The Builder and the Infinite Air Conundrum
CrawlinChaos
Pittsburgh, PA Join Date: 2015-06-05 Member: 205267Members
Pittsburgh, PA Join Date: 2015-06-05 Member: 205267Members
Hello fellow divers. So, I recently realized that there is an inherent problem with the way the Builder and base building works and the oxygen mechanic. You see, while I was happily working on my new underwater lair after the most recent update, I found myself constantly short on quartz, even more so than before due to all the new glass structures added to the game. I went onto the Subnautica wiki to see if I could find a solution to my quartz problem and I read there the newly refurbished Grand Reef is now an excellent source of quartz. However, there was still a problem; namely, that most of the Grand Reef is below 225m, which is the current maximum dive depth for the Seamoth. This meant that I couldn't just use my Seamoth to make trips up and down the Reef to collect my much needed quartz. I pondered this for awhile and then I had the idea of building a 'mini-base' down deep in the Grand Reef, so that I could collect my quartz without having to worry about making the long swim back to my Seamoth for oxygen. But, when I actually went to build my base, I had an epiphany: why build a permanent structure where I could replenish my oxygen when I could just build a temporary one? As long as you 4X titanium, 1X glass and a Builder in your inventory, you can infinitely build and deconstruct a single corridor with a hatch and viola! Reusable, portal air pocket for your deep sea diving. By exploiting this, you can basically nullify the oxygen mechanic. I'm hesitant to call this a bug, as its more of an unintended consequence of the way the building mechanic works in this game (i.e. air in bases without power and being able to reclaim the full resources from structures). I am also unsure if this exact issue has been addressed before, but I wanted to bring it to the attention of the Devs if it hasn't.
That being said, my personal opinion is that this is a difficult problem to address. Given the current dive limit of both the subs and (potentially) the limited oxygen/power supply of the Exosuit, I think its important to give players the option of building small bases or waystations when exploring the extremely deep parts of the game world or just scattered around for storage options. Maybe the solution is to make bases require power to provide air, but that might be a little extreme if a player wants to build numerous waystations around the world.
That being said, my personal opinion is that this is a difficult problem to address. Given the current dive limit of both the subs and (potentially) the limited oxygen/power supply of the Exosuit, I think its important to give players the option of building small bases or waystations when exploring the extremely deep parts of the game world or just scattered around for storage options. Maybe the solution is to make bases require power to provide air, but that might be a little extreme if a player wants to build numerous waystations around the world.
Comments
The explanation could be that bases can somehow filter oxygen out of the water even without power, but that it takes 2 minutes or so to be sufficient to breathe. That way you would need an inventory full of airtanks(but you cant farm quartz like that) or multiple waystations you can swim back to.
But as to the real point, I agree with you, I'd like there to be mechanics related to seabases and air. But they'd need to be balanced between early-game and late-game. Early game it should be as simple as a seabase needs an oxygen pipe from the surface to not eventually run out of air. Late-game there could be an option to build an electrolysis module to pull oxygen out of the sea water at any depth or have removable/refillable oxygen tanks (perhaps in pressurized/non-pressurized form) as an option.
But as long as a seabase starts with air in it, it'll always be possible to do what you describe. And I'm not sure that changing that would be a good thing, as it'd be pretty punishing in the start. But maybe that'd be fixable by making seabases always start with air, but it refills very slowly without power/some oxygen generating method.
For now, the moth has no crush depth, so you can roleplay it like it still has it, since it shows the red numbers and has the audible warning. The other thing we are going to have to worry about, is when they install the mechanic, the player will have crush depth as well. Im sure thats where the Exosuit comes in. I suspect grand reef foraging will require an exo, making those lush recources a challenge to be able to get to, keeping the difficulty ladder more accurate.
@destroyah87: It must be that just the warnings about the depth are implemented right now. I never risked taking it below 225m because of the warning, lol. Either way, at some point in the future, the Seamoth will have a crush depth, even after they add the upgrade modules, so there will still be a need to deep water bases or waystations. I agree with your point about early vs late game. What I was thinking was maybe making it such that building below a certain depth, like 400m, requires more than just titanium. Regular corridors and rooms would be crushed at that pressure before you have a chance to reinforce them, so you have to build special deep sea versions that require advanced materials (or an advanced version of the builder)
@Duff_McDuggin: Unless the exosuit has unlimited oxygen and power, there could still be a need for a deep sea base to refill at since, as you said, the player, the moth and cyclops will all have crush depths (and I can't imagine it being greater than 500m, even after the upgrades). There is also the issue of resource gathering, like I was originally trying to address; do you really want to have to swim/walk in the exosuit several hundred meters up to reach your Cyclops or Seamoth just to stash some resources?
Even if the whole depth thing gets worked out later, as long as you can do what I described above with the builder, people could exploit that at shallower depth just so they don't have to return to the surface. For example, let's say I want to scour a Grassy Plateu for silver and gold relatively early in the game, before I even have the Seamoth. I can just throw down a single corridor and a hatch and stay down there as long as I want. While I think the player should be able to do something like this (i.e. create a small waystation to aid in resources gathering), I feel like to shouldn't be this exploitable. I also would like to point out that, currently, the single greatest obstacle to deep water exploration is your oxygen supply. You can bring food, water and health kits with you when you are exploring down deep, but using structures or vehicles is the only way to replenish your oxygen at great depths, which makes it very risky. Using this exploit totally negates that potential risk.
Another point that I just thought of. As far as I see it, each vehicle offers the player some advantage over just swimming around unaided. The Cyclops is basically a mobile base and charging station. The Exosuit will probably be the only way to reach extreme depths and might also offer protection from hazards/predators and may be the most power efficient. But, the Seamoth basically only offers the player two advantages: greater mobility and a mobile oxygen source (I'm not including protection here since its pretty fragile at the moment). Being able to throw down a temporary structure offsets the Seamoth's usefulness as a mobile oxygen source, especially considering that the Seamoth now uses power just being in it, while a structure doesn't require power to provide oxygen.