Crashfish farm for weapons?

[Sephiroth]

I had a thought tonight. I want to kill a reaper which is hovering over some thermal vents I intend to use. Without cheating, I thought I'd build a crashfish farm and use them with the stasis rifle and propulsion cannon to take it on. Do crashfish harm reapers?

[kwong20287]

It explodes, what do you think?

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by kwong20287:

It explodes, what do you think?

Why, You would think they would actually deal half as much damage to sharks as they deal to players!... Which they don't.

They do indeed deal damage, but they deal tickle damage to other predators even if you do go to the effort to farm them up and bring them with you.

I am honestly uncertain if you could physically fit enough crash fish in your personal or prawn inventory to do the job on a reaper.

They are already woefully weak against basic predators as it is, and if the goal is to make things smaller than a levithan "run away" you might as well bring a repulsion gun, because leashing problems at least mean you didn't have to waste ammo if they just reaggro with the R gun.

[Sephiroth]

Well that's a bug in my book. If a stupid crashfish can take 40% of my prawn in one hit it should hurt predators. That's like me shooting you with a .45 pistol and killing you, but shooting myself ten times and getting scratches. We need a way to deal with these things. We don't need guns, but we need some way of moving them or downing them.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Sephiroth:

Well that's a bug in my book. If a stupid crashfish can take 40% of my prawn in one hit it should hurt predators. That's like me shooting you with a .45 pistol and killing you, but shooting myself ten times and getting scratches. We need a way to deal with these things. We don't need guns, but we need some way of moving them or downing them.

The bizzare catch 22 is that if our nonlethal means worked properly as advertised consistently, we wouldn't all be rolling our eyes wishing for explosive murder so much because our nonlethal things don't work and even the stasis rifle data file in game tells you to use conventional weapons instead.

I love the idea of the perimiter defense sysyem. It's no use when shark swarms gang up on your parked seamoth while you are trying to look through a wreck chased by the other swarm.

I love the idea of the sasis rifle. Which is no use when warpers are given cheat code imminuty to the stasis rifle.

I love the idea of the repulsion gun. which is no good when the AI doesn't unleash properly and, again, things so aggro you have hurled 20+ sharks out of the sea without a breather.

Then you see some odd duck saying "Well, just use the propulsion gun to shoot salt at them!" and that's like, the literal least effective thing next to calling them names. and also requires there to be anything to grab in the first place.

Which then leads back to farm raising your own explosive fish for ammo with said prop gun, and... yeah.

[Zemecon]

In staying true to the UWE "no lethal weapons" policy for Subnautica, a crashfish cannot do enough damage to kill anything with one or two hits. If none of the other tools are working as some certain people are intending then it will be because 1) they are not designed to kill anything and rather only intended to harm and thusly repel said creature, and in doing so are working properly by UWE standards, or 2) the creatures you are trying to repel are not being repelled, in which case you should probably send a bug report. And, no, I am not responsible for UWE receiving that bug report so don't complain to me about it.

[or0b0ur0s]

Unfortunately the only things the Crashfish can kill without filling your inventory full of them are regular sharks... which don't really warrant such an extreme measure in the first place when there are far easier ways to make them leave you alone. And, of course, they come in numbers that make the paltry amount of "fish" ammo you can carry utterly inadequate.

Fortunately, this is true of Reapers as well (that they don't really warrant Crashfish grenades). You're just plain not supposed to kill them, as it it's supposed to be more trouble than it is worth. Their ridiculously massive hit point total seems to accomplish that, given that they are as vulnerable to injury-based fleeing and re-leashing as any other creature.

I don't know what this re-agro or extra-agro bug with the Repulsion Cannon is that some have talked about (I almost never bother making one). But, in theory, the most effective thing you could do with a Reaper is put it between you and the Void, and zap it with a Seamoth Perimeter Defense System. It should simply go away and not come back, especially if you give it a place to run. According to a recent Dev post, things are supposed to flee directly away from whatever hurt them, so in theory you can "herd" one off the map and be rid of it just as effectively as if you killed it. In theory. For a while there I thought it was "random", with heavy weights given to "toward the Shallows" and "Into the nearest obstacle so I don't actually leave the area", but that's not what the Devs say.

If you're just after the trophy, I'm afraid stasis-knifing is still the only really reliable way. They still reliably drag PRAWNS through the map into the Void or empty oblivion, and there's still no way to make one let go of a PRAWN mid-grapple. There's not enough power in even an Ion power cell to zap one to death with a Seamoth even at maximum charge, and you almost certainly can't carry enough Crashfish to kill one, even in your PRAWN inventory, and even if you never miss (and you will miss). They have so many hit points that when the Diamond Knives still had durability, you could wear out 10 of 'em and still not kill the thing. Bring an extra battery for the Stasis Rifle if you try this, now that the knives don't wear out.

Personally I'm OK with them being ridiculous to kill. Because there are other means of dealing with them, eventually, when you've progressed enough. I absolutely loathe that this never becomes the case with the utterly invincible Warpers, though. They don't NEED to die, but in the absence of literally any other effective means of making them leave you alone for more than a few heartbeats...

[Sephiroth]

I am not necesarrily for killing them, but they are in places I need or want to go, so I need a method of moving or killing them. One that doesn't require me having them swim to the shallows. The thing is, every time I zap one with my seamoth, it heads STRAIGHT for the shallows.

[Zemecon]

Oh, you are talking about the damage from the crashfish themselves, then. OK. Sorry your thread got derailed. ImHelping tends to do that. A lot.

[Soloquendi]

Originally posted by Sephiroth:

I am not necesarrily for killing them, but they are in places I need or want to go, so I need a method of moving or killing them. One that doesn't require me having them swim to the shallows. The thing is, every time I zap one with my seamoth, it heads STRAIGHT for the shallows.

Creature decoy.

[Sephiroth]

I believe reapers simply swim into the decoy, eating it in the process, then resume the hunt for you. Either way decoys never worked on leviathans for me. It is funny placing one near a mob of bonesharks and watching though. While there are more than enough of the buggers, they do make me laugh a bit.

[Soloquendi]

Interesting. I never tried them. Seems like a good concept, but not well done?

[Sephiroth]

I just tried crashfish versus the reaper at teh damaged section of the Aurora. Every third hit the reaper would run. The first time it ran I thought it was coming for me. Each time it runs, it DOES head for 0, 0, 0. We were halfway between my base (which is at 0, 0, 0) and the damaged part of the Aurora when the thing was near a cliff and one of my shots went off next to its head. It the said "TO SPACE!" and launched. I watched it disappear, but two things are now bugged.

First, the aliean defense system did NOT shoot that reaper down! It is spreading the cirus across space now!

Second, after tne minutes it did not come back. Guess it was bored of playing with me.

I did use the oxygen cheat and I manually spawned the crashfish each time I shot one away. I hit it thirty to fourty times, and it was still alive when it took off for planets unknown.

[Zemecon]

Originally posted by Sephiroth:

I believe reapers simply swim into the decoy, eating it in the process, then resume the hunt for you. Either way decoys never worked on leviathans for me. It is funny placing one near a mob of bonesharks and watching though. While there are more than enough of the buggers, they do make me laugh a bit.

That was why a lot of players requested that the decoys be made cheaper. Leviathans are supposed to go after the decoy and eat it, and in the meantime you try to get past it. You don't get the decoy back, unfortunately.

[Sephiroth]

I am OK with losing them. I normally don't use them though.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Sephiroth:

First, the aliean defense system did NOT shoot that reaper down! It is spreading the cirus across space now!

This is my favorite part of this post.