More Ideas than you can shake a stick at (For the Devs)

[Shalmendo]

Greetings! I've been playing subnautica for awhile now and I see tons of amazing potential swimming around in the sea of possibilities. (Yes those were a pun). Since I've been playing around so long and looking at the various potentials in the game. I have a number of ideas which I would appreciate the devs looking into.

Resource Concepts

Resources in the game are finite at this point, which is great for forcing players to expand out to find more and see more areas of the game. Some resources are ony available in certain areas, that's great too! However, late game the lack of respawning resources is a bit of an issue! You can literally end up with an entirely dead map devoid of fish, plant life, and resources of any kind. A lot of players are going to want to keep living in their bases and continuing to farm fish and resources.

In a game like Minecraft that isn't an issue because it just keeps generating more space and more resources, so you can go out as far as you need to in order to find more. In Subnautica that's a huge problem because the map is finite and once you run out, you're entirely out.

In order to manage the non-respawn of resources without resorting to respawning of things that shouldn't respawn, resource nodes, the player needs to counteract this problem by using advanced technology they could attain later in the game. I would also strongly recommend that the PDA system remind the player about how they're emptying out an area and might want to consider self reliance and renewability before it's too late.

I REALLY don't want to b e forced to start a new game because there's just no more resources FOR ANYTHING and there is no other choice. Yes, I know I could use the other modes, but I like to feel rewarded at the endgame that I've not only survived but I'm managing so well I can work on some pet projects to keep busy until rescue arrives.

Quartz

This is a resource that ends up in short supply, even with extensive exploration, as it's one of the most commonly used things for glass, processors, and other items you build many times in order to expand your tech and even your base.

Another thread dealt with an autoclave that would forcefully grow Quartz in a laboratory environment. This is totally a real technology that the player could be able to utilize in order to stretch out their supply.

Detailed here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/264710/discussions/0/598198356192946065/

I would like to expand that idea by saying that an Autoclave like this should be a later game tech that would need to be found in a harder to reach area, and require a good deal of power or maintenance of some kind (Feeding it materials possibly). Similiar to the water purifier.

An earlier game implementation could be something simpler, a set of vats that you place a quartz crystal into and it gradually grows more quartz by drawing it out of water, or another source. It would be low energy, slow, fairly easy to build, probably requiring an advanced wiring kit and some titanium, and quartz, while requiring the player to put a seed crystal in to get the growth started. Crystals will grow under the right circumstances so it would be natural to set up the right environment and provide a seed to let it grow into further crystals.

Diamonds

Diamonds aren't exactly difficult to find in the right place. I usually end up with plenty. I've ended up not looking for them until I need ONE and then it's a matter of just grabbing one easily.

I would like to see more uses for diamonds. Diamond hardened glass perhaps, or just make it part of more luxurious things so you can spend them on decorative items.

Aside from this, just like with growing quartz, we have a real way to make artificial diamonds (cubic zarconium) in a press and simulating the right envrionment. An artificial diamond making press could be one of those hungry power machines that could gradually produce more as needed.

Mining

Now, it's clear that we will end up with an exosuit for some big mining tasks, and that sounds epic. But what about something midway?

We have the scanner room, and that is looking GREAT. But what about an addon to it for a drone pod with some extra features? or possibly a seperate room used in conjunction with the scans of the scanner room?

A drone room could involve basic autonomous searches for things you need, like copper. A limited search area around the room would keep it from being totally overpowered, a great need for power, and the drones working slowly would help as well.

You would be able to send off a drone or two to find resources while you go out and do other things, like seeking fragments at the bottom of a chasm or exploring a cave system.

Upgrade consoles seem to be a thing, so maybe you could expand the range, upgrade the drone speed or inventory, etc.

Drones would be at risk of being damaged or even blown up by predators and other dangers, and would need to be replaced or repaired. (it could be done more easily by running an RNG to decide if one happens to take damage or not)

Various other limitations could be imposed, such as having them ony able to grab existing items from nodes, which would eliminate the node as if a player had grabbed it manally. Speed could be fairly slow, and their inventories could be quite small, pending potential upgrades.

Volcanos and geysers

Resources could keep respawning nearby places which they could be ejected from the earth. Places like smokers, volcanic areas, geysers, etc could have chances of respawning a resource node for you to crack open and hopefully find something useful inside.

Enhanced Resource Gathering

In real life, mining facilities use a variety of techniques to get more resources out of the rock they're digging up. Players could do the same mid-game.

At first all we can really do is just crack open outcroppings and grab something that pops up. But what if eventually we could process these resources to squeeze a bit more out of it? A new mining tool could be the basis of this in order to gather up raw materials from outcroppings (mining it out in the process) and requiring some kind of processing machine to filter out even more of the valuable resource. This could result in nuggets which could be combined to form whole pieces of resources at an acceptable ratio depending on the quality of the machine processing it. Obviously more advanced machinery would require not only more power, or other maintenance, but produce more of the resource it's processing with it's more efficient process.

Such machines could be filtering machines, refiners, and similiar.

Considering this is a mining ship it shouldn't be too hard to find bits of mining equipment to scan and build blueprints for more effective processing methods.

Bases

It seems like your base is definately your home away from home and lots of players end up getting fairly attatched to them and enjoy living in them. I would like to see the devs give bases a bit of extra love in the following manners:

furniture

Furniture is a great way to spruce up a base, customize it, and make it feel homey. We have desks, chairs, lockers, and various other useful items, but what about expanding that offering a bit further?

Perhaps a unique wreck could give access to some more furniture items, say from the crew quarters area.

Curtains might be nice for some rooms, or shutter modules?

Display screens that install in the walls like windows do might be nice (these could be functional in some way as well, aside from just showing pictures. Maybe status of various attatched items like power plants, and purifier status)

Beds are coming, but the big double bed doesn't seem appropriate for a survival situation (not that a little luxury would be a bad thing), but maybe we can find, or the survival systems can extrapolate a secondary design (it did substitute acid for the batteries from the mushrooms!) for a more military style single bunk that hangs from the wall. In a survival situation i'd be worried about making the most of my limted resources and filling up a room with a big bed would mean less space for other things and more rooms I'd have to build.

Tables, coffee tables, bedside tables perhaps.

Maybe decorative touches like models, table lamps, sculptures, holodisplays of various things you've scanned, and so forth could also add to the appearance of the bases.

I'd also like to see more homey touches like couches or lamps (not the battery ones) that could offer a more pleasant environment to return home to after having been dancing with Stalkers all day. Maybe something like a rug you could place down.

Elevators/Lifts

Getting up and down in extensive bases via ladders works well enough right now, you just click and pop to the other end, especially on the long combinations of vertical connectors. However, It'd be nice to see something abit more stylish!

An elevator you could place in your base would be a wonderful touch to getting up and down, and certainly make your base feel more stablished. It could consist of a cylindrical design with matching doors that parted in the center. Building requirements would probably require a module of some kind to be placed either in a multipurpose room like the aquarium, or it's own seperate module you attatch to a room or corridor.

I would like to see an option for a more quartz(maybe enamaled glass) variation that would be transparent and allow you a lovely view of your base and surrounds during your transport from floor to floor.

Shafts would likely need to be built/extended manually with the habitat builder, and would probably require titanium, and possibly quartz, maybe silver or something, possibly lubricant, to make them fairly expensive so it's a real luxury you have to work for. A glass shaft version would be mandatory for the beautiful views, or possibly you could optionally build windows on the shafts themselves instead of requiring a seperate blueprint. (this could also allow you to add other modules to the shafts, like reinforcement panels to keep them from collapsing in the depths!)

The Elevator/lift would require power, and so would each stop section. However the lift itself would only use power while it was moving, otherwise it would jut sit idle and probably shut off. This would help to balance the luxury of the lift.

Since this would technically mean that the lift could have unlimited stops (it might be wise to put a fair cap on it to prevent script/programming issues) the logic involved in the lift might just work best to look for the next stop up and down rather then lay out a whole panel full of buttons based on how many stops are detected. Granted it would be cool to see a panel with multiple buttons lighting up as you passed the stops but I don't want to be too heavy on the devs (Then again this entire thread is just one giant suggestion the devs could easily pick and choose things out of if they so desired). On the other hand this would make it a bit of a pain to have an elevator with lots of stops, meaning you would hae to keep manually telling it to proceed to the next stop and that whole cycle could add up with the doors opening/closing again. Trips on stop heavy elevators could benefit from a menu but it's up to the devs to decide how to best implement this idea, if they want to.

Ladders

Ladders are great! They let us move up and down effectively, but they sure are a pain when there's flooding going on. An iris door could be added to ladders to allow them to close and attempt to contain a leak. (This might requrie the control room I detail further down)

Base Customization

Alongside furniture and similiar items, I'd like to see some customization of the base itself.

• Changing base colors would be VERY NICE. I love doing it on the Seamoth and Cyclops, and the custom colors can allow any player to make their base more inviting to them.
  
  
• Base names. These work well with the vehicles, and I'd love to see my custom base name plastered on the side of modules and on little tags and things. Might also be useful for a built-in beacon.
  
  
• Lighting. This is one of those things that really can change the feel of a room,. Some customization of lighting per room, or possibly placing of customizable light sources (lamps and sconces perhaps) would add a lot to the 'home base' feel. Also please let us put up light switches in various rooms to turn on/off the lights in there! That could also optionally help a bit with power management since there are lots of rooms you could leave unlit because you won't go into them often. (like aquarium rooms or storage rooms)

Base Beacon/Relay

It would be nice if we could build an actual base side relay or beacon. Yes, right now we can place the comms relay with the habitat module in our bases but I would like to see some expansion on that so we could have unique base becons so we don't lose our bases (I know we can just deploy a standard beacon for that), but also things like have comms relayed between bases (probably just information, map data, etc). Beacons are good for marking things out in the field, but for a base, I'd like to see somethig a bit more robust, possibly something we cap ontop of a room, or a unique antenna module we build next to it or something.

Power Relays/Sharing

One of the nicest base features are the power relays. Those are GREAT. They allow us to cheaply transfer power from generators in one area all the way to a base in the other area.

I realize this system may not be complete but I have some suggestions for expansion of it.

• Power Relay improvement. Right now we can build a reactor of some kind, like a thermal plant, and transfer the power to a base. Placing these items is tricky. You can't just put down a foundation and build them ontop of it. It considers that ONE BASE in itself. I would like to be able to see us build foundations and put power plants on them, then relay the power to where it's actually needed! Right now it's impossible to use foundations without confusing the relays, yet foundations are the best way to get things built in tricky areas, like a geyser.
  
  
• Power sharing and distribution. It would be REALLY nice if we could build a kind of super plant to produce power and relay it to more then one base, or have one base with extra power supply sharing it with another one. Being able to relay several mini bases deeper and deeper without having to build a power plant for each individually would be helpful for things like small decompression bases to help combat the bends and other health hazards from deep diving, but still have some niceities there while you wait, like food and water.
  
  
• A specialized cyclops power transmitter. It would be nice if we could use some kind of directional induction dish relay system to beam power to the cyclops if you park it nearby. It would be nice to see it rotate to face the cyclops, then beam it directly once you get in range. Obviously that would be a it more advanced, but a good step between a moonpool/dock, and running Cells back and forth to recharge them.

Incinerator/Recycler

One of the issues we have while playing is ending up with too much material. We could keep building endless storage for it but 3 lockers full of salt is a bit much. There's also the matter of building things we end up wanting to scrap later. I propose that a device that can destroy items, and recycle them, would not only be uesful, but a prudent matter in survival. They don't necessarily have to be in the same device, however.

Being able to recycle items, at a loss, would allow us to make some recovery from 'oops, I didn't mean to make a titanium ingot!' and other similiar mistakes, or to recycle an excessive amount of oxygen tanks, etc. The costs will need to be played with to find a good balance that doesn't punish players for mistakes, but doesn't allow for it to be a font of extra resources.

An incinerator would be invaluable for at least two major reasons, cleaning out storage of useless items like extra creepvine samples and salt, along with avoiding having to drop items on the sea floor which causes extra lag. While the lag problem could eventually be taken care of through optimization, having too much of something is a real problem that many players aren't sure what to do about. Right now we've been putting things in a locker and deconstructing it in order to vaporize items, but that seems more like an exploit that will eventually get patched. If you do patch it, please give us some kind of workable alternative!

Base modules

We have some great base modules, and I'm having lots of fun with them. So, some more might not be a bad idea.

My biggest idea here is some kind of control room or centralized point of control. Let me explain my idea:

Control Room

As a base gets bigger and more complicated, with more power hungry devices, and more complex systems (like the scanner room), it may become important to have a centralized point of command to keep an eye on everything, and even make adjustments.

this room would be simliar to the scanner room but probably a bit bigger like a two-story multi purpose room. It would also require a good deal of advanced resources, like advanced wiring kits, to account for the advanced computing and technology involved.

why would you build it? I have a few ideas:

Borrowing from the holotable you would have a central projector that would show the base layout and highlight damage and other important information so you know what's going on and where. Other information could also possibly be centralized here depending on what you set the display to show you.

There would be consoles to adjust base details:

My first concept is colors. Everyone loves to change colors on the Seamoth and Cyclops, so let's have some fun altering base colors too! (I would love that).

Other options would allow for base management:

• Turn on/off spotlights, or set them to run during nighttime only.
  
  
• Enable/disable rooms and base items to help manage power more effectively.
  
  
• Management of power plants so you can view their status and how much power and fuel they are generating/have left.
  
  
• Managing bulkheads so they don't auto close, close automatically after a set period, open/close them remotely, turn them on/off, etc.
  
  
• Ladder control so you can open/close ladder irises for flood and passage management.

(In the case of ladders and bulkheads, there should be a failsafe to auto-close them in the event of water being detected to automatically manage base flooding. This may be a built-in feature of both, or require the control room to enable this feature)

An upgrade console:

Upgrades are a big deal! It feels very satisfying to manage to make an upgrade and apply it. The same could apply for the base control room.

What kinds of upgrades? Well, since we can allready build modules that enhance hull strength and so forth, other more management based upgrades that affect the whole base might be a good idea. I have some ideas.

• An upgrade for base power management. This could help optimize your base power grid and shave a percentage of power use off, in the form of prevented waste. This could be visual by seeing room lights and feature turn on as you enter them, and off as you leave, which would make for a neat feel when you walk through your base and the hallways automatically light up as you pass through, and dim as you leave them.
  
  
• A base defense similiar to the electric field used by the seamoth could deter larger predators and keep them back from base modules by a certain radius to help avoid being eaten as soon as you go out for a swim to check on your farms. If not a module, maybe some kind of deterrant fenc or something? It's quite natural for a human to 'claim territory' and defend it from threats, so fencing an area is usually one of he first things you'd consider.
  
  
• Emergency protocols. These could auto-kick in several situations for things like flooding, power outages, and other similiar issues. These could provide emergency lighting (Gotta love the subdued red lights), a more intelligent lockdown of flooded rooms automatically, automated fire suppression, and other helpful features to give you a hand in managing base events. Obviously this shouldn't make the base enirely self sufficient but give you a nice edge on larger bases when things start happening.
  
  
• A remote hud module could provide you with an interface in your HUD while you're away to be notified of events with more detail or let you check up on your base from far away. You would probabably need one of the comms relays for this to work, or you're just enabling one that the control room has (or adding one).
  
  
• A repair bot. It's annoying to come back to your base leaking and filling with water, or having to repair something you broke by accident while leaving. A repair drone of some sort could be deployed within the control room to meander through the base and do touch-up repairs as needed. (I suppose using up all the module slots could give you four units) They would need to travel to the damage and enact the repair once there, with less efficiency then a player, but you won't need to do it yourself. Perhaps it could also be used to repair a seamoth or cyclops.

Storage room

Now, I realize that we can MAKE our own storage anywhere in the base we want, but wouldn't be nice to have a specialized storage module with lots of efficient storage?

You could start with an empty room that has slots for various storage types, and you can fill those slots however you want, with things like as follows:

• Lockers. These lockers would have a more efficient stacking and fitting system due to the slot system in the room, so you could potentially fit more storage in this room the you could in a room of similiar size and free placing the large lockers. Each indivdual locker could probably hold the same amount as the glass fronted standard floor lockers, but stack better for more space efficiency.
  
  
• Stasis chamber. This would obviously put the contents into stasis. We already have the tech in the stasis rifle, so why not reapply it to a locker? Obviously storage would be more limited to due to the fancy electronics involved and you'd have to use up advanced materials like processors in order to make it, but anything placed in side will cease to decay, rot, or othewise go bad. You could use it as a kind of fridge, or store eggs, or possibly something new the devs haven't released yet. A power requirement would be both logical and mandatory to help balance their use and benefit.
  
  
• Shielded Locker. These would be useful for storing anything that could be dangerous. Items that emit radiation, poison, etc, could be placed here for safe keeping. Uranium comes to mind as I believe it's not exactly safe to handle. I'm not a chemist but I'd sleep much better knowing my Uranium was in a shielded storage. could be good for storing things like ♥♥♥♥nium, dangerous chemicals, etc. Edit: Okay so Steam didn't like my word for another one of the dangerous elements used in the creation of power. So, I'll just say 'Storing things like radioactive and decaying element types you could use for power generation'. While the Shielded locker and the Stasis Chamber will be similiar, the Shielded locker will achieve some of what the stasis chamber does (mainly preventing radiation from getting out, or things from getting in), it will do it passively without power requirements. (This won't work well for things that you need to practically stop time for, however.)
  
  
• Matter Locker. I've seen other threads complaining about how we end up with lots of stuff (like salt from the purifier) that we end up having so much of we don't know what to do with it. A Matter Locker would take advantage of the molecular configuration capabilities of the fabricator to compact and store a single type of matter in a high density format. I.e. only copper, diamond, titanium, etc. Energy would be required to store this material as well as to withdraw it from storage due to the conversions required, but otherwise wouldn't take up any energy as it's a passive form of storage.
  
  Alternatively it could work similiar to a 'pattern buffer' concept seen on Star Trek in which the matter is suspended in some kind of energy form, which WOULD require energy to maintain constantly, and would obviouslly not work for living matter like creepvine samples.

MoonPool

So, the Moonpool is one of the most useful base modules. Charging the Seamoth really makes it the most useful thing in the game. But there is one mild issue.

Repairing the seamoth in the moonpool is tricky. I've gotten away with it for the most part by welding on the expansion panel, but I think it would be useful to add the Seamoth's damage factor to the Moonpool's functionality.

By this, I mean that I would like to see the MoonPool have not only an indicator for damage on the docked Seamoth, but you should also have a clear way to repair it while it's docked. It would be nice if we could end up installing an auto-repair module in one of the side walls that would deploy out and repair the Seamoth automatically as well. This could either be in the form of an extending armature of some kind, or a small welding drone that pops out to flutter around the seamoth and weld it back up to health. For the drone, you could probably use a modified camera drone model with the welder tip poking out of the front instead of the optical system.

Advancing further in the game

Right now, once you've gotten all the fragments scanned you're kind of at a loss for much else to do and there could be some interesting tools we could eventually make.

The big issue is, who's the player character? are they just a guard? do they have a background in science or somesuch? How inventive could they be?

Right now we work from blueprints. That's pretty awesome! But I'd like to see some further development in the kinds of tools we can make. But how?

Possibly via a special worktable for working on blueprints. It may be possible to combine existing blueprints and create new ones.

Fancy combining a propulsion rifle with a diving reel? You may end up with a grappling hook. Other such combinations could be interesting to explore to expand your available toolset.

What about a multitool that could weld, cut, illuminate, etc? Combine blueprints to create modules for one and build it!

Obviously the devs would need to come up with all the potential combinations but it would be an interesing way to expand the available tools, especially late in game, without requiring you to find yet another fragment!

If that doesn't suit your ideals, what about the survival software itself? It was able to substitute acid mushrooms to make batteries, so how about if it could eventually start extrapolating more from the scanner data you've gathered on the world around you and start altering bluerpints to produce new items and such?

One of my big deals here is it's obviously not a short-term survival issue. There could be some point where the survival software notices this and gives you new recommendations and guidance to help you survive in the long-term now, and possibly even starts extrapolating from a combination of the blueprints you've gathered and scans you've made of the environ, flora, fauna, etc.

Vehicles

Vehicles are a bit of a hot topic in the forums, people are suggesting everything from rocket travel, teleporters, to aircraft carriers complete with nuclear bombers. While a lot of those ideas are very out of theme with the 'sub' in subnautica, at least one more vehice option could be useful. The Seamoth is the primary go-to for most players since it's small, versatile, and can be upgraded with storage modules. The Cyclops is a bit big to do much constant travelling in, especially with it's power problems. (The upcoming recharging stations will fix most of that problem.)

Dinghy

A dinghy, or liferaft, is a basic piece of survival equipment almost EVERYONE who cares about survival, and knows will be anywhere near an ocean, should have. They can be squeezes into tight packages with a caniser of compressed air for automatic inflation, and some even have intelligent water detection deployment controls that automatically inflate when submerged in water. One of these would be an important basic item for any aquatic landing.

A basic one should just cost some silicone rubber to produce, possibly with a single titanium for the inflation canister which you could then deploy.

A possible upgrade could add a motor for more usefulness and surface travel. Since we travel faster on the surface, this would be a decent way to bridge the gaps between bases without eating up seamoth power and such. The motorized version could potentially have a solar panel for charging, or possibly just take a battery, which would be easy to manage with the recharging systems.

Further ugrades could add storage so you could use a dinghy to ferry items between bases at a faster rate, assuming you don't have to swim down too far to get to your base (this would be useful early on for moving stuff from a lifepod, or base, to another point in the shallows or nearby.)

Seamoth

The Seamoth is the most used vehicle in the game at this point, and with good reason. It's versatile, fits in lots of spaces, is fairly agile and manuverable and it has some great upgrades!

But while the current offering of upgrades is useful, the increasing depths and introductions of new creatures, etc, are starting to make them feel a bit outmoded. I would like to propose a few ideas for futher upgrades:

• Advanced compression compensation. This is important since the Seamoth's maximum depth is limited to four compensators using up all the slots, for a total of 1,025 meters at the absoloute deepest, while sacrificing ALL of the module slots. While I get that you don't want us to make the Seamoth into a batmobile, Some kind of advanced compensator would help us make more efficient use of the slots. Obviously this should come at the cost of advanced resources, like diamonds, lithium, and so forth, to make it a bit of a challene to make even one, but the benefit would be similar to the upgraded oxygen tanks which give you more for the same space. The exact amount of the upgrade is up to the devs, but consider doubling the depth per advanced module in comparison to the regular ones. This would allow us to take our seamoths deep, yet also retain inventory storage, torpedoes, etc, that we want to bring down with us, but again, at a worthy cost. This would extend the seamoth's usefulness nicely.
  
  
• Articulated Grips. These would allow the player to grab up items they find, even break open resource nodes, without leaving the seamoth. It would save some time as right now we have to park, exit, hunt around in the area, and then get back in with our bounty, or stow it in an the seamoth's inventory if we have the upgrade. I would like to propose that these need an advanced wiring kit, plasteel to keep them light and functional, and lubricant. It would also be necessary to have at least one storage upgrade on the seamoth to stow the picked up items, as it makes little sense to store it in the player's pocket from outside the sub. Yes, I know this has been brought up in other threads but I wanted to place it in here as it is a useful and practical idea that fits well with the game's styling.
  
  
• Equipment Mount. I'm not referring to something to stow your knife or flashlight in. But instead an actuated mount you could place a stasis rifle, replusion cannon, etc into to make it availble from inside the seamoth. I've seen people suggesting a stasis rifle upgrade for the seamoth but I think you should be able to attatch a rifle to it directly yourself to allow for flexibility. Obviously it would draw power from the Seamoth bettery to help balance it out. Construction could require an advanced wiring kit, plasteel ingot, and lubricant, like the grips.
  
  
• AI Module. While I'm calling it that, it wouldn't suddenly turn the Seamoth into the Heart of Gold and have it constantly asking you to make sure you have something warm on. I'm talking about a simple following module that would allow the seamoth to follow you on it's own at a set range, probably just from a dropdown menu of choices. This would be a life saver during resource runs so it''s not always far behind and you dont' have to keep getting in to move it some more. It may also help by lighting the area for you so you can conserve your flashglight. Obvious cost would b e a constant power drain even when you're out of the seamoth to allow it autonomy. Construction might require a couple of cpus and other advanced components for the 'brain' required. This could extend to some further options like remote controlled recall instead of an auto follow, so the seamoth can come to your aid if you desperately need oxygen during a deep dive, knowing the seamoth might suffer damage from the depth it has to achieve to get to you, but that would still give you a chance to hammer the ascenscion control to minimize said damage.
  
  
• Some kind of defense that would help against things like shockers. This could be in the form of bubblewrap (lol just kidding), but more likely a shield or other aversion field that could help ward them off, at an energy cost. A more extreme train of thought on this is some kind of cloaking effect intended to hide from predators for short bursts (and high energy cost).
  
  
  
• Lighting. The Seamoth features a pair of lights facing forward but it would be helpful if it had a more omnidirectional lighting addon that could light up the surroundings like a miniature sun (well maybe not quite that much). Obviously this would be a fairly large power drain but by adding a lighting module it would allow the Seamoth to light up a large area around itself with LED strips, or similiar, so that you could work around it without using your flashlight constantly. Seeing the surrounds of the Seamoth clearly when you're swimming about would help a lot when hunting for items.
  
  
• Resource scanner. This item would detect and direct you twoards resource nodes, quartz, lithium, diamonds, etc. It could use a ping method similiar to the sonar, but would only draw circular ping-back concentric ring points around items of interest, instead of the sonar like map of the surrounding area.
  
  
• Super Scanner. In going with the whole 'advanced upgrades' idea, I'd like to propose a type of super scanner that would be a combination of the resource scanner, and sonar. It would display both the area map ping, as well as the ping-backs from resources, and possibly show you things like detected large fish, have a filter for certain types of resources, etc. This would probably require one of each basic module along with an advanced wiring kit for the extra electronics and filtering features. But it would be a great module to have!

Seamoth Torpedoes

The Seamoth torpedoes are hilarious. The vortex whipping a stalker around makes me chuckle every time and I often forget to get done with what i'm doing because watching that is so amusing. But perhaps we could see other types of torpedoes? While i'm not saying WE NEED GUNS, I'm suggesting some torpedo alternatives that could offer some variation and choice to the player.

what about:

• Decoy Torpedo. Such a torpedo could use information based on your scans of wildlife to emit sounds that attract predators for a short time and pull them off course for you. Something like this could also deal a bit with the leviathan for short bursts until it realizes it's been duped and rips you apart from under the seabed. those might require a little silver or something for the noisemaking electronics. To balance this, you might have to make torpedoes designed for attracting specific predators, sets of predators, or they just might not work on certain types. They could potentially continue to swim off in a straight line from the seamoth's firing point, or maybe they'd shoot off a short distance and then float for a while before expiring.
  
  
• Telepedo. With the inclusion of the warper, it's obvious we may have some opportunities to learn about them and hopefully pick up a few tricks. The telepedo could teleport enemies you hit with it to another location further away from the Seamoth. Effectively sending a target away an effective distance so you can work in the area for a brief period before it returns. Construction of these would probably require some kind of unique substance that has 'warper energies' in it, and would require some trickyness to attain from warper locations.
  
  
• Netpedo. Something you might find useful is to fire a torpedo that poofs out into a net to catch a target. (this might help with the warper, actually). The net would be made from creepvine or sythetic fabrics, and harmlessly trap the target for a short period of time. Perhaps you just need to net something to scan it safely, or find a way to get some teeth from a live stalker. Either way, the net would biodegrade within a few minutes so you wouldn't want to hang around for too long.

The Cyclops

We've all experienced the thrill of FINALLY gathering up all the materials needed to produce one of these, and staring in awe as it's fabricated in mid air, and finally dropped into the ocean with a satisfying mega cannonball. I LOVE this beautiful machine. It's a fantastic mobile base, and you can even build inside it!

I do think it could have some room for further improvement, as amazing as it allready is:

• A utility closet you can build a limited amount of additions in. This would allow the player to make a decisions on what they want to put in, since the closet can only hold so much total space. A handful of small modules could slot in, or one big one. This would be a decent place to introduce something like a power reactor option, a solar panel grid module, and so forth. (But this could conflict with the module sytem.) It seems to me that we should have more options for kitting out the Cyclops then just four module slots.
  
  
• A massive lighting mod. It would be very useful to light up the area round the Cyclops with the force of a thousand suns. Really, this would help in the deep blank areas massively, especially when you're out manuvering and looking for things in your Seamoth, or just swimming alone. Visibility is massively important.
  
  
• A drone module. The ability to treat the Cyclops even more like a mobile base then we allready do would be lovely. A dome could be added to the top that could hold or two camera drones, like the scanner room ones, and offer similiar features.
  
  
• Modularity. Being able to change the function of the central room on the top deck would be useful. right now it's kind of a big empty space with access to the Seamoth but perhaps we could make THAT a mobile scanner room instead of just plugging in a drone module like I mentioned above.
  
  
• Docking. Yes, this had been addressed hundreds of times, and I wanted to make sure I include it here. Docking the Seamoth is impossibly useful, and somehow doing something similiar with the Cyclops would be a fantastic addition. A simple extending docking collar in the dive chamber could work. But, and this is kind of outlandish, with the current technology it's obvious we could 'fabricate' the components on demand if needed to allow for docking to an appropriate port on a base. Obvious reason is for charging and easy access. I've spent lots of time diving in and out of the cyclops to offload ingredients from it. A further extension could be something like a cargo unloading system! Imagine if the cyclops could automatically dump everything you've picked up on your last excursion into a room full of storage.
  
  
• Navigation hud. This would project onto the inside of the glass of the Cyclops bridge and show you a sonar map of the nearby area, large fish deteced, and possibly things like detected resources. This could possibly be used in combination with some of the upgrades I've mentioned allready to feed you some of that information, but it would also help if it could also show a compass hud and similiar information relevant to the Cyclops, including a damage meter and so forth for urgent information while you're engaged in piloting.

The Player

A few ideas here for the player themselves.

Player Equipment

I would like to see some extension to player equipment to help give us a further leg us as we progress,

• A backpack. This would probably require addition to the ragdoll but being able to make a pack to extend the size of your inventory would be very practical! I always end up filling my inventory and having to haul back, and being able to expand it would be quite useful. Fabric mesh would probably be good enough for that, but maybe an upgraded version would be helpful with even more storage eventually.

• Power Pack. In the same vein as the backpack, since that concept would add a new slot to the ragdoll probably, how about a large power pack option? You could recharge it easily in a base from perhaps a matching power port item you could build with the habitate builder, and use it to power all of your equipment with a larger capacity. I see this being especially useful with something like the LED lamps. You could possibly recharge things like floodlights and the LED lamps placed in world with it as well instead of swapping out the battery.
  
  The recharge fins could also help keep it topped up, albeit at the slow recharge rate those provide.
  
  You would probably need to construct this with a power cell for it's internal storage, but it would be better then carrying around 12 batteries in your inventory to make sure you can keep everything charged, and the recharge fins are rather slow, so this would be a nice alternative.
  
  
• Recharge pack. This would possibly allow the player to recharge their items faster then the swim fins could, and maybe it would have options to take advantage of heat in the area like a mini thermal plant on your back as well as charging just from water movement during your swimming. Obviously this would add a slowness factor to the player but might be useful to have. Possibly the player could wear it WITH the recharge fins and get a major upgrade to their recharge rate.
  
  
• Oxygenator. An alternative to building lots of tanks, and for possible use with the rebreather, the player could apply this to their backpack slot to have a system that filters oxygen out of the water around them. Obviously this would require a power cell and wouldn't last too terribly long due to how energy intensive it would be to draw out oxygen from the water, but it could give you an extra edge deep down to further boost your exploration potential at a cost of movement speed. That detriment could be countered with the enhanced fins.

Compression, decompression, dive time, etc

As of this writing the game does not feature things like compression factors, dive time, or simulations of decompression sickness, but it probably should feature some version of it.

Granted putting in a perfect simulation requiring regular dive stops and even a diving computer program would be really detailed, but this is a videogame and I doubt people want to follow complicted diving and surfacing programs based on real life decompression tables and algorithims.

Now, I'm not going to fill this post with an elaborate description of how all this works, so I'll just link you to the wikis.

Information on Decompression itself.[en.wikipedia.org]
Information on Decompression practices.[en.wikipedia.org]

But to summarize briefly, diving deep down has an issue where the pressure in your body is lower then the pressure in the water around you, and the delivered breathing mixture has to be fed to you at the pressure around you. Over time your body tissues absorb this extra pressure from the mixture you're inhaling, in the form of inert gas (like nitrogen or helium). The longer you spend down there, the more you absorb until it's equal. The problem occurs when you ascend and that extra gas starts to bubble in your blood stream. This can cause various types of internal injury, or even death itself, so divers tend to use special formulas for how quickly they can ascend, or a variety of devices to manage the compression factors, like decompression chambers.

Quite a few of these systems are rather ingenius, like the diving bell types that you seal the diver in, and lower then on a winch. The chamber itself can handle the compression/decompression factors so you can more safely yank the diver up if they're having an emergency, like a medical one, and retain their pressure so their tissues don't explode while you're pulling them up faster then would be safe otherwise. Many divers use special tables to determine how quickly they can ascend, sometimes with stops at certain pressures for a few minutes at a time, or a constant ascension formula with a specific rate involved.

Now this may not make for terribly fun gameply if it's too detailed but we could at least have to be careful about diving down too deeply and ascending too quickly. This would require oxygen supplies so we don't suffocate while waiting for the built-up gasses to trickle back to our lungs so we can exhale them safely. Alternative air mixtures can provide some aid, but it's generally best not to surface too quickly to give our bodies a chance to re-pressurize.

That end, I have a few ideas how we can transform the real world concepts into the videogame.

• Decompression bases. It should be fairly easy to set up a single room base (or larger if the user wants) to hang out in while your pressure gradually equalizes, at some mid point between your dive depth and your destination depth higher up. The base itself would auto pressurize to the proper levels at the depth you're in so you can easily come and go from the base through the hatchway without having to spend 10 minutes in a decompression chambber.
  
  
• Decompression/compression chambers. These could be built onto a base to allow for manual compression/decompression of the player character to acclimitize for a deeper diving depth premptively. The only problem with this is that you would be going from the pressurized environment in the chamber to the rest of the base, or surrounding water at a lower pressure and that would be a bit counter intuitive. It COULD work for dealing with an emergency ascension and having to hurry into a decompression chamber to decompress more properly before the gasses in your bloodstream build up too much.
  
  
• Cyclops auto compression system. Now, this could be just a built-in system that comes with the cyclops but the general idea is that you can simply take the cyclops down and it will automatically pressurize internally to match the outside pressure better so you're allready matched by the time you go out for a swim. This would also work on reverse and the Cyclops would depressurize itself on the way at a safe rate for your body to handle as you ascend. This is similiar to real life systems where they drop a whole miniature base down into the depths and it pressurizes itself properly, at a safe rate, on the way. And the same when they pull it up. Quite often the occupants will stay mostly pressurized when they've allready hit the surface and just recline in the base until the pressure has been equalized at a safe rate.
  
  Also, to help protect the player, the cyclops could lock it's exit until the pressure outside has been matched properly, except in extreme emergencies like you have to abandon ship. Perhaps the user could attempt to open the hatch, recieve a warning from the cyclops, and attempt to open it again would pop up a message saying something like "Pressure is not equalized with the exterior! Continuing could result in decompression sickness, and/or death!" With a button allowing the player to effectively say 'I understand what I'm doing could be a very bad decision.' Allowing a player to bypass this safety step MIGHT be necessary during things like a cyclops sinking to it's death because it's full of water, or other emergencies.
  
  
• Descent bell/system. In real life, divers sometimes use a descent bell of some kind that is a self pressurizing sphere, on a winch. This is lowered into the required depth at a decent rate while the internal pressure is gradually adjusted to suit the intended outside pressures. The player could built a module with a diving bell and winch that would drop out the bottom and descend to a desired depth while providing the user with appropriate pressurization. The inverse would also apply, gradually decompressing the player automatically while ascending. This would probably be a good first build module for people looking to get into the deeper areas to pick up things like moonpool fragments.
  
  This would also be useful for emergencies in which the player needs to ascend quickly. The diving bell itself could shoot up but maintain the internal pressure so the player doesn't explode on the way. Escaping from a monster fish that deep could be one reason to get the heck out of dodge. Medical emergencies might also be another one. The player could rush out, grab a medical kit, and hop back in before their internal gas levels shot up too high and tend to their wounds while resuming proper decompression.

With the above details in mind, the suit would obviously need to monitor and keep the user informed of the amounts of gas built up in their tissues. We know this is allready possible thanks to the hydration and nutrient monitoring. It may be necessary to build a hud addon, simliar to the compass and temperature modules to enable that kind of feature, however.

Firm verbal warnings could inform somone about these issues when they start diving past a certain depth for the first time. And provide them with the equivalent of a dive computer to tell them' you spent this long down at this pressure so it will take X amount of time to decompress safely if you stop for a minute every so many feet.' etc...but that might be a bit advanced. Considering we have advanced technology, the devs might find some way to counteract the pressure problems more actively in the user and manage the gas bubbling issure in a more advanced manner.

Some pople may be asking 'What about the Seamoth?'. I personally don't feel the Seamoth should be advanced enough for an auto-compression system like the cyclops one I mentioned above, BUT, I do think it should auto match the outside pressure so you can get in/out easily. This would mean the player themselves would have to watch the suit feedback and ascend gradually up to a safe level before shooting up to the surface. This would allow players to take the seamoth quite deep, but have to be smart about how quickly they ascend, or stop at a decompression base to avoid draining the battery while waiting for their internal pressure to be safe and just idling in place in the process.

The Environment

The environment is probably the biggest star in this game aside from yourself. It's flat out amazing. The immersiveness in this game is some of the most impressive I've ever seen. But I do feel there could be a couple of additions.

Weather

The weather never changes. It's hinted at in some of the PDAs found on the floating island, but it never really changes, except for the lunar eclipses but those aren't exactly 'weather'.

I'd like to see some additions to the atmosphere. Things like rainstorms, thunderstorms, hurricanes, even super cells. Obviously this would make above-water occupation very hazardous and would help drive the player down into the depths to escape it. (This could be a great mechanic so we don't just build a tiny base on the floater island and consider the game won).

Weather events could also affect the sea itself, producing currents, or other unusual things like explosions of algae that make it nearly impossible to see and make solar power almost useless. During the big storms bases could be buffeted by the surrounding sea being whipped up into a frenzy, requiring repairs, unless the player build in a deeper protected place, like a cave system, or just generally deep under water where the affects would be muted.

The player themselves could be affected by the strong currents, possibly injured if they get slammed into a rock wall, and have to struggle back to their base for shelter. Obviously you'd need some kind of weather station device to help predict the upcoming weather changes and keep yourself prepared. It would be terrifying to be rushing back to base with your hud warning you that a major storm is about to kick up any moment and you're praying you get there in time to avoid being struck by lightning.


Hazards

For now, the only real hazards are basic things like predators, and farting gasopods. I'd like to see the inclusion of more variation in the hazards, and I'm not talking just hostile wildlife, or radiation.

• Acidic areas in deep biomes could be interesting, and be another obstacle to block the player from just waltzing into an area with 8 oxygen tanks.
  
  
• Pressure could also be a blockade to entering certain areas. Special equipment, maybe a special air mix could be required, and possibly compression/decompression could be mandatory to avoid the bends. A decompression chamber module for habitats could help, and would make building a midway base deeper down useful for a brief stay for acclimation.
  
  
• Heat could get quite nasty around certain areas. We've allready experienced this with geysers, but a deep biome with high heat levels could require a special diving suit to survive in for short periods of time, requiring time managemnent and awareness.
  
  
• Plant hazards could be an interesting mechanic to deal with. While the Tigerplants are fascinating and a really ingenius concept, plants that grab prey, electrify the surrounding area as a defense, or various other exotic types would be fascinating to learn about and try to avoid/pacify. We have real examples of plants that can react to the environment, like venus fly traps, passive plants that are still carnivorous like the pitcher plant, and plants that react to touches by instantly wilting (touch me not). I'd like to mention how impressed I am with the design of the symbiotic crash and crash plant relationship.

Random Events

Many games introduce unforeseen/unpredictable occurences that you have to respond to unexpectedly. Subnautica seems like a very ripe game for that very idea. Alongside Weather hazards being generated, I have considered other types as well.

• Earthquakes could introduce base damage, temporarily clear an area of fish that ran away from the epicenter, and generally shake things up. It wouldn't be terribly necessary to have it be physics based, but shaking the screen and having a proper earth rending sound alongside changes like I mentioned above would make it viable as a game mechanic you'd need to urgently respond to. Quakes could occur in different areas of th game depending on depth, biome, and other details, but they probably shouldn't occur at all in the safe shallows! To help counter the destructiveness, this could be a rare event that actually produces more resource nodes as a result of the virtual shakeup, meaning there's a bounty of useful things in the area afterwards to pick up if you surived!
  
  
• Special threatening monster/fish events! While many of the creatures are amazing, they stick to certain biomes and it makes them fairly easy to avoid and manage them. This bodes well for player planning in that they can make sure they avoid building a base in certain areas riddled with sandsharks, or even a reaper leviathan but doesn't do much for 'oh god something happened' type events. I would like to see a few, maybe just a couple, of special rare fish that are big threats and could wander through various areas rarely, at random, and shake things up a little. Things like attacking your base, or just temporarily making an area electrical, or poisoned, etc could be effects they introduce until they move on. The player could end up rewarded for this event by the monster in question leaving something behind, like a special tooth that can enamel lots of glass due to it's scale or purity content, etc.
  
  These could be almost anything like a giant jellyfish with stingers dragging everywhere to just a reaper leviathan looking for a mate. Or even a swarm of tiny jellyfish that just cause the player constant small ticks of health loss until they get out.
  
  Fish migrations could be beautiful to watch and add some extra seasonal type life to the game. Watching a giant cloud of spadefish passing around your base on their way to a mating site would be eerily beautiful and potentially net you some easy food.
  
  
• Algae clouds. These could minimize vision in an area, and even choke up a purifier (slowing it further then it usually is). Lack of visibility could also have a deterimental effect on solar panel production (under water at least) slowing it to a crawl or even possibly negating it entirely. A plus side could be that you could easily gather up the algae to use in some way that would be useful, like making algae food cubes that would be similiar to the nutrition cubes that come in the life pod. Furthermore, these could slow down and temporarily gum up motors and propellors in everything from the Seaglide to the Seamoth and Cyclops, forcing you to adapt your strategies or risk the engine seizing up until you clear it out from a blob of the stuff.
  
  
• Temporary poisons. It's not unusual for bacteria to start producing large amounts of waste products that humans and fish could find problematic, or even lethal. Some kind of event could occur where swarms of something produce nasty poisons similiar to the gasopods but in a more constant cloud zone that could migrate around an area for awhile, then dissappear as suddenly as it appeared.

Fish

No Subnautia thread would be complete without a thread about the fish. They're great! I'm very happy with the fish and how unique they are. But I had an idea.

A fishy companion

The stalkers have mantion of capability for reward based learning. And that got me thinking, while the Stalkers are rather agressive, perhaps other fish could be trainable in some way? I'm thinking something like a Subnautica equivalent of a dolphin type creature that you could not only befriend, but train, possibly equip, and bring with you on your excursions to give you some aid. Such a creature could simply be a following inventory bag, but also could help you locate resources and alert you to incoming predators.

Flashlight Stun

It has been proposed in another thread that the flashlight could be used to momentarily confuse/stun fish and I think this is a fantastic idea. Flashing your light at them could cause them to respond depending on the type of fish it is. The small prey fish would probably just swim away, while the larger more predatory types might just sit there for a moment instead of biting you, a great way to slip away. However, perhaps there could be a chance of inadvertantly aggroing the fish you're flashing? Such a tactic shouldn't come without some kind of risk involved if you're dumb enough to either over use it or use it on the wrong fish.

Marine Biology

So, we go around scanning all these fish...and that just seems to produce short entries in the PDA (Some of which aren't finished, which is understandable.) But I would like to see more information come out of these scans. Especially if you develope a new device to study the fish more perhaps, or observe them in aquariums, etc.

Maybe we could discover various weaknesses or unique things about the larger fish to help us deal with them better? behavioural studies, a sensitivity to light,etc. Granted we don't want to completely destroy all risk but gaining a deeper understanding of the threats would certainlly help us handle them more effectively.

So with that in mind, maybe if we study fish enough we could gain technological advances of some kind? Yes I know some kind of DNA augmentation gameplay is coming, so that might completely negate this entire issue. Heck, if the DNA augmentation is the primary means of advancement in the end, then we wouldn't need the tech anymore to begin with and most of my ideas are kind of pointless.

Aquariums

Breeding fish in an aquarium is a great idea, but I think it could be expanded a bit. Primarily, I'd like to see some play between the fish and the environment you set up in the tank, as well as between the fish.

By Environment, I'm referring to the planter beds inside the aquariums. My idea works like this;

When you plant things from a particular biome into the planters, those plants come from various biomes. If you take plants from the kelp forests, like the creepvines, then the environment for that aquarium would reflect that biome. The fish would respond to this by adapting their behaviour to suit the environment you've set up. The majority of this would generally result in fish breeding faster, or growing faster, if you place them into an environment that is more suitable for them. So for creepvines, Hoverfish (for example) would naturally like that environment better, and breed more and generally exhibit happier behaviour.

Placing fish with other breeds of fish should also have an impact. Especially if you put predator and prey together. While this may not necessarily result in fish being eaten in your tanks, it should have an impact on the instinctive behaviours they exhibit together. Prey fish would probably exhibit more hiding and survival type behaviours, for example.

Also, I'd like to see the fish responsive to the player when they enter the aquarium. Some fish could be naturally curious and do things like nibble at the player's fingers looking for food, or swim away to avoid them, depending on the fish type, environment (how comfortable they feel in the aquarium, how vulnerable they feel), and other fish. This would encourage players to play in their aquariums, not just to breed fish or scan them, but to interact with them for some potential benefits.

I would love to see players having an impact on the behaviour of fish around them, both in and out of the quariums. Offering food, or various items for fish to interact with, etc, could result in surprising and delightful responses from differing kinds of fish. Secret interactions could cause fish to help the player in surprising ways, hinder the player, or do something amusing like dance around a light source. It's really up to the dev's creativity.

I'd like to point out one thing, somone with marine biology training or expertise might be able to make some really GREAT suggestions about how fish could feasibly behave and interact with the player, especially one whom has a good deal of diving experiene with real fish in varying environments. Somone like this would be invaluable for suggestions.

In the end...

I do realize that this game is inended to be 'survival under water', hence the name Subnautica and the whole story about the crash. But once we've made batteries a million times, cells a million times, explored so many wrecks, fixed the radiation leaking from the engines, and pretty much set ourselves up for survival, perhaps we could have some end-game things to keep us coming back?

A lot of people are against us having luxuries, automation, and significant tech advancements, but I believe that once we've ground our way through the majority of the game for so many hours, we're tired of looking for quartz and copper, tired of snagging fish out of the water, and lots of other manual things. Any human in their right mind would want to find ways to make their activities more efficient and less tedious!

The water purifier is a great step in that direction. After we've caught lungfish so many times and filtered small bottles of water, or hunted down salt for bleach, it makes perfect sense to find something we can use to ease the tedium. I believe this should extend further. We need to have things that make life more renewable, less tedious, and open the player up to have more time for fun and luxury then spending day and night hunting food and barely surviving.

Thus we need some kind of end game luxuries and rewards that the player can really feel satisfied with all their hard work and spend some time relaxing. I suggest the devs consider the tedium of the early game and look at ways to make it more automated and less tedious near the end. My earlier ideas for some mild automation for gathering resources is one such idea, but further?

Robots

We allready have drones in various forms ranging from the cameras in the scanner room, to the units used to build vehicles in the vehicle making deployable. So why shouldn't we have some extension of robots to do various other tasks?

I've allready mentioned base repair but what about robots that could do other helpful things?

A companion unit could follow you closely and provide benefits depending on it's configuration and modules. Perhaps it could heal you up when you get injured, be a following storage chest, or auto stasis nearby predators or other threats with a mounted stasis rifle.

Bots could also be made to do things like base repairs (mentioned earlier), repair your seamoth/cyclops, help you with your farming, gather materials of various types for you, and so on.

Granted this would be end-game or very close to it, but I feel like it would grant a sense of accomplishment, and help stave off the inevitable psychosis from being alone too long. Perhaps you could even name one Wilson.

Other things

At this point you just have to live on long enough for rescue to eventually arrive (hoepfully). And who wouldn't want to do that in peace and comfort? Obviously you don't want to make the player completely useless and negate all potential threat, but it would help with that feeling of accomplishment I keep discussing to see that you've come a long way. At this point it's less about surviving and more about keeping things interesting in the long term. I recommend looking at other games and how they've managed to keep players coming back, keep replayability up, and continue to offer entertainment. I really hope this game can avoid being something that I play for a couple of months then never touch again because it's completely a 'been there, done that, didn't even get a t-shirt' type of situation.

Conclusion

These are my current thoughts so far, but I'll probably add more as I gain more ideas from continuing to play around with and test the game. I'm enjoying seeing how it's developing, and am looking forward to coming updates! Thanks for reading.

I'd also like to throw out a heartfelt thank you to Mr. Phaota for encouraging me to post my ideas during our conversations, and being supportive.

[Roti]

Damn, that was a long thread '-'
Nice idea tho :)
I really want to see this in the game c:

[Shalmendo]

Updated extensively with a plethora of extra ideas. And plenty of typos...I'll fix those in time. Don't worry about an announcement "I fixed this one typo guyz!"

[Khorps]

i shook a stick at it, do i get cookie?

[Shalmendo]

Originally posted by Khorps:

i shook a stick at it, do i get cookie?

No, but you can have a cracker.

[Khorps]

Originally posted by Shalmendo:

Originally posted by Khorps:

i shook a stick at it, do i get cookie?

No, but you can have a cracker.

yum

[Maxpowerammo]

Longest thread I've ever read, ever. Thanks for not making it one huge block :D

I agree with pretty much everything in here. As of now, the game doesn't have much replayability, I hope they fix that.

[Shalmendo]

Originally posted by Maxpowerammo:

Longest thread I've ever read, ever. Thanks for not making it one huge block :D

I agree with pretty much everything in here. As of now, the game doesn't have much replayability, I hope they fix that.

I figured it would be MUCH easier to read and digest if I carefully broke it up into sections and subsections. So I'm glad to see that my efforts weren't in vain. It would have taken me 10 minutes to type it all out straight...the formatting made it more like 4 hours lol. Plus the formatting uses those crappy old HTML based formatting tags, UGH...so outmoded.

[Cheshyr]

I expect there will be some respawning, as we've already seen major changes. i.e., farming fish and plants, the first aid machine from the last patch, etc. But bear in mind this isn't Minecraft -- you're playing in a vacuum (solo) and on a large, but limited playing field. Ultimately, Subnautica is an RPG with survival elements.

My wife and I love the game, but we've stopped playing the beta until final release. Neither of us want to be bored before then, as it doesn't look like there's much in the way of replay value once the main story is complete.

[Shalmendo]

Originally posted by Cheshyr:

I expect there will be some respawning, as we've already seen major changes. i.e., farming fish and plants, the first aid machine from the last patch, etc. But bear in mind this isn't Minecraft -- you're playing in a vacuum (solo) and on a large, but limited playing field. Ultimately, Subnautica is an RPG with survival elements.

My wife and I love the game, but we've stopped playing the beta until final release. Neither of us want to be bored before then, as it doesn't look like there's much in the way of replay value once the main story is complete.

The replay value is something I really hope the devs address. I don't want to play it a couple times or so and end up with a 'been there, done that, have the stalker teeth to prove it *yawn*' type deal.

As it is, any current replay value is purely from the desire to 'do it again' or simply because the updates require starting a new world and you HAVE to do lots of things again to experience the balancing changes or make sure the latest world changes etc are in your world now.

Lots of people do just cheat everything back in on a new world and instabuild themselves back to the point they were at, though.

[MetaRex88]

for respawn of fish: take a fish in the aquarium and wait. you can´t eat all the fish you get.
for anything else YES please make it

[Shalmendo]

Updated with thoughts about Compression in the Player section, and random other ideas dotted around the others since the last update.

[Steve the hunter of tri.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=barWV7RWkq0

I have to say most (if not all) of those are great ideas! HOWEVER! You missed the one thing the game needs the most!

[Shalmendo]

Originally posted by Steve the hunter of tri.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=barWV7RWkq0

I have to say most (if not all) of those are great ideas! HOWEVER! You missed the one thing the game needs the most!

Could you elaborate on what that is, please?

[Steve the hunter of tri.]

Originally posted by Shalmendo:

Originally posted by Steve the hunter of tri.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=barWV7RWkq0

I have to say most (if not all) of those are great ideas! HOWEVER! You missed the one thing the game needs the most!

Could you elaborate on what that is, please?

A PING-PONG TABLE! I'm just kidding that would never happen (...unfortunatly...) What I think the game needs the most is more things on the islands. I'm kind of bored with the (kind of) small amount of land animals and plants.

[Cheshyr]

Originally posted by Steve the hunter of tri.:

Originally posted by Shalmendo:

Could you elaborate on what that is, please?

A PING-PONG TABLE!:sans: I'm just kidding that would never happen (...unfortunatly...) What I think the game needs the most is more things on the islands. I'm kind of bored with the (kind of) small amount of land animals and plants.

Land is fairly boring, but the game's focus is on life beneath the ocean. The developers have stated on multiple occasions that they're trying to avoid making the islands attractive to settlement. If players settled there, they'd lose any need to worry about survival. The land is just too safe and convenient to move the story along.

That said, some more aggressive hazards on land (and rewards to match) might not be a bad idea.