Why the PRAWN Suit sucks
SnailsAttack
Join Date: 2017-02-09 Member: 227749Members
Join Date: 2017-02-09 Member: 227749Members
My overall experience with the prawn suit can be summed up by my first encounter with a reaper leviathan in the dunes, in which I attempted to boost myself up and out of the way, but instead only succeeded in floating a bit towards the left, falling, landing and being temporarily stunned, trying to escape, getting stuck on a salt deposit, and then being nearly crushed to death.
My point being that the prawn suit is very frustrating to use.
While the seamoth is fast, maneuverable, responsive, and overall a very fun vehicle to drive, the prawn suit is slow, floaty, and entirely unresponsive. For a vehicle that's nearly required to complete the game, you'd think it would be a bit more fun to use.
I will now go over my three main issues with the prawn suit, as well as a variety of solutions and additional suggestions, because I believe that it has a bountiful supply of untapped potential to be a very fun and useful vehicle.
1. Poor Maneuverability
The prawn suit is a dreadful thing to control. Instead of feeling like I'm the pilot of an incredibly powerful mech suit, I feel a lot more like I'm running around in a bulky suit of armor on the surface of the moon.
Walking on the seabed is a very slow and agonizing experience, and the only way to move at any realistic speeds is by jumping along and boosting with your jet over and over until you reach your destination, getting stuck on various plants and animals along the way.
Whenever you land with the prawn suit, no matter the height, a single animation and sound effect are played, followed by about a half second where you can't really move, followed by a sluggish return to your usual pace.
2. Unsatisfying Reactions to Touching Things
Bumping into any object with the prawn suit will usually cause it to instantly stop, followed by the aforementioned pause and slow regain of speed.
You can't really climb up hills without boosting, and you can't walk down them without an ear shattering bang bang crash every other second. This, with the added issue of constantly bumping into plants and bits of terrain, is incredible frustrating.
3. Poor Execution of Suit Augmentation
One of the prawn suit's shining abilities is that it can use any combination of two different arms, each with a unique purpose. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty useless (or at least don't come very close to their potential).
The grappling hook is far too short, the drill can only break ores, the claw has a 1.5 second delay on picking up anything, and the torpedoes continue to go completely unused.
And that about sums up why I just hate using the prawn suit. It's frustrating to pilot for so many different reasons.
Here are my suggestions to make it much more bearable, or hopefully even fun.
- Make the thrusters more powerful and responsive
The prawn suit's thrusters are incredibly weak. The ones used while you're off the ground, anyway. I think that they should be significantly more powerful to allow for better control.
- Make the suit more agile on the seafloor
There's nearly no point to walking on the seafloor, as cool as it is to think about. It's a noisy, slow, and frustrating experience, and it's always better to just use the jets and glide toward your destination. That's why the prawn suit should be made faster and more agile on the seafloor, and perhaps less likely to get stuck on random bits of coral.
- Add 2 additional landing animations
The current animation looks pretty good for moderate falls, but for a 10 cm drop or a 50 meter drop? No chance. There should be two additional animations, complete with unique sound effects, for falling short and long distances.
- Make the thruster sounds less annoying
Every time you let go of the thrust button, it plays a rather obnoxious 2.5 second audio clip of the thrusters powering down. This is fine if you aren't trying to land accurate on an object, but if you are? The audio clip loops every single time you press the thrust button. Instead, this sound clip should only be played when the thrusters run out of fuel.
- Make the grappling hook actually useful
While the hook seems like an incredibly useful tool to have, it's kind of awful. The range is too short, the hook travels too slowly, and the snapback and recharge times take forever. All of those stats should be tripled. You should also be able to lower or raise yourself on the grapple rope and swing at high speeds.
- Make the storage upgrade work as advertised
As it stands, the storage upgrade increases the prawn suit's container size by a measly 6 slots. Where are my other 10 slots? Add em'!
- Make the claw arm more responsive
The claw arm is just ridiculous. Picking up any item takes a full second, where you have to have the cursor aimed exactly at the item you're trying to grab. It's easier just to leave the prawn suit, pick up whatever items you're trying to grab, and get back in!
- Give the drill arm a vacuum
Remodel the drill arm so that it has a vacuum in the center that can be used to pick up resource items. I hate having to either use the claw arm or get out of the prawn suit every time I need to pick stuff up. I usually have to do it more than once per resource deposit because otherwise the resource I'm mining rolls over a cliff and into an acid pool or whatever.
it should also be like maybe 20% faster because i think it takes too long ;/
- Add 2 additional upgrade slots
This will work in part with my two following ideas for new upgrades.
- Add an Arm swap-out upgrade
I'm not 100% sure if this is a good idea, but I think that it could be balanced fairly well. Anyways, when placed in an upgrade slot, another slot would appear next to it that you could place an additional arm it. It would add a quick-select tool that, when used, would swap out the right arm for whatever arm you placed next to the upgrade itself.
You would be able to swap between up to 6 different arms (even though the game doesn't have that many) if you utilized all 6 of the prawn suit's upgrade slots for this one upgrade. Newly added arms would alternate between the left and right arm.
Sorry if I explained that poorly, but I think you'll understand the gist of it. If i go into the details of it i'll just get everyone confused.
- Dash upgrade
The dash upgrade would allow the prawn suit to perform a dash in any direction by double-tapping its respective button. This upgrade would work great for escaping from predators, maneuvering through difficult areas, or even just for trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. It would use a bit of jet fuel every time you used it.
Conclusion :
Like with the many cyclops updates, the prawn suit could be significantly improved with the application of some of my ideas. As it stands, the prawn suit is, like i've said dozens of times, frustrating to pilot, hard to maneuver, and painfully slow.
Here's some counterarguments I thought up followed by my rebuttals :
While you could say that maybe the prawn suit is bulky on purpose, I'd say that games should never have a feature that's annoying and unwanted, and only included for the sake of realism.
You could also say that the prawn suit is fine as is, to which I'd tell you to maybe boot up subnautica and take a stroll through the mushroom forest.
While the cyclops is useful for transporting the prawn suit around, getting in and out of it whenever I want to go somewhere else is a bit of a hassle.
And now I've run out of counterarguments because I'm currently blinded by my ability to think basic thoughts the genius of my suggestions.
Anyways, I didn't include the recipes for the arm swap-out and dash upgrades because... well i'm lazy and bad and balancing.
Thanks for reading(or at least skimming through) this thread. I hope you enjoyed it, and agree with my ideas.
If you have any additional ideas or suggestions to improve this thread, please post them.
My point being that the prawn suit is very frustrating to use.
While the seamoth is fast, maneuverable, responsive, and overall a very fun vehicle to drive, the prawn suit is slow, floaty, and entirely unresponsive. For a vehicle that's nearly required to complete the game, you'd think it would be a bit more fun to use.
I will now go over my three main issues with the prawn suit, as well as a variety of solutions and additional suggestions, because I believe that it has a bountiful supply of untapped potential to be a very fun and useful vehicle.
1. Poor Maneuverability
The prawn suit is a dreadful thing to control. Instead of feeling like I'm the pilot of an incredibly powerful mech suit, I feel a lot more like I'm running around in a bulky suit of armor on the surface of the moon.
Walking on the seabed is a very slow and agonizing experience, and the only way to move at any realistic speeds is by jumping along and boosting with your jet over and over until you reach your destination, getting stuck on various plants and animals along the way.
Whenever you land with the prawn suit, no matter the height, a single animation and sound effect are played, followed by about a half second where you can't really move, followed by a sluggish return to your usual pace.
2. Unsatisfying Reactions to Touching Things
Bumping into any object with the prawn suit will usually cause it to instantly stop, followed by the aforementioned pause and slow regain of speed.
You can't really climb up hills without boosting, and you can't walk down them without an ear shattering bang bang crash every other second. This, with the added issue of constantly bumping into plants and bits of terrain, is incredible frustrating.
3. Poor Execution of Suit Augmentation
One of the prawn suit's shining abilities is that it can use any combination of two different arms, each with a unique purpose. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty useless (or at least don't come very close to their potential).
The grappling hook is far too short, the drill can only break ores, the claw has a 1.5 second delay on picking up anything, and the torpedoes continue to go completely unused.
And that about sums up why I just hate using the prawn suit. It's frustrating to pilot for so many different reasons.
Here are my suggestions to make it much more bearable, or hopefully even fun.
- Make the thrusters more powerful and responsive
The prawn suit's thrusters are incredibly weak. The ones used while you're off the ground, anyway. I think that they should be significantly more powerful to allow for better control.
- Make the suit more agile on the seafloor
There's nearly no point to walking on the seafloor, as cool as it is to think about. It's a noisy, slow, and frustrating experience, and it's always better to just use the jets and glide toward your destination. That's why the prawn suit should be made faster and more agile on the seafloor, and perhaps less likely to get stuck on random bits of coral.
- Add 2 additional landing animations
The current animation looks pretty good for moderate falls, but for a 10 cm drop or a 50 meter drop? No chance. There should be two additional animations, complete with unique sound effects, for falling short and long distances.
- Make the thruster sounds less annoying
Every time you let go of the thrust button, it plays a rather obnoxious 2.5 second audio clip of the thrusters powering down. This is fine if you aren't trying to land accurate on an object, but if you are? The audio clip loops every single time you press the thrust button. Instead, this sound clip should only be played when the thrusters run out of fuel.
- Make the grappling hook actually useful
While the hook seems like an incredibly useful tool to have, it's kind of awful. The range is too short, the hook travels too slowly, and the snapback and recharge times take forever. All of those stats should be tripled. You should also be able to lower or raise yourself on the grapple rope and swing at high speeds.
- Make the storage upgrade work as advertised
As it stands, the storage upgrade increases the prawn suit's container size by a measly 6 slots. Where are my other 10 slots? Add em'!
- Make the claw arm more responsive
The claw arm is just ridiculous. Picking up any item takes a full second, where you have to have the cursor aimed exactly at the item you're trying to grab. It's easier just to leave the prawn suit, pick up whatever items you're trying to grab, and get back in!
- Give the drill arm a vacuum
Remodel the drill arm so that it has a vacuum in the center that can be used to pick up resource items. I hate having to either use the claw arm or get out of the prawn suit every time I need to pick stuff up. I usually have to do it more than once per resource deposit because otherwise the resource I'm mining rolls over a cliff and into an acid pool or whatever.
it should also be like maybe 20% faster because i think it takes too long ;/
- Add 2 additional upgrade slots
This will work in part with my two following ideas for new upgrades.
- Add an Arm swap-out upgrade
I'm not 100% sure if this is a good idea, but I think that it could be balanced fairly well. Anyways, when placed in an upgrade slot, another slot would appear next to it that you could place an additional arm it. It would add a quick-select tool that, when used, would swap out the right arm for whatever arm you placed next to the upgrade itself.
You would be able to swap between up to 6 different arms (even though the game doesn't have that many) if you utilized all 6 of the prawn suit's upgrade slots for this one upgrade. Newly added arms would alternate between the left and right arm.
Sorry if I explained that poorly, but I think you'll understand the gist of it. If i go into the details of it i'll just get everyone confused.
- Dash upgrade
The dash upgrade would allow the prawn suit to perform a dash in any direction by double-tapping its respective button. This upgrade would work great for escaping from predators, maneuvering through difficult areas, or even just for trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. It would use a bit of jet fuel every time you used it.
Conclusion :
Like with the many cyclops updates, the prawn suit could be significantly improved with the application of some of my ideas. As it stands, the prawn suit is, like i've said dozens of times, frustrating to pilot, hard to maneuver, and painfully slow.
Here's some counterarguments I thought up followed by my rebuttals :
While you could say that maybe the prawn suit is bulky on purpose, I'd say that games should never have a feature that's annoying and unwanted, and only included for the sake of realism.
You could also say that the prawn suit is fine as is, to which I'd tell you to maybe boot up subnautica and take a stroll through the mushroom forest.
While the cyclops is useful for transporting the prawn suit around, getting in and out of it whenever I want to go somewhere else is a bit of a hassle.
And now I've run out of counterarguments because I'm currently blinded by my ability to think basic thoughts the genius of my suggestions.
Anyways, I didn't include the recipes for the arm swap-out and dash upgrades because... well i'm lazy and bad and balancing.
Thanks for reading(or at least skimming through) this thread. I hope you enjoyed it, and agree with my ideas.
If you have any additional ideas or suggestions to improve this thread, please post them.
Comments
I really hope they do SOMETHING to fix the Prawn, I mean, how can they NOT know how annoying the thing is to maneuver?
gamers want more !
I disagree with most of it. In fact, I LOVE the PRAWN suit (I like heavy and slow mechas). Probably because I had the reverse experience you had. At my first encounter with a reaper I was exploring the southern side of the Aurora with nothing but a seaglide. It screamed coming towards me, but I hid in a wreck (ones that doesn't seem around anymore, they looked like a dome and were a nice shelter against murderous leviathans). After a tense while, it left. My second encounter with a Reaper was when I had just finished my first seamoth and I was all like "awesome, now I can go anywhere, I've got a vehicle f*ck everything!!". I decided to explore the northern (front) side of the Aurora, terrible mistake. I didn't see it coming. It came from the bottom, from an old entrance to the ILZ. Seamoths are to Reapers like tennis balls are to dogs. They shake it, throw it around and rip'em in two bites. Lost my seamoth and escaped swimming desperately hugging the Aurora portside. That was probably the most terrifying experience I ever had with a game.
Then I got my first prawn suit and knew better then running around recklessly. Still, eventually I met a reaper I couldn't avoid and it gave me a nice kiss. That's when I realized how badass the PRAWN was. Very little damage (compared to the seamoth) and I punched and walked my way to safety. No longer would the Leviathans terrorize me, as long as I was with my faithful seamecha.
Now let's get to the specifics. It isn't. I do believe it runs faster on the seafloor than the main character swims. Jumping and boosting allows you to go even faster. It has terrible turning though, which agrees with the "heavy mecha" design.
If you include the grappling hook as a mean of movement, it gets even better. If it were much longer it would be overpowered. You actually can swing at high speeds.
If you aim at the ground (the further away from you, the better) and hook it, the PRAWN will be dragged towards the hook. By boosting during this time you will take off at amazing speeds. If done properly it's even faster than the seamoth. But as you keep the hook momentum you can't properly turn and might miss your mark, go too far or hit a cave wall. However, if during this maneuver you hit a nearby wall with your hook, you will turn in the direction of the hook and literally swing at high speed like the glorious spidermecha you always wanted to be.
I also think it takes too long, but it's still the fastest way to mine.
A tip here, if you drop a gravsphere by the deposit it will hold most, if not all, the mined resources. This will keep it from rolling downhill or into the acidic brine.
Drilling and automatically storing the ore would be a nice quality of life upgrade. Maybe a very expensive blueprint for the modification station requiring the original drill arm.
I would like an upgrade to swap arms, but I digress on the idea of additional slots. As I see it, we should have plenty of choices to choose from, but have limited combinations to use them.
And a dash would be just silly. Maybe as an upgrade, costing tons of power and with a large cooldown.
The whole point of the prawn is to be bulky and slow, to withstand punishment you couldn't face otherwise.
Not to jump around like a japanned cartoon mecha.
Never had much trouble with it. And that's beside the point, cause that's Seamoths turf.
It's amusing that the major critique I have against the PRAWN was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it doesn't bother others that much.
Only thing I would change in a heartbeat about the PRAWN would be to point its light beams wherever I look. It is annoying to climb a wall in the dark, seeing almost nothing but the wall in front of you.
This isn't Space or Air, you CAN'T move fast underwater, if it moved too fast people would complain about it.
The only point I give you is that being able to climb would make it easier to use but your ideas are WORSE than the perceived problems with it.
Suit Augmentation don't mean "better at everything", it can mean stronger and use bigger tools at the cost of speed, this is something many people WANTED, the intent of the PRAWN wasn't to just turn you into a giant Minecraft-steve with quick gathering, you are NOT supposed to go far from the Cyclop with it or to outrun predator.
If there was anything to say about that is that you should be SCARING small predator and make the bigger one stay away after a few punch.
btw:
I never had a problem catching anything with the current claw, even the falling ore, it just take skill.
We already have a powerful jump-jet upgrade that can be used to thrust forward full speed if you use it right (double jump), you can't make it better outside of just flyingfloating. You might as well be asking to ditch the prawn for a bigger seamoth.
At best you could claim the "jump-jet" upgrade also give a small thrust in any direction you go to justify a faster speed walk than without the upgrade
I'll only agree a little, but you can just learn to slow down before you touch down. You need to be skilled to use this.
Look like we can't even agree on why it's useless.
The range is just fine. The only problem with it is that you can't use it to grab stuff so you'll never want to sacrifice the claw.
Your solution is worse than the problem, it would look idiotic to be able to suck things that are too big to go through the drill, better solution above.
I made a topic about more slot and yet I will disagree completely, the prawn was the only one good.
Your idea would make it a magic clusterfuck capable of doing everything superfast and fly around everywhere.
Prawn operators receive weeks of training to counteract this phenomenon. You will have to make do with self-discipline."
These things i agree with exept with the drill arm, sure its annoying that some of the resource doesnt go into the prawn storage automatically, but that only happens when you have a full prawn storage. And you can just walk back to the cyclops which has built in storage and just walk back to where you were last at. At least i agree with the prawn suit getting stuck on random bits of flora but not on fauna that rarely or never happens to me, its the bigger ones that actually stop me. Also your underwater, its way worse when its on land. But its pointless to bring it on land since most places are too small so its better to be underwater. The only thing i will complain about the prawn is your inability to disable the lights. Its annoyance comes from the prawns head lamps lighting up areas that shouldn't be lit up where ever it is, for example: docked inside either the cyclops or the moonpools, and in areas with lots of bonesharks or around any hostile creatures that are attracted to light. Thank god reapers and ghost leviathans aren't attracted to light.
PRAWN Suit: P ressure R eactive A rmored W aterproof N ano suit
Like this guys says it is meant for use in High pressure Atmospheres namely; Fully Upgraded it can go as low as 1900M. It is meant to be this way. "I love the PRAWN suit; Its so bad"
Once you get the grappling arm, and learn how to really mess with the physics of the game, you can launch yourself really far. I remember I grappled onto a Reefback Leviathan and accidentally launched myself several hundred feet over the water. That was a really shocking experience, but it gave me so many ideas of how to traverse with the Prawn Suit a lot easier.
So it should have a more or less full glass dome. With the cyclops gone, there's no need for an exit on the top. The devs could add one on the upper back; back or even on either side.
Or they might even consider to kick the PRAWN out as well, just like the SeaMoth.
Because even without a high pressure mech suit, I am doing fine at a depth of 2000m... and I surely don't want to walk around the Glacial Basin in a PRAWN. I'd rather use a hoving SeaTruck (and it means a lot if I say I'm willing to use the truck).
I totally agree that the PRAWN suit is slow as hell, and i love to see it approved. But it also needs to have that realistic factor.
and despite tripping over roots (all the freaking time).
I was really content with my choice of vehicle, and it wasn't as impossibly hard to get out as I thought (jump module installed).
I could just punch that squid-shark all day long.