Data for Discussion: Subnautica Material Use Spreadsheet
Wodenifferous
Join Date: 2017-03-01 Member: 228458Members
Join Date: 2017-03-01 Member: 228458Members
I was recently struck by the realization of how many low-use materials there are in the game. I kept coming back to the thought, and finally decided to put together some data for the community to look at.
So, I've assembled the Subnautica Material Use Spreadsheet. I went through the in-game blueprints and recorded the raw material cost of every currently-implemented recipe. Then I did some simple math on those material numbers. (To no one's surprise, titanium is the leader in demand, with 97 out of 152 recipes calling for it.)
My hope is that this data will spark conversation in the community about what we would like to see changed about recipes or resources in the future, and that it might serve a useful function for Unknown Worlds when they're thinking about creating new recipes or adjusting existing recipes or resource drop rates.
[NB: I've categorized some of the recipes as "repeatable," which is a somewhat subjective category which includes recipes I think players are likely to make more than a handful of times. Your mileage may vary.]
So, I've assembled the Subnautica Material Use Spreadsheet. I went through the in-game blueprints and recorded the raw material cost of every currently-implemented recipe. Then I did some simple math on those material numbers. (To no one's surprise, titanium is the leader in demand, with 97 out of 152 recipes calling for it.)
My hope is that this data will spark conversation in the community about what we would like to see changed about recipes or resources in the future, and that it might serve a useful function for Unknown Worlds when they're thinking about creating new recipes or adjusting existing recipes or resource drop rates.
[NB: I've categorized some of the recipes as "repeatable," which is a somewhat subjective category which includes recipes I think players are likely to make more than a handful of times. Your mileage may vary.]
Comments
This is a great start on organizing some hard data on material usage. One thing I think is missing is some way to quantify how easy it is to obtain these materials, although that could be very subjective as well. If we could directly compare usage and ease of access to materials we'd get a pretty good insight into material balance. As an example table coral is pretty easy to obtain in large-ish numbers but it's also quickly used. Compare this to fungal samples which can be obtained much more quickly but have almost no use and you can see an issue in balance between the two.
Titanium: Renewable = TRUE
How so? The only sources of Titanium (that I know of) are from Limestone, Scrap and Fragments, none of which are respawnable. Common as it is, Titanium is the most underrated material in SN; I frequently run out when building my base.
Meanwhile, copper and lithium are renewable because you can get them from sea treader basalt outcrops. (We really need more critters digging up stuff. Sand sharks would get a major appreciation boost from it!) Salt you can make yourself with the filtration machine.
Would it be possible to list what the repeatable recipes are? Titanium and quartz can be ignored because they're core base materials, but I can't readily think what each repeatable recipe for the other materials is.
I'm fairly new to the game, so this might be my newbieness talking, but I was under the impression that scrap perpetually rained down. I often see it floating down, so I assumed the devs had made it renewable specifically because otherwise we'd be screwed, heh.
If you flip to the Recipes sheet, that's where the repeatable data is listed. As mentioned, I'm a newbie, so I fully expect that I've over- or underestimated the usefulness of a fair few recipes, so extra eyeballs would be welcome.
I had no idea Sea Treaders did anything but poop, and I brain-farted on the filtration machine. Go, me. Thanks for the info, I'll update the spreadsheet now.
For example, how many times does a player make a multi-purpose room or bleach? If you're talking about a larger base you're going to be reusing a lot of the same recipes that use titanium. Likewise if the player is making a lot of bleach for water that increases usage of coral and salt. But the player may only be making a much smaller base or ignore the recipe for bleach altogether, instead relying on bladderfish until they get the water filtration machine. In that case they'll need much less titanium, coral, and salt overall. It's tricky to chart out.
Yeah, agreed. That's why I didn't try to assign any more detailed category than "repeatable," which only means I have a sense that most people will probably make this recipe more than about 4-6 times. Hard statistics on recipe frequency across the playerbase is well outside of the scope of project I'm willing to take on, haha.
(Though with that said, it is data the devs could actually catch from the game if they wanted. It'd probably be very interesting.)
The next thing is that you could expand that list to all kind of items. To see how much of use is a refined/advanced item. Is Aerogel used much and repeatedly?
We might also see what tech/recipe is normally build only once? Something like the welder for example, which could be recreated, but there's no need for that as the item never breaks like the knife.
Finally, some items are nondestructable needed once or many times, some can be fixed or recharged, others can be consumed by us or machines, etc.
But good work with the sheet.
Of course I assume the devs will rework all their recipes as soon as the main game has almost all tech done. Probably by end of April.
Fungal samples can indeed be used in the bioreactor (but only for 10 energy, so there's not much point), but in making the spreadsheet I was only concerned with ingredients used in blueprints. I wouldn't even have included the gas balls except that they're used in a torpedo recipe.
I gave serious thought to giving a separate listing to precursor recipes such as aerogel, but in the end I didn't do it because it would have meant quite a bit more data entry for information that was outside the scope of what I was interested in. With that said, whether I listed a precursor recipe as repeatable does take into account the repeatability of what it's used for.