Hundreds of Kerbals were killed in the making of this mod.
Kerbalism is a mod for Kerbal Space Program that alters the game to add life support, radiation, ISRU chains, part and engine failures and an entirely new way of doing science.
- Life support : Kerbals consume food, water and oxygen and will die if they aren't provided. Various processes can be added to recycle or produce those resources in situ.
- Stress : Without adequate living space, atmospheric pressure and comforts, Kerbals will get stressed and start making mission-threatening mistakes.
- Radiation : Kerbalism simulate the space radiation environment and radiation from local sources. A vessel must be adequately shielded and mission planning must be adjusted to avoid the most deadly places like planetary radiation belts.
- Reliability : Components have a limited operational lifetime and will fail over time. Engines have a limited amount of ignitions and a limited burn time.
- ISRU : Instead of the easy "ore to everything" stock system, producing and processing resources in situ uses a semi-realistic set of extraction and conversion rules.
- Science over time : Experiments produce data over time, up to several years. This data is also transmitted over time, making science collection a relaxing background mechanism instead of the stock click-spammy system. Kerbalism also replace the stock labs "infinite science", rebalance existing experiments and add many probe, satellite and late-game manned experiments.
- Background processing : All vessels are simulated continuously, not only the currently active one. Life support, resource processing, experiments and data transmission are simulated in the background while keeping a low performance overhead.
- Vessels management : All vessels can be monitored and controlled to some extent from a centralized user interface available in all scenes.
- Mission planning : The editor user interface allow to evaluate your vessel design against various environments and provide extended information about all aspects of the mod.
For more detailed information, go to the Github wiki and the FAQ.
Download : Github releases - CKAN
Docs & support : Github wiki - Discord - FAQ - Github issues - KSP forums thread
License : Unlicense (public domain)
KSP version : 1.8.x to 1.12.x
Requires : Module Manager, CommunityResourcePack, HarmonyKSP, KSPCommunityFixes
Mod compatibility - Changelog - Dev Builds
Download on Github releases or use CKAN
Two packages are required :
- Kerbalism is the core plugin, always required.
- KerbalismConfig is the official configuration pack.
It can be be replaced by other packs distributed elsewhere.
Requirements
- Module Manager
- HarmonyKSP
- KSPCommunityFixes
- CommunityResourcePack (required by KerbalismConfig only, third-party config packs might not require it)
Configuration packs
The Kerbalism official configuration pack is a feature set maintained by the Kerbalism contributors. It tries to achieve a good balance between realism, difficulty and complexity, is primarily balanced against the stock game and has a "current space tech" scope. Mixing it with other mods that significantly change the stock scale, scope or gameplay isn't well supported and not recommended for a good experience.
Several alternate configuration packs have been created by third party modders :
- ROKerbalism : Official config pack for RO and RP1, maintained by the RP1 team.
- SIMPLEX : Stockalike simplified life support and ISRU designed to work well with the SIMPLEX tech tree and other mods by theJesuit.
- SkyhawkKerbalism : A BDB focused profile with revamped LS, science and ISRU going alongside a custom tech tree by CessnaSkyhawk.
- LessRealThanReal(ism) : A config pack part of a larger mod based on RP1 but made to played at stock scales without RO.
Make sure to install exactly one configuration pack only.
Don't combine packs unless there is explicit instructions to do so.
Kerbalism hasn't been under active developement since many years now. Despite various minor bugs and shortcomings, the mod is still functional and can be quite fun to play with. However, do note that due to the lack of maintainance, there are a lot of compatibility issues with the wider modding ecosystem.
In the current state of things, Kerbalism is best played in a very lightly modded game.
In particular, mods introducing mechanisms or features that greatly differ from the stock ones are very likely to cause issues. This notably include most "future scope" mods like KSPIE, Near Future Tech, Far Future Tech, USI MKS, BlueShift, as well as "interstellar" scoped planet packs. Many large part packs are also improperly supported, BDB notably, but a few others too.
The mod compatibility page is quite outdated, but can still help to avoid some issues.
Kerbalism does very custom stuff. This can break other mods. For a lot of mods that breaks or need balancing, we provide support code and configuration patches. However some mods are incompatible because there is too much feature overlap or support is too complex to implement.
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Tutorials and documentation are available at the Github wiki
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Need help ?
Ask on Discord or in the KSP forums thread
Also see this short YouTube video about useful UI tips. -
You found a bug ?
- Maybe it's related to another mod ? Check the Mod Compatibility page.
- Maybe it's a known issue ? Check the GitHub issues and ask on Discord.
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You want to report a bug ?
- Install the KSPBugReport plugin and generate a bug report with it. Support requests that don't provide full logs and KSP database dumps are often ignored.
- Report it on Github issues (preferred) or in the KSP forums thread (we don't go there often).
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You want to contribute or add support for your mod ?
- Check the technical guide on the wiki
- Pull requests are welcome, especially for mod support configs. For code contributions, it is recommended to talk to us on Discord before engaging anything.
- Read the contributing documentation
- To build the plugin from the source code, read the BuildSystem documentation
This mod is released under the Unlicense, which mean it's in the public domain.
