(Save-breaking, requires multiple PR's) The naming of life support nodes is terribly confusing and inconsistent

[Clayell]

In order, here is a list of some of the life support nodes:

Early Life Support and ISRU
Life Support and ISRU
Basic Life Support and ISRU
Improved Lift Support and ISRU

Wow, these names are all incredibly similar, and not at all memorable. Furthermore, they are inconsistent with the naming of some other tech nodes that make more sense, such as Early Rocketry -> Basic Rocketry. I would submit a PR myself to fix this, but changing the raw name of tech nodes is bound to break something that I don't know how to fix. (and changing only the display name would be even more confusing...)

Additionally, adding "ISRU" to the end of these names is confusing, as these nodes don't even have ISRU unlocked. The "and ISRU" bit should probably be limited to until Long-Term, where the drill is unlocked.

In my opinion, the following would be a less confusing list that would still follow the same consistency as other tech branches:

Rudimentary Life Support
Early Life Support
Basic Life Support
Improved Life Support

However, I am interested to hear about what other names these nodes could potentially have.

[Capkirk123]

I think changing the display names is perfectly safe (although that means they no longer match the internal names which can cause confusion).

Personally I'm in the "just name everything after the year" camp, you avoid issues like the grid-fins node containing exactly zero grid-fins that way.

[Clayell]

I'm sure that changing the display names would be safe, but that would probably just move the problem from users and developers to just developers.

Personally I'm in the "just name everything after the year" camp, you avoid issues like the grid-fins node containing exactly zero grid-fins that way.

I sort of agree. There are certainly some tech nodes that could benefit from just being named directly after the year, and I think these would also qualify under that. Yet, having all tech nodes being called by their year only could get a bit boring to see after a while.

[Clayell]

If people support this, more repos will have to be forked to essentially to a find and replace on earlyLifeSupport and lifeSupportISRU all across github. Relevant searches:
https://github.com/search?q=earlyLifeSupport&type=code
https://github.com/search?q=lifeSupportISRU&type=code

[Clayell]

I am not totally sure about removing ISRU from the title names, as there may be a point in the future where ISRU is added to tech nodes before long-term.
However, this will not affect the IDs, so it is easier to update if needed.

[TwistedGiraffe]

If we really want to take the save-breaking approach (which IMO should be postponed until RP-1 4.0), we should also fix "Advanced Capsules" (1986 tech) vs. "Advanced Capsules Era Materials Science / Electronics Research" (1964 tech) and the "Grid Fin" Kirk mentioned.
Also, the thing before "early, basic, improved" should be "prototype," as in "Prototype Hydrolox Engines" and "Avionics Prototypes" (Yeah another thing to be organized).

[Clayell]

should be postponed until RP-1 4.0

Agree, save-breaking updates should be rare, and this would definitely be one of them.

I agree that we should really nail down the exact naming of these tech nodes eras, perhaps we can go down capkirk's route of naming by the year, although I find this a bit boring. If this issue needs to pivot towards standardizing era names, I will change the title to be more appropriate.