The good and bad in my eyes
TerraBlade
Join Date: 2015-05-25 Member: 204886Members
Join Date: 2015-05-25 Member: 204886Members
So I took a long break and just recently found out the PRAWN had come out in an official update. I have since built pretty much everything and...well there is good and bad.
Pressure upgrades:
Frankly I feel these should have their own slot anymore. I know, and encourage, having to swap out gear is an element of game-play. But these just feel to much like a critical component to ever swap out. In effect I feel that since you need them, especially on the seamoth, to do anything truly useful with the vessels in getting to more rare resources that there is no point in taking them out of an upgrade swap unless to upgrade the component itself.
Pressure itself:
While the player does start to gasp at extreme pressures, which I assume is the struggle to breath under said pressures, being at 1700m and able to swim around with no physical damage or effect feels wrong. I don't know if this is the same situation as with the Seamoth in that eventually damage will come after something else gets updated (like say the transfusion system) but it just feels wrong. I'm hoping that as much as it will annoy me that eventually pressure will hurt players if they are at extreme depths.
PRAWN:
I love this thing, my poor Seamoth is very neglected once I got moonpools and nuclear reactors to keep the thing charged. I especially love that if you get your timing down you can use the grapple hook and thrusters to move faster then the Seamoth. However I do feel two things grate on me. One is that Reapers don't react to getting punched in the face, which means even with an armor upgrade there is no real way to avoid significant damage in reaper waters. By the Aurora not only did I get chained by three reapers which dropped my PRAWN to almost no health but they managed to drop me down the very deep hole to the lava zone. At the very least three punches to the face of a leviathan should make it drop a PRAWN in my eyes....since I'm punching them in their's.
Inactive Lava zone:
Honestly I hate this area right now. While this can cross over with my chief complaint on the Cyclops, in the PRAWN I have the same issue. At least the Seamoth has the sonar. But basically...I can't figure out where I am going. Maybe it just hasn't gotten the love that it has coming. But I can't navigate it very easily because I can't see anything which made trying to drive a sub through it an exerciser in anger management. Not to mention there is nothing there.
Cyclops:
As much as I enjoy and rush to build this vessel I have a couple issues with it. First off the window. I didn't really notice it until the update that put cameras on the sub, but the way the window is treated like a base window and has a semi-opaqueness to it makes it very hard to navigate with it. I kinda get now why big subs in real life don't have windows in the front. This means I generally use cameras to navigate which is awkward since you get no collision alerts or depth gauges. Furthermore the floodlights on the sub just aren't useful. Because by the time they actually show an obstacle you are almost about to hit it. Combined with the problems with the window and the Cyclops may be useful, but driving it to places or using it to explore is a huge chore. Which really shows in trying to take it through the inactive Lava Zone.
Heat Damage:
On that note I discovered there is now heat damage. Unfortunately the vessels don't have a heat gauge. This makes PRAWN use in the lava zone more complicated then it should be. Even then, in trying to set up thermal power plants I find the thermometer gauge to be useless in avoiding damage. Sure, I know that the area I am in is hot (which considering the lava flow is a 'duh' moment) but I don't know it's dangerously hot until I take damage. It would be nice that the gauge also had colors, or just shifted from blue to green to red as a reading from to cold or to hot for the vessel or player.
Power generation:
So since something kept breaking, or the game was breaking, my solar panels I ended up using other power plants. With the exception of the nuclear option, the others didn't feel very economical to use. With an in door grow bed (everything outside kept breaking for some reason) I thought using the organic power plant would be a good option until I found nuclear components. Sadly, even two plants barely could keep my base running even without docking the Seamoth or PRAWN. Granted I had three water filtration plants, but two bio plants should have done a better job in my opinion. Maybe solar power is supposed to suppliment, but like I said for some reason they all kept breaking so I could only use power plants.
As for nuclear, the only thing I have to say is that I feel we should be able to recycle spent rods. Probably on a 4:1 ratio, but even 8:1 would be fine. We have discovered, today, in how to recycle spent nuclear waste to make more nuclear fuel. Other then that, two plants keep my base very nicely running.
In the end I do like the way the game is coming together. Since I play on the experimental builds, I don't know how long until it comes out...but I can't wait to explore the addition to the island. Even unfinished it looks very nice.
Pressure upgrades:
Frankly I feel these should have their own slot anymore. I know, and encourage, having to swap out gear is an element of game-play. But these just feel to much like a critical component to ever swap out. In effect I feel that since you need them, especially on the seamoth, to do anything truly useful with the vessels in getting to more rare resources that there is no point in taking them out of an upgrade swap unless to upgrade the component itself.
Pressure itself:
While the player does start to gasp at extreme pressures, which I assume is the struggle to breath under said pressures, being at 1700m and able to swim around with no physical damage or effect feels wrong. I don't know if this is the same situation as with the Seamoth in that eventually damage will come after something else gets updated (like say the transfusion system) but it just feels wrong. I'm hoping that as much as it will annoy me that eventually pressure will hurt players if they are at extreme depths.
PRAWN:
I love this thing, my poor Seamoth is very neglected once I got moonpools and nuclear reactors to keep the thing charged. I especially love that if you get your timing down you can use the grapple hook and thrusters to move faster then the Seamoth. However I do feel two things grate on me. One is that Reapers don't react to getting punched in the face, which means even with an armor upgrade there is no real way to avoid significant damage in reaper waters. By the Aurora not only did I get chained by three reapers which dropped my PRAWN to almost no health but they managed to drop me down the very deep hole to the lava zone. At the very least three punches to the face of a leviathan should make it drop a PRAWN in my eyes....since I'm punching them in their's.
Inactive Lava zone:
Honestly I hate this area right now. While this can cross over with my chief complaint on the Cyclops, in the PRAWN I have the same issue. At least the Seamoth has the sonar. But basically...I can't figure out where I am going. Maybe it just hasn't gotten the love that it has coming. But I can't navigate it very easily because I can't see anything which made trying to drive a sub through it an exerciser in anger management. Not to mention there is nothing there.
Cyclops:
As much as I enjoy and rush to build this vessel I have a couple issues with it. First off the window. I didn't really notice it until the update that put cameras on the sub, but the way the window is treated like a base window and has a semi-opaqueness to it makes it very hard to navigate with it. I kinda get now why big subs in real life don't have windows in the front. This means I generally use cameras to navigate which is awkward since you get no collision alerts or depth gauges. Furthermore the floodlights on the sub just aren't useful. Because by the time they actually show an obstacle you are almost about to hit it. Combined with the problems with the window and the Cyclops may be useful, but driving it to places or using it to explore is a huge chore. Which really shows in trying to take it through the inactive Lava Zone.
Heat Damage:
On that note I discovered there is now heat damage. Unfortunately the vessels don't have a heat gauge. This makes PRAWN use in the lava zone more complicated then it should be. Even then, in trying to set up thermal power plants I find the thermometer gauge to be useless in avoiding damage. Sure, I know that the area I am in is hot (which considering the lava flow is a 'duh' moment) but I don't know it's dangerously hot until I take damage. It would be nice that the gauge also had colors, or just shifted from blue to green to red as a reading from to cold or to hot for the vessel or player.
Power generation:
So since something kept breaking, or the game was breaking, my solar panels I ended up using other power plants. With the exception of the nuclear option, the others didn't feel very economical to use. With an in door grow bed (everything outside kept breaking for some reason) I thought using the organic power plant would be a good option until I found nuclear components. Sadly, even two plants barely could keep my base running even without docking the Seamoth or PRAWN. Granted I had three water filtration plants, but two bio plants should have done a better job in my opinion. Maybe solar power is supposed to suppliment, but like I said for some reason they all kept breaking so I could only use power plants.
As for nuclear, the only thing I have to say is that I feel we should be able to recycle spent rods. Probably on a 4:1 ratio, but even 8:1 would be fine. We have discovered, today, in how to recycle spent nuclear waste to make more nuclear fuel. Other then that, two plants keep my base very nicely running.
In the end I do like the way the game is coming together. Since I play on the experimental builds, I don't know how long until it comes out...but I can't wait to explore the addition to the island. Even unfinished it looks very nice.
Comments
I think water filtration plants are intended to use up a tremendous amount of power. That being said, the power consumption for appliances could be better communicated.
Use fishes to keep your bioreactor. It is more economical. Full reginald load is being using around ingame 2 weeks.
And why do you use so many water filtration stations? One day ~ 100% of water for consumption. It covers by one station + a couple of pots for black day from Aurora or water fish bottles.
And there is a thermal plants which you can add with energy rod way.
I agree that power usage should be better communicated. But maybe a way to disable without deconstructing appliances? Some sort of fuse box? But yeah I get that the filtration plants are supposed to be power hogs to encourage using local fauna to survive. But the persistent annoying bug about cutting up corral persists and tends to bug out the bleach corals more then the one you need for chips. But either way it makes relying on coral for water very inefficient.
Thermal plant depends on where you put your base. While gold doesn't have a lot of uses considering how often my solar panels got destroyed going for a power line to a thermal plant seemed silly.
As for the bio reactor, do different items give different power output? Because I was using lantern fruit trees since two would easily have enough fruit to keep the bio reactor stocked, though they didn't last two weeks. But the point is to be self reliant and contained as possible. Hence why I have two growbeds with potatoes and three plants. I have a locker I'm filing with water so I have what I need for trips or in case a future update allows bases to be attacked/destroyed. Plus, at the time I hadn't found stillsuit fragments so I was down to 50% hydration very quickly and in any kind of mission away form base usually would use up one to two bottles.
Thermal plant depends on where you put your base. While gold doesn't have a lot of uses considering how often my solar panels got destroyed going for a power line to a thermal plant seemed silly.
As for the bio reactor, do different items give different power output? Because I was using lantern fruit trees since two would easily have enough fruit to keep the bio reactor stocked, though they didn't last two weeks. But the point is to be self reliant and contained as possible. Hence why I have two growbeds with potatoes and three plants. I have a locker I'm filing with water so I have what I need for trips or in case a future update allows bases to be attacked/destroyed. Plus, at the time I hadn't found stillsuit fragments so I was down to 50% hydration very quickly and in any kind of mission away form base usually would use up one to two bottles.[/quote]
How did you destroy your solar panels?
It may be only because of unlucky building process. My energy way takes path of 300-500m and is never been destroyed. A rarely cross it's way with my Seamoth and even reaper didnt destroy it while living in my Shallows.
And yes different things give different output:
http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Bioreactor - read this. Personally I dont know how to feed a reactor with my reaper corpse but fish feed is awesome (although I didnt even think about it and read about it in wiki).
Stillsuit, reprocessed water, brrr... As far as I know I can construct big aquarium for water fishes
I don't know how. My base was built next to one of the wrecks in deeper water. By best bet is one of those big gulper type fish ran into them and broke them since the only ones left were closer to actual base rooms. But yeah, after losing about seven panels and a growbed for kelp I just gave up building outside my base. I don't know if it had anything to do with being on an experimental build, but after building two bio reactors I just gave up on solar power.
I ended up building a bioreactor in a room with lantern fruit. It makes it pretty convenient to have bioreactor fuel growing in the same room.
The subs, even though they are made of metal, are under very heavy pressure because they are filled with air. This is why at depth they are more fragile. Human beings, however, are mostly water anyway. We don't really feel the depth except for when we try to come up and out of it. The temperature is a bigger threat to us then the pressure, from what I understand.
build a small base (yesterday)
2 Panels on.
2 Minutes later: gone
2 panels more
2 minutes later - gone
(eaven if i go to my Sub, and leave the sub, nothing left )
so i build no solar anymore, now only reactor, because quarz is very rare for me.
I usually place a foundation piece and then a corridor. The panels I place on the free areas of the foundation, as I didn't think you could put them on the seafloor, and felt that looked silly too. But before I would have a foundation piece that was nothing but panels since even in deeper depths some persistent power is better then having to constantly worry about a generator.
Solar panels, growbeds, floodlights, spotlights, or even salvaged items like luggage bags that you can place outside (any outside placeable item) will vanish if you perform any construction attached to or inside of a base piece that is nearby.
Example: place a solar panel on the roof of a corridor section. Place one on a Foundation just next to (even a few meters away from) the MP room at the end of that corridor. Then go put a hatch on the other side of said corridor. The one on top will vanish. Now go into the room and construct a Fabber or something on the wall inside (not even a window or hatch or reinforcement, although those will produce the bug too, but also anything other than a locker that fits on the wall - lockers seem to be the exception). The one outside on the foundation will vanish.
It's apparently related to the way base pieces make space by deforming terrain around them, but it is SUPER annoying. You basically can't expand your base without deconstructing your solar farm first, putting it far enough away that you need a power transmitter, or cheating the materials back in to rebuild it after it vanishes. I've been F8-ing this for about 4 updates now and I really wish they'd address it.
Hopefully. I did find it sorta amusing when a rock with floaters glitched and tore a huge hole in the seabed as well as a Reefback nearby spinning in lazy circles.
I also thought of one more point. The way the drill arm works now is fine...anywhere besides grassy plains. Where there the mined items EASILY get lost in the red grass and makes their retrieval a lot harder then it should be. Basically anything besides quartz and salt since they have better contrast and/or size compared to things like titanium and lead. I don't know if it would be a good idea to just have things go into storage as you mine them, but as it is I avoid mining in those areas if at all possible. Mining is a great addition to the game in my opinion, it just has that major issue of making the large areas that have dense fauna like the red seaweed areas more difficult then it should be.