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taraniselsu / TacLifeSupport

Life Support from Thunder Aerospace Corporation
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Recover from lack of life support resources over time not instantly #82

Open XHawk87 opened 8 years ago

XHawk87 commented 8 years ago

Currently, when life support resources run out, the remaining totals run negative for a duration. When they reach a certain threshold based on the type of resource, the crew die. When the supply of that resource is resumed, this deficit is instantly nullified with no penalties. This means that you can game the system by turning off life support supply until just before the death threshold, and momentarily re-enabling it to reset the timers, then repeat. This buys a considerable amount of time, limited only by how quickly the life support can be toggled.

This can be very tempting to offset the difficulty in longer early career manned spaceflights before access to photo-voltaic cells E.g. first trip to the Mun. While it might make sense to get some resource savings by careful rationing, it probably shouldn't be to this extent.

I recommend that the deficit be recovered at a rate dependent on the type of resource, and possibly also increase the consumption of that resource while there is a deficit. For example, starvation could recover slowly by eating normal amounts regularly over a long period of time. Water could recover fairly quickly, but only by consuming much of the lost water quickly. Oxygen supply could recover very quickly, but only by replacing all of the lost oxygen in the air right away. Electricity could perhaps give greater rationing potential to aid in early space exploration, just activate it for a short duration to stir the air, and require little extra power to compensate for being left off. A good balance would be for players to have some leeway when emergency situations arise, but wouldn't generally consider it worthwhile otherwise due to the micromanagement involved, and the risk of crew dying if resource supply isn't resumed in time.

A simpler solution may be to recalculate the remaining resources by instantly consuming the deficit when supply is resumed, however this would leave no way to ration resources when supplies run low. (Except maybe going for spacewalks and consuming EVA supplies? Separate but similar issue)

Another thought, perhaps the crew should turn the resources back on themselves?

taraniselsu commented 8 years ago

I have plans to implement something along those lines in a future version. So, someday :)