Scanning Room

Niil945

Hi folks,

Relatively new player here, I've had Subnautica about a week now. I've looked around and couldn't find anything specific and current aside from Scanning Rooms being on the dev's list for changes (I think it was in March or so, only glanced at it and honestly didn't understand half of what was on the projected dates for changes and details of what they were expecting to change wasn't included). I was wondering if there have been any posts or commentary from the developers in regards to the intended eventually functionality of the scanning room. As it stands, and I've read this type of commentary from others, the range on the scanning room is way too small. 95m with 4 scanning range upgrades around the scanning room just doesn't make any sense. I can almost see everything in that range just by putting windows on the room. I'm not certain what the point is of expending the resources to build it and upgrade it. Is there something I'm missing about how it works or about how it will eventually work? I thought it was going to be a nice addition to help me figure out where to explore to find fragments or needed resources as opposed to randomly searching everywhere or having to look online to find where to get something. That alone has been frustrating as things have changed a lot and the information is often times out of date.

I'm not trying to complain, the use may simply be what I consider not worth the investment and that's fine, other people may decide to make use of it and that's cool. I was just expecting the scanning room to have a meaningful impact on my game play and was really surprised how little it actually changed things for me and how often I simply avoid using it in favor of just going to look myself. As a survival game I've been really impressed with the gameplay, the beautiful graphics, the base building, crafting, whole package really is just awesome. Aside from having to clear my cellcache folder every so often I've had no issues and I'm really looking forward to seeing where things go in the long term.

SP_Kenny

I agree that when adding one to your initial base you have already grabbed the resources in that area.
You can deconstruct it and recover your resources then relocate in a new area / biome and creating a resource scanning outpost.
On that note though I cannot recall if you can remove the upgrade modules and recover those, would have to jump in game to check that

starkaos

Building a Scanning Room HUD chip and equipping it allows you to see all the nearby resources of the selected resource. So trying to find sandstone deposits for Silver is not a problem with a Scanner Room. Also, building a temporary base with a Scanner Room by a wreck allows you to see all the fragments in the wreck provided it is set to scan for fragments.

Niil945

Thanks for the feedback folks. I was aware I could disassemble and move it, haven't done it yet as the effort to build a scan room, power it, etc. isn't worth the time when I can scour the area it would cover without having to do that in prettymuch the same timeframe. Particularly when some of the locations I want to scan don't have easy access to power without dragging a bunch of resources along to put up a nuclear/bioreactor. I have the HUD chip and I can see how it would be useful if the scan range were worth it. My question wasn't so much about what it does now, so much as whether the dev's have posted anything or commented anywhere regarding the range and/or functionality changes or improvements they have in mind for it. If they've said they're happy with the range as is, great...I'm content to simply dismantle it and not bother using it, but that's the information I'm looking for. If they've said they're going to review it later or mentioned ideas they have for it, cool, that's also information I'm looking for. As it is though I just don't feel it's worth the resources and time to me is all and I was hoping that someone might have read some dev feedback/commentary about it that I haven't been able to find. I know other people may like it and that's cool. Early on I was trying to use it to provide some direction for me to go aside from aimlessly exploring and the range limitation means it doesn't work that way. I tried to avoid looking things up when I was hunting for a specific resource or fragment but there's only so long I could entertain myself just wandering to see what I stumbled across. I was hoping the scanner room was that in-game way of pointing me in the direction I needed to go as opposed to tabbing and googling it. It's immersion breaking, particularly when playing in beautiful underwater world and I'd rather enjoy the experience all in game if possible.

0x6A7232

Niil945 wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback folks. I was aware I could disassemble and move it, haven't done it yet as the effort to build a scan room, power it, etc. isn't worth the time when I can scour the area it would cover without having to do that in prettymuch the same timeframe. Particularly when some of the locations I want to scan don't have easy access to power without dragging a bunch of resources along to put up a nuclear/bioreactor. I have the HUD chip and I can see how it would be useful if the scan range were worth it. My question wasn't so much about what it does now, so much as whether the dev's have posted anything or commented anywhere regarding the range and/or functionality changes or improvements they have in mind for it. If they've said they're happy with the range as is, great...I'm content to simply dismantle it and not bother using it, but that's the information I'm looking for. If they've said they're going to review it later or mentioned ideas they have for it, cool, that's also information I'm looking for. As it is though I just don't feel it's worth the resources and time to me is all and I was hoping that someone might have read some dev feedback/commentary about it that I haven't been able to find. I know other people may like it and that's cool. Early on I was trying to use it to provide some direction for me to go aside from aimlessly exploring and the range limitation means it doesn't work that way. I tried to avoid looking things up when I was hunting for a specific resource or fragment but there's only so long I could entertain myself just wandering to see what I stumbled across. I was hoping the scanner room was that in-game way of pointing me in the direction I needed to go as opposed to tabbing and googling it. It's immersion breaking, particularly when playing in beautiful underwater world and I'd rather enjoy the experience all in game if possible.

Hop on Discord and ask them. Obraxis and Cory Strader are usually pretty active, if you @message them and wait patiently, usually they answer if they're online. (See my signature below ▼ for a link to the Discord server.)

Niil945

Oh nice, thanks! I read a post where someone commented about Discord and I didn't know what it was so I glossed it over. Will check it out and post here if I find out anything.

narfblat

They plan to make the scanner more useful, according to Trello roadmap

starkaos

narfblat wrote: »

They plan to make the scanner more useful, according to Trello roadmap

They still need to fix the Range and Speed upgrades and do something with the central console. Being able to expand the range of the map, able to zoom in and out, and rotate the map would be a start. Being able to create a 3D map of all explored areas by the PDA and camera drones would be a long term goal. Could add an achievement for mapping the entire area.

Niil945

Yep, I saw it on the roadmap but wasn't sure what they had in mind for it. I hopped on the Discord as suggested and asked Cory. He was kind enough to get back to me today on it and said that the scanning room isn't functioning as they'd like it to with the range being one of the main things they want to improve. He also alluded to other things they'd like to do with it but didn't get into any specifics, though he did say there were some technical hurdles to how they wanted to polish it. He confirmed that the pass in March on the roadmap is the tentative date they'd like to tackle it. Very cool to have an open line of communication with the Devs, particularly with how swamped they must be all the time since it's still early access.

Edit: Interesting. I looked before and saw the Scanner Room listed but didn't see any details, but the link posted above actually says succinctly what Cory told me. Not sure what I was looking at before, I'll have to try to be more thorough when going through Trello.