Add nitrogen narcosis, more realistic dive times and decompression sickness.

[David Davidson]

As a diver myself nitrogen narcosis is one of the more interesting elements to diving. Essentially when breathing compressed air some of the oxygen starts to bond to the nitrogen forming nitrous oxide (laughing gas), you usually don't notice until about you're at about 30m and 40-50m are pretty fun, though it's definitely a hazard as you'll start to read gauges wrong and such at deeper depths.
Heliox and trimix help with narcosis but don't eliminate it completely. Adding nitrogen narcosis to the game would add a good bit of realism.
Nitrous oxide (food grade) comes in cans of whipped cream or as whipped cream chargers for the larger whipped cream dispensers, so if you want to research the effects of nitrogen narcosis on the surface it is possible.
It's also used in dentistry and if you're in an ambulance for anxiety and pain control usually under the name of 'gas and air' which if a 50:50 mix of NOx and oxygen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis

It would be a really interesting addition to the game and would also maybe move the game in a direction of longer lasting tanks of air, different mixes and tank re-pressurisers in your underwater base/escape pod.

With this dives could last for up to an hour depending on your depth and the tanks you use, as well as the gas mix. When you return from a deep dive you can go straight from your seamoth to a decompression chamber with a bed in it. You can sleep in the decompression chamber to pass the time for you to decompress. The cyclops would have a similar such addition.

With this new addition a new bar would be added to your HUD named 'gas saturation' once it starts to fill this means you will have to either have a decompression chamber or make decompression stops at certain depths.

Naturally you can turn this option on or off, so you can choose to burn through your air extremely quickly, or dive for much longer without having to resurface.

Oh once the plastisteel tank is created, merging two together to make a twinset (http://tinyurl.com/zo8cxwt) which fits in the tank slot but holds twice as much air.

If you end up resurfacing and getting decompression sickness, this can be fixed by diving back down, or getting to the nearest hyperbaric chamber, the effects of decompression sickness would be mild at first but worsen exponentially over time lowering your health and slowing you down.

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by roadblock101:

I don't disagree with anything you've said from a technical standpoint.

If I'm reading it right though, besides a desire to add more realistic diving/surfacing mechanics, the real thing it sounds like you would prefer solving is the current poor dive time that's dampening the experience.

Completely agree if that's the case.

I'd suggest this could be solved quicker and more simply by tweaking the rate of depletion or increasing the storage capacity value for tanks rather than creating new; models, textures, animations, art, balancing, encylopedia lore, etc to support an autoinjector or decompression chamber.

Some of this might actually be solved by the Transfuser they're working on. A fish or plant gene may extend breathing time and adds the extra challenge of finding it. Couldn't say for certain though and yes I know, this is more far-fetched! However, they seem keen on this item to add variety to your character.

I don't think I'll manage to convince you that adding more steps to the air management process is unlikely to be fun, even if it is equipment in your inventory that automatically deploys, as it will be another depleting resource to manage like batteries (forgot power as a resource in previous post...) and more mandatory slot(s) taken up on an already exceedingly limited inventory storage space.

I'd also reckon it's unlikely this discussion will be reviewed by the Developers unfortunately.

You're probably right, even if the devs don't look it over there's always mods once the final release is made, or subnautica 2. Decompression sickness has been in the game code from early, early on (can be accessed through the console) and as previously said mesmers play with perception so a mod wouldn't be that hard if the devs don't want to pick it up.

[Roadwraith]

Yep a mod would be a perfect solution.

Perhaps you could give it a go when the time comes?

[Azirahael]

Lots of games have 'realism' mods, often put together by experts in the field.

I'd be interested in seeing this one.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Schlomo Shekelshoastein:

Originally posted by Apostate:

Read your words, still say "no". There is no need for decompression, nitrogen narcosis or any of it.

If you really miss decompressing build a bulkhead on your base airlock and sit in there till you feel give earned base time.

You know decompression sickness is already in game, right? It can be activated through a console command.
As always these features would be optional, just like survival mode would be optional, just add another difficulty/realism level or two.

I'd love to hear why you say no to this?
The only argument that you could make, considering that decompression sickness is already in game is "hurr durr too long to code" but I call BS on that, the mesmer already affects your perception, again it wouldn't take too long to flesh that out into a different game mechanic.

As for the whole being crushed at 1000m, provided you have a regulator that can provide 100 bar of pressure to you your airspaces would equalise and you wouldn't be crushed.... I think (same reason fish aren't crushed at that depth, any airspace (swim bladder) is equally pressurised to the environment. Even so, future tech, people are going to other planets; from what I gleaned in the PDA logs there seems to be a galactic empire if a human were to be crushed at that depth there would likely be future tech that stops that from happening.

No with a decent explanation is fine but people who just say no for the sake of it just come off as fools.

A few simple points:
-Decompression sickness is already accessible through the console.
-The mesmer already alters your ingame perception, therefore altering perception by depth shouldn't be a big undertaking for the developers.
-Narcosis and deco should be optional, not forced
-Longer dive times would allow you to explore wrecks properly without having to surface/return to your sub every two minutes or so.

It says a lot about you that your response includes "hurry durr...."

I couldn't possibly have an objection because it's your pet idea and therefore fantastic?

News flash, most of the people are not you.

I'm not coming at this objection from a device time issue, I'm not them and can't speak to what is or is not reasonable to add.

I am coming from a player perspective. One where I see regular need, especially early game, to travel large distances vertically. I don't want that experience changed, I like it how it is. I also don't want a time advance mechanic to deal with the narcotics. I'm not interested in having that added.

Longer dive times? I like them short. I like the need to be aware of where I am in a wreck and what my exit is.

So you say optional, how much optional, if I turn off the mod do the dive times revert?

In terms of future tech we have hatches on the sides of water tight compartments that somehow don't leak. We have a 3d printer that cooks a fish and removes all the bones and organs without cutting it on any visible way. I think a blood nitrogen scrubber being in the suit is reasonable.

So you want yur mechanic, I don't. Notice how I can have a different opinion from you without insulting you? There is a life skill for you to practice.

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by Apostate:

It says a lot about you that your response includes "hurry durr...."

I couldn't possibly have an objection because it's your pet idea and therefore fantastic?

News flash, most of the people are not you.

I'm not coming at this objection from a device time issue, I'm not them and can't speak to what is or is not reasonable to add.

I am coming from a player perspective. One where I see regular need, especially early game, to travel large distances vertically. I don't want that experience changed, I like it how it is. I also don't want a time advance mechanic to deal with the narcotics. I'm not interested in having that added.

Longer dive times? I like them short. I like the need to be aware of where I am in a wreck and what my exit is.

So you say optional, how much optional, if I turn off the mod do the dive times revert?

In terms of future tech we have hatches on the sides of water tight compartments that somehow don't leak. We have a 3d printer that cooks a fish and removes all the bones and organs without cutting it on any visible way. I think a blood nitrogen scrubber being in the suit is reasonable.

So you want yur mechanic, I don't. Notice how I can have a different opinion from you without insulting you? There is a life skill for you to practice.

Actually it says a lot about you posting to simply make personal attacks when you could have posted something constructive and since half of it is already in the game code (decompression sickness) it isn't my "pet idea" if the developers have already thought half of it up, but not implemented it. Maybe it got retconned, maybe it's coming in a later update, who knows. All I know is you came here to be an asshat and gave me a free bump; cheers.

As for magic hatches, since we have moonpools we have to assume that the pressure in underwater habitats is the same as the surrounding water pressure, therefore quickly entering through a hatch shouldn't flood the habitat, it would simply send up a stream of bubbles and let a little water in along with you. In theory at least.

Originally posted by roadblock101:

Yep a mod would be a perfect solution.

Perhaps you could give it a go when the time comes?

I wish I could, I can do computer hardware without any issues(expensive lego), but software coding is all greek to me sadly.

[Alkpaz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRjeSLCBLs&feature=related

[Obraxis]

As a few posters already pointed out, we prototyped this kind of thing early on and found that it actually harms gameplay and the flow of the game, which is why it was never implemented for the game. Sometimes doing something accurately actually hinders gameplay and we need to choose between scientific accuracy and fun. Fun tends to win most of the time, as we're making a game and not a swimming simulator.

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by Obraxis:

As a few posters already pointed out, we prototyped this kind of thing early on and found that it actually harms gameplay and the flow of the game, which is why it was never implemented for the game. Sometimes doing something accurately actually hinders gameplay and we need to choose between scientific accuracy and fun. Fun tends to win most of the time, as we're making a game and not a swimming simulator.

Excellent to get a developer to comment on the thread. I understand what you mean about it harming fun, it would need to be implemented very specifically to not harm gameplay and as a small developer team working your asses off on bughunting and such getting that balance is probably too much of a hassle. At least the groundwork for it being ingame is there so it should be much easier to mod into the game (a modding toolkit along with the game would be an excellent thing to work on for final) if someone wants to.
Anyway it's great to have word on whether or not it would be included. If you can find that very fine balance (and you're making subnautica 2) I'd urge you to put it in as an optional part of gameplay.

One small issue is that the game essentially plays like a freediving game rather than a SCUBA game, if the air times on tanks (such as the large tank and the plastisteel tank) could be increased by a couple of minutes that would be great since we have people who can get down to about 100m and breath-hold for five or so minutes, world record holders are closer to 10 minutes. I can average roughly 2 1/2 when snorkelling before my lungs feel like they're on fire. Fun fact but if you put cold water on someone's face their entire metabolism slows down allowing them to conserve energy (and thus oxygen), that along with the presence of a hymen in females (IIRC only dolphins have this adaption too, to keep water out) suggests that at one point in our evolution humans were probably semi-aquatic.

[Alkpaz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycI5vo7i6I8

[HiSaZuL]

I was going to post something witty after Obraxis originally commented involving torpedos and heads, figured it was unnecessary at that point, but dear lord you are dense. How many times the same thing can be said before it sinks in?

At one point humans were semi aquatic? Bub are you properly taking your meds? Just because human embryo comes with gill slits doesn't mean aquaman is our granddaddy... or he'd be granddaddy of most vertebrates... since most embros in that department are hard to tell apart. This is the kind of thing you'd learn in your very first biology class...

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by HiSaZuL:

dear lord you are dense.

At one point humans were semi aquatic? Bub are you properly taking your meds? Just because human embryo comes with gill slits doesn't mean aquaman is our granddaddy... or he'd be granddaddy of most vertebrates... since most embros in that department are hard to tell apart. This is the kind of thing you'd learn in your very first biology class...

It's you who is dense. The whole humans being semi aquatic has a whole scientific hypothesis (which while not theory, you may want to remember that gravity is a theory and I'd be pleased to see you test it by jumping off a nice tall building) behind it with leading palentologists and biologists backing it. I got it from my chemistry teacher a couple of years back, who was a damn genius with three doctorates so call me dense all you want, all you're doing is flinging ♥♥♥♥. Why even bother to post? I considered this /thread-ed once I'd responded to a dev. Yet still you have to fling verbal feces.

Says a ton about your character.