True to Life and Science Suggestion - Repost from Steam Forum Post I made

vaughner81

So I have been thinking and would like to posit a suggestion for navigation that could be crafted and still fit into underwater scientific theory.

First a short bit of background on me and where this came from. I spent about 15 years from the age of 15 until I was 30 (15-18 in the shop, can't go offshore until your 18) working offshore doing deep water robotics systems for multiple industries and companies. I worked in Transoceanic Phone Cable Installation/Repair, Deepwater Oil and Gas, Deepwater Shipwreck Search and Recovery (Archeology) and a fledgling Deepwater Mining Company interested in harvesting copper from the seafloor in hydrothermal vent fields. Im most of these industries we use the same technology to ascertain accurate positioning in the water column and on the seabed. (Can you see why I am hooked on this game!)

So the idea is to implement a form of Long Base Line Sonar Array or LBL. (Wikipedia Link for those interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_baseline_acoustic_positioning_system)

What LBL does is actually really cool. Water blocks GPS signals but we are on a alien planet and there wouldn't be any GPS anyways. Short of building rockets and satelites we would not have a way to create a GPS system. What LBL and it's shorter range counterparts (USBL - Ultra Short Base Line and SBL - Short Base Line) do it allow triangulation of position from timed pings from transmitters located around an area. For example, if you were to craft 3 LBL transmitters and install a LBL transceiver on the Seamoth (Seamoth Upgrade Anyone?) then each of the LBL transmitters would emit a ping at an agreed upon time and the transciever can interpret which tower ping it receives and when. This allows a position in 3d space to be extrapolated. The more LBL transmitters you put around (The larger the array is) the more accurate your position information. Transmitters run on batteries and in real life they last months but could be make to last 2 weeks or so of in game time before their pings become weak and then just stop thereby making your position less accurate until you change the battery. You would need a way to take a "fix" on the positions of the beacons as their location would affect the "reference plane" of the positioning. But concessions could be make that the LBL setup does this for you on it's own.

LBL can also be triggered by the transceiver on the Seamoth much like the sonar is triggered. Perhaps this is a way to gate the battery life on the transmitters. You only get so many pings so pinging constantly would kill your transmitter batteries more quickly.

[Typically LBL is triggered from the craft requesting the pings... It sends an omnidirectional ping in all directions, each LBL 'beacon' responds it's own code when it hears the request. Distance is determined by time our and back for the sound waves. But doing timed systems would simplify for game needs if you wanted to allow a real time position all the time.]

I think a big part of what I was wanting to get in the exploration part of this game is missing. I don't need/want an ingame map as that to me just breaks the feeling of isolation and forboding. But I would love a way to take a paper grid on my desk and swim to/pilot my seamoth to a point, get a fix and plot it on a paper map. The devs have done an AMAZING job of the atmosphere underwater and the visibility is actually quite a bit better then in real life in most cases and it works. Visibility on the seabed even with VERY powerful lights is usually no more then 10 meters max. If you place a remote light far away it can be seen farther but light emiting from the vehicle you are viewing from provides poor range in just about every situation. I find myself getting turned around constantly and getting lost and that is about as real as it get on the sea bed in the real world.

So please devs, if you get a chance, take a look at LBL and let me know what you think. You already have most of the framework in place. You have beacons, you have batteries, you have upgrade modules and I am sure you have a way to output the x,y,z position with some randomization of the accuracy. And if you ever have any questions about the reality of work on the seafloor feel free to ask.

Keep up the GREAT work!

Bugzapper

vaughner81 wrote: »

So I have been thinking and would like to posit a suggestion for navigation that could be crafted and still fit into underwater scientific theory.

LBL can also be triggered by the transceiver on the Seamoth much like the sonar is triggered. Perhaps this is a way to gate the battery life on the transmitters. You only get so many pings so pinging constantly would kill your transmitter batteries more quickly.

[Typically LBL is triggered from the craft requesting the pings... It sends an omnidirectional ping in all directions, each LBL 'beacon' responds it's own code when it hears the request. Distance is determined by time our and back for the sound waves. But doing timed systems would simplify for game needs if you wanted to allow a real time position all the time.]

I think a big part of what I was wanting to get in the exploration part of this game is missing. I don't need/want an ingame map as that to me just breaks the feeling of isolation and forboding. But I would love a way to take a paper grid on my desk and swim to/pilot my seamoth to a point, get a fix and plot it on a paper map. The devs have done an AMAZING job of the atmosphere underwater and the visibility is actually quite a bit better then in real life in most cases and it works. Visibility on the seabed even with VERY powerful lights is usually no more then 10 meters max. If you place a remote light far away it can be seen farther but light emitting from the vehicle you are viewing from provides poor range in just about every situation. I find myself getting turned around constantly and getting lost and that is about as real as it get on the sea bed in the real world.

You plead the case extremely well, Vaughner. I'm convinced that the LBL Positioning System would work rather well in Subnautica.

(Almost bought a USBL module for my AC-ROV submersible video system, but $12k was a little too steep. Settled for a manipulator claw instead. )

I particularly like the idea of hand-plotting fixes between transponders. It's basically okay having the beacons as they are at the moment for rough navigation, although a range marker tag would be extremely helpful. I've been scratching my head to find a less awkward navigation system that doesn't involve referring to the XYZ coordinates in the console pane. That text is tiny, and my poor old peepers just aren't up to the job.

Naturally, there should be a researchable mapping upgrade at some point. The Seamoth sonar suite would provide perfect point-based data, providing that The Devs can integrate its scan coverage into something that the player's PDA would render as a highly detailed pseudo-3D terrain map. I'd imagine that it could be scaled up to display on cartographic workstations aboard the Cyclops and in player bases. Might be a considerable job game-design wise, though.

Afterthought: As an interim measure, even an unobtrusive HUD readout of the player's current XYZ coordinates would be useful.

Definitely something I'd like to see implemented.

The_Shark

That... that is perfect. If people want a navigation system, this is it. I salute you, sir.

smackumz

The only thing I don't like is the battery portion. There is solar power in the game so why not power these bouys this way. Allowing the user to focus more on exploration than having to go recharge all the bouys, then recharge the cyclops, then hunt food etc... eventually you run out of time to do the funnest part, exploring, because you're too busy maintaining your current equipment.

vaughner81

Well in real life these are not bouys. They are anchored to the seafloor and float about 15 feet off the bottom. They would do you no good near the surface and actually struggle in shallow water. The sound waves reflect off the surface of the ocean and provide ghost pings that wreck havoc on the calculations. Hence the reason that they are run by batteries in the real world.

smackumz

In real life we wouldn't be on an alien world. Allow a little leeway for quality of life improvements that might open up more time for exploration and less time harvesting powercells to refuel them.... maybe not solar power, maybe an ocean current turns a magnet generating electricity charging a battery.

The basic concept is good and doable, but the resource impact in a system without resource replinishment would start to tax the balance.

Bottom line is if the cyclops power usage causes people to have no qualms using the console to cheat resources in, what would having to replace batteries in all those things do? Maybe they are nuclear powered? Meaning they wouldn't run out in decades of uptime... thus requiring less overall resource consumption.

vaughner81

All very cogent points my friend and they are all something for the devs to decide what works better in the world they have created. I only set out to provide an idea that was able to be backed with actual science as from what I understand the science is a very large "chunk" of what Unknown Worlds wants the game to be. Any ideas that I post will be steeped in real science and real world references. I leave it to the "team" to decide the best implementation though.

And while I do understand your position and statements I do respectfully disagree. Really all I think we are missing to make these power issues disappear is rechargeable batteries and a charging station you mount in your sea base/cyclops. Perhaps like 4 batteries, 2 lithium, and a silicon rubber and you can create a rechargeable battery. 2 rechargeable batteries, 1 more silicon rubber and an advanced wiring kit and you craft a rechargeable power cell. Then you build a charger in your base and ensure you are hooked up to a power source and you can change them up as needed. Would provide you with the need to harvest the materials once, have a relatively high material cost, but then you would not have the resource drain we do now. Heck, this would allow much more efficient use of the cyclops now if we had this.

Just my $0.02 my friend. All I know if I love the world they have created and know without a doubt that the resource balancing is coming. :-)

The_Shark

Simple solution to the power problem. We're in the ocean, right?

Give it a miniature hydroelectric generator, working on ocean currents. There we go.