Can we talk about Life Support?

[WillThe84th]

This is a very well thought out thread, and I think you did a great job. I am a big fan of USI Life Support (which is similar to this) and would love to see something like this implemented into the game.

[Pax Kerbana]

Anything in orbit around Kerbin automatically has life support re-supplied.

Life support pods & snack packs

warning will stop any warp when any ship is about to run out of either.

life support generator and snack house will keep life support running indefinitely (5 years or something) but have massive mass and need electricity to run.

kerbals start to conserve and stretch the life support and snacks by rationing but during that time you can't make the do anything other than pilot a ship. No Eva, no science.

 

[tseitsei89]

I know that there are many mods that offer LS in many forms but I think LS should be a stock feature since that is one of the fundamental restrictions of any (manned) spaceflight. Of course you should be able to turn it off from the difficulty settings if you just want to fool around but you really should be allowed to actually enforce the living space/food requirements without roleplaying the whole <snip> thing. If you want a manned flight to Jool you need actual living quarters and supplies for the journey (or then you dont if you just turn LS off but that is what it should be IMO since no creature can live without nutrients)...

People who dont want to play with this can turn it off if they want (not too intimidating for new players) but it would add a new challenge for us veterans...

Edited January 2, 2017 by Red Iron Crown
Keep your langauge in check, please.

[Magzimum]

There has been a pretty lengthy thread on the topic of stock life support.

I looked up my own contribution to that, and it is still relevant.

On 26-8-2016 at 2:25 PM, Magzimum said:

tl;dr: Yes, I am in favor. But only extra parts needed for interplanetary missions.

I would be in favor of it, on the condition that only the interplanetary missions (and independently operating) space stations would be in need of additional life support units. The stock capsules should already have some life support. E.g. the Mk1 has life support for 5 days, the Mk1-2 for 2 months (heavy as it is), and the Hitchhiker compartment should have supplies for 6 months (since it offers almost nothing except life support)... Then newbies can still launch missions to LKO, the Mun and Minmus, but interplanetary missions require a little extra. Space stations can optionally be independent, or receive supplies from Kerbin several times per year.

Life support should be quite simple: just air and snacks. At low tech tree, we should be able to bring extra supplies of both: snacks and pressurized air. At higher tech tree we should be able to generate our own: Air can be supplied by a very simple unit, that requires only electricity. The food unit is essentially a large greenhouse, it is for example twice the length of the R&D lab (but not necessarily as heavy), with quite high electricity demands for lamps. At even higher tech tree we may get larger units of both (the greenhouse something the size of the largest Mk3 fuel tanks?), to make it easier to create the larger space stations and motherships.

Personally, I find it quite unrealistic that you can leave a Kerbal in space indefinitely. I already compensate this by always sending multiple Kerbals on long missions (even if I don't need them), and by frequently adding more crew compartments than I need for my Kerbals. For example, many of my creations have extra cupolas and hitchhiker compartments that are empty on launch.

Yes, that means that drones are even more "overpowered", and it "nerfs" the long distance manned Kerballed missions. And I find that quite realistic, and don't mind at all.

 

 

[ottothesilent]

9 hours ago, tseitsei89 said:

I know that there are many mods that offer LS in many forms but I think LS should be a stock feature since that is one of the fundamental restrictions of any (manned) spaceflight. Of course you should be able to turn it off from the difficulty settings if you just want to fool around but you really should be allowed to actually enforce the living space/food requirements without roleplaying the whole f***ing thing. If you want a manned flight to Jool you need actual living quarters and supplies for the journey (or then you dont if you just turn LS off but that is what it should be IMO since no creature can live without nutrients)...

People who dont want to play with this can turn it off if they want (not too intimidating for new players) but it would add a new challenge for us veterans...

And another voice joins the chorus of literally thousands.......

[Sharpy]

9 hours ago, tseitsei89 said:

People who dont want to play with this can turn it off if they want (not too intimidating for new players) but it would add a new challenge for us veterans...

People who want to play with this can install the mod.

I really see no reason why this should be stock considering it doesn't cater to majority of players.

[klgraham1013]

Here we go again.

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Sharpy said:

doesn't cater to majority of players

<citation needed>

The same could have been said for the new comm network. Likewise I don't see a problem with stock life support, so long as it's a difficulty option.
Comnet is just as realistic (and potentially annoying) as a simple life support mechanic would be, so the "gameplay over realism" doesn't really wash either.

Edited January 2, 2017 by steve_v

[Sharpy]

36 minutes ago, steve_v said:

<citation needed>

The same could have been said for the new comm network. Likewise I don't see a problem with stock life support, so long as it's a difficulty option.
Comnet is just as realistic (and potentially annoying) as a simple life support mechanic would be, so the "gameplay over realism" doesn't really wash either.

Comnet activates previously 'dead' area of gameplay, that is antennas (why have different types when they all do the same thing) and satellites (they were really pointless previously).

Life support doesn't seem to be doing anything alike.

As an option, it wastes RAM, prolongs loading, adds potential bugs and clutters UI.

I don't see a problem with it remaining a mod.

One thing KSP could do better is making adding/removing, activating/deactivating and updating mods more streamlined and automatic. That way ALL disadvantages of life support as a mod would be gone.

[steve_v]

12 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Life support doesn't seem to be doing anything alike.

Resupply missions, crew rotation, a real reason to go back to a base/station.
As it stands, once a base construction contract is fulfilled there's very little reason for it to exist, or to actually do stuff with it - much the same as the "launch a satellite" contracts were before comnet.
Life support would also serve to balance the infiniscience labs, making ongoing science generation an ongoing cost.

12 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

I don't see a problem with it remaining a mod.

I didn't see a problem with comnet remaining a mod TBH, but here we are. I don't see life support becoming stock as any more, or any less silly.

Edited January 2, 2017 by steve_v

[Sharpy]

4 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Resupply missions, crew rotation, a real reason to go back to a base/station.
As it stands, once a base construction contract is fulfilled there's very little reason for it to exist, or to actually do stuff with it - much the same as the "launch a satellite" contracts were before comnet.
 

Except the simpler solution is to abandon the base. There is still no incentive not to abandon it - quite opposite, this creates a strong incentive to abandon it ASAP and discourages using them for anything serious as it will create maintenance problems.

I agree that is a problem but it must be dealt with in a different way. We need a reason we want to use bases, before we're given a reason we have to revisit the bases (and be penalized for not doing so, instead of rewarded for doing it - that's LS for you!)

 

Quote

Life support would also serve to balance the infiniscience labs, making ongoing science generation an ongoing cost.

Infiniscience is a problem on its own that should be dealt with through other means.

 

Although LS could indeed improve gameplay - when combined with the right incentives. Say, contracts for space tourism, not just roundtrips with insane internary but 'X weeks on Space Station at X'.  Or 'Build self-sustainable colony; deliver colonists provided.' Or 'bring our scientists to laboratory at X; provide necessities'.

In that case, LS would be a valuable addition to stock. Something that forces new mechanics with an actual set of rewards instead of further penalizing what is a fringe already.

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Sharpy said:

LS could indeed improve gameplay - when combined with the right incentives. Say, contracts for space tourism

Indeed, and I see any excuse for more varied contracts as a good thing. Life support on its own would just add grind, but integrated properly it would open up opportunities for more varied things to do, and better contracts.
IMO, this is almost a point in favour of it being a stock thing - where it could be better tied into the contracts/progression system. The right set of mods already gets close to this.

[Razor235]

I've been thinking for a little while that Life Support and similarly controversial mechanics and features should really be official "mods" or part/feature packs like Asteroid Day is/was, installable via patcher or Steam.  This gives an easy route for adding them for those who want the feature without penalizing those who don't with asset loading and performance impacts.  I don't know how flexible the patcher is, but if steam allows free DLC it's easy to activate or deactivate it at a whim.

[Red Iron Crown]

"Leave as a mod" is not valid for console players, or those hwo don't use mods for that matter. Baffling to me that a spaceflight game doesn't address one of the core challenges of crewed spaceflight. 

[worir4]

I agree there should be some sort of life support or some other limiting factor that means you can't just leave a kerbal in space forever. It is kind of silly how it is right now.

Run out of fuel on the Mun? I'll just send a rescue mission that arrives when i finish my 10 year Jool mission. 

If it is ever implemented though i think it should be quite simple, only having one resource such as 'snacks'. Having more than one like water and oxygen doesn't expand much on solving the problem and instead only clutters things up and adds the need for more parts that are not necessary.. 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by worir4

[eddiew]

IMHO, life support is just weight and bulk... throw on a hitchhiker can per kerbal per year and you've done as good a job of simulating life support as KSP ever will. 

Add as many parts for recycling centres and greenhouses and exercise facilities as you like, it all sums up to an additional X tons per kerbal per time unit. Sure, you can have some parts reduce the weight of other parts required, so there's a bit of maths about which configuration is more efficient for a duration of T days and a crew complement of N kerbals, but ultimately there will be a set number of things that all rockets will have to carry.

My question to the floor is this; what new thing will players get to do that isn't simply adding more tonnage to kermanned vessels?

Life support actively reduces the chance to live with your mistakes. One of the times KSP is at its best is when its encouraging you to make do and mend, to hobble on, or to rescue and recover. The current state of having your command pod sitting on Mun with no ship underneath it means its time for a rescue mission. And then a rescue-rescue mission, because that's how it usually works out   But with life support, any expedition beyond Minmus is likely to die before help can arrive. The penalty for any error is now loss of the crew, instead of a fun secondary mission. Most people will F9 out of that, I suspect.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but it feels like the general concepts floated would be better served by using the 3.2x or 6.4x mods to increase the mass of the planets, rather than adding new parts to increase the mass of the ships.

 

Exception; superfoods only growable on other planets. If Laythe could produce a food that was 10x more efficient at nutrition per unit weight than kerbin food, then just maybe there's a point because there would be a reason to set up farming colonies and freighters to ship supplies around. But this is a stretch, tbh. It's adding a problem that isn't very interesting and a solution that requires a lot of not going to new places and not seeing new things. Many players would probably just haul the larger weights of kerbin-food rather than set up farming colonies and doing milk runs.

[worir4]

@eddiew

I understand what you mean but i think there are many people, including me, that find it strange that you can just leave a Kerbal in space forever without any consequences. 

Maybe life support is not the only answer, maybe there could be negative reputation for leaving a Kerbal in space for too long.

What ever it is that might be implemented it should be optional because people like both ways.

[Red Iron Crown]

50 minutes ago, eddiew said:

IMHO, life support is just weight and bulk... throw on a hitchhiker can per kerbal per year and you've done as good a job of simulating life support as KSP ever will. 

Add as many parts for recycling centres and greenhouses and exercise facilities as you like, it all sums up to an additional X tons per kerbal per time unit. Sure, you can have some parts reduce the weight of other parts required, so there's a bit of maths about which configuration is more efficient for a duration of T days and a crew complement of N kerbals, but ultimately there will be a set number of things that all rockets will have to carry.

My question to the floor is this; what new thing will players get to do that isn't simply adding more tonnage to kermanned vessels?

In fairness, the exact same argument could be made about electrical systems in KSP. You add enough electrical sources and storage to be sufficient and then forget about it, it's just additional mass. Should they not have been added?

The new thing that is added is time limits for crewed missions. Unlike electrical systems, where it's either sufficient or not in perpetuity, LS is sufficient for a limited time. Make a mistake that costs time and you pay for it.

50 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Life support actively reduces the chance to live with your mistakes. One of the times KSP is at its best is when its encouraging you to make do and mend, to hobble on, or to rescue and recover. The current state of having your command pod sitting on Mun with no ship underneath it means its time for a rescue mission. And then a rescue-rescue mission, because that's how it usually works out   But with life support, any expedition beyond Minmus is likely to die before help can arrive. The penalty for any error is now loss of the crew, instead of a fun secondary mission. Most people will F9 out of that, I suspect.

It does make actual consequences for some mistakes, true. Flub your IP transfer burn? Right now it's no big deal, just warp until the planets align favorably again. With life support? Hope you brought some extra supplies, or find a way to get them to the craft in time.It also adds some new gameplay possibilities. In the current game there's basically never a reason to use a high energy, non-Hohmann transfer. With LS, these suddenly become useful, either for sending emergency resupply missions (one of those fun rescue missions you mention) or for reducing the amount of supplies required in the first place.

50 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Maybe I'm missing the point, but it feels like the general concepts floated would be better served by using the 3.2x or 6.4x mods to increase the mass of the planets, rather than adding new parts to increase the mass of the ships.

The difference is not just more mass, it's time limits for crewed missions. Enlarging the system affects bopth crewed and uncrewed craft, and does not introduce time mechanics. LS makes uncrewed missions more viable (especially since the CommNet system made them less so). 

Crewed spaceflight is hard. One of the main reasons is because of life support requirements. Why would a space game ever ignore this?

[eddiew]

41 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

In fairness, the exact same argument could be made about electrical systems in KSP. You add enough electrical sources and storage to be sufficient and then forget about it, it's just additional mass. Should they not have been added?

The new thing that is added is time limits for crewed missions. Unlike electrical systems, where it's either sufficient or not in perpetuity, LS is sufficient for a limited time. Make a mistake that costs time and you pay for it.

My thing with the penalty is that it's too severe. It's so catastrophic, that in a game with easy quicksave/quickload, there are very few players will live with the mistake. Most will just F9 and try again. And we can't sanely play without F5 because there will still be random things blow us up that aren't our fault...

WRT electricals... the weight isn't usually very high, especially relative to command pods. For an ion probe, it can be a big percentage of the mass, but for kermanned missions, not so much. You do also have options such as docking a power-module to with the thing you sent out that hasn't got solar panels, or sending an engineer to open them because you forgot to do it before the batteries died   Even if you don't provide enough battery capacity, you can still send your data home, but you'll probably lose some in transmission. To me, this is a consequence that can be lived with, rather than reverted to VAB.

That said, I like @RoverDude's implementation of LS - probably because it's more analogous to electricity than to food+water+air. He has kerbals become unresponsive, such that they stop being crew and aren't able to pilot/report/EVA, but they don't die. Get a rescue boat out there and feed them, they'll jump back to action. That's a pretty good compromise, imho, and is the only version of LS I'd have any interest in.

 

41 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

It does make actual consequences for some mistakes, true. Flub your IP transfer burn? Right now it's no big deal, just warp until the planets align favorably again. With life support? Hope you brought some extra supplies, or find a way to get them to the craft in time.It also adds some new gameplay possibilities. In the current game there's basically never a reason to use a high energy, non-Hohmann transfer. With LS, these suddenly become useful, either for sending emergency resupply missions (one of those fun rescue missions you mention) or for reducing the amount of supplies required in the first place.

I'd be happier with that thought if there were proper tools in stock to help you figure out burns and delta-v. This is probably one reason almost everyone goes with Hohmann - they can check the wiki and use KER to tell them that the vessel works on paper. Nothing in stock tells me how to get to Duna within 90 days 

 

41 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

The difference is not just more mass, it's time limits for crewed missions. Enlarging the system affects both crewed and uncrewed craft, and does not introduce time mechanics. LS makes uncrewed missions more viable (especially since the CommNet system made them less so). 

Crewed spaceflight is hard. One of the main reasons is because of life support requirements. Why would a space game ever ignore this?

Honestly, for the same reason most people don't play RSS. Sometimes realism and fun don't go together... I know some people embrace the challenge, but that's not true for everyone. The inability to build a working spaceplane when you're a spaceplane fan is pretty frustrating. Some people don't have any interest in un-kermanned vessels at all, because the fun is in the cute green astronauts.

I get your point about time limits, and I sort of agree that there should be some penalty for leaving kerbals out for 20 years to man the mine on Minmus... but imo that's better served as @worir4 suggested, by having a rep penalty. There would probably need to be a mechanism for specifying how long each crewmember is expected to be away for, however, but again, the game is lacking any tools to tell players how long that amount of time is likely to be. There seems to be a lot of basics missing before we can sensibly say that anything in stock should have a time limit. It's only ok with contracts because they're always such long periods...

 

Ultimately, I could be talked into being ok with non-lethal life support, but my 2p is that it doesn't fit with the feeling of "go explore places" that stock KSP has. All it's doing is increasing the scaling factor for distance vs vessel size, such that instead of your Eeloo ship being twice as big as your Bop lander, it's got to be five times larger. It doesn't feel like anything has been added with this, there's no new activities to perform, and failure is probably non-recoverable. I prefer it when KSP says "well, you fluffed that, but you still have options".

Edited January 4, 2017 by eddiew

[Randazzo]

23 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

The difference is not just more mass, it's time limits for crewed missions.

This is demonstrative of the many varying play styles we have in this game. Personally, I would never consider the time required to complete a mission as a variable thing. It is set in stone. It takes Y amount of time to get to Z and back again. That is how long it takes, period. From this (my) point of view, most life support mods function in such a way that it really is just adding mass, because you must add X amount of mass to last Y amount of time, and time is set in stone.

That has been my past position.

Since I've been playing around with USI life support, I'm coming around to the idea of a stock system that works in a similar fashion. It's not just adding blocks of life support to last a certain amount of time (though you can use that method if you want), but it offers lots of options like recyclers and habitats that can also act as recyclers, greenhouses, etc.

With the new(ish) upgrade system we have available in the stock mechanics, this would allow tech upgrades to existing parts (such as capsules or the hitchhiker and other crew parts) to extend the life support without just being "X mass for Y amount of time". Coupled with being a difficulty option that can be switched off, stock life support isn't such a big bad monster after all.

[Kerbart]

2 hours ago, eddiew said:

My question to the floor is this; what new thing will players get to do that isn't simply adding more tonnage to kermanned vessels?

I get your argument and I agree to a certain point. But... mass is the deciding design factor in the game. Sending a replacement crew for a Duna orbital station hardly takes a bigger vessel than sending a crew for a Kerbin LKO station. If it were "just more mass" for every mission this would be an extremely valid point, but it does add an interesting dynamic to those 10yr grand tours compared to a quick flag planting on the mun.

There's the argument of added mission complexity of course, making it less suitable for starting players, but just like Kerbnet it's something which impact can be configured through the game settings.

[tseitsei89]

I will just quickly answer to everyone saying things like "It wouldn't really bring much new to the gameplay" or stuff like that:

IMO it definitely would since as it stands now time is an infinite resource in KSP. It doesn't matter wether your transfer takes 1 hour, 1 year or 100 years. Your kerbal will just as happily still be sitting in the crammed command pod. If we had life support time would actually become a manageable resource like fuel or electricity.

That in turn would create a reason for using different transfer orbits than just energy efficient hohmann transfer. Such that use more dv but are (significantly) faster.

And that is a good thing since there would be more stuff to learn and more stuff to do. And that is what makes the game fun (at least for some people) learning how new things work. And again, if you dont want to use it because it is too hard or you just want to fool around with crafts, you could just turn it off/adjust it (just like infinite fuel/electricity or adjusting reentry heat are handled now).

Edited January 4, 2017 by tseitsei89

[Kerbart]

10 minutes ago, tseitsei89 said:

Your kerbal will just as happily still be sitting in the crammed command pod. If we had life support time would actually become a manageable resource like fuel or electricity.

If only lifetime would be a limited, spoilable resource as well.

• 95 year old Jebediah has a hard time executing maneuvering nodes as he's forgotten them by the time you get there.
• 105 year old Bob ruins the experiment you're about to conduct with his shaking hands
• Repairing that rover wheel by grizzled grey bearded... who... he forgot his name... not a good idea... what am I doing here? Why? Is it dinner time yet? WHAT?! DINNER TIME! I have to pee now... I think... Or did I go ten minutes ago?

[tseitsei89]

3 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

If only lifetime would be a limited, spoilable resource as well.

• 95 year old Jebediah has a hard time executing maneuvering nodes as he's forgotten them by the time you get there.
• 105 year old Bob ruins the experiment you're about to conduct with his shaking hands
• Repairing that rover wheel by grizzled grey bearded... who... he forgot his name... not a good idea... what am I doing here? Why? Is it dinner time yet? WHAT?! DINNER TIME! I have to pee now... I think... Or did I go ten minutes ago?

Yep  some mechanic for kerbals aging and dying as well as reproducing would be fun when trying to build a permanent self sustaining colony to some other celestial body. But it is probably best to leave that as a mod feature...

[klgraham1013]

5 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Baffling to me that a spaceflight game doesn't address one of the core challenges of crewed spaceflight. 

Quoted for accuracy.