Some ideas for improving Subnautica
TheAdamator
Join Date: 2016-12-17 Member: 225071Members
Join Date: 2016-12-17 Member: 225071Members
General changes I'd like to see (not Ranked by Importance):
1.) Make certain crafting materials stackable and change amounts of materials needed for building. Stack size might also be related to in-game values of mass, like one
unit of inventory space being needed for 5 kilograms of titanium.
Rename the "titanium" found in the world to "titanium ore" and rename the "titanium ingot" and "plasteel ingot" to just "titanium" and "plasteel," and give each unit
of inventory space occupied by these materials a value to represent how much of the material is present in the stack. It currently doesn't make sense that one unit of
titanium takes up one unit of inventory space but a titanium ingot that requires ten units of titanium to make also takes up only one unit of inventory space.
Rebalance build costs to account for material stack sizes would also help solve the material cost discrepancy that you see when building windows on the walls and
ceilings of small habitat compartments (the "I," "T," and "X" compartments) and in multi-purpose rooms, as they all require two units of glass but are radically different
sizes. For instance, the small port hole style windows in the ceilings of simple compartments might cost 1 unit of glass, windows in the sides of simple compartments
might cost 2-3 glass, and the large windows in multipurpose rooms might cost 8-10 glass.
2.) Have the thermometer display the kinds of temperatures you would ACTUALLY expect to find in biomes at abyssal depths or with high volcanic activity, etc.
For some perspective, 36.8 degrees Celsius is normal human core body temperature and 100 degrees Celsius is the boiling point of water at the atmospheric pressure
found at Earth's sea level.
3.) Change the paper doll UI to allow the player to equip suits in layers OR allow their basic survival suit to be upgraded. I can't think of a reason why an end-game player
shouldn't be able to have a still suit with radiation and heat-resistant armor plating on the outside surface.
4.) Implement a system that causes increasing impairment as the player dives deeper. It seems silly that a vehicle has a crush depth but the player's ability to survive
outside the vehicle at depth is limited only by their air supply. This might take the form of a depth-dependent temporary decrease to max health that multiplies in
severity as depth increases (which would eventually kill you when your max health reached zero.)
5.) The ability to quickly and easily determine which edge of a grow bed is the "front" after it is placed and to decide exactly where a plant will be located when planted or
better yet, the ability to drag seeds from your inventory into the grow bed in the world to determine placement.
6.) Change the hatches of the cockpits on the Seamoth and P.R.A.W.N. to lock-type systems that have their own opening, closing, draining, and filling animations. Aside
from the fact that opening or closing a simple hatch against the exterior water pressure is physically impossible without powerful hydraulic motors, I think a slower
animation would be more conducive to the feeling of transitioning between safe and dangerous environments. While the entry to the Cyclops could technically be
considered to be a lock-type passage as it is a small chamber sealed by a bulkhead, but I'd still very much like to see a redesign of that section.
Changes to base building (again, not Ranked by Importance):
1.) Make reinforcements apply to an entire compartment by:
a.) targeting a compartment with the builder tool and have a button upgrade that compartment
b.) having different blueprints for stronger compartment types
c.) having the option to toggle between normal and reinforced versions of habitat modules while building them
This makes more sense given that reinforcements are meant to resist surrounding water pressure that affects all sides of a compartments equally. This would also
allow you to apply reinforcements to habitat compartments without having some wall surfaces stick out farther into the room and block/overlap wall-mounted objects.
2.) Have all habitat compartments have an energy cost, at least a low cost to represent energy used for lighting, heating/cooling, and air circulation. Have these costs
change based on surrounding environment temperature, especially in extremely hot environments. Could be implemented by reducing max base power capacity rather
than actually consuming power over time.
3.) Have multipurpose rooms feature 24 wall sections (24 being the smallest number evenly divisible by the numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8) to allow more versatility in
the placement of doorways, hatches and interior wall-mounted modules by allowing the player to select any group of adjoining wall sections to place to place a hatch,
compartment junction, or wall module.
4.) Building off the above concept, have alternate versions of large interior appliances/modules like the bio reactor, nuclear reactor, and alien containment that can be
built across multiple wall spaces to spare the center of the room.
5.) Let ME decide which way ladders and moon pools face. GOD. DAMN. IT.
6.) Prevent multipurpose rooms placed side-by-side from automatically joining and allow them to be joined manually by a single "I" section instead.
7.) Allow base foundations to have customizable dimensions with scaling strength and material requirements.
8.) Allow windows in multipurpose rooms, moon pools, and the walls of "I" and "T" compartments to have customizable dimensions with scaling material use and base
integrity impacts.
9.) Allow grow beds to "snap" to the inner and outer walls of multipurpose rooms and other base compartments, and allow their dimensions to be customizable so that
you can build grow beds that "wrap" along the inside and outside of your bases. Grow bed "depth" would be customizable as well in order to create grow beds that
you could wrap around the entire inside of a multipurpose room while still leaving plenty of room in the middle, or grow beds that spanned the entire distance between
compartments. Grow beds that were built directly next to each other could be fused to create a single larger grow bed or left separate.
10.) A way to create terraced grow beds with the planting positions further back being placed higher up to make them easier to see/reach.
11.) Higher/lower ambient temperatures should have some kind of impact on base building, such as needing aerogel to build in high-heat areas or needing to use energy
or specially built modules to regulate internal temperatures.
12.) Have interior modules like fabricators, lockers, and grow beds able to be "snapped" to points on the walls of habitat compartments for faster and more consistent
placement and help with organization (I may be OCD about this kind of stuff, but I know I'm not alone.)
13.) Change hatches on bases and large aquariums to air locks that have their own opening, closing, draining, and filling animations. Aside from the fact that opening or
closing a simple hatch against the exterior water pressure is physically impossible without powerful hydraulic motors and you'd be allowing massive amounts of water
into your base while you entered or left, I think a slower animation would be more conducive to the feeling of transitioning between safe and dangerous environments.
14.) Transit between habitat modules using pods that travel on rails and dock at different points. These could act as elevators when traveling up and down and would
have their own power cells in case of base power outages to keep from getting stuck in transit. The rails might also act as power lines to connect bases.
15.) Have the nuclear reactor and fuel rods cost much more to create and reduce the amount of power produced over time for each fuel rod, but make the rods have an
indefinite life span instead of having them act like large batteries (lasting forever if their power is not used but depleting quickly with high power consumption.)
16.) Instead of one small locker that is built on walls and one larger locker that is built on the floor, have wall-mounted and standing lockers with customizable
dimensions that change the storage space provided and construction materials used. Make wall-mounted lockers able to be "wrapped" around the interiors of base
compartments like grow beds as described above.
17.) Make lockers able to picked up and placed elsewhere while inside a base. Wall-mounted lockers should be able to reattached to any other wall with enough space
18.) Include the ability to create modular walls with customizable dimensions inside multipurpose rooms that can be used to mount wall-mounted modules like fabricators
and lockers. The walls could also have sections replaced with glass to make them transparent or sections removed to make low walls or interior archways (similar to the
building system in Fortnite, if you've played/heard of it.)
19.) Allow living walls to have customizable dimensions and either allow me to plant a limited selection of plants and flowers in them or make the default ivy much thicker
so that it doesn't look like my lawn just after the snow melts in the spring.
1.) Make certain crafting materials stackable and change amounts of materials needed for building. Stack size might also be related to in-game values of mass, like one
unit of inventory space being needed for 5 kilograms of titanium.
Rename the "titanium" found in the world to "titanium ore" and rename the "titanium ingot" and "plasteel ingot" to just "titanium" and "plasteel," and give each unit
of inventory space occupied by these materials a value to represent how much of the material is present in the stack. It currently doesn't make sense that one unit of
titanium takes up one unit of inventory space but a titanium ingot that requires ten units of titanium to make also takes up only one unit of inventory space.
Rebalance build costs to account for material stack sizes would also help solve the material cost discrepancy that you see when building windows on the walls and
ceilings of small habitat compartments (the "I," "T," and "X" compartments) and in multi-purpose rooms, as they all require two units of glass but are radically different
sizes. For instance, the small port hole style windows in the ceilings of simple compartments might cost 1 unit of glass, windows in the sides of simple compartments
might cost 2-3 glass, and the large windows in multipurpose rooms might cost 8-10 glass.
2.) Have the thermometer display the kinds of temperatures you would ACTUALLY expect to find in biomes at abyssal depths or with high volcanic activity, etc.
For some perspective, 36.8 degrees Celsius is normal human core body temperature and 100 degrees Celsius is the boiling point of water at the atmospheric pressure
found at Earth's sea level.
3.) Change the paper doll UI to allow the player to equip suits in layers OR allow their basic survival suit to be upgraded. I can't think of a reason why an end-game player
shouldn't be able to have a still suit with radiation and heat-resistant armor plating on the outside surface.
4.) Implement a system that causes increasing impairment as the player dives deeper. It seems silly that a vehicle has a crush depth but the player's ability to survive
outside the vehicle at depth is limited only by their air supply. This might take the form of a depth-dependent temporary decrease to max health that multiplies in
severity as depth increases (which would eventually kill you when your max health reached zero.)
5.) The ability to quickly and easily determine which edge of a grow bed is the "front" after it is placed and to decide exactly where a plant will be located when planted or
better yet, the ability to drag seeds from your inventory into the grow bed in the world to determine placement.
6.) Change the hatches of the cockpits on the Seamoth and P.R.A.W.N. to lock-type systems that have their own opening, closing, draining, and filling animations. Aside
from the fact that opening or closing a simple hatch against the exterior water pressure is physically impossible without powerful hydraulic motors, I think a slower
animation would be more conducive to the feeling of transitioning between safe and dangerous environments. While the entry to the Cyclops could technically be
considered to be a lock-type passage as it is a small chamber sealed by a bulkhead, but I'd still very much like to see a redesign of that section.
Changes to base building (again, not Ranked by Importance):
1.) Make reinforcements apply to an entire compartment by:
a.) targeting a compartment with the builder tool and have a button upgrade that compartment
b.) having different blueprints for stronger compartment types
c.) having the option to toggle between normal and reinforced versions of habitat modules while building them
This makes more sense given that reinforcements are meant to resist surrounding water pressure that affects all sides of a compartments equally. This would also
allow you to apply reinforcements to habitat compartments without having some wall surfaces stick out farther into the room and block/overlap wall-mounted objects.
2.) Have all habitat compartments have an energy cost, at least a low cost to represent energy used for lighting, heating/cooling, and air circulation. Have these costs
change based on surrounding environment temperature, especially in extremely hot environments. Could be implemented by reducing max base power capacity rather
than actually consuming power over time.
3.) Have multipurpose rooms feature 24 wall sections (24 being the smallest number evenly divisible by the numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8) to allow more versatility in
the placement of doorways, hatches and interior wall-mounted modules by allowing the player to select any group of adjoining wall sections to place to place a hatch,
compartment junction, or wall module.
4.) Building off the above concept, have alternate versions of large interior appliances/modules like the bio reactor, nuclear reactor, and alien containment that can be
built across multiple wall spaces to spare the center of the room.
5.) Let ME decide which way ladders and moon pools face. GOD. DAMN. IT.
6.) Prevent multipurpose rooms placed side-by-side from automatically joining and allow them to be joined manually by a single "I" section instead.
7.) Allow base foundations to have customizable dimensions with scaling strength and material requirements.
8.) Allow windows in multipurpose rooms, moon pools, and the walls of "I" and "T" compartments to have customizable dimensions with scaling material use and base
integrity impacts.
9.) Allow grow beds to "snap" to the inner and outer walls of multipurpose rooms and other base compartments, and allow their dimensions to be customizable so that
you can build grow beds that "wrap" along the inside and outside of your bases. Grow bed "depth" would be customizable as well in order to create grow beds that
you could wrap around the entire inside of a multipurpose room while still leaving plenty of room in the middle, or grow beds that spanned the entire distance between
compartments. Grow beds that were built directly next to each other could be fused to create a single larger grow bed or left separate.
10.) A way to create terraced grow beds with the planting positions further back being placed higher up to make them easier to see/reach.
11.) Higher/lower ambient temperatures should have some kind of impact on base building, such as needing aerogel to build in high-heat areas or needing to use energy
or specially built modules to regulate internal temperatures.
12.) Have interior modules like fabricators, lockers, and grow beds able to be "snapped" to points on the walls of habitat compartments for faster and more consistent
placement and help with organization (I may be OCD about this kind of stuff, but I know I'm not alone.)
13.) Change hatches on bases and large aquariums to air locks that have their own opening, closing, draining, and filling animations. Aside from the fact that opening or
closing a simple hatch against the exterior water pressure is physically impossible without powerful hydraulic motors and you'd be allowing massive amounts of water
into your base while you entered or left, I think a slower animation would be more conducive to the feeling of transitioning between safe and dangerous environments.
14.) Transit between habitat modules using pods that travel on rails and dock at different points. These could act as elevators when traveling up and down and would
have their own power cells in case of base power outages to keep from getting stuck in transit. The rails might also act as power lines to connect bases.
15.) Have the nuclear reactor and fuel rods cost much more to create and reduce the amount of power produced over time for each fuel rod, but make the rods have an
indefinite life span instead of having them act like large batteries (lasting forever if their power is not used but depleting quickly with high power consumption.)
16.) Instead of one small locker that is built on walls and one larger locker that is built on the floor, have wall-mounted and standing lockers with customizable
dimensions that change the storage space provided and construction materials used. Make wall-mounted lockers able to be "wrapped" around the interiors of base
compartments like grow beds as described above.
17.) Make lockers able to picked up and placed elsewhere while inside a base. Wall-mounted lockers should be able to reattached to any other wall with enough space
18.) Include the ability to create modular walls with customizable dimensions inside multipurpose rooms that can be used to mount wall-mounted modules like fabricators
and lockers. The walls could also have sections replaced with glass to make them transparent or sections removed to make low walls or interior archways (similar to the
building system in Fortnite, if you've played/heard of it.)
19.) Allow living walls to have customizable dimensions and either allow me to plant a limited selection of plants and flowers in them or make the default ivy much thicker
so that it doesn't look like my lawn just after the snow melts in the spring.