kingkumacancels Work: distracted by Dwarf FortressJoin Date: 2015-09-25Member: 208137Members
INCOMING TRANSMISSION... ... (I'm writing all subsequent posts like this from now on)
The sea treader's path is the copper motherlode. Each step they take, they make an outcrop. The outcrops seem to give copper 2/3 of the time, and silver the other 1/3.
To counter the "people skipping the lost river", they could use either the red or white (preferably red) unused precursor keys to unlock the thermal generator's blue artifact room. The red artifact could be somewhere in the SRF, (maybe in the room with the warper parts and data bank or the fish tank with the giant biter), allowing people to still use the crash zone passage, but you have to visit the LR at least once. This way, people don't skip it and head straight for the PTPG. Remember, you can visit most areas in the lost river in a seamoth.
As my bit for the "turn of the engine" thing, I don't take my cyclops into the deeper areas. That's what I use the PRAWN for. And if you're wondering how I manage to get to the ALZ and back in a PRAWN - I just build my base next to the QEP and let the teleporters do the grunt work.
...
That being said, I'm actually not sure of the engine on/off thing, especially if I'm in really dangerous territory with Leviathans and my turning it on to move draws them in before I can hit Silent Running. I like that smaller creatures like the sharks pretty much can't damage the thing anymore, but now I'm torn between whether or not it encourages you to be smart about where you park the Cyclops or just a big hassle all the way around.
It's incredible easy as well as counterintuitive, so probably only a minority of players is aware of it. But the thing is, that even when you are under full attack, you can simply turn off the engine and immediately all attacks will stop. Furthermore you can cam view your surrounding with engines off and simply wait until your attackers are far away to easily restart engines and drive off to safety with slow or normal speed and no other help. It's even possibly to drive while watching a following attacker through rear cams to turn the engine off before he comes close. So you don't need decoys, shield or silent running at all. And no driving skill too. Just doing the unintuitive miracle of engine stop and go.
It's incredible easy as well as counterintuitive, so probably only a minority of players is aware of it. But the thing is, that even when you are under full attack, you can simply turn off the engine and immediately all attacks will stop. Furthermore you can cam view your surrounding with engines off and simply wait until your attackers are far away to easily restart engines and drive off to safety with slow or normal speed and no other help. It's even possibly to drive while watching a following attacker through rear cams to turn the engine off before he comes close. So you don't need decoys, shield or silent running at all. And no driving skill too. Just doing the unintuitive miracle of engine stop and go.
Except that I'm talking about the areas that are literally filled with enemies, like the LR, ILZ or ALZ - places like that, there's really not going to ever be any such point where the enemies (especially the Sea Dragon) will be far away enough to even turn the engines on safely, let alone drive off safely. In those areas, you'd very much need to have decoys, shields, silent running, driving skill or even all the above to get by - especially considering you're seemingly one of the most skilled players (or at least based on the fact that the feats you claim to do easily, I've yet to see anyone say the same of XD ). That's why these aspects need to be balanced better - one of which, in my opinion, is how the Cyclops' power automatically shuts off every single time you leave it (or at least last I checked).
The sea treader's path is the copper motherlode. Each step they take, they make an outcrop. The outcrops seem to give copper 2/3 of the time, and silver the other 1/3.
To counter the "people skipping the lost river", they could use either the red or white (preferably red) unused precursor keys to unlock the thermal generator's blue artifact room. The red artifact could be somewhere in the SRF, (maybe in the room with the warper parts and data bank or the fish tank with the giant biter), allowing people to still use the crash zone passage, but you have to visit the LR at least once. This way, people don't skip it and head straight for the PTPG. Remember, you can visit most areas in the lost river in a seamoth.
As my bit for the "turn of the engine" thing, I don't take my cyclops into the deeper areas. That's what I use the PRAWN for. And if you're wondering how I manage to get to the ALZ and back in a PRAWN - I just build my base next to the QEP and let the teleporters do the grunt work.
Well, that's all well and good for people who aren't going into the game blind, or have been at it for a while... but what about all those that are new, going in blind or simply don't want to spoil themselves with online walkthroughs, the forums, etc? Those people aren't going to know about the Sea Treader's path - it's well off the beaten path for those who don't already know about it. Even those that do know are still going to be hurting for the stuff in the early hours of the game, back before they have the vehicles necessary to even explore that deep down, let alone discover the path and start harvesting.
That being said, that's actually a very good idea regarding the keys - rather than just restricting the pathways down to the ILZ out of forced direction, it would feel more realistic if you have to visit every base at least once to get the needed keys for the next one in order.
As for not taking the Cyclops down there, that's kind of my point about it's accessibility - the thing shouldn't feel so inconvenient as to make building a whole 'nother base the more appealing option. By all accounts, the Cyclops was designed to be how you get down through the LZ and to the ILZ while the PRAWN was meant for the ALZ - especially since relying on the teleporters is only possible after you make it to the Prison.
It's incredible easy as well as counterintuitive, so probably only a minority of players is aware of it. But the thing is, that even when you are under full attack, you can simply turn off the engine and immediately all attacks will stop. Furthermore you can cam view your surrounding with engines off and simply wait until your attackers are far away to easily restart engines and drive off to safety with slow or normal speed and no other help. It's even possibly to drive while watching a following attacker through rear cams to turn the engine off before he comes close. So you don't need decoys, shield or silent running at all. And no driving skill too. Just doing the unintuitive miracle of engine stop and go.
Except that I'm talking about the areas that are literally filled with enemies, like the LR, ILZ or ALZ - places like that, there's really not going to ever be any such point where the enemies (especially the Sea Dragon) will be far away enough to even turn the engines on safely, let alone drive off safely. In those areas, you'd very much need to have decoys, shields, silent running, driving skill or even all the above to get by - especially considering you're seemingly one of the most skilled players (or at least based on the fact that the feats you claim to do easily, I've yet to see anyone say the same of XD ). That's why these aspects need to be balanced better - one of which, in my opinion, is how the Cyclops' power automatically shuts off every single time you leave it (or at least last I checked).
...
In the last stable only leviathans should damage the Cyclops considerably and in the last experimental sharks no longer damage the Cyclops. In all versions only the leviathans do matter when it gets to damage. And usually you never face more than a single leviathan. (To make sure you shouldn't start a very old game with the latest game versions, as this could carry over unexpected damage)
As I said, you don't need special skills, just the skill not to panic and keep a cool head. You can watch the leviathan roaming around your sub with the cams until he is at the edge of cam perception AND starts to turn away from you (wait for that moment). Then you just have to press escape (not E) to return to your cockpit view and repower the engines and then switch back to the cam to watch the leviathan while you can now drive the Cyclops in this mode. If the leviathan immediately returns you should still have about 10 secs before he gets back into range. I usually have that much time and use it to drive back out of leviathan range (usually by driving backwards to avoid turning time).
In the last stable only leviathans should damage the Cyclops considerably and in the last experimental sharks no longer damage the Cyclops. In all versions only the leviathans do matter when it gets to damage. And usually you never face more than a single leviathan. (To make sure you shouldn't start a very old game with the latest game versions, as this could carry over unexpected damage)
And the DRG, LR, ILZ and ALZ all have Leviathans - the Ghost Leviathan now spawns in the first two and the Sea Dragon is in the last two, so you're guaranteed to meet them four times at least. And the smaller enemies can still hassle you even without the Sea Dragon's huge aggro range.
As I said, you don't need special skills, just the skill not to panic and keep a cool head. You can watch the leviathan roaming around your sub with the cams until he is at the edge of cam perception AND starts to turn away from you (wait for that moment). Then you just have to press escape (not E) to return to your cockpit view and repower the engines and then switch back to the cam to watch the leviathan while you can now drive the Cyclops in this mode. If the leviathan immediately returns you should still have about 10 secs before he gets back into range. I usually have that much time and use it to drive back out of leviathan range (usually by driving backwards to avoid turning time).
And again I say, your idea of that skill seems to be well and beyond most of the other players here - much of the time, people describe themselves has having basically reacted much like Markiplier does; in complete terror from the abruptness of it. For the rest of us actual, normal human beings, what you're saying is much easier said than actually done - and much more nervewracking to do. Hell, some might even call it patronizing of you to say this stuff as if the rest of us can just follow your lead (and I don't mean that to be mean; I'm just trying to point out that acting like everyone should be capable of the exact same things as you isn't exactly realistic).
@The08MetroidMan
Ok, then just take my posts as some advices how to best react when meeting the terror of the deep. As I said, it's really unintuitive and that probably prevents almost everyone from doing it like that.
Probably the main reason why I'd call it no good stealth. Who would just play dead when getting attacked and assume it could ever work?
I'd pledge for more realistic or immersive alternatives:
The Cyclops behaving like a squid or octopus releasing ink: creates an ink pseudomorph as a decoy to buy some time while the squid can escape. In the game we could release a decoy, but that decoy seems not to buy you the necessary 15-30 secs to turn your sub and get out of range. It's just a beacon that gets destroyed much sooner and by any predator that catches it. So the devs should improve those decoys.
Improved Cyclops maneuverability with a bit strafing and much shorter turning times. Probably coupled with flank speed as an emergency maneuver button. In this mode strafing should be allowed and turning should take place in about 5-10 secs. Engines shouldn't overheat for about 20-30 secs, which is the estimated escape time maneuver. Flank speed itself should take you quickly out of range and a overheat value bar should be displayed to signal the player the time he can do this maneuver. TL;DR: Flank speed should turn the Cyclops into a Seamoth for that time.
Safe Haven alternatives should be created. The Cyclops has no natural place to be safe from a leviathan and this is the reason for this engine off thing that creates a safe haven at anytime. If certain targets like the PCF or TPG would have Precursor build places that act as leviathan shields and thus be safe havens to reach, all the player had to do is to reach that safe haven or escape out of the leviathan's reach.
I still think that silent running should be improved and made a sound dampening device that can be coupled with ship speed noise levels. Because the aggro range based on noise now seems to work. It should be a Precursor tech to be found and work for at least 30 secs to reduce noise and thus allow sneaking around a leviathan for some time.
TL;DR: Mainly strengthening the alternatives to engine off. Most people seem to panic anyway and don't think of turning the engines off, thus the alternatives are better fit for natural panic behaviour and even more realistic and immersive. The devs just have to really strengthen them and create these alternative safe havens at special places in the game. A simple Precursor platform should do - it doesn't have to be a full Precursor sub moonpool.
The feedback for silent running, shield and decoy use, as well as flank speed overheat time is extremely bad. You don't get any display that tells you when it's getting near the end or is finished. There is no progress bar showing you how much time of the effect is left. The only progress bar visible to you is the cooldown time for reactivating and that is far less of value as the effect max time bar or the overheat progression bar. The devs really should improve this as well as merging the cockpit HUD with the cam view to allow information flow while driving in cam mode.
I would really like to get info on how long my shield lasts, my decoy will work, the engine heat in flank speed mode is progressing or silent running is working for how long. It's even more important in testing than in real gameplay. How can I tell the devs that some time is too short or too long if I can't get exact feedback values? How will I tell the devs that a decoy, shield or silent running isn't much of a use if I can never know exactly because I always have to guess as the info display isn't there?
I never turn the engine off, really. I just stay out of the way.
A bit difficult for a leviathan that is faster than the Cyclops. Are you sure it wasn't luck or did you resort to silent running which is now quite long? (I could do this several times but sometimes I would need to resort to either engines off or silent running)
And if you observed a leviathan enough to know its roaming path enough to bypass him, the question is if it's realistic and ok for an animal to travel deterministically like a robot, so you can be always sure to know where he is? It shouldn't be possible to avoid a leviathan that is faster than your sub.
Or maybe you use a graphic setting that always lets you see a sea dragon, even if it's at the other end of the big lava cave? Because then you can really have a good chance of bypassing the dragon.
Just saying, I'm not participating to this stealth debate because my ideas ask for new features whereas you try to work with minimal change.
- "Safe Haven Alternative" -> I would rather make the haven a different kind of 'threat', by that I mean management. You get your safe haven, but you have to maintain it or it is limited in time.
- "Fire from overheating shouldn't happen so quickly" -> to me the problem lies on how it threaten you, it have to be something you CAN let happen and then repair the effect later.
- How long the decoy work and how agile the Cyclops is, are interesting levers but if you have to deal with 5-10 seconds interval between choice in a vehicle that is only balanced/fun because it maneuver slowly, in the 20s mark, then it's the gameplay that must spread choices at interval beyond 20s.
And I can't respect the rules I gave here without inevitably changing a lot.
It would be more than how long last the decoy/silent running, silent running itself wouldn't be a mode for me, more like a button that put everything to the lowest sound setting. Even the "engine on/off" could change, as to me an electric engine DON'T need idle mode. I would rather use the button for a features that fit the interval time requirement. Like how the decoy would have control, even just a On/Off.
And that was just for the "silent running", the too easy safe haven/fire damage ask for other requirement.
So having said that, I will go silent again and cruise to my destination while I leave my noisy decoy above
Probably the main reason why I'd call it no good stealth. Who would just play dead when getting attacked and assume it could ever work?
Anybody who remembers these things are animals that might not even see the same spectrums as we do; if they rely on ultraviolet/light-sensitivity like the Bonesharks or echolocation/sonar like the Reapers (which we learn via scan-data), or how the Crabsquids and Ampeels probably hunt by sensing electrical fields, I personally think it'd actually be a relatively safe bet to think they'll be blinded by playing dead. Hence why I argued normal stealth from other stealth games wouldn't properly translate here.
I'd pledge for more realistic or immersive alternatives:
The Cyclops behaving like a squid or octopus releasing ink: creates an ink pseudomorph as a decoy to buy some time while the squid can escape. In the game we could release a decoy, but that decoy seems not to buy you the necessary 15-30 secs to turn your sub and get out of range. It's just a beacon that gets destroyed much sooner and by any predator that catches it. So the devs should improve those decoys.
Improved Cyclops maneuverability with a bit strafing and much shorter turning times. Probably coupled with flank speed as an emergency maneuver button. In this mode strafing should be allowed and turning should take place in about 5-10 secs. Engines shouldn't overheat for about 20-30 secs, which is the estimated escape time maneuver. Flank speed itself should take you quickly out of range and a overheat value bar should be displayed to signal the player the time he can do this maneuver. TL;DR: Flank speed should turn the Cyclops into a Seamoth for that time.
Safe Haven alternatives should be created. The Cyclops has no natural place to be safe from a leviathan and this is the reason for this engine off thing that creates a safe haven at anytime. If certain targets like the PCF or TPG would have Precursor build places that act as leviathan shields and thus be safe havens to reach, all the player had to do is to reach that safe haven or escape out of the leviathan's reach.
I still think that silent running should be improved and made a sound dampening device that can be coupled with ship speed noise levels. Because the aggro range based on noise now seems to work. It should be a Precursor tech to be found and work for at least 30 secs to reduce noise and thus allow sneaking around a leviathan for some time.
It might just be simpler to make the decoy tougher overall, though, rather than having the Cyclops release ink-clouds. Another possibility is decoy-torpedos for the Seamoth or PRAWN - fire the missile off in opposite direction and watch the predator chase after it while you get back in the sub, start it up and break for it. The biggest weakness of the decoy, after all, is that it launches vertically right above the sub rather than laterally or horizontally.
IDK about it ever becoming as fast as the Seamoth, but better turning times is something I could get behind.
The idea of a safe-dock actually sounds a good premise; the existence of the Cyclops-sized Moonpool in the Array/Gun proves the Precursors must have had vehicles of equal size.
Silent Running doesn't strike me as something that could, let alone should, be Precursor-exclusive - if the sub was designed for exploring unknown worlds, sound-dampening as a precaution against hostile fauna seems like it'd be a must-have feature. That being said, there's definite merit to your idea - instead of being needed to build it, maybe finding Precursor-dampening tech could be an upgrade module for the base Silent Running to improve it.
TL;DR: Mainly strengthening the alternatives to engine off. Most people seem to panic anyway and don't think of turning the engines off, thus the alternatives are better fit for natural panic behaviour and even more realistic and immersive. The devs just have to really strengthen them and create these alternative safe havens at special places in the game. A simple Precursor platform should do - it doesn't have to be a full Precursor sub moonpool.
I think most people don't think of shutting the engine off because they know there'll be several seconds where they're vulnerable trying to turn it back on again, thereby getting terrified of whether or not they can switch it on again before the Leviathan comes back. Than again, as you have already noted, a lot of that paranoia would probably be mitigated if there were reliable progress bars and timers on the Cyclops' HUD to show how long something takes to use or has left in it's usage.
Seems I have to use max settings as there is no separate distance viewing slider like in other games. Yes, tested and now it's better. Thanx.
I hope the devs will opt performance for long range viewing those fast leviathans or at least they should increase the creature radar range, so it will be possible to sneak around them.
...
- "Safe Haven Alternative" -> I would rather make the haven a different kind of 'threat', by that I mean management. You get your safe haven, but you have to maintain it or it is limited in time.
- "Fire from overheating shouldn't happen so quickly" -> to me the problem lies on how it threaten you, it have to be something you CAN let happen and then repair the effect later.
- How long the decoy work and how agile the Cyclops is, are interesting levers but if you have to deal with 5-10 seconds interval between choice in a vehicle that is only balanced/fun because it maneuver slowly, in the 20s mark, then it's the gameplay that must spread choices at interval beyond 20s.
And I can't respect the rules I gave here without inevitably changing a lot.
It would be more than how long last the decoy/silent running, silent running itself wouldn't be a mode for me, more like a button that put everything to the lowest sound setting. Even the "engine on/off" could change, as to me an electric engine DON'T need idle mode. I would rather use the button for a features that fit the interval time requirement. Like how the decoy would have control, even just a On/Off.
And that was just for the "silent running", the too easy safe haven/fire damage ask for other requirement.
...
Your safe haven seems to be something like a stealth field that draws massive energy to uphold. I already made this suggestion somewhere else.
I always install the fire suppression system for emergency cases. So I can relax if a leviathan or flank speed gives me too much fire. But an engine heat bar and a fire progress display right at the cockpit would be far better.
Decoys really work bad. Tested it and the Sea Dragon can completely ignore it and still attack your sub. That's not how emergency decoys should work. If they only work if you turn off engines or run silent they are useless, because then you don't even need the decoys and as long as the leviathans don't hunt for the decoy while you drive they're useless too.
Silent running is too powerful if engines off already makes the Cyclops untargetable. But they now last for 30 secs and that's a running time perfectly fit for an escape maneuver matching the lazyness of the Cyclops movement. So I think silent running only needs to change into a sound dampening mode and the rest would be fine. Maybe a progress bar to show you when the effect will end rather than when the cooldown ends would be better. Maybe all cooldown progress displays should include a second marker displaying the working limit too.
Anybody who remembers these things are animals that might not even see the same spectrums as we do; if they rely on ultraviolet/light-sensitivity like the Bonesharks or echolocation/sonar like the Reapers (which we learn via scan-data), or how the Crabsquids and Ampeels probably hunt by sensing electrical fields, I personally think it'd actually be a relatively safe bet to think they'll be blinded by playing dead. Hence why I argued normal stealth from other stealth games wouldn't properly translate here.
Creatures with echolocation or sight shouldn't be fooled by playing dead. And especially not while they already attack the target if they tend to eat their prey and not act like the Warper soldiers who only need to kill and not eat. But the game just uses a simple mechanism and triggers the Cyclops untargetable with engines off, no matter what creature with which senses is attacking and even while under attack. That's my main annoyance and probably done because the devs can offer no "safe haven" as an alternative, escpecially near the PCF and TPG.
It might just be simpler to make the decoy tougher overall, though, rather than having the Cyclops release ink-clouds. Another possibility is decoy-torpedos for the Seamoth or PRAWN - fire the missile off in opposite direction and watch the predator chase after it while you get back in the sub, start it up and break for it. The biggest weakness of the decoy, after all, is that it launches vertically right above the sub rather than laterally or horizontally.
...
The Decoy system as it works is a complete failure. Usually there can be 2 kind of decoys. One decoy type is placable to lure a leviathan away from its path so you could bypass him meanwhile. This type of decoy can be seen in most movies and is even widely used in reality to bypass guards and even animals. But it's not used in the game. The second type that is used in the game is an emergency escape decoy that is fired when you get targeted to mislead the attacker and buy you escape time.
Unfortunately here the devs seem to aim a realism like in weponized naval warfare, where timing must be precise for it to work. Because testing it without any timing just lets the Sea Dragon continue to attack your sub and ignore the decoy. I don't get why the devs use this war standart in a peaceful game when they don't like weapons in the game. Of course you could always run silent while the decoy works, but then you won't need the decoy at all, as silent running alone lets you escape with its 30 secs runtime and making zero noise. It would be different if silent running would only dampen sound. Then you would fire a decoy and escape with dampened sound.
In ocean life a squid would use his ink to create a visible ink copy of himself to buy himself time. It's coupled with an extreme flank speed principle of the squid rushing away from his ink decoy in record time. So it's a trifold escape principle. Launch decoy, escape jet speed and then going silent into darkness. The attacker then only find the decoy and nothing else.
In the simplified game for the escape decoy to work, it would have to disallow targeting the sub for about 10-20 secs to give you time to drive backwards in flank speed and then run with low noise out of range. If the player wants to turn the sub (15 secs), the decoy would have to work for about 30 secs or the flank speed should improve turning speed too.
The fact we have now is a very short decoy time and most time the leviathan ignores the decoy if you don't fire it right into the leviathans face. So voting the decoy system I give a 0/5.
I think most people don't think of shutting the engine off because they know there'll be several seconds where they're vulnerable trying to turn it back on again, thereby getting terrified of whether or not they can switch it on again before the Leviathan comes back. Than again, as you have already noted, a lot of that paranoia would probably be mitigated if there were reliable progress bars and timers on the Cyclops' HUD to show how long something takes to use or has left in it's usage.
Yes the info feedback in the Cyclops cockpit mode is terrible. It's like they wanted a multiplayer 3 man crew but then reverted to single player.
My advice if you have those startup problems: You should be able to turn on the engines with the sea dragon at least 3 secs away if you wait until the dragon is away a bit. Then you could immediately turn on silent running that lasts for 30 secs now. Enough to almost drive out of the whole cave in standart speed. And then you could just drive halfway out, turn off a second time and repeat if you need more than one escape step.
My experience lets me do all this with just using the cams and engines on/off and switching from slow to standart speed. But you have 15 secs shields and 30 secs silent immunity after turning on engines. The shield is definitively too short for leviathan escape maneuvers, but if you're running the experimental version now the 30 secs silent running should do it.
Your safe haven seems to be something like a stealth field that draws massive energy to uphold. I already made this suggestion somewhere else.
I always install the fire suppression system for emergency cases. So I can relax if a leviathan or flank speed gives me too much fire. But an engine heat bar and a fire progress display right at the cockpit would be far better.
Decoys really work bad. Tested it and the Sea Dragon can completely ignore it and still attack your sub. That's not how emergency decoys should work. If they only work if you turn off engines or run silent they are useless, because then you don't even need the decoys and as long as the leviathans don't hunt for the decoy while you drive they're useless too.
Silent running is too powerful if engines off already makes the Cyclops untargetable. But they now last for 30 secs and that's a running time perfectly fit for an escape maneuver matching the lazyness of the Cyclops movement. So I think silent running only needs to change into a sound dampening mode and the rest would be fine. Maybe a progress bar to show you when the effect will end rather than when the cooldown ends would be better. Maybe all cooldown progress displays should include a second marker displaying the working limit too.
Safe-haven: Even if i was rather open that's not what I implied, btw I'm actually OK with no-engine = safe because the game need it. To tell what I REALLY meant, one of my safe haven would mean "stopping O² production" with a onboard O² storage to be defined, another would be/include to have to be wary of anything aboard that make sound/light (deploying/retrieving subs) or using a Fabricator/power upgrade/etc.
Fire: easier to imagine better but I would still likely have a different synergy with other mechanic. The whole "overheat bar" isn't a solution to me, there shouldn't have any form of timer for this.
Decoy: "my" decoy would be a controlled (reclaimable?) system that make more sound than you would (depending on distance). You would deploy it somewhere (stationary or launched) and activate it with a on/off switch (on the Cyclops interface) to attract hostile to it while you move at lower speed.
So long as you do less noise relative to the decoy, you are safe. (note: retrieving it isn't actually needed to make that idea work, you can have a bar that indicate how long you can still use it)
Silent running: as said, I have no problem with Cyclops being able to stay safe forever, we need that. So MY "silent running" isn't a mode, it's just a button that switch everything to the lowest level of sound.
If a Leviathan was attacking when (my suggestion) go as silent as needed, he'd attack once or two then STOP, because it is an animal who believe he "killed me" and since I can't be eaten it is pointless to continue.
Just to be clear: I have NO PROBLEM WITH 100% SAFE-HAVEN, the game need it, you can have your noise mechanic on other things.
I still think it's a bad idea to suggest things here, there's thousand of solutions but you should just keep defining the problem first (with different point of view), let the dev choose a solution.
Creatures with echolocation or sight shouldn't be fooled by playing dead. And especially not while they already attack the target if they tend to eat their prey and not act like the Warper soldiers who only need to kill and not eat. But the game just uses a simple mechanism and triggers the Cyclops untargetable with engines off, no matter what creature with which senses is attacking and even while under attack. That's my main annoyance and probably done because the devs can offer no "safe haven" as an alternative, escpecially near the PCF and TPG.
If something gives off no sound or, better yet, has a hull composition that actively dampens all sounds (as Silent Running seams to make it do), than echolocation would be fooled playing dead. If something can only see properly in brightly-lit spectrums, than they'd likely be fooled playing dead. If they were dependent on seeing the world through electrical impulses, they'd be fooled by switching everything off and playing dead. And in fact, it might even be moreso if you do it while they're attacking - suddenly having your target vanish like that is disorienting even to thinking humans; how much moreso would it be to an animal that wouldn't be able to pick you up again?
Like I said before, the simple mechanism and triggers work and even make sense in this context because these are simple creatures - hell, the Reaper is specified as having practically no real sense of cognition aside from "seek out, breed and eat", so fooling one of those would be especially easy. The only real iffy part comes from the Sea Dragon, since it's the only Cyclops-damaging creature that we can't tell if it sees differently - but overall, I think it's less that the devs don't or can't offer a safe haven and more that it just makes more sense gameplay/lore-wise for these things to not be all that intuitive against evasion technology.
The Decoy system as it works is a complete failure. Usually there can be 2 kind of decoys. One decoy type is placable to lure a leviathan away from its path so you could bypass him meanwhile. This type of decoy can be seen in most movies and is even widely used in reality to bypass guards and even animals. But it's not used in the game. The second type that is used in the game is an emergency escape decoy that is fired when you get targeted to mislead the attacker and buy you escape time.
Actually, that's not true - you can manually pick up and deploy the decoys by hand rather than loading them into the Cyclops deployment tube. So this measure is in fact used in the game - it's just that the decoy is unilateral in that case. The issue is that the players themselves rarely elect to do this - because you really place a decoy like that with any certainty you'd get away from it's radius and back to the ship before the Leviathan locks onto you instead, though? And I'm not talking about you specifically, given the way normally-difficult tasks seem to be a breeze for you - I mean regular people who panic at the idea of going out with one, doubly-so if they're on Hardcore mode. Couple that with all the other creatures out there that might try to take a bite out of you when you place it, and I personally think most don't find it feasible to do.
Unfortunately here the devs seem to aim a realism like in weponized naval warfare, where timing must be precise for it to work. Because testing it without any timing just lets the Sea Dragon continue to attack your sub and ignore the decoy. I don't get why the devs use this war standart in a peaceful game when they don't like weapons in the game. Of course you could always run silent while the decoy works, but then you won't need the decoy at all, as silent running alone lets you escape with its 30 secs runtime and making zero noise. It would be different if silent running would only dampen sound. Then you would fire a decoy and escape with dampened sound.
Well, there you go, though - that's the big problem in your argument; this isn't actually treated like weaponized navel warfare in the first place, I don't think. This is an exploratory vessel, not a military craft, but in neither instance is there a lack for needing precision in your tasks - hell, operating vehicles at all requires precision at the controls. Deep-sea explorers train just as much as military do on how to operate subs before using them, and they can no more or less afford to be reckless - the idea that a ship designed to explore alien unknown worlds wouldn't require more or less precision than a war-sub feels a misnomer to me. Plus, I also point out the Cyclops was designed for use by a 3-man crew - any single person using it is advised by the PDA to be highly experienced... and we, a simple desk-jocky that likely never had training to even set foot on an alien world, is the one having to manage it. Personally, I'd think a learning curve there makes sense without it ever having to be based on any kind of military tech.
Also, you're forgetting when we have to exit the Cyclops in the PRAWN for some aspects like the ALZ - you can't exactly run silent in an exosuit, so you'd likely need to deploy the decoy to launch the PRAWN with enough leeway to get past the Dragon.
In ocean life a squid would use his ink to create a visible ink copy of himself to buy himself time. It's coupled with an extreme flank speed principle of the squid rushing away from his ink decoy in record time. So it's a trifold escape principle. Launch decoy, escape jet speed and then going silent into darkness. The attacker then only find the decoy and nothing else.
In the simplified game for the escape decoy to work, it would have to disallow targeting the sub for about 10-20 secs to give you time to drive backwards in flank speed and then run with low noise out of range. If the player wants to turn the sub (15 secs), the decoy would have to work for about 30 secs or the flank speed should improve turning speed too.
That feels extremely counterintuitive, though - as I've already pointed out, the creatures of this world don't seem to rely on normal eyesight in the first place, and features like echolocation, ultraviolet, infrared or electrical-sensitivity can all be blocked out by Silent Running's dampening or just shutting the Cyclops off. There'd be literally no reason for the ink-jet to exist in-game. And again, it could be done simply by allowing the decoy launch tube to angle itself or having the option to arm it on the Seamoth or PRAWN. It feels like it'd be unneeded complication. As it stands, again, the only real major flaw I find in the decoys is that you can't choose the angle you launch them in or put a ton of distance between them and your ship, but I think the answers to those issues seem relatively easy to me and don't require a huge amount of work - let alone the complete overall you're suggesting.
My advice if you have those startup problems: You should be able to turn on the engines with the sea dragon at least 3 secs away if you wait until the dragon is away a bit. Then you could immediately turn on silent running that lasts for 30 secs now. Enough to almost drive out of the whole cave in standart speed. And then you could just drive halfway out, turn off a second time and repeat if you need more than one escape step.
My experience lets me do all this with just using the cams and engines on/off and switching from slow to standart speed. But you have 15 secs shields and 30 secs silent immunity after turning on engines. The shield is definitively too short for leviathan escape maneuvers, but if you're running the experimental version now the 30 secs silent running should do it.
There's the whole "your precision is well and above most people's" problem, though XD. Telling me this stuff doesn't help if the capacity to pull it off isn't there.
Blughh... the wall of text posts have reared their ugly heads again!
Honestly please try and cut it down, as I feel that it cuts down on any constructive feedback that other players may have, if they fear getting a full page reply from you that tears into every letter they typed.
It seems to me that the main battle is between long-time players who have had many play-thoughts who want the cyclops to be difficult to use so that they can increase the challange in the game. (Fine but this isn't great for first-time players, or people who dont want to read spoiler guides on the forum or wiki)
The other side are first time players or people who just want the convenience of having a mobile base/home and don't like building multiple bases.
I personally think silent running 2.0 is actually mostly effective. Cutting the engine is an effective strategy for hiding from the above senses. All it needs is a little wor, the decoys should launch behind you instead of above, creatures should be forced to re-target to these, and a few other little things. Fix these and it would be OK
@The08MetroidMan
I feel you are either experienced and teasing me like a troll
or
you are giving me theoretical lections about practical issues I encounter (the uselessness of the decoy) without ever testing it or being able to use it yourself.
If you're too inexperienced you should not be able to test the usefulness of a decoy near leviathans, or you'd have no problems with them. I'm experienced and still can't get those decoys to work like decoys should. So I'm not talking about how useful a decoy theoretical could be, but how it practically fails
@william1134
I'm trying to give some practical problems the system has. If you want some feedback about decoys, see below. I've tested them in the game by myself.
@Timelord_Fred
See below, my practical decoy tests in the Lava Sea Cave
The failure of the decoys:
manually placed decoys work for about 30 secs, so they can't be placed practically to lure leviathans away, because by the time you're back from placement from one side of a cave to the other, they are already gone. Just getting one to place it outside the Cyclops and getting back is already a failure.
a Sea Dragon will ignore a manual placed decoy and still target the player diver instead, even if the decoy is placed right under his nose and between the Sea Dragon and the player.
a Sea Dragon will ignore a fired decoy if the Cyclops is too loud. But if you use any silence tech you don't need a beacon at all, rendering the purpose of the decoy to zero.
a Sea Dragon could ignore a fired decoy if there are other targets around, while other creatures attack the decoy instead. Making its use too random to be much of use.
Right now with these issues you can only use a decoy if you couple it with silent running or maybe shields. Or by firing more than a decoy until it works. But decoys alone seem to unsure to rely on for me and the other alternatives are far more practical and easy to use.
My suggestions for the devs:
Give those beacons a lifetime that lasts until destroyed to allow far placement and luring away creatures as a concept.
Make decoys work only for big creatures or leviathans, to allow specific use. It's no fun to place a decoy for a leviathan that is catched by a shark nearby. Or at least create decoy categories.
If a beacon is closer to a leviathan than the player, it should be strong enough to force the leviathan to switch targeting to the decoy in every case possible.
A decoy should buy the player about a minimum of 5-10 secs time.
Blughh... the wall of text posts have reared their ugly heads again!
Honestly please try and cut it down, as I feel that it cuts down on any constructive feedback that other players may have, if they fear getting a full page reply from you that tears into every letter they typed.
I'm not exactly happy about it either, but it often feels like I have to go deeper in depth than I normally do here, since it often feels like @zetachron is missing parts of my argument otherwise. Plus, much as I dislike talking about it openly, I'm OCD - if I'm wordy and blunt, it's not always something I can help. That's the whole reason I section off my arguments into quotes - so that people can pick and choose what parts are relevant to read rather than sifting through one huge textwall. It's not perfect, but it's all I've got
I feel you are either experienced and teasing me like a troll
or
you are giving me theoretical lections about practical issues I encounter (the uselessness of the decoy) without ever testing it or being able to use it yourself.
If you're too inexperienced you should not be able to test the usefulness of a decoy near leviathans, or you'd have no problems with them. I'm experienced and still can't get those decoys to work like decoys should. So I'm not talking about how useful a decoy theoretical could be, but how it practically fails
Neither, actually; I'm pointing out that despite any such arguments, I think it doesn't matter either way if it works - the method itself doesn't feel to me personally like it's viable, even if the decoys were completely de-bugged. I also pointed out that the decoys were manually-deployable and that the system we had was a working basis, not that it was completely issue-free. I'm saying that just because the decoys' ability/signal to draw predators is flawed, it doesn't mean the whole thing has to be scrapped and redone.
Please don't call me a troll just because I disagree with you, dude; I may be really blunt, but I try not to be deliberately insulting
manually placed decoys work for about 30 secs, so they can't be placed practically to lure leviathans away, because by the time you're back from placement from one side of a cave to the other, they are already gone. Just getting one to place it outside the Cyclops and getting back is already a failure.
a Sea Dragon will ignore a manual placed decoy and still target the player diver instead, even if the decoy is placed right under his nose and between the Sea Dragon and the player.
a Sea Dragon will ignore a fired decoy if the Cyclops is too loud. But if you use any silence tech you don't need a beacon at all, rendering the purpose of the decoy to zero.
a Sea Dragon could ignore a fired decoy if there are other targets around, while other creatures attack the decoy instead. Making its use too random to be much of use.
Right now with these issues you can only use a decoy if you couple it with silent running or maybe shields. Or by firing more than a decoy until it works. But decoys alone seem to unsure to rely on for me and the other alternatives are far more practical and easy to use.
Personally, that list feels subjective to me;
If you're right in front of the decoy, of course predators are going to lock on to it over you - you've got a scent of tasty flesh; the decoy's cold steel. Hence why I believed that manual deployment in general wasn't a viable means of deployment even if the decoy's signal functioned properly.
Again, if you have to go out to deploy it manually, the thing's probably already focused on your flesh-and-blood scent; it's natural for it to prioritize going after you, as opposed to one cold object launching a cold object making noise.
Actually, one purpose might be to lure the thing away so that it doesn't start zipping towards you the moment Silent Running cuts out - another is distracting it so that you can launch out in the PRAWN and go the opposite direction.
Considering the PRAWN can be damaged by all the smaller creatures, that still sounds like a plus to reduce the number of beasties coming after you by any number.
Again, I admit that the decoy's signal behavior needs a fair bit of work. But for the in-game deployment of the physical device itself, it feels like you're nitpicking it a bit. I fully support the idea of the beacons having a longer lifespan (because 5-10 seconds is way to short for most normal players, BTW), I can fully support having adjustable signal settings to attract certain kinds of creatures (maybe giving the effort of scanning them a more tangible reward than just extra lore for the gameplay-focused players), but things like the decoy forcing a Leviathan off of you if it's already locked onto you doesn't feel as realistic. The whole point of a decoy is to keep them from detecting you in the first place - if it's seen you, drawing it off is going to be way, way harder unless you get something like a "Decoy Signal Upgrade" or whatever as an upgrade.
@The08MetroidMan
I didn't really think you're a troll, but you shouldn't answer practical tests with theoretical maybes, even if you can't test it yourself.
But right now discussion seems to be pointless as I think the experimental version has a bugged decoy handling. For example the decoy at least seems to work with Reaper leviathans, but the Sea Dragon and a lot of other creatures completely ignore it under all possible circumstances. Tested. So as long this is bugged the devs have to rework decoys anyways.
But right now discussion seems to be pointless as I think the experimental version has a bugged decoy handling. For example the decoy at least seems to work with Reaper leviathans, but the Sea Dragon and a lot of other creatures completely ignore it under all possible circumstances. Tested. So as long this is bugged the devs have to rework decoys anyways.
I'd say right now that decoys are broken.
It seems right now Experimental is a stew of bugs. All the power and recharge ones back in June had me last play about June 27. Went on earlier today as a couple of guys on reddit said the Seamoth/PRAWN depth mod bug was back; fixed in June, it is indeed back. There are still power issues in bases.
And I can't move my Cyclops, which is near my base, not hung up on anything, I can turn it, but I can't move or push it. F1 displays says I have velocity but my position doesn't change.
I didn't really think you're a troll, but you shouldn't answer practical tests with theoretical maybes, even if you can't test it yourself.
But again, that's my precise point; your tests don't come across as practical to me, at least not personally. What I'm suggesting isn't "theoretical maybes" - they're fact-based deductions. For instance; if an animal's locked on to you either as a threat or prey, just throwing something new out there isn't suddenly going to make it lose track of you - that's a universal fact in regards aggressive or predatory fauna. Unless you can outright vanish immediately like in Silent Running, or deploy something that would be a tangible alternative like food, than a creature that spots you isn't suddenly going to lose track of you just because you drop a decoy - that's a practical consideration of dealing with wildlife that it doesn't seem like you're accounting for.
Maybe it's just personal opinion (and again, I apologize if my words sound rude at any point), but I think a practical test is based more upon whether an action is practical for the situation/whether or not it would work, not simply whether or not the action can be performed or whether it could ever work in that instance to begin with - a practical test feels to me like it should take into account whether or not the action in question would work in that given situation.
But right now discussion seems to be pointless as I think the experimental version has a bugged decoy handling. For example the decoy at least seems to work with Reaper leviathans, but the Sea Dragon and a lot of other creatures completely ignore it under all possible circumstances. Tested. So as long this is bugged the devs have to rework decoys anyways.
I'd say right now that decoys are broken.
Reapers hunt primarily through echolocation, though, and their data-bank entry flat-out lists them as one of the least intelligent predators in Subnautica - wouldn't it make a certain kind of sense that they out of all other predators would be the easiest to trick with it? Again, if most creatures can see you and are already coming after you before the decoy is placed, they're not going to suddenly veer off afterwords - a decoy's purpose is supposed to be to draw something away without them noticing you; if they've already noticed you, doesn't that defeat the purpose? Again, I don't think it would matter how much the signal power is tested, because I personally don't think manual/hand deployment of the decoys is viable to use. It's bugged for sure in terms of the subs, but for the player manually dropping them himself... I just don't think it'd be realistic for that to work.
Who would just play dead when getting attacked and assume it could ever work?i
I've read that that works with wild rhinos. Unless I was absolutely sure about it, even with rhinos I'd be really careful about betting my life on it. ...
A good real life explanation. Yes it would work if you are inside a vehicle and rhinos can't eat you. But they probably hit you a few times before loosing interest in you and don't stop at once. That's sort of an attack cooldown of a few seconds.
Give the Sea Dragon such an attack cooldown of 2 additional strikes that add 50% Cyclops damage and it would not only be more realistic, but also couldn't be exploited as a "Get out of Jail" free card anymore. Furthermore it could then be a valid safe haven principle, if you can't use it as a free stop and go stealth method.
But we can forget valid creature base attacks then, unless we force stopping air regeneration when power is off. So to make it consistent within gameplay, the Cyclops shouldn't produce air anymore when powered down to play dead.
TL;DR: Two factors for engine off missing for better gameplay:
attack cooldown that allows the leviathan to hit the Cyclops for additional time before it retreats
It seems we soon get Cyclops 3.0 with more modules:
As you usually already need a slot for depth and another for energy optimization and probably another for sonar to see in the dark, there isn't really much left with even more modules coming, so I think this is good.
Swimming through Reaper or Ghost leviathan terrain and releasing the decoy in front of you:
- success, the leviathan grabs the decoy and chases away with it, buying you almost 30 secs
- allows you to not only cross this leviathan terrain, but also do some work while the leviathan is busy taking the decoy far away
- can be fired with the propulsion cannon and from the Prawn propulsion arm with being even more effictive
Swimming through Sea Dragon terrain and releasing the decoy in front of you:
- failure in all possible geometric constellations, the Sea Dragon ignores the decoy and always targets the player
- probably broken and will get fixed later, it doesn't make sense to let decoys fail on the most important leviathan (gameplay view)
Using the decoy through the Cyclops:
- as the range of the decoy is low and must be detected before the leviathan detects anything else, this is like mission impossible
- wrong vertical launch if it works like that. The decoy would have to be released like a torpedo in front of the sub for usability
- conclusion: failure, because no front launch mechanism
Generally the decoys suffer from a very very low attraction range and are completely inable to distract a leviathan once it detected the player. Thus only hand placing is method to work for all kind of players as the vertical Cyclops launch would need superior Cyclops navigation capabilities I don't have.
Overview of potential decoy usage:
decoys for luring leviathans to a certain place: failure due to 30 secs lifetime
decoys for distracting or irritating leviathans, allowing the leviathan to switch prey and the player to escape: not implemented
decoys for luring leviathans away as a front shield: success for hand or propulsion placement
TL;DR:
Right now best decoy use is against Reaper and Ghost leviathans allowing to swim or Prawn through their terrain. Most effective with firing them at the leviathan through the propulsion cannon.
I don't recommend launching the decoy from the Cyclops as you would additionally need silence, but then you don't need any decoy. This might change if noise is only dampened.
A good real life explanation. Yes it would work if you are inside a vehicle and rhinos can't eat you. But they probably hit you a few times before loosing interest in you and don't stop at once. That's sort of an attack cooldown of a few seconds.
Give the Sea Dragon such an attack cooldown of 2 additional strikes that add 50% Cyclops damage and it would not only be more realistic, but also couldn't be exploited as a "Get out of Jail" free card anymore. Furthermore it could then be a valid safe haven principle, if you can't use it as a free stop and go stealth method.
But again, you're talking about something that can see in a way we know. We don't know how most of these deep-sea creatures "see" - and unlike rhinos, vehicles haven't been moving around in their environment long enough to develop those kinds of "safe-check" behaviors like if a rhino knocks against a vehicle.
But we can forget valid creature base attacks then, unless we force stopping air regeneration when power is off. So to make it consistent within gameplay, the Cyclops shouldn't produce air anymore when powered down to play dead.
TL;DR: Two factors for engine off missing for better gameplay:
attack cooldown that allows the leviathan to hit the Cyclops for additional time before it retreats
no air production while engines are off
Not really; between energy generation and water filtration, it's really hard to believe something wouldn't notice, thereby validating creature base attacks. The Cyclops, on the other hand, has only engine noise and air-filtration, both of which are on a hardwired on/off switch. And even if your system were implemented, the devs have been talking about having plants produce oxygen on their own, so you could just put some of them in and there'd still be no issues.
Swimming through Reaper or Ghost leviathan terrain and releasing the decoy in front of you:
- success, the leviathan grabs the decoy and chases away with it, buying you almost 30 secs
- allows you to not only cross this leviathan terrain, but also do some work while the leviathan is busy taking the decoy far away
- can be fired with the propulsion cannon and from the Prawn propulsion arm with being even more effictive
Reapers are the dumbest creatures in the game, though - both lore-wise and behavior-wise - and the Ghost Leviathan uses an AI based off of them that might still be going through change; again, is it really that surprising that they of all creatures would be so single-minded as to easily fool with it?
Swimming through Sea Dragon terrain and releasing the decoy in front of you:
- failure in all possible geometric constellations, the Sea Dragon ignores the decoy and always targets the player
- probably broken and will get fixed later, it doesn't make sense to let decoys fail on the most important leviathan (gameplay view)
Or, again, maybe it's just releasing the decoy right in front of it by hand that's the problem. Nothing suggests they're as single-mindedly dumb as the Reapers. You're basing your tests off of the idea that these creatures all act and respond to the same things - the fact that they all don't strikes me more as being realistic rather than a flaw.
Using the decoy through the Cyclops:
- as the range of the decoy is low and must be detected before the leviathan detects anything else, this is like mission impossible
- wrong vertical launch if it works like that. The decoy would have to be released like a torpedo in front of the sub for usability
- conclusion: failure, because no front launch mechanism
That was something we both already noted was an issue, though; a lack of lateral or horizontal deployment at a great enough range. But that in and of itself doesn't entail the entire decoy signal rigging needs to be scrapped and redone - the only thing that needs to be built from the ground-up are new deployment vectors.
Generally the decoys suffer from a very very low attraction range and are completely inable to distract a leviathan once it detected the player. Thus only hand placing is method to work for all kind of players as the vertical Cyclops launch would need superior Cyclops navigation capabilities I don't have.
Overview of potential decoy usage:
decoys for luring leviathans to a certain place: failure due to 30 secs lifetime
decoys for distracting or irritating leviathans, allowing the leviathan to switch prey and the player to escape: not implemented
decoys for luring leviathans away as a front shield: success for hand or propulsion placement
But again, that's the issue I have with these tests; if a creature detects you, of course the decoy is useless to use in that situation unless the creature is exceedingly stupid (again, like the Reapers). As a result, hand-placing feels like the absolute least viable method to me, because you could never hope to get that close and place it without being detected - if even veteran players have issue, nobody casual is going to have any such luck.
Not really; between energy generation and water filtration, it's really hard to believe something wouldn't notice, thereby validating creature base attacks. The Cyclops, on the other hand, has only engine noise and air-filtration, both of which are on a hardwired on/off switch.
Yes, sure, a turned off base is louder than a turned off submarine. Tell that your children. Oh, wait, a base has no power off switch, my argumentation is doomed.
... the devs have been talking about having plants produce oxygen on their own, so you could just put some of them in and there'd still be no issues.
Where have you learned science? Even alien plants can't produce oxygen out of a vacuum and without energy and function like a perpetuum mobile working on its own forever. Earth plants use photosynthesis, needing carbondioxide (from air), water and light. No air, no plants! Air isn't oxygen.
And of course if plants work like that on the Cyclops, they'd work like that in a base too.
Or, again, maybe it's just releasing the decoy right in front of it by hand that's the problem.
Didn't you read the part where I told that I also used the Propulsion cannon? I did this to make sure that the leviathan wouldn't detect me, but only the decoy. You said you don't want to be a troll. Are you sure with that?
Yes, sure, a turned off base is louder than a turned off submarine. Tell that your children. Oh, wait, a base has no power off switch, my argumentation is doomed.
A turned-off base can be larger, is hardwired into the ground, may optionally possibly have an external thermal power generator and - most importantly - unlike the Cyclops, it doesn't have a hull and/or systems specially designed to dampen noises, a part of it's Silent Running feature. To say nothing of the fact that we don't even know if a base's power can be turned off in such a way - and if it could, that would be the only way to dampen said noises as opposed to the Cyclops' using silent running to dampen the noises without needing to shut off everything.
Again, no offense, but it honestly feels like you're nitpicking some aspects... and being deliberately patronizing in some others
Where have you learned science? Even alien plants can't produce oxygen out of a vacuum and without energy and function like a perpetuum mobile working on its own forever. Earth plants use photosynthesis, needing carbondioxide (from air), water and light. No air, no plants! Air isn't oxygen.
One of their proposed ideas is in fact to have plants produce oxygen by consuming carbon-dioxide, so as to keep o2 in a base even with no power. Also, key word in your sentence is "earth plants".
You know, instead of jumping on me with insinuations that I don't know basic science, you could give me the benefit of a doubt in considering that I'm just reiterating what I've heard about the dev's plans. I mean, @Who_needs_Armor already called out hostility in this thread before - if we're going to disagree, can't it at least be done civilly?
Didn't you read the part where I told that I also used the Propulsion cannon? I did this to make sure that the leviathan wouldn't detect me, but only the decoy. You said you don't want to be a troll. Are you sure with that?
Yes, I did - it just feels like you're missing the part where I told you "if a creature detects you, of course the decoy is useless to use in that situation unless the creature is exceedingly stupid (again, like the Reapers)." Getting close to use the propulsion cannon is still going to be inside the detection radius for any creature that's not a Reaper - you yourself noted the Sea Dragon's aggro range was practically the entire ILZ and ALZ. It also feels like you missed the part where I said it wasn't a reliable or feasible method as opposed to an impossible one, since you're quite possibly the only person who I've seen be skilled enough to make it work in any instance, let alone every one, which isn't guarantee of viability - that would be if anyone in any instance could do it.
Again, please don't call me a troll just because I disagree with you and express skepticism to this.
Okay so im sure its been said, but the silent running 2.0 feature is EXTREMELY dumb.
I was on a submarine for 4 years in the navy and thats just NOT how engines work. You cannot just be "silent" in high speed, and whatever the DEVs think cavitation is they are very confused. you cavitate with speed and pressure. shallow water/high speed = more cavitation Deeper water/slow speed = Less to no cavitation. But these 30 second bursts of quiet make absolutely no sense. rig for silent running is a whole ship condition with speed limitations and non essential system shutdowns, not just a flip of a switch 30 second sound muffle. Lastly, an engine (especially a futuristic one) should be able to run at high speed for quite a while before catching fire. that just doesnt make any sense to me.
P.S. I worked in the engineroom so I kind of know about submarine engines
Comments
The sea treader's path is the copper motherlode. Each step they take, they make an outcrop. The outcrops seem to give copper 2/3 of the time, and silver the other 1/3.
To counter the "people skipping the lost river", they could use either the red or white (preferably red) unused precursor keys to unlock the thermal generator's blue artifact room. The red artifact could be somewhere in the SRF, (maybe in the room with the warper parts and data bank or the fish tank with the giant biter), allowing people to still use the crash zone passage, but you have to visit the LR at least once. This way, people don't skip it and head straight for the PTPG. Remember, you can visit most areas in the lost river in a seamoth.
As my bit for the "turn of the engine" thing, I don't take my cyclops into the deeper areas. That's what I use the PRAWN for. And if you're wondering how I manage to get to the ALZ and back in a PRAWN - I just build my base next to the QEP and let the teleporters do the grunt work.
That's all I've got for now, Kingkuma out.
END TRANSMISSION
It's incredible easy as well as counterintuitive, so probably only a minority of players is aware of it. But the thing is, that even when you are under full attack, you can simply turn off the engine and immediately all attacks will stop. Furthermore you can cam view your surrounding with engines off and simply wait until your attackers are far away to easily restart engines and drive off to safety with slow or normal speed and no other help. It's even possibly to drive while watching a following attacker through rear cams to turn the engine off before he comes close. So you don't need decoys, shield or silent running at all. And no driving skill too. Just doing the unintuitive miracle of engine stop and go.
Except that I'm talking about the areas that are literally filled with enemies, like the LR, ILZ or ALZ - places like that, there's really not going to ever be any such point where the enemies (especially the Sea Dragon) will be far away enough to even turn the engines on safely, let alone drive off safely. In those areas, you'd very much need to have decoys, shields, silent running, driving skill or even all the above to get by - especially considering you're seemingly one of the most skilled players (or at least based on the fact that the feats you claim to do easily, I've yet to see anyone say the same of XD ). That's why these aspects need to be balanced better - one of which, in my opinion, is how the Cyclops' power automatically shuts off every single time you leave it (or at least last I checked).
Well, that's all well and good for people who aren't going into the game blind, or have been at it for a while... but what about all those that are new, going in blind or simply don't want to spoil themselves with online walkthroughs, the forums, etc? Those people aren't going to know about the Sea Treader's path - it's well off the beaten path for those who don't already know about it. Even those that do know are still going to be hurting for the stuff in the early hours of the game, back before they have the vehicles necessary to even explore that deep down, let alone discover the path and start harvesting.
That being said, that's actually a very good idea regarding the keys - rather than just restricting the pathways down to the ILZ out of forced direction, it would feel more realistic if you have to visit every base at least once to get the needed keys for the next one in order.
As for not taking the Cyclops down there, that's kind of my point about it's accessibility - the thing shouldn't feel so inconvenient as to make building a whole 'nother base the more appealing option. By all accounts, the Cyclops was designed to be how you get down through the LZ and to the ILZ while the PRAWN was meant for the ALZ - especially since relying on the teleporters is only possible after you make it to the Prison.
In the last stable only leviathans should damage the Cyclops considerably and in the last experimental sharks no longer damage the Cyclops. In all versions only the leviathans do matter when it gets to damage. And usually you never face more than a single leviathan. (To make sure you shouldn't start a very old game with the latest game versions, as this could carry over unexpected damage)
As I said, you don't need special skills, just the skill not to panic and keep a cool head. You can watch the leviathan roaming around your sub with the cams until he is at the edge of cam perception AND starts to turn away from you (wait for that moment). Then you just have to press escape (not E) to return to your cockpit view and repower the engines and then switch back to the cam to watch the leviathan while you can now drive the Cyclops in this mode. If the leviathan immediately returns you should still have about 10 secs before he gets back into range. I usually have that much time and use it to drive back out of leviathan range (usually by driving backwards to avoid turning time).
And the DRG, LR, ILZ and ALZ all have Leviathans - the Ghost Leviathan now spawns in the first two and the Sea Dragon is in the last two, so you're guaranteed to meet them four times at least. And the smaller enemies can still hassle you even without the Sea Dragon's huge aggro range.
And again I say, your idea of that skill seems to be well and beyond most of the other players here - much of the time, people describe themselves has having basically reacted much like Markiplier does; in complete terror from the abruptness of it. For the rest of us actual, normal human beings, what you're saying is much easier said than actually done - and much more nervewracking to do. Hell, some might even call it patronizing of you to say this stuff as if the rest of us can just follow your lead (and I don't mean that to be mean; I'm just trying to point out that acting like everyone should be capable of the exact same things as you isn't exactly realistic).
Ok, then just take my posts as some advices how to best react when meeting the terror of the deep. As I said, it's really unintuitive and that probably prevents almost everyone from doing it like that.
Probably the main reason why I'd call it no good stealth. Who would just play dead when getting attacked and assume it could ever work?
I'd pledge for more realistic or immersive alternatives:
TL;DR: Mainly strengthening the alternatives to engine off. Most people seem to panic anyway and don't think of turning the engines off, thus the alternatives are better fit for natural panic behaviour and even more realistic and immersive. The devs just have to really strengthen them and create these alternative safe havens at special places in the game. A simple Precursor platform should do - it doesn't have to be a full Precursor sub moonpool.
The feedback for silent running, shield and decoy use, as well as flank speed overheat time is extremely bad. You don't get any display that tells you when it's getting near the end or is finished. There is no progress bar showing you how much time of the effect is left. The only progress bar visible to you is the cooldown time for reactivating and that is far less of value as the effect max time bar or the overheat progression bar. The devs really should improve this as well as merging the cockpit HUD with the cam view to allow information flow while driving in cam mode.
I would really like to get info on how long my shield lasts, my decoy will work, the engine heat in flank speed mode is progressing or silent running is working for how long. It's even more important in testing than in real gameplay. How can I tell the devs that some time is too short or too long if I can't get exact feedback values? How will I tell the devs that a decoy, shield or silent running isn't much of a use if I can never know exactly because I always have to guess as the info display isn't there?
A bit difficult for a leviathan that is faster than the Cyclops. Are you sure it wasn't luck or did you resort to silent running which is now quite long? (I could do this several times but sometimes I would need to resort to either engines off or silent running)
And if you observed a leviathan enough to know its roaming path enough to bypass him, the question is if it's realistic and ok for an animal to travel deterministically like a robot, so you can be always sure to know where he is? It shouldn't be possible to avoid a leviathan that is faster than your sub.
Or maybe you use a graphic setting that always lets you see a sea dragon, even if it's at the other end of the big lava cave? Because then you can really have a good chance of bypassing the dragon.
- "Safe Haven Alternative" -> I would rather make the haven a different kind of 'threat', by that I mean management. You get your safe haven, but you have to maintain it or it is limited in time.
- "Fire from overheating shouldn't happen so quickly" -> to me the problem lies on how it threaten you, it have to be something you CAN let happen and then repair the effect later.
- How long the decoy work and how agile the Cyclops is, are interesting levers but if you have to deal with 5-10 seconds interval between choice in a vehicle that is only balanced/fun because it maneuver slowly, in the 20s mark, then it's the gameplay that must spread choices at interval beyond 20s.
And I can't respect the rules I gave here without inevitably changing a lot.
It would be more than how long last the decoy/silent running, silent running itself wouldn't be a mode for me, more like a button that put everything to the lowest sound setting. Even the "engine on/off" could change, as to me an electric engine DON'T need idle mode. I would rather use the button for a features that fit the interval time requirement. Like how the decoy would have control, even just a On/Off.
And that was just for the "silent running", the too easy safe haven/fire damage ask for other requirement.
So having said that, I will go silent again and cruise to my destination while I leave my noisy decoy above
Anybody who remembers these things are animals that might not even see the same spectrums as we do; if they rely on ultraviolet/light-sensitivity like the Bonesharks or echolocation/sonar like the Reapers (which we learn via scan-data), or how the Crabsquids and Ampeels probably hunt by sensing electrical fields, I personally think it'd actually be a relatively safe bet to think they'll be blinded by playing dead. Hence why I argued normal stealth from other stealth games wouldn't properly translate here.
I think most people don't think of shutting the engine off because they know there'll be several seconds where they're vulnerable trying to turn it back on again, thereby getting terrified of whether or not they can switch it on again before the Leviathan comes back. Than again, as you have already noted, a lot of that paranoia would probably be mitigated if there were reliable progress bars and timers on the Cyclops' HUD to show how long something takes to use or has left in it's usage.
Seems I have to use max settings as there is no separate distance viewing slider like in other games. Yes, tested and now it's better. Thanx.
I hope the devs will opt performance for long range viewing those fast leviathans or at least they should increase the creature radar range, so it will be possible to sneak around them.
Creatures with echolocation or sight shouldn't be fooled by playing dead. And especially not while they already attack the target if they tend to eat their prey and not act like the Warper soldiers who only need to kill and not eat. But the game just uses a simple mechanism and triggers the Cyclops untargetable with engines off, no matter what creature with which senses is attacking and even while under attack. That's my main annoyance and probably done because the devs can offer no "safe haven" as an alternative, escpecially near the PCF and TPG.
The Decoy system as it works is a complete failure. Usually there can be 2 kind of decoys. One decoy type is placable to lure a leviathan away from its path so you could bypass him meanwhile. This type of decoy can be seen in most movies and is even widely used in reality to bypass guards and even animals. But it's not used in the game. The second type that is used in the game is an emergency escape decoy that is fired when you get targeted to mislead the attacker and buy you escape time.
Unfortunately here the devs seem to aim a realism like in weponized naval warfare, where timing must be precise for it to work. Because testing it without any timing just lets the Sea Dragon continue to attack your sub and ignore the decoy. I don't get why the devs use this war standart in a peaceful game when they don't like weapons in the game. Of course you could always run silent while the decoy works, but then you won't need the decoy at all, as silent running alone lets you escape with its 30 secs runtime and making zero noise. It would be different if silent running would only dampen sound. Then you would fire a decoy and escape with dampened sound.
In ocean life a squid would use his ink to create a visible ink copy of himself to buy himself time. It's coupled with an extreme flank speed principle of the squid rushing away from his ink decoy in record time. So it's a trifold escape principle. Launch decoy, escape jet speed and then going silent into darkness. The attacker then only find the decoy and nothing else.
In the simplified game for the escape decoy to work, it would have to disallow targeting the sub for about 10-20 secs to give you time to drive backwards in flank speed and then run with low noise out of range. If the player wants to turn the sub (15 secs), the decoy would have to work for about 30 secs or the flank speed should improve turning speed too.
The fact we have now is a very short decoy time and most time the leviathan ignores the decoy if you don't fire it right into the leviathans face. So voting the decoy system I give a 0/5.
Yes the info feedback in the Cyclops cockpit mode is terrible. It's like they wanted a multiplayer 3 man crew but then reverted to single player.
My advice if you have those startup problems: You should be able to turn on the engines with the sea dragon at least 3 secs away if you wait until the dragon is away a bit. Then you could immediately turn on silent running that lasts for 30 secs now. Enough to almost drive out of the whole cave in standart speed. And then you could just drive halfway out, turn off a second time and repeat if you need more than one escape step.
My experience lets me do all this with just using the cams and engines on/off and switching from slow to standart speed. But you have 15 secs shields and 30 secs silent immunity after turning on engines. The shield is definitively too short for leviathan escape maneuvers, but if you're running the experimental version now the 30 secs silent running should do it.
So long as you do less noise relative to the decoy, you are safe. (note: retrieving it isn't actually needed to make that idea work, you can have a bar that indicate how long you can still use it)
If a Leviathan was attacking when (my suggestion) go as silent as needed, he'd attack once or two then STOP, because it is an animal who believe he "killed me" and since I can't be eaten it is pointless to continue.
Just to be clear: I have NO PROBLEM WITH 100% SAFE-HAVEN, the game need it, you can have your noise mechanic on other things.
I still think it's a bad idea to suggest things here, there's thousand of solutions but you should just keep defining the problem first (with different point of view), let the dev choose a solution.
If something gives off no sound or, better yet, has a hull composition that actively dampens all sounds (as Silent Running seams to make it do), than echolocation would be fooled playing dead. If something can only see properly in brightly-lit spectrums, than they'd likely be fooled playing dead. If they were dependent on seeing the world through electrical impulses, they'd be fooled by switching everything off and playing dead. And in fact, it might even be moreso if you do it while they're attacking - suddenly having your target vanish like that is disorienting even to thinking humans; how much moreso would it be to an animal that wouldn't be able to pick you up again?
Like I said before, the simple mechanism and triggers work and even make sense in this context because these are simple creatures - hell, the Reaper is specified as having practically no real sense of cognition aside from "seek out, breed and eat", so fooling one of those would be especially easy. The only real iffy part comes from the Sea Dragon, since it's the only Cyclops-damaging creature that we can't tell if it sees differently - but overall, I think it's less that the devs don't or can't offer a safe haven and more that it just makes more sense gameplay/lore-wise for these things to not be all that intuitive against evasion technology.
Actually, that's not true - you can manually pick up and deploy the decoys by hand rather than loading them into the Cyclops deployment tube. So this measure is in fact used in the game - it's just that the decoy is unilateral in that case. The issue is that the players themselves rarely elect to do this - because you really place a decoy like that with any certainty you'd get away from it's radius and back to the ship before the Leviathan locks onto you instead, though? And I'm not talking about you specifically, given the way normally-difficult tasks seem to be a breeze for you - I mean regular people who panic at the idea of going out with one, doubly-so if they're on Hardcore mode. Couple that with all the other creatures out there that might try to take a bite out of you when you place it, and I personally think most don't find it feasible to do.
Well, there you go, though - that's the big problem in your argument; this isn't actually treated like weaponized navel warfare in the first place, I don't think. This is an exploratory vessel, not a military craft, but in neither instance is there a lack for needing precision in your tasks - hell, operating vehicles at all requires precision at the controls. Deep-sea explorers train just as much as military do on how to operate subs before using them, and they can no more or less afford to be reckless - the idea that a ship designed to explore alien unknown worlds wouldn't require more or less precision than a war-sub feels a misnomer to me. Plus, I also point out the Cyclops was designed for use by a 3-man crew - any single person using it is advised by the PDA to be highly experienced... and we, a simple desk-jocky that likely never had training to even set foot on an alien world, is the one having to manage it. Personally, I'd think a learning curve there makes sense without it ever having to be based on any kind of military tech.
Also, you're forgetting when we have to exit the Cyclops in the PRAWN for some aspects like the ALZ - you can't exactly run silent in an exosuit, so you'd likely need to deploy the decoy to launch the PRAWN with enough leeway to get past the Dragon.
That feels extremely counterintuitive, though - as I've already pointed out, the creatures of this world don't seem to rely on normal eyesight in the first place, and features like echolocation, ultraviolet, infrared or electrical-sensitivity can all be blocked out by Silent Running's dampening or just shutting the Cyclops off. There'd be literally no reason for the ink-jet to exist in-game. And again, it could be done simply by allowing the decoy launch tube to angle itself or having the option to arm it on the Seamoth or PRAWN. It feels like it'd be unneeded complication. As it stands, again, the only real major flaw I find in the decoys is that you can't choose the angle you launch them in or put a ton of distance between them and your ship, but I think the answers to those issues seem relatively easy to me and don't require a huge amount of work - let alone the complete overall you're suggesting.
There's the whole "your precision is well and above most people's" problem, though XD. Telling me this stuff doesn't help if the capacity to pull it off isn't there.
Honestly please try and cut it down, as I feel that it cuts down on any constructive feedback that other players may have, if they fear getting a full page reply from you that tears into every letter they typed.
It seems to me that the main battle is between long-time players who have had many play-thoughts who want the cyclops to be difficult to use so that they can increase the challange in the game. (Fine but this isn't great for first-time players, or people who dont want to read spoiler guides on the forum or wiki)
The other side are first time players or people who just want the convenience of having a mobile base/home and don't like building multiple bases.
This is of course all my subjective opinion.
I feel you are either experienced and teasing me like a troll
or
you are giving me theoretical lections about practical issues I encounter (the uselessness of the decoy) without ever testing it or being able to use it yourself.
If you're too inexperienced you should not be able to test the usefulness of a decoy near leviathans, or you'd have no problems with them. I'm experienced and still can't get those decoys to work like decoys should. So I'm not talking about how useful a decoy theoretical could be, but how it practically fails
@william1134
I'm trying to give some practical problems the system has. If you want some feedback about decoys, see below. I've tested them in the game by myself.
@Timelord_Fred
See below, my practical decoy tests in the Lava Sea Cave
The failure of the decoys:
Right now with these issues you can only use a decoy if you couple it with silent running or maybe shields. Or by firing more than a decoy until it works. But decoys alone seem to unsure to rely on for me and the other alternatives are far more practical and easy to use.
My suggestions for the devs:
I'm not exactly happy about it either, but it often feels like I have to go deeper in depth than I normally do here, since it often feels like @zetachron is missing parts of my argument otherwise. Plus, much as I dislike talking about it openly, I'm OCD - if I'm wordy and blunt, it's not always something I can help. That's the whole reason I section off my arguments into quotes - so that people can pick and choose what parts are relevant to read rather than sifting through one huge textwall. It's not perfect, but it's all I've got
Neither, actually; I'm pointing out that despite any such arguments, I think it doesn't matter either way if it works - the method itself doesn't feel to me personally like it's viable, even if the decoys were completely de-bugged. I also pointed out that the decoys were manually-deployable and that the system we had was a working basis, not that it was completely issue-free. I'm saying that just because the decoys' ability/signal to draw predators is flawed, it doesn't mean the whole thing has to be scrapped and redone.
Please don't call me a troll just because I disagree with you, dude; I may be really blunt, but I try not to be deliberately insulting
Personally, that list feels subjective to me;
Again, I admit that the decoy's signal behavior needs a fair bit of work. But for the in-game deployment of the physical device itself, it feels like you're nitpicking it a bit. I fully support the idea of the beacons having a longer lifespan (because 5-10 seconds is way to short for most normal players, BTW), I can fully support having adjustable signal settings to attract certain kinds of creatures (maybe giving the effort of scanning them a more tangible reward than just extra lore for the gameplay-focused players), but things like the decoy forcing a Leviathan off of you if it's already locked onto you doesn't feel as realistic. The whole point of a decoy is to keep them from detecting you in the first place - if it's seen you, drawing it off is going to be way, way harder unless you get something like a "Decoy Signal Upgrade" or whatever as an upgrade.
I didn't really think you're a troll, but you shouldn't answer practical tests with theoretical maybes, even if you can't test it yourself.
But right now discussion seems to be pointless as I think the experimental version has a bugged decoy handling. For example the decoy at least seems to work with Reaper leviathans, but the Sea Dragon and a lot of other creatures completely ignore it under all possible circumstances. Tested. So as long this is bugged the devs have to rework decoys anyways.
I'd say right now that decoys are broken.
It seems right now Experimental is a stew of bugs. All the power and recharge ones back in June had me last play about June 27. Went on earlier today as a couple of guys on reddit said the Seamoth/PRAWN depth mod bug was back; fixed in June, it is indeed back. There are still power issues in bases.
And I can't move my Cyclops, which is near my base, not hung up on anything, I can turn it, but I can't move or push it. F1 displays says I have velocity but my position doesn't change.
But again, that's my precise point; your tests don't come across as practical to me, at least not personally. What I'm suggesting isn't "theoretical maybes" - they're fact-based deductions. For instance; if an animal's locked on to you either as a threat or prey, just throwing something new out there isn't suddenly going to make it lose track of you - that's a universal fact in regards aggressive or predatory fauna. Unless you can outright vanish immediately like in Silent Running, or deploy something that would be a tangible alternative like food, than a creature that spots you isn't suddenly going to lose track of you just because you drop a decoy - that's a practical consideration of dealing with wildlife that it doesn't seem like you're accounting for.
Maybe it's just personal opinion (and again, I apologize if my words sound rude at any point), but I think a practical test is based more upon whether an action is practical for the situation/whether or not it would work, not simply whether or not the action can be performed or whether it could ever work in that instance to begin with - a practical test feels to me like it should take into account whether or not the action in question would work in that given situation.
Reapers hunt primarily through echolocation, though, and their data-bank entry flat-out lists them as one of the least intelligent predators in Subnautica - wouldn't it make a certain kind of sense that they out of all other predators would be the easiest to trick with it? Again, if most creatures can see you and are already coming after you before the decoy is placed, they're not going to suddenly veer off afterwords - a decoy's purpose is supposed to be to draw something away without them noticing you; if they've already noticed you, doesn't that defeat the purpose? Again, I don't think it would matter how much the signal power is tested, because I personally don't think manual/hand deployment of the decoys is viable to use. It's bugged for sure in terms of the subs, but for the player manually dropping them himself... I just don't think it'd be realistic for that to work.
A good real life explanation. Yes it would work if you are inside a vehicle and rhinos can't eat you. But they probably hit you a few times before loosing interest in you and don't stop at once. That's sort of an attack cooldown of a few seconds.
Give the Sea Dragon such an attack cooldown of 2 additional strikes that add 50% Cyclops damage and it would not only be more realistic, but also couldn't be exploited as a "Get out of Jail" free card anymore. Furthermore it could then be a valid safe haven principle, if you can't use it as a free stop and go stealth method.
But we can forget valid creature base attacks then, unless we force stopping air regeneration when power is off. So to make it consistent within gameplay, the Cyclops shouldn't produce air anymore when powered down to play dead.
TL;DR: Two factors for engine off missing for better gameplay:
As you usually already need a slot for depth and another for energy optimization and probably another for sonar to see in the dark, there isn't really much left with even more modules coming, so I think this is good.
Swimming through Reaper or Ghost leviathan terrain and releasing the decoy in front of you:
- success, the leviathan grabs the decoy and chases away with it, buying you almost 30 secs
- allows you to not only cross this leviathan terrain, but also do some work while the leviathan is busy taking the decoy far away
- can be fired with the propulsion cannon and from the Prawn propulsion arm with being even more effictive
Swimming through Sea Dragon terrain and releasing the decoy in front of you:
- failure in all possible geometric constellations, the Sea Dragon ignores the decoy and always targets the player
- probably broken and will get fixed later, it doesn't make sense to let decoys fail on the most important leviathan (gameplay view)
Using the decoy through the Cyclops:
- as the range of the decoy is low and must be detected before the leviathan detects anything else, this is like mission impossible
- wrong vertical launch if it works like that. The decoy would have to be released like a torpedo in front of the sub for usability
- conclusion: failure, because no front launch mechanism
Generally the decoys suffer from a very very low attraction range and are completely inable to distract a leviathan once it detected the player. Thus only hand placing is method to work for all kind of players as the vertical Cyclops launch would need superior Cyclops navigation capabilities I don't have.
Overview of potential decoy usage:
TL;DR:
Right now best decoy use is against Reaper and Ghost leviathans allowing to swim or Prawn through their terrain. Most effective with firing them at the leviathan through the propulsion cannon.
I don't recommend launching the decoy from the Cyclops as you would additionally need silence, but then you don't need any decoy. This might change if noise is only dampened.
The decoy is useless against Sea Dragons.
But again, you're talking about something that can see in a way we know. We don't know how most of these deep-sea creatures "see" - and unlike rhinos, vehicles haven't been moving around in their environment long enough to develop those kinds of "safe-check" behaviors like if a rhino knocks against a vehicle.
Not really; between energy generation and water filtration, it's really hard to believe something wouldn't notice, thereby validating creature base attacks. The Cyclops, on the other hand, has only engine noise and air-filtration, both of which are on a hardwired on/off switch. And even if your system were implemented, the devs have been talking about having plants produce oxygen on their own, so you could just put some of them in and there'd still be no issues.
Reapers are the dumbest creatures in the game, though - both lore-wise and behavior-wise - and the Ghost Leviathan uses an AI based off of them that might still be going through change; again, is it really that surprising that they of all creatures would be so single-minded as to easily fool with it?
Or, again, maybe it's just releasing the decoy right in front of it by hand that's the problem. Nothing suggests they're as single-mindedly dumb as the Reapers. You're basing your tests off of the idea that these creatures all act and respond to the same things - the fact that they all don't strikes me more as being realistic rather than a flaw.
That was something we both already noted was an issue, though; a lack of lateral or horizontal deployment at a great enough range. But that in and of itself doesn't entail the entire decoy signal rigging needs to be scrapped and redone - the only thing that needs to be built from the ground-up are new deployment vectors.
But again, that's the issue I have with these tests; if a creature detects you, of course the decoy is useless to use in that situation unless the creature is exceedingly stupid (again, like the Reapers). As a result, hand-placing feels like the absolute least viable method to me, because you could never hope to get that close and place it without being detected - if even veteran players have issue, nobody casual is going to have any such luck.
Yes, sure, a turned off base is louder than a turned off submarine. Tell that your children. Oh, wait, a base has no power off switch, my argumentation is doomed.
Where have you learned science? Even alien plants can't produce oxygen out of a vacuum and without energy and function like a perpetuum mobile working on its own forever. Earth plants use photosynthesis, needing carbondioxide (from air), water and light. No air, no plants! Air isn't oxygen.
And of course if plants work like that on the Cyclops, they'd work like that in a base too.
Didn't you read the part where I told that I also used the Propulsion cannon? I did this to make sure that the leviathan wouldn't detect me, but only the decoy. You said you don't want to be a troll. Are you sure with that?
A turned-off base can be larger, is hardwired into the ground, may optionally possibly have an external thermal power generator and - most importantly - unlike the Cyclops, it doesn't have a hull and/or systems specially designed to dampen noises, a part of it's Silent Running feature. To say nothing of the fact that we don't even know if a base's power can be turned off in such a way - and if it could, that would be the only way to dampen said noises as opposed to the Cyclops' using silent running to dampen the noises without needing to shut off everything.
Again, no offense, but it honestly feels like you're nitpicking some aspects... and being deliberately patronizing in some others
Tell that to the devs:
https://trello.com/c/7lNaPgNm/59-plants-generate-o2
One of their proposed ideas is in fact to have plants produce oxygen by consuming carbon-dioxide, so as to keep o2 in a base even with no power. Also, key word in your sentence is "earth plants".
You know, instead of jumping on me with insinuations that I don't know basic science, you could give me the benefit of a doubt in considering that I'm just reiterating what I've heard about the dev's plans. I mean, @Who_needs_Armor already called out hostility in this thread before - if we're going to disagree, can't it at least be done civilly?
Yes, I did - it just feels like you're missing the part where I told you "if a creature detects you, of course the decoy is useless to use in that situation unless the creature is exceedingly stupid (again, like the Reapers)." Getting close to use the propulsion cannon is still going to be inside the detection radius for any creature that's not a Reaper - you yourself noted the Sea Dragon's aggro range was practically the entire ILZ and ALZ. It also feels like you missed the part where I said it wasn't a reliable or feasible method as opposed to an impossible one, since you're quite possibly the only person who I've seen be skilled enough to make it work in any instance, let alone every one, which isn't guarantee of viability - that would be if anyone in any instance could do it.
Again, please don't call me a troll just because I disagree with you and express skepticism to this.
I was on a submarine for 4 years in the navy and thats just NOT how engines work. You cannot just be "silent" in high speed, and whatever the DEVs think cavitation is they are very confused. you cavitate with speed and pressure. shallow water/high speed = more cavitation Deeper water/slow speed = Less to no cavitation. But these 30 second bursts of quiet make absolutely no sense. rig for silent running is a whole ship condition with speed limitations and non essential system shutdowns, not just a flip of a switch 30 second sound muffle. Lastly, an engine (especially a futuristic one) should be able to run at high speed for quite a while before catching fire. that just doesnt make any sense to me.
P.S. I worked in the engineroom so I kind of know about submarine engines
Rant over
You'll need:
1 alien containment
1 Brain coral sample.
Plant the coral sample.
Wait for it to grow.
Kaboosh. Infinite O2.