Following the atmosphere model and associated Life-Support Systems the simulation now features a model for the crew itself.
The objective here was to try to convey the feeling that a spaceship’s crew requires specific management, while hopefully staying consistent with the intended “space simulation game” play. That’s the rationale for representing the crew as a collective entity, and that largely manages itself given a set of directives.
The model’s inputs are connected to the ship’s equipment and so are its physical outputs. In that sense the crew is also a “thermodynamic” system comparable to the other parts. However it also produces “training”, a first element of the coming gamification layer and that is meant to interact with the pure simulation domain… at long last! 👨🔧
The following video presents an overview of the model and its interface:
Thanks for watching!
Cool, we’ll have to care for the self-loading cargo as well 😛
I see that the default atmosphere composition is nitrogen+oxygen at 1 atm. Will we encounter situations where we’ll have to keep, say, 0.3atm of pure oxygen – in case nitrogen is in short supply or the habitat’s integrity is compromised? Less pressure differential but increased risk of fires and toxicity for the crew, for example.
Nothing is scripted in the sim but that may very well happen due to various parts being damaged. I did not do the test but since hypoxia is a function of the partial pressure of oxygen alone, such an atmosphere should be perfectly breathable (and it is IRL!). Also on a standard payload there is much more oxygen on board (for the APUs) than there is nitrogen. So even if losing all LN2 and LO2 tanks in the crew module it would still be possible to pressurize again with some O2 from the power plant.
Awesome! I also could have been wrong about the toxicity, as articles from the 90s and up seem to agree that breathing pure oxygen should be fine as long as its partial pressure is below 30kPa, even for prolonged exposures. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯