I didn't see anyone at all saying it was "impossible" or even undesirable.
I like the idea of life support, but think it would work better if kept generic - not all spacefaring races breathe oxygen. Making it solely about O2 is just racist, man
Also, since conduits are assumed for power under current conditions, I believe conduits and distribution could be assumed for life support as well. So a very simple way to do it might be to just implement a "Life Support Processor" block, make it look nice, and allow it to be placed ANYWHERE on the ship. If each block provided a certain amount of LS per tick, the only important calculation would be ratio of LS processing per tick to
currently enclosed blockspaces on the entity or station.
If an area becomes not enclosed
for any reason, it would simply no longer enter into the equation because we can assume the distribution system would compensate and re-route life support to intact areas. A better LS:enclosed space ratio wouldn't have to involve complex fill-time calculations (when we lag servers just doing the current calculations to fly a large ship past a planet), it could simply be a threshold number, like 1. So if each LS block provided 200 LS points per tic, and the entity had 10,000 blocks worth of enclosed space, you would need 50 LS modules to provide for those. Less would mean the whole ship had insufficient life support. If part of the LS array was destroyed, the whole ship would suffer (though I guess you could open doors and deliberately breach walls in less vital area to perform damage control and reduce the area your LS was servicing to improve your ratio.
The
effects of LS are another thing entirely and should be completely server-optional.
Seriously though, this is a purely RP/survival system and not of vital importance when we are still trying to get core dynamics fine tuned and prevent malicious or ignorant players from actively crashing multiplayer servers with too-big ships and such. I'd rather see planets fixed first. I'd rather see shipyards fixed first. I'd rathe see the economy fixed first. I'd rather see collision & break-away fixed before wasting Schine's time with something that doesn't contribute to gameplay at all, just... adds atmosphere, if you'll pardon the pun.