Water Filtration Really needs a speed buff
mikeloeven
Join Date: 2017-04-14 Member: 229623Members
Join Date: 2017-04-14 Member: 229623Members
I know that people will immediately pop up screaming balance and difficulty and thus came prepared (holds up giant whack-a-mole mallet with SCIENCE written on it).
There is a major problem in the timing of the water filtration system. Just googling the numbers for a small reverse osmosis filter such as would be used for a home aquarium, you still get a flow rate of about 50 gallons per day which is already a heck of a lot more than the player would ever need. the filtration system used in the survival habitats is several times larger than those home systems would produce alot more water a heck of alot faster.
Additionally a machine that size would have a lot more storage space for water and salt than the UI allows (why is the machine even generating salt deposits in the first place most RO systems just backflush the concentrated brine out of the system).
With the power grid issues in the most recent experimental build it is completely impossible to run keep running multiple filtration systems even with a very robust power grid as the power requirements will drain a 5k power grid rapidly. (Prior to voice of the deep I was running 4 filtration machines off this grid with no problems)
Something's gotta give here and i hope this will be fixed in the future but for now ill be using the filterfast console command completely guilt free cause the devs broke my existing sytem.
There is a major problem in the timing of the water filtration system. Just googling the numbers for a small reverse osmosis filter such as would be used for a home aquarium, you still get a flow rate of about 50 gallons per day which is already a heck of a lot more than the player would ever need. the filtration system used in the survival habitats is several times larger than those home systems would produce alot more water a heck of alot faster.
Additionally a machine that size would have a lot more storage space for water and salt than the UI allows (why is the machine even generating salt deposits in the first place most RO systems just backflush the concentrated brine out of the system).
With the power grid issues in the most recent experimental build it is completely impossible to run keep running multiple filtration systems even with a very robust power grid as the power requirements will drain a 5k power grid rapidly. (Prior to voice of the deep I was running 4 filtration machines off this grid with no problems)
Something's gotta give here and i hope this will be fixed in the future but for now ill be using the filterfast console command completely guilt free cause the devs broke my existing sytem.
Comments
Hopefully with the new power balance they'll bring some sanity to this.
So on average, there is a higher water ratio than a salt ratio. In gameplay terms, this means that water should be created faster and more frequently than that of salt. Now you could go on to counter "But bruh! It's an alien ocean, who knows WHAT its made of?" But hydrogen and oxygen (water), and sodium and chloride (salt) are some of the most common elements in the universe. Even in a gameplay setting, you have to take realism into approach that the WFM just shouldn't operate like it does at present. (Unless perhaps, it's part of Alterra's line of stellar quality products...)
Talking again about the above poster's point that it takes days (gametime) to even produce one bottle of water, goes to show that both the WFM runs too slowly, and yet again, the game days just run by too quickly. I love this game and appreciate all the work UWE are doing on it! But with 1.0 coming up sooner than later, they really should look into adding more common sense realism to the game. Even though it's "just a game" and there should be Acceptable Breaks From Reality, this is one point of contention that really gets to me.
How many people actually die from starvation or dehydration in this game? Once you've built an adequate base, even early on, you can build some indoor plots and grow some melons. The growth rate is unrealistically fast so it'll cover your water needs. Use that while you farm resources to and from your base, occasionally emptying your filtration machine and storing the water. That way, when you want to go on a long mission away from base, you can bring water with you that can't spoil.
Also while we're on the subject, why does the WFM take such a long time to work its magic? I mean, I know it's for gameplay balance, but think about it from the Alterra perspective. We have technology to instantly craft bottles of water, lubricant and bleach from a Fabricator - as well as more technologically dense items. Handheld tools with computer chips, personal vehicles and elaborate building structures can be built in mere seconds in real-time... or just a minute in game-time. If technology is so precise and reliable for that... why does the WFM take days in-game to just make one measly bottle of water?
I'm sure someone will point out that the machine itself is filtering water as it gets it, and it's not molecular technology like what the Fabricator uses. But why isn't it? The Fabricator can immediately cauterize a Bladderfish, extract the water from its body in an instant, and it's instantly purified. Why then does the WFM take so long to do what it does? Why not just increase its water flow, laser out its impurities (we don't really need salt anyways) and filter it the same way the Fabricator does with everything else it processes?
Alterra sure likes to pick-and-choose how their technology decides to work and adhere to logic, it seems to me.
I understand what you're getting at here, and in many cases it is acceptable to cast aside science in the name of gameplay (especially in a science fiction game), but when something that isn't terribly difficult in the real world is made to be much more difficult in a game (and one set far in the future at that) with no plausible explanation, it smacks to me of lazy game design. I tend to be much more forgiving when things in a game are made easier than the real world for the sake of gameplay and convenience, but it really bugs me when it goes the other way. Internal inconsistencies (like the fact that the fabricator can purify a fish for eating, but can't directly purify water for "reasons") are also a pet peeve of mine.
There are plenty of ways the base power usage (and power usage in general in the game) could be balanced without effectively violating the laws of physics to the player's detriment. Oxygen production is a big one. That is definitely something that takes a LOT of power and could open up some neat gameplay opportunities with pipes to bring down oxygen from the surface for early bases that don't have enough power to sustain full O2 production. The devs are already moving this direction somewhat with adding power usage to each base piece.
Maybe the core issue here is that we don't really need separate food and water bars and just need hunger (say that the survival suit includes a water purification system so the player always gets the water they need). Most of the food items already provide both, and even with the unrealistic energy use and very slow purification time the water purifier (and the stillsuit), not to mention plant pots with marblemelons make water a non-issue early in the game anyways.
@darntrool
Машина для фильтрации воды может использовать некоторую балансировку перед выпуском, например, скорость и потребление энергии. Мне нравится ваша идея, хотя
The filtration machine is supposed to be slow. If it worked as fats as real filters water wouldn't even be a chore.
That's kind of my point. It seems like the devs are having to work really hard to make water relevant, to the point of nerfing the water filtration machine to be about as efficient as a solar still or dew collecting tarp despite the obscene amounts of energy it uses. Maybe the real question is whether water should even be a separate survival need from food. If the game was rebalanced around just food, then it would be easy to make growing crops/farming fish take awhile to balance the gameplay without having to resort to immersion breaking things like we're seeing with the WFM.
How deep is your base? I run one easily off of 2 panels from the surface.
Solar Panels got a HUGE buff this last update. They hold more energy per panel now (I think 250 each vs old value of 100) and just two of them at the surface seems to provide as much power as a single Thermal Reactor. Now the trade-off of course is that the output diminishes as you go deeper, but this makes the early game far more accessible now when you're just trying to get on your feet and move out of your 1-bedroom apartment Lifepod.
I thought there was a bug with my game after the last update; four TPs at a thermal spout was more than adequate to run two WFMs at once before, but it took nine TPS just to keep one going without brownouts. Come to find out with the new power distribution setup, TPs output energy relative to the temperatue - after that I was able to get just two TPs to run one WFM without issue. Likewise the energy changes have caused behavior differences with the Solar Panels as well, is my guess.
It is a bug, and the devs will fix it. I think Fred nailed it, it's not science it's a game, and once the power issues are sorted out I think it'll be well balanced. The whole base power system needs rehauling, power switches are a must and if you think WFMs are power hungry try adding a couple of floodlights. No seriously, try it, look at the results and press F8, that's the way to get stuff changed
Give it a warning
"Processing taking longer than expected. Unrecognized biological material in the processing chamber."
"Possible biohazard. Standard thermal decontamination and molecular seperation failed. Implementing Level 12 biohazard decontamination protocol"
Kind of scary after you've been drinking from a fish.
That was an excellent comment that came really close to detailing the problems with this machine. Here's the rub though, the fabricator can churn out gallons of water at damned near no energy cost (especially by comparison). This dumb water filtration machine, as designed, is practically useless. It drains a whole base of energy and takes more than an entire game day to turn out TWO measly bottles of water? What were they thinking? You're right: people who want to complain "balance" are way off base here. This thing is WAY too nerfed, especially when, as a game mechanic, it was designed to reduce the grind aspect of gathering water! Mission failed. Hell, the way this thing works, it is just cheaper and smarter to just stock up your deep base with a locker or two full of bleach and keep using the fabricator than to build and run one of these stupid things. I'm way disappointed. The energy and time requirements are ridiculous, especially when you consider that the only thing this foolish machine does is give you water in larger containers that still only take up one inventory slot. That's it, that's the big payoff for spending the time and resources to build one of these white elephants. As a water producer, the fabricator has it beat for lower resource and energy costs. I spent a lot of time digging up blueprints and resources to build this space and energy hog, only to be disappointed at the lackluster results. Seriously, without a supply of Bulbo tree and marblemellons I would have dehydrated to death while this foolish machine sucked up half the energy of my base and an entire game day to trickle out ONE bottle of water. Nonsense.
It's been three years since your comment, and the water filtration machine is STILL a white elephant that is way too nerfed. It makes no sense, either in in-game rationale, or from a game design perspective, as it was designed to reduce the grind for water acquisition. It's just a nonsense design that needs to be de-nerfed, but I suspect that the game designers believe it would destroy balance to do it. Free clue, designers: no, it wouldn't. You could make the thing twice as fast AND have half the energy cost and the game would still be fine with respect to challenge. As it is, this thing is just a big disappointment and frustration. It's hardly worth putting in your base.
In answer to the people who argue that buffing the water filtration machine would "upset game balance," I suggest that they are reacting emotionally and not logically. The logistics of carrying and using water are NOT determined by the rate at which any particular device produces water. The logistics are determined by two and only two variables: how many inventory slots the player has and how much water a particular container can hold relative to the inventory slots the player needs to carry it. The ONLY thing influenced by the speed of operation is how fast a particular set of water containers can be stockpiled, whether the device produces 2oz cups of coffee (coffee vending machine) or the 15oz water filtration machine "big gulp." The speed of the device is not the determining factor for water logistics. Now, one other thing that IS impacted by the speed of the device, and that is the energy consumption, presuming that the device consumes energy at a particular rate as it operates, but that is an entirely different issue than water logistics. At any rate, making the water filtration machine slower does NOT make the game more challenging; it just makes it more tedious. Conversely, making it faster does not wreck the water supply logistics for the player at all. If the developers are needing the machine to be an energy sink, and the game's energy balance would be "thrown off" by making the machine faster (and thus cheaper in total energy cost) they could just increase the WFM's energy consumption per unit time to mach the faster production. Frankly, water from the filtration machine is already the most ridiculously overpriced water, in terms of energy cost, in the game now, but if it's necessary for "game reasons" that the WFM be a large energy sink then the devs could still implement a larger energy consumption while still making the thing faster, though I would suggest a better game mechanic than using the WFM for that purpose, anyway. You've painted yourselves into a corner, developers, and the WFM is not the best way of getting yourselves out of that.
There are several benefits to making the water filtration machine faster (at least in the production of water). One: it makes it less tedious for the player to stockpile the large 15oz containers for a journey away from base. As it is now, players have to build a bank of these white elephants in order to stockpile water in a reasonable amount of time, which is, as I mentioned above, not challenging, merely tedious and ridiculous. With one WFM it requires more than two real-time hours to get enough water to fill one wall locker. Outrageous. Two: it makes the device more plausible and less blatantly contradictory. For an example of how the handling of this machine is contradictory, consider the Torgal base in the Jellyshroom Cave. There is ONE filtration machine there, and not a lot of opportunity to collect coral or bladderfish to supplement water production with the fabricator. This implies that Maida and the Torgals are all using the machine for their water needs. Nevertheless, at its present painfully slow production rate, the machine barely makes more water per day than ONE human needs to survive, per day. Given the scenario implied by the game, the Torgal party would have died of thirst. In addition, as has been pointed out in earlier comments, it is a silly contradiction to compare the energy cost for the fabricator to produce 6oz of water by rearranging the molecules in a bladderfish with the ridiculously more expensive process the WFM uses. Third: In real world terms, a potable water production device that worked the way the WFM does would be a ridiculously inefficient and ineffective solution to human water needs. Such a device, given its construction and operation costs is entirely inefficient. It's just not a plausible plot device because it strains the player's suspension of disbelief way too much to have a science fiction device that operates way less efficiently than contemporary technology does. At minimum, to be even remotely plausible, it would need to be THREE times faster at producing water, and then it might plausibly have sustained the Torgal party in the Jellyshroom cave. Making it four times faster would be the minimum speed improvement in order to claim that the device is not merely a ridiculous prop and a kludge solution to a game-balance problem. Come on, guys, speed this thing up. You can still keep the energy consumption high while making water production less tedious. Tedious and challenging are two entirely different things.
And I believe here we have the root of your problem (yes, I'm saying your problem): Stockpiling lockers full of water...? When did that become a thing? Since when has Subnautica become a prepper simulator?
Not worth the thread-necro, I think......
If you really feel the need for speed: https://www.nexusmods.com/subnautica/mods/520
Opinion noted, but if you really wanted to be concise or if you were really worried about wasting your time, you could have just clicked "disagree." Complaining about "thread necro" is kind of a silly point to raise, given that you thought the issue was important enough to revisit this thread and comment. Do you know what a performative contradiction is? At any rate, impugning the way someone plays the game does not address ANY of the points raised, which clearly, you haven't noticed.
The central point still stands: making the water filtration machine very slow does not make or keep the game challenging in any way. All it does is make water production tedious, which is just silly, even from a game-mechanics perspective. Speeding up the WFM does not make the game less challenging in any way, nor does it change the logistics of water management. They ought to fix it, for a number of reasons presented by various users in the preceding thread. The beauty of addressing the issue is that its probably just a matter of tweaking one or two parameters.
Edit: I checked out the link to the modification. Good gravy, the fact that someone actually went to the trouble of creating a mod to fix the issue ought to be enough evidence in support of speeding the thing up. I would ask the devs: why the intransigence or neglect of the issue? What's the concern here, the big reason for not changing the parameter?