Cyclops Battery and Powercell Chargers now use power at a 1:1 ratio on Experimental Build
Jacke
Calgary Join Date: 2017-03-20 Member: 229061Members
Calgary Join Date: 2017-03-20 Member: 229061Members
Saw this on the Subnautica subreddit. Battery and Power cell chargers now use power at a 1:1 ratio
There's no longer a power efficiency in charging Batteries and Powercells on the Cyclops to effectively give infinite power.
I just set out for my run to the Aurora in the Cyclops from my 4-Biome Base and confirmed this while stopped. Currently Experimental build May-2017 48390.
So we're going to need spare Powercells on the Cyclops. Powercell Chargers in Bases. And it's kind of pointless to put Powercell Chargers on the Cyclops as it just moves charge between Powercells. Maybe 1 to shift charge and a Battery Charger to charge Batteries, although it's better to charge Batteries with the Swim Charge Fins.
EDIT: Here's a post from reddit reporting the measured power consumption of the current Experimental Cyclops.
https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/6erlja/test_results_of_cyclops_energy_consumption/
There's no longer a power efficiency in charging Batteries and Powercells on the Cyclops to effectively give infinite power.
I just set out for my run to the Aurora in the Cyclops from my 4-Biome Base and confirmed this while stopped. Currently Experimental build May-2017 48390.
So we're going to need spare Powercells on the Cyclops. Powercell Chargers in Bases. And it's kind of pointless to put Powercell Chargers on the Cyclops as it just moves charge between Powercells. Maybe 1 to shift charge and a Battery Charger to charge Batteries, although it's better to charge Batteries with the Swim Charge Fins.
EDIT: Here's a post from reddit reporting the measured power consumption of the current Experimental Cyclops.
https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/6erlja/test_results_of_cyclops_energy_consumption/
Comments
The only thing this does is make exploration of the open world of Subnautica more difficult. Try to imagine the Cyclops being used for its design purpose: exploration of the waters of a world. This is a ridiculously short leash for it to have. It would be more appropriate for the Cyclops to have some sort of self-contained power system of greater range.
This would have trivial impact on the gameplay yet have so much benefit for exploration.
Consumed 252 charge in about 5000m there and back. The return trip had the Cyclops Engine Efficiency Module.
There's also the shield and the sonar that can consume a lot of charge.
Yea, I wish the cyclops was large enough to fit like a bioreactor in there to help power it or something.
Maybe in the form on a major refit changing out the electric engine for a nuclear one to turn the prop.
Nuclear powered submarines can go for along time before needing refueling.
So you're basically saying that the things we desperately need to get through the Lost River and Lava Zones are basically unusable unless you have Ion Power Cells? Or that if you don't already have a base down there, you can't recoup what the lava larva steal?
Is it just me, or has every initial change the devs made to the cyclops (initial damage/health specs, initial silent running functions, etc) just made the thing less appealing to play?
Well, this is the major functional and gameplay design phase for the Cyclops, as can be evident by the number of changes. UWE created it graphically and put it in the game with placeholder functionality. Now they get to fleshing it out and we all get to test it so UWE can tune it.
Apparently, getting into place in the ILZ and even the ALZ doesn't demand that much of the Cyclops in the current Experimental, as wildlife aggression and collision damage have been toned down. That would require actually testing and I'm a ways away from that in my own game. (I just finished the Aurora and will likely proceed with making a PRAWN and then with the story to the energy pulse source on Volcano Isle. I've only been down to the DGR and the start of the LR once, so it's not familiar territory to me.) But from what others have said, the Cyclops is very survivable now (while the PRAWN and swimming is another story).
I haven't had any problems with the Cyclops meself so far. But I've been using Silent Running all the time just to avoid trouble. Also have 10 spare Powercells on board so I should be good for a while. Also have the Seamoth with the Solar Recharger mod if I really need it.
I get that, but as it stands it feels the placeholder functionality was more usable than what we've got so far. I'm happy that the thing at least is harder to wreck, but it seems like the trade-off is making it harder to manage power-wise - the Seamoth and Prawn at least have the moonpool to get a full charge from; without a matching dock system for the Cyclops, it feels like the Lost River in particular is going to be either hard or at the very least frustrating to get through.
Solar recharging and solar panels have no value that deep down, and considering how many resources you'd have to cart down there since all the base-building stuff (Titanium, Lithium, Quartz, Copper, Coral samples for electronics, etc) is on the surface, it feels... well, a grindy chore, to put it simply. Not to mention that even with the power-efficiency module, I usually ended up draining my cells pretty quickly on deeper levels between back-and-forth travel and in charging the Seamoth/Prawn. It's a bit better than before, yes, but it still doesn't feel worthwhile yet.
It's the smallish size mesa with the bones of a rather large dead creature sitting on it.
It also has several Black Smokers placed there that are perfect for using the Thermal Power Plant.
With a bit of planning, one can carry just enough supplies in the Seamoth and ones Personal Inventory to build a Multipurpose Room with a Hatch, a Platform and a Thermal Plant with a Transmitter in one trip down.
(with room left over for a Beacon)
There are only Two Ampeels in the area and they can eventually be driven away (or knifed to death) if one has a bit of patience.
It's the first spot I go to too create my second base.
Except that doesn't actually fix the real issue - which is basically that you either have to grind out or do things a spicific way instead of freely exploring and naturally progressing; either you do it this way, or the game's pretty much impossible to continue in.
Otherwise resource management and energy costs for bases would drastically rise and this process would be ugly for a lot of players.
Anyhoo, I'm planning on eventually setting up a base in the Tree Cove on the Lost River. Could certainly haul down enough stuff in the Seamoth or the PRAWN to do that. Will eventually try to take the Cyclops there. Right now, I have to check out the energy pulse location on Volcano Isle.
Onto the fabricator battery exploit!
Same as above though; that still doesn't solve the whole "you have no choice/are arbitrarily forced to build a base down there or you cannot progress through the game" issue. Also, I think that only works if you have an equivalently-large energy pool in the first place - or at least when I tried it - which is hard to do when you're that deep down.
Also, according to the most recent vid from Mobius, the devs are going to be changing how power works for everything and not just the sub - case in point; all base pieces will passively consume power now in order to maintain lights and/or oxygen. And since what you described with the ion cells will probably be considered an exploit, I worry that won't be an option either by the time of the full build
- https://youtu.be/h836ly50jac?t=2m3s
Except that, even for experts like Mobius, getting down to the ILZ and back often required that kind of net-gain to make manageable. Plus, you're assuming everyone's going to be as well off on power cells as you were - IDK if that's always going to be a guarantee. Being a "big honkin' sub running on batteries" doesn't necessarily mean that should be almost impossible to use any other way than the spicific route the devs want, right? Especially not when the game is supposed to be open-world exploration.
I'm actually building a 2nd Cyclops and Prawn just to keep for exploring down there at the moment. I used the seaglide and about 4 Ultra O2 tanks to get into the thermal plant since earlier attempts in a Prawn and Cyclops ran a foul of the Dragon.
Then a crabsquid comes over and disables your entire base. Congratulations. Bases became a bit of a joke and now Cyclops is as much of a joke.
Meanwhile... my 10 year old phone has fucking emp shielding. Logic is out there... somewhere... probably drowned by now tho.
The solution is to actually build more than one base - which I think is of real benefit to gameplay!
At the rate that the cell chargers charge cells (say that 10 times real fast...) this is a pretty light issue overall. Ion power cells are supposed to charge at the same energy/sec rate of regular cells, which is about 1 energy every 3 seconds. Say you are charging two of them so 2 energy every 3 seconds, or 40 energy per minute. A single thermal plant will keep this up with max charge and about 10 energy/minute to spare. This is slightly more power drain than a water purifier if you're charging two cells at once.
Now if you are in a seamoth docking into a moonpool and it instantly drains the energy like normal that could certainly be problematic... a nearly depleted ion battery in a seamoth would take a base with a fully stocked nuclear reactor offline for about 3 minutes...
Also, there's something I never considered until @HiSaZUL brought it up; the crabsquid with EMP's in the Lost River, and the lava larva in the Lava Zone. They're issue enough just with vehicles, but does anyone know if those two can affect bases?
Even if they don't now I'd wager that when they update the creatures to attack bases directly they will be able to hit your power source.
how energy is distributed, generated, & consumed still needs some tweaking. screwed at night using solar, bioreactor is high maintenance, and nuclear requires frequent trips simply for uranium (good for a small outpost). only real option is to put several thermal generators around heat vents then interconnect them with power transmitters spanning across the ocean.
thermal to energy is OP if you link enough of them together, makes it almost impossible to run out of power even if you set up an entire room full of water purifiers. power is a nonissue with the exosuit adding thermal generator. sure i solved an energy crisis with trial and error with stated sources in that order, but still should be something make me concerned of even with that setup.