Most useless life form on the planet
scubamatt
Georgia, USA Join Date: 2016-05-22 Member: 217295Members
Georgia, USA Join Date: 2016-05-22 Member: 217295Members
The shuttlebug.
They are everywhere, cluttering up the view. I've never seen a predator chase and eat them, not even biters. You can't grab one and feed it to a Stalker. They can't be cooked and eaten. I have yet to find an egg for one, so I can't even farm them for bioreactor fuel. In theory, they are a great indicator that there are caves nearby - which explains why they are everywhere, since there are caves **everywhere** in this game. Kind of like having a fish to indicate the presence of OCEANS on this planet. They don't even make decent ammo for a propulsion/repulsion gun.
The only use I have found for them so far is 'practice target for Prawn claw arm', and even then they suck, because the biters make more challenging targets.
Even the rock grubs are more useful because they at least mark a terrain surface in otherwise dark water.
[Finishes typing on his PDA, takes a swig of water, resumes trudging along in the Prawn]
They are everywhere, cluttering up the view. I've never seen a predator chase and eat them, not even biters. You can't grab one and feed it to a Stalker. They can't be cooked and eaten. I have yet to find an egg for one, so I can't even farm them for bioreactor fuel. In theory, they are a great indicator that there are caves nearby - which explains why they are everywhere, since there are caves **everywhere** in this game. Kind of like having a fish to indicate the presence of OCEANS on this planet. They don't even make decent ammo for a propulsion/repulsion gun.
The only use I have found for them so far is 'practice target for Prawn claw arm', and even then they suck, because the biters make more challenging targets.
Even the rock grubs are more useful because they at least mark a terrain surface in otherwise dark water.
[Finishes typing on his PDA, takes a swig of water, resumes trudging along in the Prawn]
Comments
The Player.
We don't even belong there and are screwing up the environment with our actions.
Technically every fish indicates the presence of ocean
They do run away when attacked, IIRC, so they do have some sort of AI involved.
They do indeed!
if (playerid='scubamatt'){
ANNOY_PESTER(shuttlebug_armageddon);
} else{
WANDER(aimless);
}
Another mystery solved.
Between this and your sig block, I almost choked to death on my coffee this morning, and my wife thought I might need psychiatric help on top of the Heimlich thing. (One of my major hobbies is studying pre-1700 performance magic.)
Nope, I am improving my environment, and if someone doesn't rescue this planet from me soon, I'll conquer it. Also, some players can always serve as 'Bad Examples'. The shuttlebug is just mobile clutter.
There's a wry bit of topical, political humor in there, that I'm sure will go over the heads of many a forum poster who might happen upon this.
It's quite comical, but also very sad.
For the xbox one version, they swim in place, not moving, UNTIL u wack your Knife into one
Clearly, your mother has never met me.
Very little ocean.
Hey now! To you it might be a tiny ocean. But to Bubbles it's her entire world
So in essence, it's actually the most important creature!
Everywhere.
But it's a question of perspective. As the player in my games, the most useless life form is probably a plant life form like the Bulbo tree, which I only ever use if I need it as a decoration. Even the Shuttlebugs give me something interesting to look at.
Shuttlebug could say that as well, but they don't because there's not a grain of egocentrism in their nature. Be cool like shuttlebug o/
It'd be a bit of a compliment to call a fishtank an ocean, no? Also... I wanna see.
Yes they could, and they no doubt would. As for their ego, (which we simply don't know if they have or not in the first place,) I think you're way off. Even something running on base instincts is the centre of it's universe. It could be argued that it's even more so than something with total self awareness. Something with the intelligence to create an ego for itself is far more likely to be aware that it's not the centre of it's universe, whereas a dumb, base thing like a Shuttlebug is completely the centre of it's universe, because it knows nothing beyond it.
Any way, this is all way off topic. The point is that the player character is in no way the most useless life form.
Actually, something as low level as the Shuttlebug probably has absolutely no self-awareness and it would be sort of like saying that a tree thinks it's the center of the universe. Err. It's a tree.
Sorry buddy, but that's an old way of thinking, one I used to subscribe to myself.
But though we don't know for sure yet how deep it goes, many fish on our own planet have been proven to have self recognition, which certainly "indicates self awareness." I've been doing some googling over the last half hour (because honestly I wasn't informed enough to comment on it) and it's fascinating stuff. I'd recommend looking it up to anyone interested. Google is your friend.
The jury is still out, but there's a hell of a lot of evidence pointing towards fish being very self aware. I've spent a hell of a lot of my life as an avid angler with a love of fish life, and I'd certainly say they have self-awareness. They can learn, they can remember, they can show "emotional fever"... things we are only recently learning.
But it seems like it's virtually impossible to define what exactly that means, so perhaps we'll never be able to put a label on it. Biologists are certainly pretty divided. It's more of a philosophical question than a scientific one though. It's not like you can ask a fish, so how do you go about testing for it?
(I found this article particularly interesting.
http://theconversation.com/do-fish-have-feelings-maybe-54291)
So it lives in caves but scavenges off of dead carcasses? So the only time they can get food is when a body slides into their cave system or they risk everything and leave the tunnels to eat something nearby. These guys are like the Bidoof of Subnautica.
I would imagine that quite a bit of detritus ends up floating into the cave systems of the game.
(even though the game doesn't show this, it's quite obvious in the real world this happens a lot)
I'm not sure about that. While one does see a lot of detritus in caves, I don't think that it's there because an inordinate amount of stuff enters caves, I think it's because some stuff enters caves and then never leaves. For most caves that have an ecosystem of any sort, it's all based on bats because they leave the cave and bring in energy from outside. That seems to indicate that not a lot of stuff just finds it's way into caves all on it's own.