Colonization - Step by Step!

1.0 - Introduction

So you’re ready to move beyond flags and footprints, and establish something a bit more permanent, whether in orbit or on the surface of a planet or moon.  If so, then this guide is for you.

Why step by step?

The USI Kolonization mods have been around for a long time.  And sometimes it’s easy to forget that a lot of people don’t have the same context and background using the mod as myself and the longtime users do.  So the idea of this guide is to start with the basics, assuming no prior knowledge or context, and slowly go through steps, the terminologies, and the workflows one by one.  

A quick note on terminology

UKS consists of several mods under the general umbrella of Umbra Space Industries (USI) - the fictitious organization all of my mods are published under.  

MKS (Modular Kolonization System) is the oldest, followed quickly by OKS (Orbital Kolonization System).  The two together are collectively called the USI Kolonization Systems (UKS).  Then there’s MKS-Lite, which is a lightweight ‘intro’ version.

So if you were to divide these into two camps, you would have UKS on one end (the full mod) and MKS-Lite on the other (the intro mod).  Confused yet?

To keep things (relatively) simple, we’ll stick to using the two terms above (UKS and MKS-LITE).  This guide will be written with UKS in mind, but I’ll note where MKS-Lite operates differently.

1.1 - How to use this guide!

UKS Is a big mod.  It’s not just parts.  Rather, it’s an entire gameplay system that uses KSP as the engine.  It can be overwhelming if you don’t take it in chunks.  It’s also an incredibly rewarding addition to your game, and can serve as the capstone for your career, or an entirely new endgame activity for your save.  

Since we have a LOT of stuff to cover, I’ve broken the guide down into four main sections.

1.  The introduction (what you’re reading now), which covers a lot of the design concepts and terminology.
2. Core Concents.  These are some of the main mechanics and building blocks used by the mod, such as manufacturing, farming, etc. - they should give you some good background info and context when we start building bases, and separate the gameplay discussion from the parts discussion.
3. Missions!  This is a series of step by step missions that slowly reveal all of the core components and parts.  They will take you from your first base all the way through establishing a thriving and independent colony.

There are two ways to handle sections 2 and 3, based on how you learn best.  You can either read the core concepts first, and reinforce them with the missions, or you can start with the missions, and read about each core concept as it comes up.  If you’re new to UKS, using the missions as a guide may be the best bet.  If you have used MKS in the past, reviewing the core concepts and looking at a couple of sample missions might work better for you.

There will also be links to the UKS wiki along the way.  This guide is a more general overview and set of working examples, whereas the wiki can afford to dive into a lot more detail.

1.2 What makes a colony a colony?

At its most basic level, and within the context of stock, just dropping a command pod onto the mun is technically a colony.  And for a lot of players, making colonies out of stock parts from a purely aesthetic standpoint is more than adequate (and with the only constraint being roleplay, the door is wide open for creativity).  But given that you’re reading this guide, odds are you want something a bit deeper.

Any collection of parts can be called a colony, outpost, base or station.  No gameplay changes are required.  Whether this is just a single lander, or a sprawling series of interconnected modules set up for roleplay purposes.  If this suits your needs, then there are lots of mods and parts that can satisfy this, and at that point, terminology is largely irrelevant - that collection of parts is whatever you wish for it to be.

But when we add gameplay changes, things become a bit different.  And that’s where USI’s Kolonization System comes into play.  UKS is not a parts pack (though it has a lot of pretty parts).  It is first and foremost a gameplay mod (the parts are just there to facilitate the gameplay constraints it adds).  

What this means is that it introduces challenges, constraints, and obstacles that the player will have to overcome.  Which also means it pushes people a bit out of their comfort zone, which is ok.  

Odds are you’re adding a gameplay mod to enrich your playing experience.  For example, adding a satellite relay mod like RemoteTech or AntennaRange makes the game more challenging, but also give you the tools to make the experience more rewarding.  Same with life support.  People do not add a life support mod to make their gameplay easier, they add it for realism, or for the challenge of extra constraints.

UKS takes this same concept, but focuses on the challenges and constraints of long term space habitation.  And as NASA can attest, this is pretty hard stuff.  Earth is bursting with life, and is pretty good at helping to keep people alive.  Space, not so much.  So when we look at what a colonization gameplay mod would look like, we’ll be taking a look at what we need to not only survive, but thrive off of our home world, and what kinds of challenges NASA is facing (since we can assume Kerbals need some of the same things).

Colonization, at it’s simplest, is figuring out how to keep people, away from our home world, alive for a long time.  That’s pretty much it.  So our first checkpoint is whether or not you are using a life support mod.  UKS will assume this.  If you are not, then odds are what you want is a parts pack for roleplaying purposes - at which point, the rest of this guide is really not for you.

The good news is that if you don’t use a life support mod, you can go have fun creatively building bases without having to worry about the constraints (i.e. there’s nothing wrong with having a base with gardens and nuclear reactors and habitation domes even if you don’t technically need any of these to keep your Kerbals alive).

For the rest of you, get your favorite life support mod ready (UKS supports USI-LS or TAC-LS, but USI-LS is the strong favorite because some mechanics simply don’t exist in TAC-LS).  

Note that while both are supported, to keep things simple, our examples, etc. will assume USI-LS.

1.3 Outposts, stations, bases, and colonies (vs. ‘just a ship’).

We’ll start with some terminology and see where that leads us.  The first question I would propose, is what transforms a lander can, a solar panel, and a few batteries into a base, station, etc?  i.e. at what point does this transformation take place?  I would argue that it’s a case of duration.

Land a Kerbal on the mun, hop out, hop back in, do some science?  Not a base, just a mission.  But land a mobile processing lab there and stick around for a few years, and you just made a base.  

Launch a Kerbal into orbit, grab some science, come back down?  Just a mission.  Loft a bunch of tanks into space to serve as a refueling point?  You just made a station.  

The common denominator here is permanence.  So let’s all agree that when we talk about stations, bases, etc. we’re dealing with ships that need to support long term operations (whether that’s for a few days or a few decades).  So when talking about UKS, it’s best to tackle it from examining what kinds of problems arise when humans are in space for a long time, move those over to their Kerbal analogues, and look at what kinds of interesting gameplay mechanics and constraints come into play.

Remember when I asked about life support earlier?  Good.  Because that’s pretty much the linchpin here.  At the end of the day, every mechanic we look at, every problem we solve, is going to be about keeping your Kerbals alive.  And those problems compound as our duration increases.  So let’s take a walk down the garden path and see how this pans out.

We’ll be doing this in the form of a series of scenarios and suggested missions.  We’re doing it this way because it will allow us to slowly introduce new concepts, and also give you a chance to work with the components in the small, without being overwhelmed by the array of parts that UKS offers (so you should really make sure you have UKS and USI-LS installed before you start).  If you’re new to UKS and USI-LS, I strongly suggest following the demo missions - it will put you in a much better position to make your own missions down the road!

Required mods for this demo series:

• USI Life Support
• USI Kolonization Systems
• Karibou Rover

Optional mods for this demo series:

• KIS/KAS
• OSE Workshop
• Extraplanetary Launchpads

A quick note on mods.  These demo missions assume you are using USI-LS and UKS with the default settings, and have installed all of the required mods listed above.  So even if you are normally a TAC-LS user, it makes sense to set up a sandbox install with these mods, otherwise you might have some difficulty in a lot of the tutorials.  Once you understand how all of the bits work, it will be a lot easier to adapt back to TAC-LS (though you will be missing some of the mechanics unique to USI-LS, like habitation constraints).

You’ll also see a list of optional mods. These are ones where there are some specific enhancements or changes in place when combined with UKS.  We’ll showcase these as side missions and demos - so while they are not required, if they include mods you usually have in your normal save, it will be worth it to install them for the demo missions.

2.0 - Core Concepts

2.1 - Introduction

So now it’s time to dig into some of the details.  But before we can start launching rockets and building stuff, we should take another step back and cover a few concepts that are pretty core to how UKS (and by extension, USI-LS) work.  This will help put the future missions in a much better context as we start doing a more detailed drill down into how the mod and it's parts work.

Some of the core concepts we’re going to cover include:

• Farming
• Habitation, Radiation, and Space Madness!
• Machinery and Wear and Tear
• Resources and Manufacturing
• Resource and Power Distribution
• Kolony Rewards and Statistics

2.2 - Farming and Life Support

As we've noted already, your first order of business is going to be keeping your Kerbals alive.  This means making sure they have food to eat, oxygen to breath, a place to live, disco music to listen to, and the tools and spare parts they need to keep their hab modules from explosively decompressing.

Supplies and Mulch.

Within USI-LS, 'Supplies' represent all of the stuff a Kerbal needs to keep alive and healthy.  This includes food, oxygen, and water (not only for drinking, but also for food preparation and hygiene).

This equation is pretty simple.  Supplies go in (to the tune of about 16kg per day), and 'Mulch' comes out.  Mulch is just a nice way of saying waste, candy bar wrappers, grey water, etc.

Now, while shipping (literally) tons of supplies makes a lot of sense for a short term mission (on Gemini 7, food packets were stuffed so tightly it was a challenge to extract them in the small capsule), you will want to consider space-saving alternatives as your missions grow longer.

This is a pretty big deal for NASA as well, since it's impractical to ship that kind of mass along for the ride to Mars, let alone the initial cost of getting it all to LEO.  So we need some options.

First, we have recyclers.  The idea here is that if I can purify some of my grey water, scrub CO2, etc. I can take that 16 tons and reduce it.  In USI-LS this is represented by reductions from a modest 25% all the way up to 90% (if I have a reliable source of water that I can purify).  

So for any long-term mission, you're going to want to have a decent recycler along.  Fortunately, a lot of the UKS and MKS-Lite parts include recyclers of varying capacities and efficiencies.

Next, we probably want to put all of that mulch to use for us.  One option is to take our mulch, mix in a little bit of nutrient-rich fertilizer, and grow some plants.  In reality, these would probably be algae (yuck!) that would not only be a food source (albeit a very boring one), but would also serve as a biological filter for water, and generate oxygen.

Now.  If we can take 10kg of mulch, mix it with 1 kg  of fertilizer, and get 11 kg of supplies, we can seriously extend our initial supply allotment just by shipping fertilizer instead of more supplies.  The only catch being we also have to loft up all of the farming equipment to make this happen.  So what you will find is that for your longer missions, spending the mass on farming parts and fertilizer makes a lot more sense, and can dramatically extend your mission time.

The rub with fertilizer is that it's something you have to ship in from Kerbin - so there's going to eventually be a point where you just run out.

Fortunately, we have some other options.  Once you are landed on a planet, we can do some pretty hardcore farming.  We can harvest Gypsum to use as a fertilizer, and can also use substrate and water as inputs (instead of mulch) for our farming.  So having bases that not only 'break even' but can generate a net positive (to supply other ships or bases) is completely possible.

Habitation and Space Madness!

For most life support mods, a lot of time is spent focusing on the consumables - whether those are supplies (like USI-LS) or oxygen/food/water (like TAC-LS).  But having enough to eat and breathe is only part of the equation.  We will assume that Kerbals, like people, need space.  Space to move around and exercise, space to sleep and relax, and space to just get away from other Kerbals.  In the USI mods, we refer to this as 'Habitation'.  

All parts have a habitation value.  This represents how long a Kerbal is willing to tolerate living inside of them.  This is a combination of not only physical space, but also overall durability.  A Kerbal would be happer in a smaller, more substantial and better constructed hab than one that was nothing more than a thin sheet of canvas (even if it was twice the size).

Habitation value goes down in time as the part is used and slowly wears out - latches break, floors and walls are patched, and eventually all but the most durable habitats wear out and become less hospitable.  Fortunately, maintenance can combat this, and an EVA engineer can patch up and refurbish an old hab to breath new life into it.

Now, let's talk about how Kerbals interact with this habitation value, and it's effect on our mission duration.  Like a lot of our concepts, we'll illustrate these with examples and compare them to earth analogues.

Take the case of a ship heading to Minmus with a small lander.  The lander is pretty tiny - not something a Kerbal wants to live in for a long time, so we also have a larger command ship with more room.  The crew spends a lot of time in the command module, but only goes into the lander to go to the surface and back.   So even though the lander is super cramped, it's ok because the crew have the roomy command module to get to - as long as we don't leave them stuffed in the lander for too long, and as long as our entire mission length (outbound trip, exploration, and return trip) don't exceed the habitation capacity of the command module.

Kerbals actually keep two timers in relation to habitation.  The hab value of their current vessel measured from the time they entered it (displayed as HAB in the UI), and a 'homesickness' value based on the highest hab value of the vessels they were in post-launch, measured from the time they left Kerbin.

So in our example, let's assume the command module has a hab value of 90 days, and the lander has a value of 15 days.

When the Kerbal enters the command module (with attached lander) at launch, their HAB value is 90 (their current vessel) and their HOME value is also 90.  

When the Kerbal exits the command module 30 days later and goes into the lander, their HAB value is now 15 (their current vessel) and their HOME value is 60 (the 90 day hab value of the CSM - 30 days into the mission).

When the Kerbal returns to the command module five days later, their HAB value jumps up to 90 (they just entered the CSM so the timer resets), but their HOME value is only 55 (because the only way to increase or reset the homesickness timer is to go back to Kerbin or enter a larger base.

Now let's say the CSM, at day 60 (five days later), docks with a massive colony ship with 1200 days of habitation time.  Upon docking, their HAB timer resets to 1200, but their home timer only goes to 1170.  This is because the starting point for the homesickness timer is always the date/time they left Kerbin.

While this dual-timer system can seem confusing at first, as you work through the example missions in this guide you will get a better feel for it.  The intent is to support Kerbals switching vessels (like rovers, bases, stations, and transit vehicles) while penalizing them if they remain cooped up in tin cans for too long.  It also encourages having larger bases and stations with large hab values, even if you transit between them in vessels with more modest accommodations.

Little glowing green men… [THIS IS A WIP FEATURE]

Radiation in the form of cosmic rays is some serious business in space travel.  Add into the mix atomic engines, radiation belts, and other horrible things, and you may soon find yourself with some very unhappy three-eyed glowing Kerbals.

In USI-LS, this is tracked on a per-Kerbal basis, and as the Kerbal exposes themselves to more radiation, this builds up, eventually leading to death or other negative effects.  USI-LS supports both acute (reversible) and chronic (irreversible) radiation exposure.  So exposing your Kerbal to a radioactive blast might kill them instantly, and having them sit on top of an unshielded nuclear reactor on a long voyage may result in so much radiation exposure that the cumulative effects eventually lead to death.

Fortunately, a few things are assumed in USI-LS.  Specifically, that most crewable parts have sufficient radiation shielding to keep Kerbals safe within LKO, and with the addition of radiation shielding, habitats and other modules can be hardened to block harmful radiation.  You can also take design precautions, like keeping dangerous elements like nuclear engines and reactors as well as nuclear fuel tanks far away from the crew habitation areas, and using higher level engineers when performing refueling operations to risk the chance of an accident.

A Kerbal's current radiation level (both acute and chronic) is shown in the life support UI, and like many things, is fully configurable.  Additionally, all planets can be configured to have varying degrees of radiation protection or radiation hazards.  

For simplicity, these are based on spheres, unlike our own Van Allen belts, which are toroidal, and programmatically created for various bodies to support additional planet packs.  The effect is based on adding up all of the radiation belts in the current SOI based on ASL, and adding this to Kerbol's radiation belt.  Overrides are supported so that modders can add support for secondary suns, etc.

Life Support, Habitation, and Radiation Penalties

Now, with all of these constraints (supplies and space farming, and having enough space for your Kerbals), there are bound to be some penalties.  All of these are configurable in USI-LS and can range from death through ‘grouchiness’ (in which the Kerbal becomes a tourist), or can be disabled entirely.

2.3 - Understanding UKS via the Tech Tree

Tier 0

5 Science:

45 Science:

90 Science

160 Science

Tier 1:

300 science

550 science

Tier 2

1000 science

Tier 3

1500 science

Tier 4 - 2250 science

Tier 5

4000 science

2.4 - The stages of colonization

We’ve said it before - the road to making a fully self sufficient colony is hard stuff.  This is just not something you do in one launch.  And it’s a pretty long road.  That being said, one of the most common pitfalls I see people fall into with UKS is being confused by the wide array of parts, and feeling the have to ‘do it all’ in one go (and unlike Pokemon, you are under no obligation to catch them all).

In reality, not all of my own colonies make it to self sufficiency.  Some are just minor mining outposts I resupply periodically, while others are large, self sufficient shipyards.  But regardless of where your colony ends up, they are all going to follow the same basic growth path, and understanding that path (and having some context for where you are along it) will help you not only break UKS into much more manageable chunks, but will also help you decide when ‘enough is enough’.

So much like the five stages of grief, a twelve step program, or the fifty ways to leave your lover, let’s cover the different stages of a colony.

Note:  There’s going to be a lot of new terms tossed out in the next section, and a lot of new concepts (like machinery, farming, habitation, etc.) - don’t worry.  It’s meant more as a cursory overview.  

In the sections that follow, we’ll cover a few of the core systems in a lot more detail at a conceptual level (things like farming, manufacturing, and resource distribution).

We will then drill down into these concepts through a series of proposed missions.  These may seem pretty boring at first, but they will be the very best way of learning the system, and will walk you through each concept one by one.

Stage 1:  The OutpostAt this stage, we’re still pretty much ‘just a ship’ in all but name.  We still have to haul in all of our supplies and equipment, and save for simple things like some basic (partial) life support recycling, remain a long way from self sufficiency.

That being said, this is perfectly fine for either stations or bases that we’ll be able to resupply periodically, or cases where we’re setting up a temporary outpost (for example, a small refueling base for a biome science hopper that we will abandon once we’ve completed our exploration).

At this stage, you should primarily be concerned with pre-deploying enough supplies and machinery to either complete your mission, or move onto the next stage.

Stage 2:  The Agricultural Settlement

The first order of business is going to make sure your Kerbals don’t starve to death, or vent each other out of the airlocks in a fit of cabin fever.  So this stage will focus on better habitation, and the ability to produce supplies for our growing settlement, with the end-goal to be a self-sufficient, at least with regard to life support.  

Note that self sufficiency is a pretty different beast from closed loop - but both have the send end-game, that is, once construction is complete, we will no longer have to ship life support supplies to our settlement.

For this stage, you want to consider parts and resources that help extend your limited life support supplies.  Some examples include recycling waste and combining this with fertilizer to grow food, the use of life support recyclers to reduce supply consumption, and adding ‘habitation multipliers’ - these are parts that can dramatically extend the habitability of your base, allowing for longer stays without crew rotations.

Based on the resources present, you can reduce your dependency on life support supplies and fertilizer even further.

The key takeaway is that in most cases, an agricultural settlement that is roomy with enough space to keep your kerbals happy, and it’s own source of production for life support supplies, may be ‘good enough’ for most players, since at that point, you just need to send in small shipments of equipment and replacement parts to keep the machinery running (and those payloads are very modest compared to the mass required for life support).

Additionally, with the right parts and the right raw materials, your planetary base can not only supply itself, but also generate a net-positive resource flow and become an agricultural settlement capable of supplying other bases (thus eliminating the need to do an agricultural setup at every single base you have, which helps with part count, etc.)

Stage 3:  The Industrial Base

Keeping your Kerbals fed and housed is just the first step.  Stuff does not last forever.  Equipment wears out, critical components like computer screens, delicate electronics, and complex scientific gear will break down over time.   So long after the warranty has expired, your Kerbals will normally have to have replacements brought in.

In the early stages, it’s sufficient to have a pretty basic manufacturing capability (like making structural panels, wiring, etc.).  The tradeoff here is that while you can get started for a low investment, you won’t be able to completely make the part on your own.

Consider as an example, 3D printing a computer case out of local materials.  Pretty easy stuff, and between the case, wiring, etc. you might account for, say, 90% of the mass.  But you will still need to ship in that last 10%.  But this is still a much better proposition than having to ship in 100% of the mass, and can significantly extend the lifespan of your base.

 But at some point, your Kerbals may want to invest heavily in more complex manufacturing.   This represents a pretty significant investment, but one you don’t have to make right away (or at all, given how long you plan on keeping this base around).

In summary, you would not invest in heavy manufacturing for just a small outpost, because it would be considerably more efficient to ship in a few tons of specialized parts (circuit boards and other small but highly complex twiddly bits), and combine these with bulkier material kits that can be more easily manufactured on-site.  But if your intent is to springboard other outposts and bases, or (better yet) to transform your base into an autonomous colony, you will likely want to have the full range of manufacturing capabilities.

When coupled with the concept of the agricultural settlement above, you will quickly find that in a multi-base scenario, it makes a lot of sense to have a handful of specialized bases (mining bases, manufacturing centers, and agricultural settlements)  instead of trying to make a series of ‘all-in-one’ bases, thus reducing not only part count on the individual bases, but also making the entire planetary infrastructure a lot more efficient by leveraging economies of scale and specialization.

Stage 4:  The Autonomous Colony

And this is it - the pinnacle of your kolonization program.  At this stage, you will go beyond worrying about the logistics of production and resource management, and your colony will transform into it’s own self-sufficient entity.  

This stage really is the end-game for UKS.  Once you unlock the final colonization parts (which not only require a significant material investment, but also require a lot of accumulated local knowledge), the gameplay transforms from one where you are constantly juggling resources and keeping your colony alive, to one where not only are these constraints removed (for example, Kerbals in a colony are immune to life support penalties, similar to if they were on Kerbin), but to a point where the colony autonomously produces resources, finished goods, life support supplies, and even spawns new Kerbals.

At this point, the expectation is that you would use the newfound freedom and resource generation capabilities of this autonomous colony to fuel further exploration and the creation of new outposts (and thus repeat the cycle).

The best part is that like the parts above, this is not a case of all-or-nothing.  It may be that you unlock and specialize in agriculture first, or only manufacturing or mining.  

CORE CONCEPTS:

Farming

Machinery and Wear and Tear

Resources and Manufacturing

Resource and Power Distribution

Kolony Rewards and Statistics

MISSION SUMMARY:

Stage 1/2

• Orbital Base (Basic life support mechanics)
• Orbital Base II (Converters)
• Orbital Base III (Recyclers)
• Orbital Base IV (Hab Modifiers)
• Minmus I - Site Survey (Resources, base site selection)
• Minmus II - Basic outpost (Cover all items above)

Stage 3:

Minmus III - Scrapping and Recycling

Minmus IV - Small scale manufacturing with OSE Workshop

DOCUMENT NOTES:

Concepts to cover:

Power Couplers and Distributors

Scavenging

Resource Logistics

Warehouse Distribution

Planetary Logistics

Colonial Logistics

Orbital Logistics

Life support

Supplies/Mulch

Fertilizers and Farming

Concept of using machinery to reduce mass

Machinery’s effect on efficiency

Kerbal efficiency and happiness

Workspaces

Living Space

Roles (Pilots, Engineers, Scientists)

Life Support Recyclers

Life Support Converters

Habitation

Hab values

Hab multipliers

Wear (Replacement Parts)

Building with accelerators

Material Kits + Specialized Parts = Machinery

Gypsum=>Fertilizer

Substrate+Water=>Supplies

Machinery

Material Kits

Resources and base site selection

Efficiency Parts

Dirt Extraction

Kolonization Rewards/Perks

Concept of locked Colony parts

Configuration Options (Mostly for Life Support, but also Logistics)

Sample base layouts for each step/stage

Tips for delivering UKS modules to various planets