Sunbeam diving?
Kostriktor
Switzerland Join Date: 2017-01-08 Member: 226342Members
Switzerland Join Date: 2017-01-08 Member: 226342Members
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Given how small the Sunbeam is, if the beam wasn't powerful enough to outright obliterate it, then it never should've been able to damage the Aurora to the point of failure. Unless that thing has a dimmer control we haven't been told about, it's more realistic that the tiny Sunbeam ends up as confetti.
Plus, from a development standpoint, they'd have to model the Sunbeam, and it's probably too small to really add something to the gameplay.
I agree. I don't really want to derail this topic, but since we're talking about exploration... I've always thought it'd be cool if an abandoned, dilapidated cyclops was hidden someplace ;D
The counter-argument is squarely on the huge amount of effort it'd take to animate the fall of the Sunbeam, because the player can be anywhere on the map during the ship's flight in. If the player'd be locked on the island, the wreck could simply be spawned in, but such is not the case. Alternatively, it'd have to crash down on a spot that the player is guaranteed (give or take people who force themselves through events out of order) not to be able to enter prior so it can spawn in/secretly always be there. A reverse island + high level precursor security could work, but then we're talking about a lot more work than just the Sunbeam already.
But DID it remain intact? Or did they just gather up a shitton of Ship Wreckage pieces?
"We salvaged the Degasi wreck down to its barebones and built this habitat from the scrap."
Doesn't sound like mere wreckage to me. Of course, I don't know what rewrites UWE is planning, but as is six-seaters don't have to get obliterated when hit.
All that's left, again as DrownedOut points out, is technical. Right now the only map change Subnautica does is the Aurora's explosion, and that's really just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that the Aurora's explorable wreckage is there from the start. The problem with spawning in the Sunbeam wreck someplace sensible off in the distance, is seamlessly replacing a few chunks of the seafloor and the space above that seafloor with the Sunbeam's wreckage and collateral damage.
Worst case, a player would've built their base there already and the modules would clip through everything. How could they accommodate all the possibilities of 2 weeks in-game time?
Again I'm sure the devs would've loved to do an explorable Sunbeam wreck, but they just can't add wrecks dynamically like that. Instead they've been doing Aurora wreckage and abandoned/ancient seabases which are sensibly mapped in from the start, and can scratch that exploration itch well.
Here's one more thing for you to consider: the Aurora may have had a sustained blase, or a second blast, who knows. You had enough time for the ship and/or its captain to detect critical damage to its systems, sound the abandon ship, and have a decent amount of people make it to lifepods, before it went down in the explosion you saw from your lifepod viewport.
We "know" the only mercenary aboard was Maida. Paal refers to the others as his entourage and that generally does not include mercenaries. Not to mention he others Maida in the same file, which'd be odd if there was another merc. A personal pilot is possible, though.
My point isn't so much that the Sunbeam has to still be significantly intact as that it is that there's no argument the Sunbeam has to have been obliterated.
So the Degasi was hit in such a way and was built in such a way that allowed it to more-or-less survive to crash. Okay, it's a '52 Ford, built like a tank. The Sunbeam was incinerated with one shot - it's a Pinto, so it blew up. Only if we were comparing two identical ships on identical flight paths could we say both should have survived or should have been atomized.