Vertical climb and decent is killing this game

[Elyrien Valkyr]

I've been coming back to this game every few updates and it's clearly getting better and better with every update. But other than AI flaws, the biggest issue with this game is the pacing, from what I've experienced.

Being able to hit over 100 horizontally can feel pretty awesome, and very hard to do. Though I've never seen a sub that can reliably move vertically higher than 20. This may seem like such a petty complaint, but this compounds to be an absolutely miserable experience that drags games out to 40+ minutes. Instead of having each mission take a long time because the player decides to do things that take a long time, we're forced to just sit there and stare at our screens because of how painfully slow the game moves.

Honestly, so much of this game is amazing, but the movement is like riding a motorcycle at full speed, but then being forced to sit in a mostly broken down elevator for every single vertical climb and decent. It's bad enough that every single person I've convinced to try this game has refused to play again. Purely because 90% of the game you're doing absolutely nothing. You're sitting in a sub and WAITING for it to move to the point of interest.

I can't think of a reason why the maps need to be so long, and why vertical movement needs to be so painfully and insufferably slow. Specially in the later stages of the game when maps can get up to 5k away from the start, on top of this absolutely insane distance, you have faaaaar too much vertical movement. There should never be a situation where the player is clearing the mission 5 minutes in, then they're forced into 50 minutes of boring, mindless, tedious movement with zero content to do since you finish the goal minutes in.

I honestly figured this would be a petty complaint when I first noticed it months ago. I pushed through it, but the endgame really makes it just beat you down over and over with how slow everything is. It's fine when you have a map that's just 1-2k and the objective is in the middle.

It does suck to say, considering so much of the game is genuinely fun and fascinating... I've spent almost a hundred hours just making ships. But whenever I see an update and come back to this game, the only thing I look to see is how long the map is, and how slow the ships move. After I see absolutely nothing has been done to fix this blatant issue, I just uninstall and wait 2 months, hoping they'll finally address the biggest issue.

I get that shortening the map would rob the world's sense of scale, and that speeding up the vertical movement wouldn't feel realistic... but the way it stands right now is actively driving players away.

[2D > 3D WEEB 4 LIFE]

Isn't it possible to just make custom subs that "fix" this by having ridiculous ballasts and engines? Not that it completely fixes the issue since you still have to navigate through a bunch of stuff most rounds but at least it's something.

[Elyrien Valkyr]

If you have to design something to absurd degrees, that would undoubtably throw every other mechanic and system in the game off, just to bypass an issue. That in itself is an issue.

I've tried many community subs, as well as all of the dev team designed subs, and vertical speeds are almost always between 15-20 regardless of ballast count / volume.

[yeet]

it's a submarine bro it's not nascar

[shrekstyle]

Originally posted by BAD RAT:

Isn't it possible to just make custom subs that "fix" this by having ridiculous ballasts and engines? Not that it completely fixes the issue since you still have to navigate through a bunch of stuff most rounds but at least it's something.

No in this game bigger ballast tanks wont make you go up down faster.

I think there is a hard cap for down movement of 35 and i have never got anything to move up faster than 19-20.
Just made a test sub that had one very small room just big enuff for a nav console air pump and reactor and one giant room for ballast.

The neutral setting for the tank was 0.0707 full.
When empty it had up speed of 18.
When it was around 50% full it reached 35 down speed and didn't increase for the other 50%.

Then made the ballast tiny and had neutral ballast of 0.9640
Took so long just to make if go down so im not counting the down speed.
Empty ballast and it would rise up 19 quickly maybe 20 if i waited longer.

[Shadeball]

Originally posted by Elyrien Valkyr:

If you have to design something to absurd degrees, that would undoubtably throw every other mechanic and system in the game off, just to bypass an issue. That in itself is an issue.

It's not an objectively problematic issue, though. The very nature of the subs creates this dynamic. You were presented with an option that is contained within the tools of the game- to design your own sub that would fit your tastes and you don't want to do that.

Maybe it's just that people aren't that upset about this and that's why you don't find mods catering to it.

[Dan Cooper]

I mean you're complaining about this issue, but this is really the first time i've heard of it. I keep crew entertained by having plants and pets. By calling out what I'm doing and how far we have to go, and by offering to stop at places so people can get out and explore/salvage/mine if they want.

[GreySciTe]

Since I often play the quartermaster of the ship I rather have too little than too much time to fabricate and stash everything. And I generally like the slower pace of the game.

[Deceptive Pastry]

Can't do much about upward speed, sub empty of water is as buoyant as it could be. But I have added auxiliary ballasts to some of my subs that I can turn on if I want to dive faster. More water in ship = faster sinking. Sounds like the diving speed is capped around 35 but that's still decently fast.

[GreySciTe]

It's pretty much capped by physics. Can't ascend/descend faster as artificial gravity/water density allows with only ballast tanks. For faster vertical movement you'll need propulsion.

[Cheesepizza2]

honestly i kinda agree. being able to move at 40 mph sideways but going up or down at like 15 mph doesn't really match up, and it makes some maps quick and some slow. the pacing feels just a bit slow in my opinion, as the optional tasks on the ship (such as plants, wiring, fabrication) take a shorter time than driving to and from destimations

[Katitoff]

Its a submarine... not a space ship...
You can't just slap engines on top and bottom and call it a day.

[terve886]

The sinking and lifting speed is based on the % of the hull that is under water.

[Elyrien Valkyr]

It's little surprise that the extremely few people playing this game see no issue. This game absolutely struggles to maintain 1000 players, and averages less than that. The vast majority are touching this game, being bored to tears by the pacing and never picking it up again. By any other game's metrics, this game is already dead, and it hasn't even hit 1.0. Most people don't complain, they simply just don't come back or buy it to begin with.

Everyone is well aware that it's a sub, that comment isn't clever, or helpful. This is a pacing issue. You don't need to "slap an engine on it and call it good", as if that changes anything. The maps are far too big, the subs are far too slow, and you're ground to a skidding halt any time you have to go up or down. On top of all this, there's borderline nothing to do in the meantime.

Having played this for well over a hundred hours, I can say for absolute certainty that by 25% campaign map mark, you should no longer need to leave the sub for supplies, and resource management by the 50% mark is so trivialized that you could easily have everything made and stored away within 3 minutes. So why then should a map take 40+ minutes to complete?

This game would be dramatically improved by having quick missions, with actual content worth stopping the sub for. It hurts nothing and no one to cut maps down to 25% the size they are currently. If you need time to make things because you're slow, then upgrade the systems, it would give an actual reason to do so. If you still need time, then stop and explore a thing. No one is forcing you to end a mission early. But forcing people to suffer through insane map lengths because you craft slowly is insane in itself.

Right now, as it stands, finding something along the path in any mission almost feels like something to do, until you realize how much further you still have to go, and stopping to do what ever it is would only add an ungodly amount of time to each mission.

Next time you play a map where you have +5k travel distence, go ahead and take out a stopwatch and pay attention. That 5k very very quickly turns into 20k when you start adding in vertical climb, moving rocks, dead ends, etc. All that adds up, and makes the pacing far worse than it needs to be.

[Terminal Velocity]

My main gripe with this latest update are currents. They are slowing parts of my trips to almost a standstill. Some time they get in the way of docking. At one instance I spent around 30 minutes trying to dock until I gave up, reloaded and back to the origing point to try something else.

[Timoteo]

Originally posted by Terminal Velocity:

My main gripe with this latest update are currents. They are slowing parts of my trips to almost a standstill. Some time they get in the way of docking. At one instance I spent around 30 minutes trying to dock until I gave up, reloaded and back to the origing point to try something else.

Yeah, the currents are kind of tough. It's super tough to "park" the sub in order to mine resources, salvage a shipwreck, or deploy men to destroy a creature nest. I wish that the currents weren't so strong, and I wish there were more spots without currents (for parking the sub).

Back to the original post... I have not noticed that vertical movement is too slow, but I haven't yet gotten to the 5k map distances. Maybe at that point I would feel it too. Maybe at that point I would agree that we need faster vertical movement. However, it seems unlikely to me that people are quitting the game for that reason, because we don't really encounter that kind of distance until later in the campaign. Probably, people who try (and then quit) the game are not hanging in there that long.