When Making/Looking For A Custom Sub What Features Do You Look For?

[Quill]

When you're building your own custom sub or looking for ones made by other users what sort of features do you want in them?

Do you enjoy subs with Moon-pools? Do you find a Silent Running mode to be required? A on-board Ballast Flora response system? Auto Reactor Shutoff for friendly stations? Etc.

Leave them below

[Adam]

I've made two subs and probably my biggest thing is that they be usable in single-player, which mostly means that the bots are able to get everywhere and repair everything and not screw things up.

Since you mention it, both subs, incidentally, have had a "silent running mode", which limits engine thrust, disables weapons, and turns off exterior lights. (Monsters can see the lights of turrets, too.) They've also had a "hold fire" mode to toggle whether weapons are enabled, because sometimes the bots just want to waste tons of ammo shooting at a pirate ship that's already dead, while I'm trying to go deliver the coup de grâce in person.

Of course, being a single player, I want important numbers and indicators piped into the command room and displayed there so I can see the ship status without having to walk down to the reactor or electrical room.

I also like smart doors and hatches that open automatically, except when there's danger, in which case they close automatically, but in all cases allow manual override. Smart airlocks, too, that don't let any water into the ship. I like a bilge system that doesn't just dump water onto the heads of whoever is on the next deck below. (In my first sub, I had channels in the walls for water to run down through.)

I also like a good battery backup. My first sub mostly ran off the reactor and used batteries as a backup. My second sub is all electric and doesn't use a reactor. I have lots of logic in place to reduce power consumption, such as turning things off when nobody is in the room, circulating the air so I rarely have to run the oxygen generator, etc. I can get power down as low as 37 kW on that sub when needed. (That's just the standby power when I'm out on a dive, of course.)

Anyway, I've gotta go, but those are some quick, unproofread thoughts...

[Ittrix]

I'm pretty new to making subs, but I will say something that a lot of people probably look over is making too many improvements and not leaving much to the electrical engineers. A large part of campaign is upgrading and modifying your submarines, and if you've already done it all, well... you've done it all.

[Quill]

Originally posted by Ittrix:

I'm pretty new to making subs, but I will say something that a lot of people probably look over is making too many improvements and not leaving much to the electrical engineers. A large part of campaign is upgrading and modifying your submarines, and if you've already done it all, well... you've done it all.

I mean tbf not many know crazy custom circuits. I joined the game not that long ago and even I still run into people who don't know what bang-bang reactors controllers are

[Ittrix]

Actually you accidentally taught me you even *could* make reactors better with electronics when I was lurking awhile back. I guess I just never thought about it. Still... the point stands. Why have stores sell electrical components if you've modded your sub so much you can't even use them for anything practical?

Sometimes, maybe, but I genuinely wouldn't want one.

[Buggy Boy]

Pretty much what Adam said, but also if I make a submarine for the Workshop then it's what Ittrix said, so almost the opposite of what Adam said.

When I look at some of the subs on the Workshop they're like works of art, I've sailed on a few in multiplayer and while they're very fancy and impressive, they leave nothing for my play style which is to tinker as an engineer, it's little wonder that some players get bored if they're playing on such subs.

If I'm playing solo (which is all of the time nowadays) I'll just edit a vanilla sub in the campaign; I have previously gone to town editing subs in the editor exactly to my liking and that's fun, but they become 'too good' so the game becomes almost too easy because any challenges surrounding the sub itself are gone, and these are a big part of the game. I get that some people don't care for that aspect of the game and just want to shoot stuff etc, and that's fine, but really I think maybe this isn't the ideal game for them as they're missing half of the point of it being set in a rickety old submarine. Just my opinion.

So in conclusion, generally I prefer the vanilla subs as they are, warts and all, I would only fix bugs such as bot waypointing or other problems that would cause bots to die in stupid ways, e.g. there was a hole in the Humpback that it was possible to fall through and die instantly due to pressure, I fixed that and also made it possible for bots to repair the docking hatch long before the vanilla sub was fixed officially (not sure but the gap might have just been on my custom version). When I've built custom subs I no longer add a reactor controller, fancy battery management, or anything like that, these are for the crew to add or not as that's the way I prefer to play.

I think the most important thing for a custom submarine is for it to have an overall design goal, a niche that the submarine fits into - is it meant to be nimble, fast, and quiet, or is it big, noisy, tough as old boots? What's the story behind this sub, what are its weaknesses or strengths, is it based on some fictional theme or a more realistic / historical aesthetic? Maybe it's just a bare bones scratch built one-of-a-kind that's gone for function over form.

My Workshop subs show my journey in sub design, from adding bells and whistles to just basic functional designs for a small crew.

[Adam]

Ittrix is on to something. It's easy to start playing this game and think "Man, all these subs are flawed or broken somehow. I can make something better!" Then you go and build your first sub, which is naturally perfect and overpowered, and the game gets too easy and boring.

Then you have to discover the fine art of making a sub that's good but broken or flawed so that people can have some fun grappling with it... :-)