Is the planet an ocean world, earth like, or something else?

IvanKeska

This is something I wonder because the game would imply that being about the ocean. But a few things i've noticed one being the planet has a very active a lava layer and that we do have signs of mountains and ridges, this implies there are tectonic plates and they are shifting similar to earths. This means there is a strong chance of such movement resulting in the formation of land, so imagine the safe shallows but getting a bump upwards. Another thing is it's safe to say we have volcanic activity something else that can cause the formation of island/s.

Another thing to note is how Floater Island has plant life which is pretty different then the plants found in the ocean, this says more islands exist or a larger land mass exist to in which these plants originated from.

Also something to note to is the ocean currents and the weather, seem to calm for an ocean world. Which doesn't make sense when an ocean world would be like the Southern Ocean which has nasty weather. Because there is no land mass to stop this continuous cycle of currents and winds from keep building up energy, since it's pretty much a solid loop of ocean.
This tells me me we might be located by a land mass or a few keeping this area pretty calm. Thus we might actually be in an area like the Golf of Mexico or the Mediterranean Sea, which would explain why we have deep water but not the roughly 4200 meter depth our oceans average. Well also explaining why most of the ocean seems to be a coastal shelf or something similar, due to the amount of animal and planet life as well as the shallow depth.


So in total we might be in a world that has a high number of islands caused by volcanic activity as well as weak tectonic movement, which would allow surface life to exist and spread as well as prevent any extreme weather like seen in the southern ocean. Or we could be located in a Sea or near a continent on it's coastal shelf and near it's continental slope, both of these would explain the shallow depths of around 0-400 meters well also having much deeper ones to.
But maybe this planets doesn't have much in the way of extreme terrain features thus deep drops in terrain over huge areas (like earth). Thus could be the same size as earth but have less over all water, which can cover the planet in a shallow layer because of the smooth terrain. Which would be granted a weird planet but in all fairness such a planet is not possible, considering some of the crazy stuff we've discovered already. Thou such a planet would have really strong winds and pretty huge waves as a result, so wouldn't work.

Anyways, how do you think this planet is set up and where on it do you think we might be located? Also go off of how the game is now, since that helps eliminate confusion on what is what.

sayerulz

It could be that the planet lacks an axial tilt, which could even out temperatures and cause less winds, keeping the large areas of ocean we see more calm. I suspect that you are right, however, and that there are landmasses somewhere. perhaps the planet consists of a large amount of small, swampy continents surrounded by shallow seas?

IvanKeska

sayerulz wrote: »

It could be that the planet lacks an axial tilt, which could even out temperatures and cause less winds, keeping the large areas of ocean we see more calm. I suspect that you are right, however, and that there are landmasses somewhere. perhaps the planet consists of a large amount of small, swampy continents surrounded by shallow seas?

A planet covered in a continents about the same type as Australia but maybe 1/4-1/2 the size and are mostly swamp land. Which would allow for the evolution of land based animals and plants. Well the existence of these small continents everywhere could cause a lot of shallow seas combined with the possibility this planet compared to earth might be even smoother and have less water.

Thou what i wonder is such a system would be mostly tectonic based, thus what we might have is actually a cluster of small continents forming a partly submerge or forming/seperating Pangea. Well huge parts of the planet could be these raging oceans with extreme depths.
So we could be in this continent cluster where the tectonic plates are buckling thus we have the elevated terrain, resulting in land and shallow seas. Well the rest of the planet could be mostly deep oceans averaging possibly 6000 meters deep, do to a lack of tectonic plates buckling. Well the surface is just full of raging storms and massive waves.

Hmm.. I looked at the thread about the rotation of the planet. This means the planet is rotating from north to south as it orbits the sun on a west to east orbit. This tells us we are near the north pole since the arctic region is north and ear by, but also telling us we are either on the west or east side of the planet. Also this rotation orbit will have extreme weather and heating across the planet. The west and east pole will be in complete darkness or burning sunlight for a quarter of the year, well in between these quarters it will have a pseudo spring/fall. Well the north to south longitudinal line separating the two halves will have a pseudo summer/winter for 2 quarters thanks to one side being on fire and one being a super cold tundra. Well in between it will get a warm/hot summer, this could result in an ice belt looping around the planet that shifts west or east a bit based on which one is in darkness. This explains the arctic zone and even thou it gets a summer that summer time might not have enough heat to dissipate the ice belt just keep it under control.

Anyways thats enough for tonight getting a bit tired now

Myrm

If you look on the UWE Trello thing you'll see like a transcript of characters in the world of Subnautica who are responsible for the sending down/making available of various items, such as the Seamoth 1.2 In that manuscript it is revealed that the planet is 97% ocean.

04Leonhardt

We can see from the loading screen that the planet is mostly water.

Any land masses would be floater suspended islands, or small tropical archipelagos