Yup, it's for throwing back into the ocean. Sorry, but I find the bioreactor and nuclear reactor to be more trouble than they are worth, except as temporary stopgaps.
Do you think it might become more useful when setting up even deeper bases, or will the thermal power still be your choice?
This is something I'm looking forward to once the game nears completion. Currently there's almost no incentive to go any deeper/farther than the Grand Reef or Mushroom Forest except to simply explore. My dream is building heavy duty elevator shafts that go 500-1500m below the surface for the purpose of extracting rare and precious resources (perhaps something like crude oil, but obviously much more useful).
And the other ... oh, my god it's nuclear power, we old time players never found it (at least not since the recent changes) ... or wait ... ah, 166m !!! Yes, this should be impossible. Congrats for finding it at this depth.
Yup, it's for throwing back into the ocean. Sorry, but I find the bioreactor and nuclear reactor to be more trouble than they are worth, except as temporary stopgaps.
The bioreactor might be useless how it's implemented, but the nuclear reactor will still be a boot reactor - it allows to power a base for some time until you can establish an energy transmitter line from other sources, like sunlight or heat. Also not too bad in deep cold zones like ILZ now (if they don't get steamy heat from the LZ through currents).
Assuming there's a vent or heat source reasonably close, would you choose thermal or nuclear?
I would always go thermal given the option. It's one less thing you have to manage.
Main base with all my aquariums and farms on thermal. Satellite bases for recharging seamoth and feeding myself on thermal. Probably Bio-reactor for any base I need where thermal isn't an option.
The bioreactor might be useless how it's implemented....
With the introduction of farming, changing the reactor to requiring fungal samples and those being dropped by jelly plants, it is theoretically a sustainable power source.
Though I haven't been able to find any jelly plants lately. I have in the past and even watched some vids of people picking them up and went to those spots, but nada. Spawned one with the console. Could farm them but when I broke one it just created waste pieces on the ground which I couldn't pick up. So I wonder if they're still being worked on.
@Halios The bio and nuclear reactor will get internal (see sketchfab artwork is there) this month, so better usable with containers, farming and harvesting. And maybe even safe from creature attacks. This changes the situation.
@Halios The bio and nuclear reactor will get internal (see sketchfab artwork is there) this month, so better usable with containers, farming and harvesting. And maybe even safe from creature attacks. This changes the situation.
@Halios The bio and nuclear reactor will get internal (see sketchfab artwork is there) this month, so better usable with containers, farming and harvesting. And maybe even safe from creature attacks. This changes the situation.
Oh it does. I knew about the new models and them being internal but forgot about creature attacks. I do like my peace and quiet. Maybe I need to reconsider building my main base on the floating island.
Yup, it's for throwing back into the ocean. Sorry, but I find the bioreactor and nuclear reactor to be more trouble than they are worth, except as temporary stopgaps.
The bioreactor might be useless how it's implemented, but the nuclear reactor will still be a boot reactor - it allows to power a base for some time until you can establish an energy transmitter line from other sources, like sunlight or heat. Also not too bad in deep cold zones like ILZ now (if they don't get steamy heat from the LZ through currents).
You hit the nail right on the head there, it's how they are currently implemented. My main issue with the reactors is the lack of endurance. Constantly coming back to base to find that the blasted thing ran out of fuel again just leaves a bad taste when, even at 200m a solar array is usable. Okay, I need to set up 5 to 10 times as many to get the same charge rate as I would in the shallows, but I never need refuel them. Below 200m, I'll use a reactor as temporary bootstrap power source if there's no nearby thermal vent, but only until I can string power from a vent, then it's bye-bye reactor.
If thermal vents were a little more scarce, I would consider it a decent investment seeing as each piece of uranium is good to 1000 power, but as it stands... what would be nice would be the ability to load up something like 5 lots of fuel in the bioreactor and a single reload in the nuke. But with the set and forget utility of thermal and solar, I'm going to be strongly biased against the reactors unless they change significantly.
@zetachron How do you post Sketchfab models on the forums? I need to know!
At the sketchfab page you'll find an embed label and get code to copy and paste. This code is to paste directly here without any other help. Check preview to be sure.
@Aegil I hope they don't forget preload containers or autofetch. Otherwise it's again micromanagement hell.
I've got a base in the Safe Shallows powered by a six-panel solar array. 300 power, and yet... I hardly use any of it. That's... not right. The 'power' game mechanic either needs redesign or power requirements need to be bumped. Because... once you go Solar (or perhaps Bio with a sustainable farm)... why do anything else? I need a reason to go for Thermal, or Nuclear, damn it. Perhaps this will change; maybe they'll implement it where at a certain point, when your base becomes too big, the 'lower tech' methods just won't work anymore?
Or maybe not. I do like the fact that the kind of power plant in your base is 'your' choice; that the game doesn't force you to 'tech up' to a higher tier when 'X condition' happens. When I play Subnautica I marvel at the beauty of the underwater world and I build my base carefully, setting down farms first, and taking from the Biome only enough to survive until my farms are set up; THEN I expand and gather up the metal salvage - 'clean' the environs.
'How and where can I expand my base without "interfering" with the natural layout of the Biome?' are my thoughts when I build. How can I have as little impact as possible?
I need a reason to go for Thermal, or Nuclear, damn it.
Thermal is great. If you build a base near a heat source it's place and forget energy just like solar, and doesn't need you to be near the surface. So you can build somewhere like Grand Reef and run your base on thermal power from one of the smoker vents.
EDIT: Also lets you have sustainable energy places like the Jelly Shroom caves.
@Halios The bio and nuclear reactor will get internal (see sketchfab artwork is there) this month, so better usable with containers, farming and harvesting. And maybe even safe from creature attacks. This changes the situation.
I've been letting this one swim around in my head and realised thermal needn't be vulnerable to creature attacks.
The north safe shallows geyser is very well protected by terrain.
Build a foundation and room (with hatch) inside the geyser (but not right at the bottom unless you enjoy being cooked) and vertical connectors up to a base above.
Place thermal reactors near the foundation.
Place current generators facing outwards in both tunnels which give access to the geyser. There aren't any critters both small enough to fit in those tunnels and strong enough to swim against the currents. But you can still reach the reactors.
Warpers are the only possible exception and they might just as easily be able to warp inside bases.
Okay, given this comment, a major change to the bio-reactor's implementation is due soon, and I'm not just talking about how it and the nuclear reactor are going to be interior structures (already a helpful improvement), but the bio-reactor will be able to use any plant matter.
I've got a base in the Safe Shallows powered by a six-panel solar array. 300 power, and yet... I hardly use any of it. That's... not right. The 'power' game mechanic either needs redesign or power requirements need to be bumped. Because... once you go Solar (or perhaps Bio with a sustainable farm)... why do anything else? I need a reason to go for Thermal, or Nuclear, damn it. Perhaps this will change; maybe they'll implement it where at a certain point, when your base becomes too big, the 'lower tech' methods just won't work anymore?
Honestly, right now I don't have a use for the nuclear reactor. The only place I'm interested in having one is on board my Cyclops, because I don't have a base in deep enough water or cold enough to need one to power a base. And I can't put one on my Cyclops — and even if I could, 1000 energy for one uranium? That's probably, what, half a day's output from the twelve solar panels on my base? From a nuclear reactor? Seriously?
(If we assume the sun in Subnautica to be somewhat similar to Earth's, there's about a thousand watts per square meter available at the surface, at the equator, at noon. I'm going to estimate the area of the solar panels at about three square meters. If we're really, really generous and declare the panels to be 75% efficient (which might, maybe, maybe be possible if you can eliminate virtually all losses), then there's a bit over 2kW available from each panel ... at noon. A typical nuclear reactor's output is measured in anywhere from megawatts to hundreds of megawatts. And it will only extract about 1% of the energy in the uranium or plutonium it is fueled with, over the course of a fuel cycle of one to five years.)
Now a possible approach that I can see to nuclear energy that would not be ludicrously nerfed is if instead of making nuclear reactors, we could make a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that would replace a power cell, and have the same power output, but for ... oh, for game purposes, let's say only a hundred times as long. So a total capacity of about 10,000 units, but you can't draw power from it any faster than from a regular power cell, and you can't recharge it from base power. Maybe if you ran it dry, you could refuel it with fresh uranium.
Almost all actual RTGs use plutonium-238, not uranium, but polonium-210 and strontium-90 have also been used. Strontium 90's main advantage is that it's available really cheaply as a waste byproduct of fission reactors. Pretty much only the Russians use it. Polonium 210 has a very high initial power output for an RTG, 140W/g, but a short half-life of only 138 days means its power output diminishes rapidly. This might make 210Po a very good model for a Subnautica RTG power cell — high enough useful power output to run the Seamoth or Cyclops, but six months or so and it's done, whether you used the power or not.
Comments
Definitely. When you're deep enough that solar panels don't work a nuclear reactor or thermal reactor is the best option.
I haven't used the nuclear yet so I don't have a feel for how quickly it runs through uranium.
This is something I'm looking forward to once the game nears completion. Currently there's almost no incentive to go any deeper/farther than the Grand Reef or Mushroom Forest except to simply explore. My dream is building heavy duty elevator shafts that go 500-1500m below the surface for the purpose of extracting rare and precious resources (perhaps something like crude oil, but obviously much more useful).
And the other ... oh, my god it's nuclear power, we old time players never found it (at least not since the recent changes) ... or wait ... ah, 166m !!! Yes, this should be impossible. Congrats for finding it at this depth.
The bioreactor might be useless how it's implemented, but the nuclear reactor will still be a boot reactor - it allows to power a base for some time until you can establish an energy transmitter line from other sources, like sunlight or heat. Also not too bad in deep cold zones like ILZ now (if they don't get steamy heat from the LZ through currents).
I would always go thermal given the option. It's one less thing you have to manage.
Main base with all my aquariums and farms on thermal. Satellite bases for recharging seamoth and feeding myself on thermal. Probably Bio-reactor for any base I need where thermal isn't an option.
With the introduction of farming, changing the reactor to requiring fungal samples and those being dropped by jelly plants, it is theoretically a sustainable power source.
Though I haven't been able to find any jelly plants lately. I have in the past and even watched some vids of people picking them up and went to those spots, but nada. Spawned one with the console. Could farm them but when I broke one it just created waste pieces on the ground which I couldn't pick up. So I wonder if they're still being worked on.
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This will require a multipurpose room surrounded by reinforcement panels connected to a long corridor filled with a ton of bulkheads.
Oh it does. I knew about the new models and them being internal but forgot about creature attacks. I do like my peace and quiet. Maybe I need to reconsider building my main base on the floating island.
You hit the nail right on the head there, it's how they are currently implemented. My main issue with the reactors is the lack of endurance. Constantly coming back to base to find that the blasted thing ran out of fuel again just leaves a bad taste when, even at 200m a solar array is usable. Okay, I need to set up 5 to 10 times as many to get the same charge rate as I would in the shallows, but I never need refuel them. Below 200m, I'll use a reactor as temporary bootstrap power source if there's no nearby thermal vent, but only until I can string power from a vent, then it's bye-bye reactor.
If thermal vents were a little more scarce, I would consider it a decent investment seeing as each piece of uranium is good to 1000 power, but as it stands... what would be nice would be the ability to load up something like 5 lots of fuel in the bioreactor and a single reload in the nuke. But with the set and forget utility of thermal and solar, I'm going to be strongly biased against the reactors unless they change significantly.
At the sketchfab page you'll find an embed label and get code to copy and paste. This code is to paste directly here without any other help. Check preview to be sure.
@Aegil I hope they don't forget preload containers or autofetch. Otherwise it's again micromanagement hell.
Or maybe not. I do like the fact that the kind of power plant in your base is 'your' choice; that the game doesn't force you to 'tech up' to a higher tier when 'X condition' happens. When I play Subnautica I marvel at the beauty of the underwater world and I build my base carefully, setting down farms first, and taking from the Biome only enough to survive until my farms are set up; THEN I expand and gather up the metal salvage - 'clean' the environs.
'How and where can I expand my base without "interfering" with the natural layout of the Biome?' are my thoughts when I build. How can I have as little impact as possible?
EDIT: Also lets you have sustainable energy places like the Jelly Shroom caves.
I've been letting this one swim around in my head and realised thermal needn't be vulnerable to creature attacks.
The north safe shallows geyser is very well protected by terrain.
Warpers are the only possible exception and they might just as easily be able to warp inside bases.
Honestly, right now I don't have a use for the nuclear reactor. The only place I'm interested in having one is on board my Cyclops, because I don't have a base in deep enough water or cold enough to need one to power a base. And I can't put one on my Cyclops — and even if I could, 1000 energy for one uranium? That's probably, what, half a day's output from the twelve solar panels on my base? From a nuclear reactor? Seriously?
(If we assume the sun in Subnautica to be somewhat similar to Earth's, there's about a thousand watts per square meter available at the surface, at the equator, at noon. I'm going to estimate the area of the solar panels at about three square meters. If we're really, really generous and declare the panels to be 75% efficient (which might, maybe, maybe be possible if you can eliminate virtually all losses), then there's a bit over 2kW available from each panel ... at noon. A typical nuclear reactor's output is measured in anywhere from megawatts to hundreds of megawatts. And it will only extract about 1% of the energy in the uranium or plutonium it is fueled with, over the course of a fuel cycle of one to five years.)
Now a possible approach that I can see to nuclear energy that would not be ludicrously nerfed is if instead of making nuclear reactors, we could make a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that would replace a power cell, and have the same power output, but for ... oh, for game purposes, let's say only a hundred times as long. So a total capacity of about 10,000 units, but you can't draw power from it any faster than from a regular power cell, and you can't recharge it from base power. Maybe if you ran it dry, you could refuel it with fresh uranium.
Almost all actual RTGs use plutonium-238, not uranium, but polonium-210 and strontium-90 have also been used. Strontium 90's main advantage is that it's available really cheaply as a waste byproduct of fission reactors. Pretty much only the Russians use it. Polonium 210 has a very high initial power output for an RTG, 140W/g, but a short half-life of only 138 days means its power output diminishes rapidly. This might make 210Po a very good model for a Subnautica RTG power cell — high enough useful power output to run the Seamoth or Cyclops, but six months or so and it's done, whether you used the power or not.