Charging power cells?

[Ramar]

I Just started the game and have the Cyclops. I was wondering if it is worth it to add a power cell recharging station on the cyclops?

[Dirak2012]

No, it will drain the power from the active cells. You need to recharge them at a base.

[Suzaku]

The recharging station uses the energy of the cyclops to charge the cells, so if you're hoping to use it to recharge the cells of the cyclops, it won't result in more or less energy.

[Ramar]

That's sad. I have been reading reviews about how the Cyclops is pretty much useless. Was hoping their had been upgrades to it. I wanted to use it as a mobile base.

[Suzaku]

There is a thermal reactor module that allows it to regenerate energy when in hot areas. Also, the cells last quite a long time normally. Use it as a mobile base, because that's its purpose.

[Tevirik]

Many players use the Cyclops as mobile base. I take with me lots of power cells in case of need and recharge them when I get near one of my bases.

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by Ramar:

That's sad. I have been reading reviews about how the Cyclops is pretty much useless. Was hoping their had been upgrades to it. I wanted to use it as a mobile base.

https://youtu.be/UIhXdA-TQUs

The Cyclops is far from useless, you only need to use it in the proper way.

[Ramar]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

Originally posted by Ramar:

That's sad. I have been reading reviews about how the Cyclops is pretty much useless. Was hoping their had been upgrades to it. I wanted to use it as a mobile base.

https://youtu.be/UIhXdA-TQUs

The Cyclops is far from useless, you only need to use it in the proper way.

Thanks for that video. It gave me some good ideas. :) How deep does the cyclops go?

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by Ramar:

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

https://youtu.be/UIhXdA-TQUs

The Cyclops is far from useless, you only need to use it in the proper way.

Thanks for that video. It gave me some good ideas. :) How deep does the cyclops go?

Fully upgraded, it will reach the very bottom part of the game (not deep enough for the void, but that technically isn't part of the game).

[dreamrider]

@Ramar,
The only people who talk about how useless the Cyclops is are the impatient types who want to "beat" the game as quickly as possible.

Those same people probably run the thing on flank speed (the middle one) all the time and burn down their Power Cells unnecessarily.

It is immensely useful, possibly the single most important piece of equipment in the game.
Consider, among many other things:
- With the engine off, it is invisible to all creatures (except, perhaps, in a limited way, crabsquids). With care and timing, you can use it to slip by every dangerous point in the game, even without Silent Running and the Shield Generator.
- It is complete protection from Warpers. They ignore it, and they ignore you in it.
- It can be fitted out with a farm, a bed, a fabricator, a mod station, a thermal reactor, an energy efficiency module, and enough storage (several thousand units) that you never have to return to...anywhere.
- Put a portable Scanner Room camp in a cabinet - build it when you need it.
- Put a portable Recharger camp, with a bioreactor or a nuc in the kit, in another cabinet - build it when you need it.
- If you want to, you can even even put a moonpool kit in a cabinet - build it when you need to modify the PRAWN or Seamoth some more.
- With the engine efficiency module, I have been on missions away from my home base for multiple game weeks, and barely reached 50% energy expenditure.

It is not intended to zip around in. It is intended to support anything you want to do, for as long as you want to do it, ANYWHERE.

[Ramar]

@dreamrider,
thanks for that info. I did only want to move the sub to different locations, park it, and use the seamoth for local exploration. I really don't want to race through the game. Wanted to explore, but I was going way too far away from my initial base. Didn't have all the parts to the base, but found everything for the Cyclops first.

so it's time to travel and explore. I figure if necessary, I can create a tube, throw in a cell charger and add a solar panel and charge the batteries. Don't have all the parts for a reactor yet. :)

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by Ramar:

so it's time to travel and explore. I figure if necessary, I can create a tube, throw in a cell charger and add a solar panel and charge the batteries. Don't have all the parts for a reactor yet. :)

Remember that you're exploring into the deep, and solar panels need sunlight to work. A power generator that doesn't require the sun is advised.

[dreamrider]

@Ramar:
If you prepare everything to the final advanced resource form, all the parts for a temp camp for any depth will fit into a single Wall Locker.

Multi-Purpose Room = 6 Ti
Hatch = 2 Ti, 1 Quartz
Bioreactor = 3 Ti, 1 Wiring Kit, 1 Lubricant
(You can substitute a Nuclear Reactor - same space requirement)
Power Cell Charger = 2 Ti, 2 Ruby, 1 Adv Wiring Kit
Scanner Room (optional) = 5 Ti, 2 Cu, 1 Au, 1 Table Coral
Starter fuel = 2 fish, preferably Peeper, Reginald, or (much the best) Oculus

30 units.

You can carry it all out of the Cyclops in one dive, one Inventory, along with your Habitat Builder, and have your charging and scanning station up in ~3 min or less.

In a second wall cabinet you can have nice-to-haves: More fuel fish, some pot materials and seeds for grown fuel (Speckled Rattler mushrooms are the best pure fuel crop, Bulbo Tree or Marble Melons if you want double duty as edibles), Range modules for the Scanner Room, etc.

Until you have all the blueprints for above, the tube and solar panel will work adequately, down to about 150m. Solar powered cell charging will be very slow below that point and impossible below ~200+m. Of course, if you have the Thermal Plant blueprint, you could park in a hot spot, and put a pre-packaged Thermal Plant out to power your temp base.

With the Cyclops Engine Efficiency module installed on the sub, you can cruise and operate for weeks on a single charge of Power Cells, if you stick with Ahead Slow speed, and avoid using the Sonar, Silent Running, or Shield as much as possible. In my experience, if you are patient, Silent Running is almost never needed - upon creature approach, just turn off the engine and wait for it to wander further away.

[Ramar]

Thanks for all the help. It's funny, I have found everything and built the cyclops, but still haven't found all the blueprints for the multi-purpose room for the habitat.

[dreamrider]

A vague tip on that:
There are no habitat data boxes. You have to scan remnants.
You can get to locations to scan the key habitat remnants quite easily and safely, although it may be a fair distance.
You have probably even been directed to such a location already.

Remember your earliest advice: Scan EVERYTHING.
When you are in a new place, try to carry your Scanner in hand as much a possible. A scanner icon will pop up in the lower right of your HUD when there is a new something scannable in the forward arc of the Scanner.


BTW, you can begin laying out a major base without access to the MPR blueprint.
An x-tube with I-tubes attached at each cardinal panel takes up the same building grid space as a Multi-Purpose Room.

I eventually replaced all the x-tube junctions you see in this picture with Multi-Purpose Rooms.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2618049251
Just be sure to NOT build anything inside the tube sections you are going to replace. You will have to deconstruct the inside stuff before you replace the temporary tubes.

One other architecture tip: It is good to have one I-tube between two MPRs (or their surrogate structures) where feasible. The reason: you can only put reinforcing bulkheads, with flood limiting doors, on a tube end, NOT on a room connector (a room connector is like the little piece of tube coming out of the Scanner Room in the picture).

So if you want some bulkheaded, separate water tight zones inside your base (a good idea) you have to have some tube interfaces to install them on. You cannot have a bulkhead with a door between two immediately adjacent Multi-Purpose Rooms, or between a Moonpool and an immediately adjacent MPR.

[Balthazaar]

Hey Bud! Your at a exciting part of the game! A tip for driving the cyclops, use the cameras!!

Also, I got the cyclops going before I figured out the multi purpose room too!

Repairing the cyclops is super cool. Also, I really enjoyed living in my cyclops!

Good luck!