we'd be replacing with the cryochamber and glykerol.

Knowing your trip to eeloo was going to take 12 tons is useful. That was for the full 8+ year round trip? How big was the crew?

[E.Nygma]

It was planned for a crew of 5, but now that you wrote it takes 8 years for a round trip, i might have made a gross miscalculation...i will gladly try out a few parameters in Snacks! and IFLS for you for better estimates, i will come around with something in the next days. If I draft a rough estimate for an Eeloo round trip: in IFLS/Snacks! 1 Kerbal consumes 1 unit LS-Resource and up to 2 Snacks (there is a random element involved) per Earth day (both Mods calculate from the game settings AFAIK), for the 8 year trip you would need ~3000 LS and ~6000 Snacks (calculated in Earth time), tbc (KSP keeps crashing on me)...

In regard to the methodology: I think the crypod should consume something, maybe EC, for keeping the freezer, heart monitor, respirator etc. running

Edited September 5, 2014 by E.Nygma

[scottpaladin]

Could be a Kerbin day to Earth day conversion problem, or maybe I made a mistake at the transfer window planner just now. Any data you could provide would be helpful for balance purposes.

[E.Nygma]

Sure thing, glad i can help! First thing tomorrow is setting up clean test environments for different LS-mods