Plea for a Farming Mod

BlueBottle

Not sure if this goes here or in suggestions. Anyway it seems like the vanilla farming mechanic is really OP, making a lot of other key habitat items redundant.

Some seemingly do-able ideas for a farming mod came up in an unrelated thread, so let me regurgitate them here:

1. Slow down grow times by a factor of 10 or so and/or reduced how much water you can get out of Bulbous Trees. @Wintervoid
2. Require all indoor plants to use 1 bottle of water to plant (& respawn?) @Wintervoid.
3. Require all indoor plants to use 1 lump of Sea Treader poo to plant
4. Allow growth inside the two glass compartments where it's well lit. Say, at less than 100m.

So far this mod rescues the need for:
- the water purifier
- the Sea Treader
- the two other reactor types
- the two glass compartment types
- the 3rd law of thermodynamics (currently powering lights to make fuel to run a bioreactor to power the lights)

Naturally these may need tweaking or adding to. Any thoughts?

0x6A7232

Ask over in the Modding Emporium. I believe there's links in my signature. They've also got a Discord channel, which might also be linked in my signature (if not I'll post it).

EDIT: Ah, that's right. There's a link to the modding Discord channel in the official Subnautica Discord (linked in signature, then look for "subnautica-modding" on the left side).

Halios

BlueBottle wrote: »

Anyway it seems like the vanilla farming mechanic is really OP, making a lot of other key habitat items redundant.

Here's an alternate perspective : Subnautica is a game which famously doesn't include guns and in which killing isn't necessary.

But then there's food. Ever noticed how there isn't even a single food recipe which doesn't include fish?

http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Food_&_Water

Try playing the game without killing for food and all those things you regard as OP are necessary just to stay alive.

BlueBottle

@Halios if you're interested in discussing challenge playthroughs check out a thread on that topic. For example:

https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/154951/subnautica-challenge-playthroughs

This thread is about modding. Cheers

Wintervoid

Halios wrote: »

Try playing the game without killing for food and all those things you regard as OP are necessary just to stay alive.

I just did a Hardcore run and I didn't need any fish. All I needed was 1 Bulbo Tree in my Base, and one in my Sub. Combined with the Nutrient packs from Aurora, a water filtration system and an actual 'farm' was not needed.

It would be nice if a Water Filtration system actually was useful. I mean, yes, it can help on long trips in the PRAWN, but with Bulbo Trees, it is more of a luxury than a need. I don't think I have ever taken food with me beside nutrient bar, and I had the same one on me at the end of the game, just as a 'what if'.

What I would like to see is that you have to work to get water or build the filtration system. I would also like food to be a bit harder to get then it currently is. Stick with farming if you don't want to eat fish, but maybe need 8-10 plants to keep fed?

Maybe it is because the last game I played before coming back to Subnautica was Green Hell, but even on my first playthough, once I discovered Bulbo trees, food/water was never an issue again.

BlueBottle

A recent development spoiler for multipurpose room! Looks a lot like the 'grow dome' people have been asking for. Maybe the farming mechanic is getting some refinement in the expansion anyway.

https://twitter.com/slice3d/status/1056688606398554112

SouthernGorilla

I don't know about the specifics in the OP, but I like the idea of making farming a bit more involved. Another possibility is to finally make the nutrient bar a fabrication item and give it a fairly complex recipe requiring several plants, maybe even some minerals. Or even add a "food processor" that you stock with plants and it occasionally spits out nutrient bars and compost like the filtration machine spits out water and salt. The recipe could be designed to make some of the scarcer plants more relevant.

Another idea is to make plants dependent on conditions. So maybe you couldn't farm blood kelp in the shallows, it needs deeper, darker water. That creates a logistics puzzle on top of the agricultural issues.

That dome in the spoiler above is sexy AF. It would be cool to have it so you needed that to grow indoor plants, they won't grow under artificial light.