Minor adjustment to the Multipurpose Room unlock
Tarkannen
North Carolina Join Date: 2016-08-15 Member: 221304Members
North Carolina Join Date: 2016-08-15 Member: 221304Members
By now we all know the trials and tribulations of the MP Room - for the longest time it was included in the survivor's PDA as a basic crafting recipe, but then it was changed to where you had to scan a pre-existing Room in order to unlock it. Now while that decision does make exploration more of a top priority, currently it means just a quick trip to the Floating Island or the Jellyshroom Caves instantly grants access to make it. In turn it makes a lot of the early game stress of base management null, as you can quickly build MP Room-exclusive items such as the Reactors or Water Filtration Machines much sooner.
My proposal is to make it so that scanning one MP Room only unlocks 1/5 of the recipe to create them (three on the Mountain Island and two in the JSC). This gives the other MP Rooms in the world more of a reason to exist and makes it more of a necessity to explore. Also, it seems weird that smaller appliances like the Reactors and Chargers need multiple fragments to unlock while a much larger construct only takes just one. It could be argued that the appliances are more complex as opposed to the simpler MP Room, but consider this: The MP Room has to accommodate multiple exclusive appliances; that's ostensibly not something as simple as plug-and-play, even in the world of Subnautica. I would counter-argue that such a complex building needs more than one scan to be able to recreate it, given its flexibility status.
By scouring one area for a base, it makes trips to other bases less exciting as you have fewer things to scan and unlock; why even visit those bases?Maybe more scans for the Observatory, Bulkhead and Spotlight should be a thing as well. I know personally I was frustrated that I could never find fragments for the Water Filtration Machine for months, until someone here mentioned the machine exists intact in the JSC. I never knew that, as I had no reason to visit that base in the previous updates... outside of mild curiosity. There used to be a Signal you could find in Chests that pointed to the JSC base location, maybe an event could be added so that players could be given a Signal to point them back to that base again?
All in all, I'm not driving to make it more frustrating to build such an important base item. I just feel that it's incredibly easy to unlock them and reap the benefit, all while driving down the purpose of the game: exploration and discovery. I hope that others maybe feel the way I do about this.
My proposal is to make it so that scanning one MP Room only unlocks 1/5 of the recipe to create them (three on the Mountain Island and two in the JSC). This gives the other MP Rooms in the world more of a reason to exist and makes it more of a necessity to explore. Also, it seems weird that smaller appliances like the Reactors and Chargers need multiple fragments to unlock while a much larger construct only takes just one. It could be argued that the appliances are more complex as opposed to the simpler MP Room, but consider this: The MP Room has to accommodate multiple exclusive appliances; that's ostensibly not something as simple as plug-and-play, even in the world of Subnautica. I would counter-argue that such a complex building needs more than one scan to be able to recreate it, given its flexibility status.
By scouring one area for a base, it makes trips to other bases less exciting as you have fewer things to scan and unlock; why even visit those bases?Maybe more scans for the Observatory, Bulkhead and Spotlight should be a thing as well. I know personally I was frustrated that I could never find fragments for the Water Filtration Machine for months, until someone here mentioned the machine exists intact in the JSC. I never knew that, as I had no reason to visit that base in the previous updates... outside of mild curiosity. There used to be a Signal you could find in Chests that pointed to the JSC base location, maybe an event could be added so that players could be given a Signal to point them back to that base again?
All in all, I'm not driving to make it more frustrating to build such an important base item. I just feel that it's incredibly easy to unlock them and reap the benefit, all while driving down the purpose of the game: exploration and discovery. I hope that others maybe feel the way I do about this.
Comments
Maybe only 3 scans though, unless there are more fragments. Otherwise you'll have to explore almost entire topside of the map for an important room. I remember my initial frustration at having a Vehicle Upgrade Console Blueprint before i even knew what a Moonpool was. I could see that happening if not well implemented.
Maybe a PDA message if a piece can't be scanned again. Something like "Blueprint gathered; additional data needed"?
During the second run, I only went there again when I receive the signal.
See ? That's the point, you rush the MP room. A new player won't.
And why 1 scan for the room ? Well, it is not destroyed by the crash, except a bit of degradation, it is quite intact.
@dork42 I originally thought of just three in keeping with the Seamoth, but then that just leads to the same bottleneck we have now. There's two MP Rooms in the JSC base, but three MP Rooms on the Mountain Island (the two mountaintop bases and the single one with the Lantern Trees) - so needing three to unlock the MP Room would be accomplished by visiting the Mountain Island first... which defeats my proposal to begin with
I had briefly considered adding the base in the Deep Grand Reef (it has three more MP Rooms in its design) but honestly that's so much trouble to gain access there as it is; if you can make it there safely then likely you don't need the MP Room at that point (either with 'corridor bases' or the Cyclops). So I was thinking that five would be a good number, although four would still force going to both the Mountain Island and JSC bases to unlock the structures. Also my request to add more scans for the Bulkhead, Spotlight and Observatory would make visiting those bases more viable as a necessity as well.
I think we have a misunderstanding. My question isn't in regards to knowing how much of the MP room blueprint would've been collected, but how to tell if a scannable MP room has already been scanned (because scanning the same MP room multiple times defeats the purpose of your proposal). Like, say the MP room covered by a landslide on the island: how are you supposed to easily tell your 33% scan comes from there and if you want more you've got to look elsewhere?
Well, that's kind of the thing. The first time around new players try to process and learn how everything works. When we get the MP Room unlocked and see how nice and big it is compared to cramped corridors, most players try their best to get that unlocked first on the next new game we start. You're right, a new player won't try to rush unlocking it... but I would guess that more than often most others will strive to get it even before their Seamoth or even Seaglide. (I fully admit to that myself, lol)
And yeah, Degassi equipment like the MP Room, Bulkhead, Spotlight and Water Filtration Machine only need one scan, presumably because they're intact if not weathered. But why is that the case? It would add more need for exploration and survival if multiple scans are needed in more locations. And then there's the case for equipment like the Power Transfer fragment and the Light Stick fragment, damaged equipment that only need one fragment scanned to unlock (I guess they're just slightly damaged?)
I'm not saying all this to point out flaws or anything, I just feel that these other items should need more scans to unlock them. It adds a sense of progression and accomplishment, when you find that last item you need to unlock the thing you want to build so badly... why not do the same for these "one and done" base items?
Hmm yeah, I hadn't considered that notion really. But there is a solution, I think! The scanning system can keep track of which items have been scanned and what hasn't, with the bouncy "scanner" icon that appears at the bottom right of applicable targets. That's nothing new, as it's been that way since I have been playing. However, the more recent update has changed that behavior slightly. As far as scanning for unlockable technology goes, before now if you completed a recipe the bouncy corner tooltip would not show up anymore, but now it bounces on a target even if you've already unlocked it. The same go for lifeforms as well; if you've scanned a fish like the Peeper the tooltip won't bounce, but if a Peeper infected with Carar swims by, the tooltip will bounce again.
So the game engine has a way to detect which items are and aren't scannable, and the game registers already built structures as fragments when scanned (that's shown on the wiki page for Fragments). So there should be a way to set flags for each structure, so that if one is scanned its fragment "disappears" and can't be scanned again - the same way that it happens now (If you've unlocked the MP Room then it can no longer be scanned anymore). Whether this can be changed in a practical way is up to the developers, but I still hope it can be done.