I Hate the Air Bladder! Lets Fix It!
Jackalope
Join Date: 2015-03-13 Member: 202057Members
Join Date: 2015-03-13 Member: 202057Members
I hate the air bladder. There i said it. No Charlie, I will not apologize.
I think it is a really neat concept and fills an important role as a means of quickly escaping a bad situation down under, but it can be so awkward to use that it's really not worth the precious space it takes on the hot bar to use. Instead I think with a little tweaking it could become an essential part of the dive kit and not an novelty item that becomes irreverent after building a seaglide or seamoth.
I would find it far more useful if it could be used to quickly descend as well as ascend. I'm picturing a wearable item like a BCD (An inflatable vest used in SCUBA to control buoyancy) that could be activated by a quick double tap of the spacebar or C key (like the minecraft sprint function) or with separate hotkeys. The general idea is that the vest would be weighted, in its default position the bladder would be half filled with air, offsetting the weight of the vest, allowing the diver to maintain position in the water column and swim normally.
Spacebar would fully inflate the vest, consuming a small amount of air and propelling the diver to the surface, pressing the C key once would release a bit of air, returning the diver to a neutral state.
Double tapping the C key would have the opposite effect, expelling air from the bladder causing the diver to descend quickly until the spacebar was pressed. This would re-inflate the vest to its default position, stopping the descent and consuming a small amount of air in the process.
Like the air bladder, whenever air is released the bubble effect would envelope player's field of view. I would hate to lose that cool effect.
I think this would work great with the new paper doll equipment and inventory system being considered for the next game build. Let me know what you think!
I think it is a really neat concept and fills an important role as a means of quickly escaping a bad situation down under, but it can be so awkward to use that it's really not worth the precious space it takes on the hot bar to use. Instead I think with a little tweaking it could become an essential part of the dive kit and not an novelty item that becomes irreverent after building a seaglide or seamoth.
I would find it far more useful if it could be used to quickly descend as well as ascend. I'm picturing a wearable item like a BCD (An inflatable vest used in SCUBA to control buoyancy) that could be activated by a quick double tap of the spacebar or C key (like the minecraft sprint function) or with separate hotkeys. The general idea is that the vest would be weighted, in its default position the bladder would be half filled with air, offsetting the weight of the vest, allowing the diver to maintain position in the water column and swim normally.
Spacebar would fully inflate the vest, consuming a small amount of air and propelling the diver to the surface, pressing the C key once would release a bit of air, returning the diver to a neutral state.
Double tapping the C key would have the opposite effect, expelling air from the bladder causing the diver to descend quickly until the spacebar was pressed. This would re-inflate the vest to its default position, stopping the descent and consuming a small amount of air in the process.
Like the air bladder, whenever air is released the bubble effect would envelope player's field of view. I would hate to lose that cool effect.
I think this would work great with the new paper doll equipment and inventory system being considered for the next game build. Let me know what you think!
Comments
This would give the item much more practical use than currently. (I used it once then wondered why I wasted resources crafting it.)
The paper doll equipment solution is one I'm really hoping they go with since currently I find it on the annoying side not being having my fins take up needed inventory space (they'r eon my feet they shouldn't take up any room at all) along with other small items I should be able to just clip to my wrist (compass) or integrate as part of my dive gear. (rebreather, temp monitor)
That way if you accidentally stay down to long and need to use the thing, you don't have to worry about it killing you off before you hit the surface. But if you're confident you can reach the surface quickly and are just using it to get away from a nasty critter, you can use it over and over again as you like without resurfacing.
Silveressa, Im pretty exited too about the paper doll inventory overhaul, the way flippers work now has always bugged me too. They're on my feet but they're stored in my backpack, where they would be entirely useless for swimming. Its just silly, but that alpha for you. They cant fix everything at the same time.
Korith, you have a point about the air consumption. It could be pretty annoying to use your last breath of air inflating the bladder vest trying to get to the surface only to suffocate in the process, like the air bladder works now. But i have a few reasons for suggesting air consumption when using the inflater. Like the current air bladder or a real SCUBA BCD, air is pulled from the main tank to fill the flotation device. The dev team seemed to think air consumption was important when they programmed the air bladder. I agree, if using the device consumes a small amount of air form your breathing tank it makes you use the floatation device more strategically. You need to anticipate when to use it to get to the surface before you drown and keep a bit of air in reserve. I think the amount of air needed to inflate the vest should be pretty small maybe 1 or 2 points worth. You would use less air inflating the vest than you would breath if you tried to swim for say 50 or 100 meters. If there was no air use penalty i think the device could be overpowered. But I think its kind of a minor point. If the vest used batteries or even its own internal air tank, i'd be fine with that too. I'll leave it to the dev team to figure out how to balance all the equipment.
I like the idea of having it act like a weight as well. It fits with air as one function, then with a very heavy liquid (mercury?) as the other.
It really wouldnt be necessary to fill the bladder with mercury to make the diver sink. Buoyancy is determined by the ratio of weight to the amount of volume displaced by an object. The vest would have to be heavy enough to make the diver sink when fully deflated.
Pure water has a density of 1000kg per cubic meter. In order to sink the diver's density would have to be greater than water, say 1100kg per cubic meter. Inversely, to float the diver would need to be less dense than water, maybe 900kg per cubic meter.
Since the total mass of a diver and his equipment cant be changed (unless they dropped or picked up weights off the sea floor) density must be changed by altering the volume of water displaced by the diver. Say for example a diver and his gear is exactly 1 cubic meter in volume with his vest deflated and weighed 1100kg, he would sink because his density would be 1100kg per cubic meter, greater than water. But if the vest was fully inflated he would still weigh 1100 kg, but he would displace 1.25 cubic meters of water, giving him a density of 880 kg per cubic meter. This is much less than water, causing the diver to float to the surface.
I'm using all of this math to demonstrate how density could be applied here. But in terms of game play i dont think it would be reasonable to require players to micro-manage their density with an air bladder, as density would change every time they dropped or picked up an item. That would just be tedious and frustrating. This isn't Diving Simulator 2015 after all.
and an air bladder would be compressed by pressure, changing density with depth, making everything much more complicated. Example: it have to be constantly inflated when going down, and deflated when going up. But in Subnautica the diving equipment is smart enough to control buoyancy automatically, no need for air bladder... and I hope it stays so!