Equipment Upgrades

[freezerman71]

I found the blueprints for both the Seatruck Horsepower Upgrade & Ultra High Capacity Air Tank in the Lily Pad Biome. I used the Seatruck fabricator and made the horsepower upgrade but it does not work. I have selected the number of its slot while I am piloting the Seatruck and hold down the mouse button but nothing happens. As for the High Capacity Air Tank the blueprint shows in my inventory but not either the fabricator in the base or Seatruck. I am I missing something? Thanks guys in advance.

[Arondil]

You need a modification station to for the Ultra High Capacity Tank.

The horsepower upgrade is always active, but it does not make the sea truck cabin faster - it reduces the speed loss caused by attached modules.

[Coops]

You will only notice the effect of the HP upgrade if you have two or more modules.
The seatruck with two modules and the HP upgrade will have the same speed as the seatruck alone. The overall effect is to give you the same speed as the current configuration minus one module.

The turbocharger module activates when you press the "run" key. Speed goes from 9 m/s to 13 m/s

[dragonbornzyra]

I'd be willing to stack 2 HP upgrades at the cost of PDS if it meant I would go faster with 3+ modules. I know they're working on speed and storage, and those are wonderful starts.

But with 2 patches left before 1.0 they still have so much work left to do to make the game ready. I think they should focus on making Below Zero right, even if it means missing that Switch release. Let those console babies wait just like everyone else.

If Below Zero releases undercooked, they might can get back the PC users through patches and fixes, but they'll lose the console/Switch users if it doesn't come out perfect as is.

Things that need fixing according to my personal opinion:

-Swim speed
-Add Ultra Glide Fins back to game
-Improve Seaglider speed
-Walking physics on land
-Gathered resources, players, and Prawn suits falling through land terrain
-Decrease dangerous weather frequency on land or remove PDA warning
-Seriously rebalance the surface weather, it's a form of non gameplay
-I'm not kidding fix that ♥♥♥♥
-Snowfox should be removed if they can't figure out how to make a hover bike not get stuck on every pebble every five feet
-Scanner room blips should be improved. It's sad the modding community can do this for both games yet UWE can't do it for any of their games. Fix the blips. Stop sending me to resources that I've already gathered or aren't even there are or are stuck 40 meters below terrain.
-Mineral Detector should be removed if they can't make it work. It suffers from the same problems as the Scanner Room with horrible blips, and eats up batteries so badly so such a useless tool and wate of item slot and time.
-Both West and East Arctic "biomes" are barren empty and dull. The most interesting part about West Artic is the nearby Kelp Forest and Glacial Basin. Ironic since those are OTHER biomes. East Arctic has Maida's Greenhouse, an alien artifact, and a Diamond/Magninite/Silver/Gold filled iceburg with Titan Holefish eggs. One step above nothing. Polish the biomes and make it more than an empty barren seafloor and iceburgs on the surface with empty space inbetween and copy pasted creatures.
-Fix collision issues with resources that cannot be collected or picked up with Propulsion
Polish Tree Spires and Thermal Spires biomes so they don't have wide swath's of featureless empty barren terrain that serve no purpose other than just being blank unused wasted space
-Polish World's Edge
-Keep World's Edge massive Chelicerate, repace in game "normal" Chelicerate with new Leviathan species
-Ice Worm as an animatronic is like real animatronics. The first time you see it you go awww and ahhhh and oooo. Then every other time you step on the spot you know to trigger and the Ice Worm goes OOHA BOOGA BOOGA! And you just move on. Disappointing to be the game's big baddie mascot. The pathway to the Artic Spires is filled with what feels like 20 triggers for Ice Worm roars, screams, and "fake attacks" By the time the player actually triggers the Ice Worm for real, they are desensitized and bored with it. Or annoyed.
-Lightning should be able to damage the player, otherwise just remove it. It's unecessary tax on processes and rendering when all it does is never hit the player but "almost" hits them.
-Remove Robin's emotes from the game, or give the player the choice to turn them off
-Revert PDA back to Alterra design and voice. Give the player the option to find/use/unlock Xenoworkx PDA if they chose but don't force it on the player
-Remove Squidsharks misplaced EMP attack and give it Spiky Traps tentacle grapple mechanics to make it a mobile long range threat (that can be delt with properly equipped with a knife and fast reflexes)
-Give Spiky Trap the EMP attack, a plant that discharges electrical shock to deter predators that get too close to it. Almost same behavior but makes more sense when you swap the attacks between the two
-Add Hoverfish to Lillypad Islands, or some other creature that lives on the surface and uses the Lillypads
-Deep Purple Vents? Lol why. How? Let's count "biomes" are that just "deep" versions of existing ones: "Deep" Purple Vents. "Deep" Lillypand Island Crevice. "Deep" Lillypad Caves. "Deep" Twisty Bridges.
[Side rant on Deep biomes]
First off even though Deep Twisty is an offender of a few of these things, it gets a HARD PASS okay? I let Twisty Bridges and DTB slide with alot of their shortcomings if not all of them just because it's done so well. It's most fleshed out biome in the game in my opinion. It was a biome idea ported from cut content from Subnautica and given life of its own and it's become something greater than it would have ever been if it was put into Subnautica.

With that out of the way.... there's nothing we need in the Deep Twisty. Yeah there's some stuff down there we really want, and even a few things we can only get here I think. Sea Truck modules, if you gotta have em, alien artifact to scan, so you can finish your easter egg hunt/treasure hunt side quest (I'm waiting on Robin to just bust out a sword and start shouting at fish like Link any miniute) There's an Ion Cube.....and then more Diamond than you'll ever actually need, and a lot of Lithium. You look around and that's it....Spiky Traps and Squidshark and you're done with the biome.

You hit the bottom and you look around for the "next" drop off, since that's how we found DTB was that crevice at the bottom of TB. But we don't find it. But Deep Twisty gets a pass because it tried so hard and fell down and kept going and lept across the finish line fabulously and I'm so proud of it.

Deep Purple Vents: I don't even know why this biome in the game. Not being hyperbolic, the alien artifact, that giant insect fossil scanner thing can be anywhere else. There's nothing in the biome. It's just Purple Vents.....but "deep" There's Red Featherfish in here you can find everywhere else in the game. I mean, no Cryptocurrency in here so it's at least not that loud, but you still have to listen to the Purple Vents erupting anyway. No special resource, and even what's present isn't abundant. As a connection between Purple Vents and Maida's base it USED to be convenient, but not all it connects to is the Crystal Cavern? When we can already get there from Maida's base? It's so pointless. It's just a weak stretch of space to try to make "more" of nothing. Not to mention it makes no sense how Deep Purple Vents exists and there are Purlple Vents ABOVE the caverns created by Deep Purple Vents. But whatever, logic right?

Deep Lillypad Crevice/Caves: It makes a bit more sense because of the root systems, and does have more diversity with flora and fauna opposed to the "bottom" of the Lillypad biome and itself. But for some reason they put a Seamonkey colony out here for no reason when there's no Kelp around. And there's Lillypaddlers and Spiky Traps in here for no reason. So much "we have nothing else to put here so let's just paste this and that" It connects to Maida's base and the deep Butt Hole caves (What my roomate calls those cave flowers and now I can never unsee/unidentify them as) It should just be it's own separate thing.

As shallow and small of a game as Below Zero is, it doesn't have any right calling more than one biome "Deep" sitting at 400m in a biome calling itself Deep when I've just come up from 600 and then I can swim south to another "deep" 400 meter biome it just makes me chortle. No it isn't. It's not deep. Instead of calling itself deep and slowing the player down to make us think Below Zero is bigger, it should embrace the fact it is not and just be DIFFERENT. Give us our speed back and make "deep" biomes "frozen" versions of their surface counterparts instead of "deep" Any area under water not by a source of thermal heat should be frozen over. But I digress on with the list of improvements

-Land Boundaries should have zones flagged for an automatic Ice Worm attack. If the player goes further, the next Ice Worm attack is an automatic kill. Or just be simple (if not cruel) and make the boundary trigger Ice Worm finishers that brutally tells the player No.....you cannot, and you w i l l not go past this point. Someone else suggested this idea and it makes sense. It serves the purpose of World's Edge Chelicerate. This solves their problem with people going itno the boundaries, and they would not have to remove Grapple Arms or make the Snowfox unable to do it or give players a Height limit when building bases on land. Just put the cruel "Adult" or "Ancient" Ice Worm in the boundary zone as a harsh deterent.

UI/HUD: Let the player consume items and interact with our inventory in the same screen we interact with Planters or Lockers, such as we were able to in Subnautica. Let us Repair and interact with vehicle inventory in the moonpool. Update Docking Module to allow the user to interface with our docked Prawn suits inventory and manage our upgrades (which we currently have no reason to since there aren't even enough Prawn upgrades in the game to fill all the slots!)

Speaking of which, same for Seatruck. There's no choice or option when putting in the upgrades. Depth Module + PDS + Horse Power + Afterburner. That's it. It doesn't feel much like an "upgrade" when it's mandatory and where's the customization when there are no options? I see for experimental they have 2 new upgrade modules "Thruster" upgrade and "Engine Efficiency" upgrade. Thruster "Increases maneuverability at the cost of energy efficiency." Which makes no sense, as with alot of Modules attached there's no increase to maneuverability when we keep hitting terrain with modules attached, and as just the Sea truck there's no need for more. So it just drains engine efficiency for no benefit? I don't get this.

And we already have an Engine Effiency upgrade: Ion Power Cells. The map is so small, you can beat the game with 4 pair of power cells and 2 Ion Power Cells. Less if you speedrun to your first 2 Ion Cells. Any player that's ever built a Power Cell Charger in any base ever already have all the energy anything they do in a Sea Truck is ever going to need. I guess they want us to use this upgrade to off set the other upgrades increased power drain. But it serves no benefit worth taking up a whole slot for.

-Prawn Suit thermal power upgrade doesn't seem to work even in 30'c higher water
-Modification Station is redundent as is and currently underutulized. As it stands in stable the only reason to make one is to get a Thermal Blade and upgrade your Oxygen tanks. There is no purpose or reason to have or use a Repulsion Canon, and we have a Vehicle Mod station already in our moonpool to upgrade Vehicle modules. There's no other equipment to mod. I see in experimental they brought back Ultra Glide Fins. Good. Why did it take them this long to put them in? It's part of the slowing the player down, but it seems at least they are listening to the tremendous backlash and feedback and putting them back.

Swimcharge fins? Hard pass. They were so slow in Subnautica they were impractical, the rate at which they charged your tools battery was completely inconsequential to the detriment to your swim speed it gave you. You were literally better off just getting things done faster with quicker swim speed and just using the seabase utulities as intended to recharge our batteries. There's nothing in Below Zero worth doing where we'd need to be away from a seabase or our Seatruck long enough we'd have to be recharging the batteries for the tools we're using. Not when Ion Batteries are an option, not when I can just bring [gasp] bring a SPARE battery or two. In a game (Below Zero) suffering so much from slooooooooooooooooowness, I refuse to use the Swim charge fins and it's a bit insulting to see them return. But that's a personal gripe.

Let us mod another tool, like the Mineral Detector to have a 30 meter radius where it displays blips like the Scanner Room HUD chip does. Make us have to mod our Laser Cutter so it can cut Ice and not just metal? Let us mod our gloves so we can mine outcrops with 1 click instead of 3?

-Booster Tank: fix it or remove it from the game. Make it fun or don't insult us with its existance
-Control Room UI for base power management needs improvements and accuracy fixes for interacting with the map
-With how often it snows/rains/hails/blizzard storms the player should have a land based option for collecting drinkable rainwater, like how the Water Filtration machine does for water bases
-Land based herbivore species
-Better writing
-PDA Entries filled out
-Better dialouge

I will write more later, but for now, Caloric intake is reccommended so I must pause here.

[freezerman71]

Originally posted by angisilexpen:

You need a modification station to for the Ultra High Capacity Tank.

The horsepower upgrade is always active, but it does not make the sea truck cabin faster - it reduces the speed loss caused by attached modules.

Originally posted by Coops:

You will only notice the effect of the HP upgrade if you have two or more modules.
The seatruck with two modules and the HP upgrade will have the same speed as the seatruck alone. The overall effect is to give you the same speed as the current configuration minus one module.

The turbocharger module activates when you press the "run" key. Speed goes from 9 m/s to 13 m/s

Thank you very much guys and appreciate that you were able to answer my questions. Things have changed so much with the last update that I am still figuring out how to play the game again. I did not play Subnautica so perhaps not having familiarity with the previous game some game mechanics would not occur to me. TBH this game sometimes is not fun to play and have read some of the criticisms on the forums. Hopefully the Dev' s read these posts and can address some of the suggestions that have been made.

[jonnydoh]

Originally posted by dragonbornzyra:

Deep Lillypad Crevice/Caves: It makes a bit more sense because of the root systems, and does have more diversity with flora and fauna opposed to the "bottom" of the Lillypad biome and itself. But for some reason they put a Seamonkey colony out here for no reason when there's no Kelp around. And there's Lillypaddlers and Spiky Traps in here for no reason. So much "we have nothing else to put here so let's just paste this and that" It connects to Maida's base and the deep Butt Hole caves (What my roomate calls those cave flowers and now I can never unsee/unidentify them as) It should just be it's own separate thing.

Does the current (Non experimental) build have those sea horse things? I forget what they're called, but they are down there in the lilypad/deep lilypad biome. What's more, if you get too close they have this shimmer/mesmerize effect that makes you swim at speed in a random direction. SUPER annoying if it makes you swim directly into a squidshark. Neat effect though. Once was enough. I thought that that made them a smart creature to add to that biome. Lots of places to get a little lost in if the effect lasted long enough and you swam around a couple of corners.

[dragonbornzyra]

Originally posted by jonnydoh:

Originally posted by dragonbornzyra:

Deep Lillypad Crevice/Caves: It makes a bit more sense because of the root systems, and does have more diversity with flora and fauna opposed to the "bottom" of the Lillypad biome and itself. But for some reason they put a Seamonkey colony out here for no reason when there's no Kelp around. And there's Lillypaddlers and Spiky Traps in here for no reason. So much "we have nothing else to put here so let's just paste this and that" It connects to Maida's base and the deep Butt Hole caves (What my roomate calls those cave flowers and now I can never unsee/unidentify them as) It should just be it's own separate thing.

Does the current (Non experimental) build have those sea horse things? I forget what they're called, but they are down there in the lilypad/deep lilypad biome. What's more, if you get too close they have this shimmer/mesmerize effect that makes you swim at speed in a random direction. SUPER annoying if it makes you swim directly into a squidshark. Neat effect though. Once was enough. I thought that that made them a smart creature to add to that biome. Lots of places to get a little lost in if the effect lasted long enough and you swam around a couple of corners.

Then while hypnotized a Spiky Trap grabs you, and as you break free it's only into the jaws of a Squidshark.

[jonnydoh]

Oh derp. You mentioned their names in the post I quoted and I just looked them up. Hah!

I personally think Seamonkeys are drawn to technology in order to build their nests. If that's the logic, then it kinda makes sense that they have a colony next to ship wrecks-- but then it would mean that they should also have a colony at the ruins of Omega Base. *shrugs*

[archer9234]

Grapple arm has been readded to the game.