Yeah, only the ones immediately surrounding the Aurora are truly relevant, and there's good odds those'll be encountered before the Cyclops is even obtained.
I'm not much for being forced into reaper territory either, but I would like to be invited. Like a cache I'm free to skip but that's there all the same if I want to give it a try. Or the aforementionedly desired exit out of the ALZ -- reapers aren't that hot after the sea dragon. Rare plants maybe. In the other thread where I proposed reefback plating as freebie planter spots, why not have at least one of the three territories rich in them like an elephant graveyard deal with an achievement for planting ten plants, "Greatly Committed Gardener". The Crash Zone's actually interesting for its loot, but to get (much of) it I have to leave the Cyclops (hence my suggestion for a Cyclops-powered stasis field; that could turn the tide).
My blueprint wish'd be Precursor tech to make those water/air forcefield doors myself. Not necessary at all, but I'd love to have those for my bases.
If there was game-mechanics allowing you to get rid/away/hide from a Reaper in various circumstance I might actually support for Reaper to roam in (almost) any biome.
They would have to be rare of course, and as said there would need to be ways to actually survive them early game. With the Cyclops we are getting what we need. Problem would be the Seamoth and before. Having to shy away before you get gears isn't a problem, but if they just appear as you were in a wreck and kill you without any chances... what's the point?
Another reason we'll never get that, is that eventually we would need to have seabase get attacked. Too much work to come before an expansion.
I've written some posts about the Cyclops still needing work and even now with the next set of changes coming it will probably be not enough.
First, we still have the bad maneuverability. It's now quite managable but far from being fun. That includes direct controlling as well as bad info display management and the bad turning and vertical facing quality of the Cyclops.
Second, the stealth gameplay seems to be too much for the devs. Right now you mainly have a stop and go stealth mechanism with total immunity on engine stop. Good stealth games are much more sophisticated. There are ways to lure enemies from the path and if your enemies get too close you have a quick escape mechanism that ends with getting back to a safe hiding.
It's good that the devs plan to focus on Leviathans vs Cyclops, as the leviathans are rare and stealth can be better planned for that. But a leviathan close to a Cyclops should always see and attack it. Otherwise the devs get stuck on the engine turns off stop and go stealth route.
Just imagine this stop and go stealth with games like Dishonored, Thief or the other stealth games. The assassin stops walking and immediately gets total immune to detection. Then it takes time to walk again and again if the assassin gets detected he immediately stops motion and poses as a statue. Everyone runs blind around his statue until the place is empty and the assassin can move again. Bad stop and go stealth. No real gameplay like throwing a distraction event, luring mechanisms, chasing from shadow to shadow.
What would the good assassin strategies be for a submarine fearing leviathans? (as the war strategy is forbidden and the outmaneuvering strategy is technically impossible)
placable decoys to lure leviathans into a direction (missing)
flank speed and quick turning for fast escapes once detected (flank ok, but turning too slow, maybe strafe & turn?)
emergency stasis or decoys to stop following leviathans for some time (decoy ok, but stasis would be good addition)
a free engine off working only to a vision distance (already there, but without range limit and thus invincible)
an emergency stealth field for close vision distance using energy to limit it (missing)
silent running should be tech to only reduce noise (instead being invincible silent and free to get, but with cooldown)
safe places to park a sub or a concept to sacrifice a sub to get somewhere (storywise only 2 locations)
For those struggling with Copper shortages, until there's another solution, I do suggest you do Seamoth runs to the Sea Treaders to salvage the "basalt" they stir up for Copper and Lithium. It's like putting on the Rad Suit and taking a Seamoth with 4 Storage Mods to the portside of the Aurora to get Titanium. Except once you get the Depth Mod, you only take 3 Storage Mods.
Thanks for the suggestion. To be honest, I've never gathered resources from the Sea Treader area. But after your suggestion, I'm definitely gonna head that way! Thanks!
I really wouldn't compare subnautica stealth to dishonoured... you are in the sea in a big submarine. You can't exactly go and hide behind a bin.
Look at the movie "Dune". There the people used thumpers to lure the giant sandworms away. That would work with those leviathans in Subnautica as well. Hiding the Cyclops in stealth fields would work as well and balanced, if the stealth would consume energy.
Right now you just move and stop engines ... repeat. If that's the vision then something is wrong. Of course everything would change if you could outmaneuver a leviathan, but right now that's impossible as the Cyclops can't dive around a leviathan.
The devs muster have listen. Silent Run was buffed to 90 seconds like last week
Better, but Silent Run ability is like all or nothing. Too powerful while active. Instead it should dampen 80% noises from the Cyclops while running and draw massive energy while running. Then the Cyclops would still need to be careful and could not overuse it, but you could decide to run dampered in flank speed or slow speed. Dampered slow speed would be total silent, while dampered flank speed would make noises like regular speed.
So my suggestion: A sonic damper field module for the Cyclops as a necessary requirement for the silent running and energy drain instead 90 secs with cooldown.
I think it is important to note that although it may be too easy for you, not everybody has the same level of skill.
Personally if I find things like silent running to be too powerful (which I don't) then I would just not use it.
Well, once you keep cool and don't panic, you quickly realize that you just need to turn off engines and watch the leviathan through your cam until he's far away, then restart and move on until he gets to close. No real skill needed other than "don't panic".
Now with a long time total silent running your second option is to go silent to bypass the leviathan without stopping.
So I've found out that all I need is slow and standart speed with engines turning off sometimes. I ignore all other tech like silent running, flank speed and shields.
Silent Running could be made into a "level of noise versus distance". The problem isn't being invisible when silent, if we wasn't we won't be able to park the Cyclops anywhere and more problem will happen.
What you need is a reason and a mean to move at the very limit of detection.
- Reason can be made easy, just surveilling the distance of the target.
- Limit of detection is the hard part, it's the brunt of the mechanic "do I get detected if I impact a wall ?", "Do I get detected if I impact a fish?", could be your priority.
In my mind it would mean making silent running not timed.
It's that or I enter some of my personal suggestion about having the Cyclops "silent running" meaning no infinite O². Aka: you can park your cyclops silently but if you want O² autonomy you'll need to make some noise. And so on.
Just imagine this stop and go stealth with games like Dishonored, Thief or the other stealth games. The assassin stops walking and immediately gets total immune to detection. Then it takes time to walk again and again if the assassin gets detected he immediately stops motion and poses as a statue. Everyone runs blind around his statue until the place is empty and the assassin can move again. Bad stop and go stealth. No real gameplay like throwing a distraction event, luring mechanisms, chasing from shadow to shadow.
Actually, after taking some time to look into this... there's a big problem with those suggestions. Which is that... well, simply put, this isn't an assassin game because these aren't human beings - they're deep-sea creatures that, for all we know, don't even see in the same visual spectrum as a human. Some might see in infra-red or ultra-violet, or are outright color-blind and rely on other senses to distinguish threat from prey and vice-versa. Some might have sight that operates on motion rather than detail, like a toad, or use echolocation like a bat (hell, the Reaper Leviathan's roar is confirmed in it's data-entry to be precisely that; echolocation).
As a result, "assassin strategy" isn't necessarily reliable either, because these things aren't assured to have the same range of sight as us - for all we know, they might in fact not be able to see you in the conventional sense no matter how close you are to them. Granted, that doesn't necessarily remove minor hax-issues like a Sea Dragon not recognizing you as a potential rival due to size and trying to drive you out, but it does create more leniency in why suddenly shutting off all power and/or sounds makes you practically invisible.
I'm " " this close to post a suggestion about every way X creature could see and react to your presence. (simple idea that should be possible to be added without new model/animation and only reusing stuff we've seen already)
Glad I haven't yet, now you are reminding me that whatever I applied to to "subs" interaction should also concern players presence (like body heat)
Just imagine this stop and go stealth with games like Dishonored, Thief or the other stealth games. The assassin stops walking and immediately gets total immune to detection. Then it takes time to walk again and again if the assassin gets detected he immediately stops motion and poses as a statue. Everyone runs blind around his statue until the place is empty and the assassin can move again. Bad stop and go stealth. No real gameplay like throwing a distraction event, luring mechanisms, chasing from shadow to shadow.
Actually, after taking some time to look into this... there's a big problem with those suggestions. Which is that... well, simply put, this isn't an assassin game because these aren't human beings - they're deep-sea creatures that, for all we know, don't even see in the same visual spectrum as a human. Some might see in infra-red or ultra-violet, or are outright color-blind and rely on other senses to distinguish threat from prey and vice-versa. Some might have sight that operates on motion rather than detail, like a toad, or use echolocation like a bat (hell, the Reaper Leviathan's roar is confirmed in it's data-entry to be precisely that; echolocation).
As a result, "assassin strategy" isn't necessarily reliable either, because these things aren't assured to have the same range of sight as us - for all we know, they might in fact not be able to see you in the conventional sense no matter how close you are to them. Granted, that doesn't necessarily remove minor hax-issues like a Sea Dragon not recognizing you as a potential rival due to size and trying to drive you out, but it does create more leniency in why suddenly shutting off all power and/or sounds makes you practically invisible.
Well we don't need an assassin game, it's just that assassins game know how to do stealth right or they would be immediately out of buisness. It's always "learn from the master", so I don't think it's wrong to look a bit at good stealth games.
In underwater games we have no bushes to hide, but we can have a noise attraction range and vision attraction range like in stealth games. But Subnautica just seems to have no workable creature_react-noise-vision-range-table and vehicle_creation-noise-vision-range-table to establish a functional stealth gameplay. The Sea Dragon should be attracted from afar by too much noise and visibly the bigger or nearer the vehicle is getting. So stealth would mean bypassing silently around his path or decoys luring him away. When he's too close you could only use an optical stealth with engines off or simply escape or sacrifice your sub. If you think about it, there could be dozens of different strategies with simple noise and vision ranges combined with decoys. Unfortunately the game is half hearted into this. Even the silent running as an ability is half hearted, as noise isn't dampened, but just cut to 0% and then stopped by timers, because with this 0% niveau it's completely overpowered. Also the silent running is no tech module.
Well we don't need an assassin game, it's just that assassins game know how to do stealth right or they would be immediately out of buisness. It's always "learn from the master", so I don't think it's wrong to look a bit at good stealth games.
I'm not sure that actually addresses what I said, though; again, this isn't really the sort of situation you can apply assassin game logic to. These aren't humans tasked with guarding a spicific person or treasure, nor do they have any reason to search for you specifically when compared to any other creature. They're just animals, operating on territorial instinct, having no spicific reason to begrudge you any more than you do them, and they might even use the same senses.
Above all else, though, an assassin game revolves around seeking out and eliminating a spicific target for which you circumvent everything else to do - that's not the purpose of an open-world exploration-driven game; your goal is to survive and discover, not to seek and destroy. So it comes across as learning from the wrong master - the conventional stealth tactics used in those games; there's no such guarantee they would work in this kind of situation when the creatures here aren't even liable to see you, figuratively or otherwise, the way normal humans would.
In underwater games we have no bushes to hide, but we can have a noise attraction range and vision attraction range like in stealth games. But Subnautica just seems to have no workable creature_react-noise-vision-range-table and vehicle_creation-noise-vision-range-table to establish a functional stealth gameplay.
But you're not acknowledging that these sea creatures might not even "see" the way we do - like I said before, some of them might hunt via motion-detection, so you wouldn't even need a bush to hide behind in the first place; you'd just have to sit still. Hell, as I mentioned in the last post, Reapers hunt through echolocation - if you can hear the roar, they can find you (or that's how the PDA data-entry describes it) - so the conventional stealth tactics you outlined already wouldn't work on the likes of them. It doesn't translate well to this because it's not a case of sneaking past humans - it's a case of trying to outmaneuver animals with non-human senses and instinct-driven impulses.
The Sea Dragon should be attracted from afar by too much noise and visibly the bigger or nearer the vehicle is getting. So stealth would mean bypassing silently around his path or decoys luring him away. When he's too close you could only use an optical stealth with engines off or simply escape or sacrifice your sub. If you think about it, there could be dozens of different strategies with simple noise and vision ranges combined with decoys. Unfortunately the game is half hearted into this. Even the silent running as an ability is half hearted, as noise isn't dampened, but just cut to 0% and then stopped by timers, because with this 0% niveau it's completely overpowered. Also the silent running is no tech module.
Optical stealth, again, might not even be a factor with the Sea Dragon - for all we know, it's color-blind and wouldn't recognize the sub as a threat via visual input. It might rely on a mix of colorless imagery, sound and scent to determine threats and prey respectively, explaining why it dive-bombs/aggros for anything small like the player so quickly - for all we know, optical stealth wouldn't prevent it from detecting the Cyclops' presence in the water at all.
I'm not going to say you don't have some merit to the idea of the Sea Dragon not showing overt aggression to something large entering it's territory, but it also feels like you're being a bit too critical in asking for options that might not even be feasible for this kind of setting. Also, I never said anything about the silent running being a tech module or not - I said that the fact these creatures might not even see the same spectrums we humans do would make it easier to justify why they're seemingly blinded to you if the noise and power gets shut off.
P.S. - In a nod to the original OP on current Cyclops changes, a recent vid on YouTube (not sure if it's acituanbus's, Mobius or Awsomecrunch) details that the Cyclops is apparently now immune to/unable to be harmed by bonesharks, sandsharks and the like, but can now be damaged by Shocker Eels with their electrical bursts; aside from those, the sub can only be damaged by Leviathans (and maybe River Prowlers? Have to test that when I enter the game again).
@The08MetroidMan
I didn't write that I want to have an exact assassin type game copy. You even quote me with that. I wanted to copy the base principles of stealth and not the assassination part, as this game isn't about killing. And you forgot that you can play Dishonored without killing and getting seen, called Ghost Achievement. So the focus of discussion isn't about assassination, but stealth. That means getting to the goal without the enemy getting aware of you. And how you can escape if you get caught. Subnautica has improved the Cyclops gameplay, but I think it needs more polishing towards general stealth principles like distraction, observation and moving around leviathans.
With seeing I rather mean a short range location sense. The devs have stated that some creatures react to light and have given the Sea Dragon eyes to see. And I didn't even talk about creatures using echolocation to catch their prey, which usually greater sea mammals can do. Otherwise all their prey would just learn to play dead and the predators without a close range sense would simply starve.
And maybe you forgot that sometime in the future the devs want to implement base attacks. As bases don't move they only need to not have noisy machines running and there couldn't be creature attacks, as the bases would be less detectable as a Cyclops with engines off. You might pull a miracle explanation how to do that, but I'm off if leviathans can't find a Cyclops with engines off, but find a non moving base with no noisy parts.
It would all be better if each creature had a unique sound and vision range. If your vehicle is silent and far enough away from sound range it works. If it gets into vision range it must use escape, decoys or cloaking to get out of range again.
Not to speak about the most strange thing: The diver doesn't make as much noise as a vehicle with propeller, yet every creature magically finds him probably because all Subnautica creatures can hear tiny air bubbles from miles away.
I didn't write that I want to have an exact assassin type game copy. You even quote me with that. I wanted to copy the base principles of stealth and not the assassination part, as this game isn't about killing. And you forgot that you can play Dishonored without killing and getting seen, called Ghost Achievement. So the focus of discussion isn't about assassination, but stealth. That means getting to the goal without the enemy getting aware of you. And how you can escape if you get caught. Subnautica has improved the Cyclops gameplay, but I think it needs more polishing towards general stealth principles like distraction, observation and moving around leviathans.
Actually, I never once said you wanted "an exact assassin type game copy" - I said that these mechanics and base principles you wanted carried over from them, had no guarantee of feasibly working in this setting. I said that an assassin game in general was the wrong thing to take tips from for the idea of stealth in this game, due to the potential differences in sensory input/output of the game's creatures compared to the humans of an assassin game.
And you in turn are forgetting that Dishonored is not only largely based in arcane magic and stealth, as opposed to exploration and discovery, but that it's also based on land with humans as opposed to in the ocean with creatures that can likely find you through ultraviolet, echolocation and movement rather than the kind of sight we use. So I'm not sure you can use the Ghost achievement comparison in these circumstances since it's pretty much impossible for something in the water to not be aware of you - just that you have to mitigate whether or not it sees you as a threat. There's also no real "sneaking past" some creatures, like the Reaper - you often have to avoid them outright unless you have a Cyclops.
To make a long story short, again, you're trying to superimpose stealth principles that might not even work the way you're intending, simply because of the difference in how these creatures act compared to normal humans - a difference it doesn't feel like you're accounting for.
With seeing I rather mean a short range location sense. The devs have stated that some creatures react to light and have given the Sea Dragon eyes to see. And I didn't even talk about creatures using echolocation to catch their prey, which usually greater sea mammals can do. Otherwise all their prey would just learn to play dead and the predators without a close range sense would simply starve.
That doesn't change the context of my words at all, though; you're not illustrating how them seeing in "a short range location sense" would in any way change whether or not that sight is based in the same spectrum as a human's. And I never said you brought up echolocation - that was my whole point; the fact you didn't bring up how creatures in the game like Reapers were already confirmed to "see" the world through different means like sound-detection rather than conventional sight. We already have had it confirmed in-game that at least some of these beasts like the Reapers use sound to hunt - and in the case of the sandsharks, some did evolve ways of hiding themselves - though the Reaper itself developed a countermeasure in how fast it can swim and in the mandibles on it's face to grip something; if it struggles, it's alive. So it wouldn't be starving anytime soon. Hell, why would you assume echolocation (which translates to sonar underwater) only worked in long-range, either?
And maybe you forgot that sometime in the future the devs want to implement base attacks. As bases don't move they only need to not have noisy machines running and there couldn't be creature attacks, as the bases would be less detectable as a Cyclops with engines off. You might pull a miracle explanation how to do that, but I'm off if leviathans can't find a Cyclops with engines off, but find a non moving base with no noisy parts.
No - more like you've forgotten that echolocation doesn't actually rely on movement alone; creatures with echolocation are also very sensitive to sound-waves in general, meaning that they can seek out loud machinery even if it's completely stationary. If they didn't have hearing that could pick up sound-waves like that, they wouldn't even be able to hear the echo of their own sonar pulse. And considering that noisy machines do in fact look like a part of bases already (pumps for the water-filters, low-level humming of power conduits and air vents, etc), a silent base doesn't seem like it's in the cards as anything besides a possible upgrade as opposed to a starting feature. Not to mention that in the case of a Reaper, the echolocation on a powered-off Cyclops could make them mistake it for a reefback as opposed to a large aggressive creature like another Reaper, whereas the form of structure suddenly appearing somewhere out of seemingly nowhere... might not get the same passivity in it's response.
It would all be better if each creature had a unique sound and vision range. If your vehicle is silent and far enough away from sound range it works. If it gets into vision range it must use escape, decoys or cloaking to get out of range again.
But again, cloaking might be a completely pointless feature in and of itself to use since, unlike humans, a "normal" range of eyesight being blinded might not impact any of these creatures in the slightest. Bonesharks, for example, seem to see ultraviolet - or rather, they hunt things with bright lights as a guide, like the trace bioluminescence of the creatures or, for you, the lights of the subs. You turn your lights off and go still while it's night, it's harder for them to see you than in the day - and any base you build in their territory basically couldn't have windows. For a creature like that, cloaking would be completely unneeded - you'd just need to switch out the lights rather than finagle with such a comparatively-complex piece of tech. Also, you're once again assuming that having a different type of vision as us means they somehow are more limited in range; they've got other senses like hearing and scent to fall back on that normal humans don't, so again, cloaking would likely be all of useless if they can still smell and hear you - it doesn't feel like it would have any real use in-game.
Not to speak about the most strange thing: The diver doesn't make as much noise as a vehicle with propeller, yet every creature magically finds him probably because all Subnautica creatures can hear tiny air bubbles from miles away.
Prey for those creatures usually is the player's size, you know. Especially for the leviathans - anything smaller than you wouldn't be worth much if they have the choice. Same with the sharks - they're similar or slightly larger than the player, so why wouldn't they pick you up with the same ease they would each-other? Especially if some of them are territorial and have to fight off other breeds that encroach on the territory?
let's slow down a bit and take a step back. It's been pretty civil but lets avoid turning this into a mudslinging contest and focus on the actual issue at hand.
At a core level I agree with @The08MetroidMan 's logic against those stealth mechanics, but I haven't really seen him offer any alternative. I think @zetachron 's main point here is that we have heard time and time again from the Devs that we are not meant to be fighting these huge threats. So stealth is the ONLY alternative. and it's a system that may need to be refined a little bit more than it currently is.
If we're going to focus on the other things @zetachron was suggesting in that original post, I think he has a lot of valid points.
Second, the stealth gameplay seems to be too much for the devs. Right now you mainly have a stop and go stealth mechanism with total immunity on engine stop. Good stealth games are much more sophisticated. There are ways to lure enemies from the path and if your enemies get too close you have a quick escape mechanism that ends with getting back to a safe hiding.
Although subnautica isn't a stealth game at it's core like Dishonored or Hitman, we are not only expected to use stealth to bypass larger threats, but forced to since it's really our only option. Subnautica's stealth mechanics are simplistic and easy, and perhaps too much so. Using these games that have refined stealth already - despite how exact mechanics may not transfer flawlessly due to differing settings - is at the very least a good place to look for reference.
But if you're going to ask me, I don't think the cyclops is even meant to be your 'go-to' stealth vehicle. It's big, it has terrible maneuverability , it's slow, and it's loud. More than anything, I feel like it's meant to be your hauler, and a lot of these features with silent running aren't meant to be relied on as much as they're supposed to be emergency buttons to get you out of situations you'd otherwise be screwed in.
Honestly, I don't think it's possible to get the cyclops in a situation where it's stealth mechanics are perfect. It's one of those things that's either going to be way too easy to use, or won't work at all. Much like adding a drill arm to the cyclops as discussed here earlier. If it was easy to use the PRAWN suit would be trivialized. Which brings up a good point.
If you were REALLY trying to be stealthy, you wouldn't be trying to use the industrial-sized submarine to sneak around. You'd use your much quicker, much quieter, and much smaller seamoth or PRAWN suit. I really don't think you're meant to bring the cyclops into the lava zones. I've gotten to both the thermal plant and PCF using only the prawn suit without getting grabbed by the Sea Dragon once. You just have to be smart about it; use your environment to your advantage, and stay vigilant. Wait for the openings and use them. I think the area around the lava castle is designed absolutely-fucking-amazingly to support being stealthy. The more I think about it, the more I realize the game has good stealth mechanics in about everything except the cyclops. Besides, it doesn't make sense that the cyclops would, or should be able to be super stealthy. I don't really think that's what it's role is. You don't build a bigger sub to be stealthier.
let's slow down a bit and take a step back. It's been pretty civil but lets avoid turning this into a mudslinging contest and focus on the actual issue at hand.
At a core level I agree with @The08MetroidMan 's logic against those stealth mechanics, but I haven't really seen him offer any alternative. I think @zetachron 's main point here is that we have heard time and time again from the Devs that we are not meant to be fighting these huge threats. So stealth is the ONLY alternative. and it's a system that may need to be refined a little bit more than it currently is.
If I came across as "mudslinging" in how I go on long textblocks of explanation, I apologize. I just tend to be... well, wordy for lack of a better word. Also, I admit that a lot of the time, I don't feel like zetachron is getting the gist of my posts, so I sometimes type up longer posts to try and explain myself more thoroughly - it's not meant to be patronizing, so sorry in advance if it comes across as such.
In this context, my disagreements are more that I think that traditional stealth really isn't the way to go for Subnautica, let alone the "only alternative", since the aspects normally associated with stealth gameplay (cover mechanics, alternate paths, bait and eliminate) aren't really factors here - you have to either lure, make a break for it, get something too tough for them to bust or just avoid them outright. As for why I'm not offering any other ideas... it's because the ones in game are, at their core, good premises to start with; they just need refinement, though how much is needed likely varies from person to person.
Although subnautica isn't a stealth game at it's core like Dishonored or Hitman, we are not only expected to use stealth to bypass larger threats, but forced to since it's really our only option. Subnautica's stealth mechanics are simplistic and easy, and perhaps too much so. Using these games that have refined stealth already - despite how exact mechanics may not transfer flawlessly due to differing settings - is at the very least a good place to look for reference.
But if you're going to ask me, I don't think the cyclops is even meant to be your 'go-to' stealth vehicle. It's big, it has terrible maneuverability , it's slow, and it's loud. More than anything, I feel like it's meant to be your hauler, and a lot of these features with silent running aren't meant to be relied on as much as they're supposed to be emergency buttons to get you out of situations you'd otherwise be screwed in.
Well, like I said before, a lot of the simplicity for the stealth is - at least in my opinion - largely because these are animals we're dealing with instead of humans. They're instinct driven and, due to being sea-creatures in a relatively open space, see and perceive the world in different ways even just from land-dwellers, let alone humans. Games like Dishonored or Hitman have those more refined systems because we're supposed to be dealing with a more refined intelligence - we're trying to outwit and/or avoid other thinking, self-aware sentient beings and advanced, sometimes multi-level security systems.
In sharp contrast to that, Subnautica is a place where the goal isn't infiltration, extraction or recovery - it's exploration, discovery and survival against beasts of the ocean that really cannot be cleared out. In turn, the player-character in this is not a trained professional assassin, soldier or even born killer - he's a company employee aboard a transport vessel that was meant to set up gateway tech; he probably wasn't even given training for any job outside the Aurora, let alone an alien world. He's not had lifelong training in behavioral analysis and combat like Hitman's Agent 47, nor a vast array of arcane powers and gadgets like Dishonored's Corvo.
Again, I admit it's personal opinion... but there just doesn't seem to be enough basis to suggest the kind of settings from those games would be a good reference, due to the massive difference even just in core concept, let alone the type of beings we're trying to avoid and how they see the world compared to humans and security systems.
Honestly, I don't think it's possible to get the cyclops in a situation where it's stealth mechanics are perfect. It's one of those things that's either going to be way too easy to use, or won't work at all. Much like adding a drill arm to the cyclops as discussed here earlier. If it was easy to use the PRAWN suit would be trivialized. Which brings up a good point.
If you were REALLY trying to be stealthy, you wouldn't be trying to use the industrial-sized submarine to sneak around. You'd use your much quicker, much quieter, and much smaller seamoth or PRAWN suit. I really don't think you're meant to bring the cyclops into the lava zones. I've gotten to both the thermal plant and PCF using only the prawn suit without getting grabbed by the Sea Dragon once. You just have to be smart about it; use your environment to your advantage, and stay vigilant. Wait for the openings and use them. I think the area around the lava castle is designed absolutely-fucking-amazingly to support being stealthy. The more I think about it, the more I realize the game has good stealth mechanics in about everything except the cyclops. Besides, it doesn't make sense that the cyclops would, or should be able to be super stealthy. I don't really think that's what it's role is. You don't build a bigger sub to be stealthier.
I admit that's true in the conventional sense... but that's if we're talking a comparison to human-based detection system. The Cyclops' Silent Running system likely isn't as advanced as that of a full-on military grade Alterra war-sub - it wouldn't be enough to get past other humans and their tech. But they're not who we're trying to avoid - it's a mass of creatures who, aside from the noise and energy emissions, might not even have the perception needed to recognize it as a threat should those things be muted. It's not a good stealth sub for infiltrating other human territories and their sealed borders, but for exploration on an uncharted alien world with no (or at least no known) indigenous advanced civilization? In that situation, it would serve it's purpose in mitigating risk from the native fauna.
By contrast - again, in my personal opinion - the Seamoth and Prawn don't have the needed faculties to support that kind of insulated system. The Seamoth, for the sake of maneuverability, was likely designed with only the minimum features needed and with lightweight materials - there'd be no room for the sound dampeners and energy insulation needed for a stealth mode. Same for the Prawn, what with all the room it's heavy hydraulics systems, storage bay and thruster pack takes up as well as the reinforced armor needed for traversing deeper depths. Both of these are designed to escape threats by way of stalling via add-ons like the torpedo arm, or simply being able to fit into places large predators can't reach like between lava spires or shallow caves (although, as zetacrhon has noted, the Sea Dragon can sometimes clip through terrain, and it's being tweaked by the devs so that it's size creates a suction as it moves it's arms that can draw you toward it if you're not careful). In the case of deep-sea exploration, you actually do arguably need a bigger sub to be stealthier, because anything smaller wouldn't have the kind of gear needed to avoid detection - all you'd have is your own skill and whether or not you can use it in such a way as to flat-out outmaneuver them. It wouldn't be a matter of if you can avoid them, in my opinion - only whether or not you can find shelter before they definitely detect you.
In turn, there's another factor to consider in all this when it comes to the "you just have to be smart about it" aspect - and it's that not everyone is as good on the draw, for lack of a better term. Not everyone is as skilled or as good with reaction time to make such a strategy work - or at least not without it becoming more stressful than it's worth; something that's been a perpetual sliding-scale issue in this game between the survival-driven players and the exploration-driven players. The Cyclops, in retrospect, is probably the devs attempt to help support the latter of these - the ones who don't want to risk losing their Prawn and possibly a good chunk of progress on whether or not they can outmaneuver or outrun a Sea Dragon.
Also... just a note, but sorry if this is a bit verbose; I'm prone to building walls of text when expositing on ideas, beliefs, etc XD
It may be unrealistic that you'd be able to stealth past these creatures for one reason or another, It certainly isn't realistic to think the best option to get around them is to attempt to outrun something that can fit the exo-suit you're wearing in it's mouth. Running is supposed to be your last resort. Not your first.
And it's unrealistic that we'd be able to build something that this giant fireball-breathing monster wouldn't be able to damage. Heck, something as big as the cyclops is actually designed for a 3 man crew. Anything bigger a single person would just not be able to maintain on their own.
And I wouldn't mind a more refined way to lure creatures away. But the funny thing is this option falls victim to your own argument. How do we know any of these lures we make would even be able to be detected by the creature we're trying to lure away? We don't.
Which leaves avoid them entirely. Well, we can't. They reside in areas we simply need to go to in order to progress. You can't just avoid the inactive lava zone entirely. you HAVE to enter the Sea Dragon's territory. It's just not avoidable, unless you're planning to just chill on the planet till Carar kills you.
I'll put it this way. We're just 'a company employee aboard a transport vessel that was meant to set up gateway tech.' Like you said. Which is true. We know nothing about this planet, or the way the creatures 'see.' So what do you do? You work with what you know and you pray it works. For all we know before we see the Sea Dragon, given the information our computer friend provides, the damn species is extinct! So face to face with a 112 meter monstrosity that a player on their first (blind) play through would not know ANYTHING about, we're forced to make assumptions. We don't have time to think, "what if it see's in X or Y?" Well if it does, you're probably screwed no matter what, so sucks to be the player, and you rule that out as a possibility since you can't work confidently with a "What if." This is a life or death situation. And the natural human instinct is going to be to run and hide and see if it works. And the thing is, it does. If you hide behind a pillar and there's no line of sight, it doesn't know you're there. And the entry on the Sea Dragon gives me no reason to think those eyeballs aren't used for seeing.
You keep saying "What if this, what if that," but these guesses are irrelevant when we have sufficient evidence to conclude what the reality of the situation is. And for the Sea Dragon, we can conclude that hiding and sneaking around work well enough. It doesn't take Agent 47's training to know that hiding behind something lessens your chance of being detected. I'm totally willing to give the Reaper Leviathan situation to you since the game tells you it uses echo-location when it reality we have little reason to believe that based on its behavior around silent running currently.
There might be some technical lore-reasons for why stealth may or may not be effective, but from a game-play perspective, they don't really matter. You're right in the sense that the game is largely about exploration. But realistically, there WILL be dangers in while exploring an uncharted worlds. And it's not realistic that getting past these dangers would be easy. When you have zero information on the creature trying to kill you, hiding (or going somewhere it can't reach you) and praying is probably your best bet in that emergency situation.
Yes, the devs have to cater to a more casual audience, but they have done so in COUNTLESS places already. You lose nothing important when you die, food and water become a non-issue the second you unlock farming and the filtration machine, the game (currently) holds your hand and leads you to all the exact locations of facilities, even the enemies are almost entirely a non-threat once you realize you can just stroll past them or avoid them entirely (the one exception being the Sea Dragon, and even he is easy to avoid if you're trying). The 'casual' side is so much of the game frankly.
And as much as you are right in a lot of your points about stealth and why it might not work, the game is months away from release, and was clearly designed with stealth-like features in mind. These things are and should be available for the players to utilize. And it WAY too late to change anything that core to the game. Like it or not, stealth is here to stay.
It may be unrealistic that you'd be able to stealth past these creatures for one reason or another, It certainly isn't realistic to think the best option to get around them is to attempt to outrun something that can fit the exo-suit you're wearing in it's mouth. Running is supposed to be your last resort. Not your first.
I disagree; in my opinion, one of the best defenses out there is simply to not get hit - and in turn that how big or powerful it is (or in this context, whether or not it can fit the sub in it's mouth) is utterly moot if it can't catch it in the first place. In that context, it's actually far more realistic to outmaneuver or outrun your hunters rather than fight a losing battle - it's a resort, period; whether or not it's the first or last depends on what mods you put on the thing, what your terrain is, etc.
And it's unrealistic that we'd be able to build something that this giant fireball-breathing monster wouldn't be able to damage. Heck, something as big as the cyclops is actually designed for a 3 man crew. Anything bigger a single person would just not be able to maintain on their own.
Again, I disagree; if it can't hit it, it doesn't matter either way what's being thrown or not. The Cyclops' size works to it's advantage in this instance because it's the only vehicle large enough to house the gear needed to insulate and/or dampen the energy emissions and sound it generates. Also, that's not entirely accurate - the Cyclops was recommended for a 3-man crew, but it specifically a single experienced pilot can operate it just as well.
And I wouldn't mind a more refined way to lure creatures away. But the funny thing is this option falls victim to your own argument. How do we know any of these lures we make would even be able to be detected by the creature we're trying to lure away? We don't.
Actually, that's not true; ranged deployment like, say, launching it at a fair distance via torpedo deployment system, would put more than enough distance between you and the lure and thereby give a decent amount of certainty that anything following the lure won't just lock on to you anyway. The Cyclops' flaw was that it's torpedo deployment is vertical rather than horizontal or lateral, but Silent Running mitigates that issue a bit.
Which leaves avoid them entirely. Well, we can't. They reside in areas we simply need to go to in order to progress. You can't just avoid the inactive lava zone entirely. you HAVE to enter the Sea Dragon's territory. It's just not avoidable, unless you're planning to just chill on the planet till Carar kills you.
Actually, we can; skirt around the edges while they're on opposing sides, drop down into areas they can't fit into (the corridors of the Lava Castle for example) - hell, zetacrhon himself went even further by saying he plays chicken with the things using the stasis rifle to freeze them up long enough for a getaway (though I think only people with skill/experience in FPS games will be able to replicate that feat). Nobody said anything about avoiding the Lava Zone - I said you have to avoid the creatures within it and avoid confronting them; that's avoidable.
I'll put it this way. We're just 'a company employee aboard a transport vessel that was meant to set up gateway tech.' Like you said. Which is true. We know nothing about this planet, or the way the creatures 'see.' So what do you do? You work with what you know and you pray it works. For all we know before we see the Sea Dragon, given the information our computer friend provides, the damn species is extinct! So face to face with a 112 meter monstrosity that a player on their first (blind) play through would not know ANYTHING about, we're forced to make assumptions. We don't have time to think, "what if it see's in X or Y?" Well if it does, you're probably screwed no matter what, so sucks to be the player, and you rule that out as a possibility since you can't work confidently with a "What if." This is a life or death situation. And the natural human instinct is going to be to run and hide and see if it works. And the thing is, it does. If you hide behind a pillar and there's no line of sight, it doesn't know you're there. And the entry on the Sea Dragon gives me no reason to think those eyeballs aren't used for seeing.
That still doesn't make sense to me, though; if you're effectively someone who's only training basically amounts to a desk job rather than field-survival work, what would you "know" in that situation? What previous experiences would you have to draw on for this situation to make any kind of reasonable assumption with? What would you have to recall from to have any inkling on what you even can do, let alone what you should or shouldn't? If you have no such previous expertise to utilize and you "don't have time to think", you're more liable to flounder and panic than you are to actually make a decision in those circumstances.
Honestly speaking, I feel the "we don't have time to think" argument is somewhat flawed, because doesn't take into account the fact that people who haven't gone through it before, let alone not been trained for it, are more likely to seize up purely because they don't know how to react or what they should/need to do. Heck, you yourself just illustrated one of the big fallacies of the argument - if you need to take the time to deliberate what you can and cannot work with, yet are constantly in a situation where you don't have that time to think, than it's a self-defeating premise; there's literally no right answer for someone who's not been trained to handle it.
Also, no offense, but your example kind of contradicts yourself - before we know about the Carar, we have no reason to believe there was an extinction of anything on the planet, let alone that most of it's native species are dead; likewise, upon learning about Reapers, we have no reason to think there isn't anything larger than it out there. Hell, if we know nothing about the species before first seeing it, why would we ever presume it's extinct? Furthermore, again, I point out how other predators like the Boneshark reacts to light, therefore likely sees ultraviolet spectrums, or how the Reaper roars to find prey, therefore it likely sees using echolocation - given those contexts, you're not giving a reason to think those eyeballs are evolved to see us through sight alone; no reason to think the Sea Dragon primarily hunts through something other than or stronger than it's sight. Hell, the thing picks up the player the moment they're outside the Cyclops even when it can't see them, so doesn't that alone make that argument on it's eyes moot - especially since your argument is based on an assumption that it needs to see us, which is the same kind of "what if" situation you said people in survival situations needed to avoid?
I apologize in advance if I sound ranting or patronizing - it's not my intention. It's just that your argument doesn't make sense to me.
You keep saying "What if this, what if that," but these guesses are irrelevant when we have sufficient evidence to conclude what the reality of the situation is. And for the Sea Dragon, we can conclude that hiding and sneaking around work well enough. It doesn't take Agent 47's training to know that hiding behind something lessens your chance of being detected. I'm totally willing to give the Reaper Leviathan situation to you since the game tells you it uses echo-location when it reality we have little reason to believe that based on its behavior around silent running currently.
But honestly speaking, you're doing the exact same thing in several cases - you just earlier made guesses as to how hiding from the Sea Dragon would work, despite in-game experience (where the thing starts beelining for you as soon as you're in the water) proving otherwise; if you had banked your life on the idea that avoiding it's eyeballs meant it couldn't see you, you'd be dead. And I keep bringing up the what ifs because that, in my opinion, is in and of itself is one of the key elements of survival. When you have no back-up and limited resources, you literally cannot afford to go into anything without as much info beforehand as possible.
Want to build a base? You need to ask "what if" - what if there's little resources, what if there's worse predators, what if I find a new discovery and it becomes inconvenient to go back there, etc. Want to go to a new area? You need to ask "what if" - what if there's something my current gear can't handle, what if I get wrecked along the way and can't make it back up, etc. For these things, I feel that guesswork and learning before you take the plunge are the furthest thing possible from irrelevant - they're key to making sure you don't take the plunge only to crash and burn. Especially since, again, the conclusion you're claiming isn't true in-game - even zetachron, who I was disagreeing with here, not only agrees with me on that but was the one who first brought to my attention how easily the Sea Dragon aggros even if you're on the opposite side of the ILZ; he made the same assumption you did and nearly got roasted.
Ergo, it actually does feel to me like it takes Agent 47's training to know what to do here, because someone like Agent 47 would likely never assume he knows the limitations and workings for the senses of an alien creature that, again, is not human. A novice worker who has no clue what to expect, or no idea that he shouldn't expect human sensitivity limitations from alien creatures, wouldn't be guaranteed to fair so well. Also, I actually thought up a theory on that during all this; perhaps the Cyclops' Silent Running might mean it dampens the sounds around it when they impact the hull, absorbing it the same as how it absorbs the sound inside - and thereby blunting the Reaper's echolocation.
There might be some technical lore-reasons for why stealth may or may not be effective, but from a game-play perspective, they don't really matter. You're right in the sense that the game is largely about exploration. But realistically, there WILL be dangers in while exploring an uncharted worlds. And it's not realistic that getting past these dangers would be easy. When you have zero information on the creature trying to kill you, hiding (or going somewhere it can't reach you) and praying is probably your best bet in that emergency situation.
Again, I really do disagree on this; from a game-play perspective, I think they make all the difference, because you're not dealing with a human being. Look at how a human behaves in the stealth game you mentioned; Do they operate on plain raw instinct? Are they aquatic and therefore have full free-range movement in a fluidic space as opposed to land-based and gravity-bound? Do they lack the comprehension of technology to recognize they're fooled by a decoy the moment it's in eyesight as opposed to after they bite into it's shell? Do they possibly lack the same depth perception or spectrum of color that a normal human has? With all these different factors, both physical and behavioral, why would any of these things not matter for the game-play perspective when it's the difference between coding a gravity-based game and a zero-gee game?
It isn't the danger that was in debate - it's that the form of threat is so different from the kind you'd see in a traditional stealth game that I do not feel that the mechanics would be a good point to draw from. Whether or not there's danger is completely moot - it's the fact that these dangers don't seem the kind you could approach the same as in a stealth game like Hitman or Dishonored; it's not realistic to think that getting past these dangers would be the same as getting past the ones posed by a security system or a human guard. It's not realistic to assume that what would or would not work on humans would have the same effect here - it doesn't feel feasible to take that rulebook for human-to-human stealth, apply it to deep-sea alien creatures and expect it to function the same.
I admit that some creatures in this game (Reapers, Bonesharks, etc), you can hide from just by being still and killing sound or lights; With some creatures (Sea Dragon), running away for somewhere it can't reach you is the better solution rather than thinking it can be conventionally blinded or hesitant like a human may. But what it doesn't feel like you're acknowledging is that it's equally presumptive to assume this will always be the case - if we don't know anything about a creature, why should we make an assumption on what the best bet is going to be? Depending on the situation, the creature, the environment and the equipment you have, what is or isn't the best will always be subject to change.
Yes, the devs have to cater to a more casual audience, but they have done so in COUNTLESS places already. You lose nothing important when you die, food and water become a non-issue the second you unlock farming and the filtration machine, the game (currently) holds your hand and leads you to all the exact locations of facilities, even the enemies are almost entirely a non-threat once you realize you can just stroll past them or avoid them entirely (the one exception being the Sea Dragon, and even he is easy to avoid if you're trying). The 'casual' side is so much of the game frankly.
That feels a moot argument to me, though; whether or not they have or have not done so in "countless" places or not doesn't mean more should or should not be done to work on the scale. Furthermore... I don't mean to be rude, but part of what you're saying feels an exaggeration; Hardcore mode, where you only have one save slot and no respawns, sinks a lot of what you're saying and makes food and water a constant concern since you can't ever risk running out at a bad time. Also, maybe it's just a difference in game or gameplay, but I have never once been able to "just stroll past" any of the creatures in this game unless I had the Cyclops' silent running - and even than, I found out the hard way that the early version of it was bugged so that the creatures saw the lights/heard the noise from your external cameras if you used them, so I'd often get hit anyway. IDK if you're more hardcore at it than me or if I'm just too casual, but I've honestly yet to see the "casual side" equate to a majority of the game.
And as much as you are right in a lot of your points about stealth and why it might not work, the game is months away from release, and was clearly designed with stealth-like features in mind. These things are and should be available for the players to utilize. And it WAY too late to change anything that core to the game. Like it or not, stealth is here to stay.
But that in and of itself is my point; "stealth-like features" does not necessarily equate to being the same as or functioning similarly to a full-on stealth-based game, due to the large difference in the core setting, premise and the nature of the creatures in mind. My point is that it may be "here to stay," but it's not actually stealth that's staying - it is, at best, advanced evasion or exploration tools rather than an actual, true stealth gameplay mechanic. Hence why I believed that taking from other stealth-oriented games wouldn't be the right way to go.
Wow what a wall of text this thread is starting to become.
Would be great if some people could become a bit more succinct as it can't be great for any devs reading this and trying to get a good idea of what the playerbase wants.
Wow what a wall of text this thread is starting to become.
Would be great if some people could become a bit more succinct as it can't be great for any devs reading this and trying to get a good idea of what the playerbase wants.
As someone who really trends to waxing on about a topic and really has to edit himself down every time, I agree. I think there are great points here. I'm just a bit tired and couldn't focus enough to read or skim to latch onto much.
Except that if there's threat, you either avoid via stealth or speed or confront with conversation or violence. I think Subnautica is more about avoidance and things are getting better in Experimental. Will have to see how that progresses.
I've jumped out because the entire thing is irrelevant as far as I can tell. Shouldn't have input in the first place.That huge wall is text can essentially be squeezed down into "don't look towards stealth games to refine subnautica's stealth mechanics." Which has some merit as an idea, but we're months away from release. What he have right now stealth-wise is really going to change that much anyways. None of those core gameplay-mechanics are going to change. Hopefully they'll continue to be refined with small adjustments here and there, as we've seen with changes to the cyclops's Silent running in experimental. It will just take back and forth adjustments in values to find the right spot for it.
And including this is probably petty, but for the record:
"Be advised: the Cyclops is designed to be operated by a three-person crew. Only experienced helms-people should attempt to pilot this vehicle solo."
If I'd nail the main problem down to one sentence I'd say:
"As long as the best strategy against attacks is to turn the engines off to be immune, there is no gameplay, so the devs should skip that and improve escape maneuverability of the Cyclops and efficiency of the decoys."
I've jumped out because the entire thing is irrelevant as far as I can tell. Shouldn't have input in the first place.That huge wall is text can essentially be squeezed down into "don't look towards stealth games to refine subnautica's stealth mechanics."
Yes and no; it's more that the message is "don't look towards stealth game to refine Subnautica's non-stealth mechanics", because there's not enough to it to be actual stealth - evasion tactics, maybe, but it's not real stealth like in Hitman and Dishonored. The creatures aren't like humans - not smart enough or having the same sensory capacity needed for those kind of mechanics to translate, to say nothing of the 365-degree free-range environment as opposed to flat-earth, walkways and rooftops. The rest is just explaining why I think that is, though it often feels like a catch-22 for me in that regard - too little, and it feels like points are misunderstood; too much, and it feels like points are missed.
Also... bit of a notation to your "probably petty" part, but:
wrote:
"Be advised: the Cyclops is designed to be operated by a three-person crew. Only experienced helms-people should attempt to pilot this vehicle solo."
― PDA, Dialogue (after crafting the cyclops)
Please note the bolded; you yourself literally just confirmed what I said about how the Cyclops is factually-operable by a single person, albeit it's recommended they be experienced... which runs contrary to how you seemingly claimed it wasn't possible to operate at full capacity at all without a 3-man crew.
Hope that doesn't sound rude or patronizing; I just don't get why you decided to make that of all things an issue out of everything else I talked about.
No. I claimed "the cyclops is actually designed for a 3 man crew," and "anything bigger a single person would just not be able to maintain on their own." Nothing about the drive-ability of the cyclops itself.
And unfortunately, those will be my last words on the subject. I'm out.
No. I claimed "the cyclops is actually designed for a 3 man crew," and "anything bigger a single person would just not be able to maintain on their own." Nothing about the drive-ability of the cyclops itself.
And it's unrealistic that we'd be able to build something that this giant fireball-breathing monster wouldn't be able to damage. Heck, something as big as the cyclops is actually designed for a 3 man crew. Anything bigger a single person would just not be able to maintain on their own.
The way that sentence as structured, it came across like you were use the Cyclops' being designed for a 3-man crew as evidence that a single operator couldn't manage larger vehicles on their own. It's precisely because you didn't say anything about the drive-ability of the Cyclops that it seems like you were ignoring that a single person could operate it, in relation to the belief that we couldn't build something the Sea Dragon couldn't destroy... even though that wasn't even what I said in the first place. I'd said that building something a creature couldn't destroy was one of the optional methods of getting past the predators, not that it was universal to them all - or in other words, a misunderstanding took place somewhere.
Again, I just don't get why that was the thing you decided to take the most issue with out of everything else, let alone to end off on
Agreed, @kingkuma. We've pretty much all said what we need to about the cyclops at this point.
Says the one who tried to end it off on a note they themselves admitted was petty? (this is supposed to be humor - I tend to be bad at it, though)
All (attempt sat) joking aside, I disagree that everything to say about it has been said. For instance, I do agree with @DrownedOut on the fact that actually maintaining the Cyclops resource-wise is still an issue - until you find the Thermal Generator upgrade they put in the Bulb Bush zone (I think?) as well as the efficiency module from the Aurora, power can be an early issue. Especially before you visit the Aurora and pick up all the extra power cells - crafting them yourself with the copper shortage isn't a good option since there's now so much more you need it for. Upping the chances of copper drops would go a long way to mitugating that, I think.
Furthermore, as @zetachron mentioned before, maneuverability for the ship is a big issue that likewise ties into DrownedOut's complaints about there being little efficient way down to the ILZ if things like the Crash Zone passagway gets closed off - it seems the devs are so focused on railroading down to the Lost River that they forget having a single path means restricting gameplay methods as well. I can't tell you how many times I myself decided to just leave my Cyclops in the DGR and use the Prawn or Seamoth to try and survey the LR. Gameplay-wise, the Cyclops needs to be more maneuverable - and if the devs can't do that, than I think they should either widen the passagways to the LR or just leave the Crash Zone passage alone as so many others have suggested they do.
That being said, I'm actually not sure of the engine on/off thing, especially if I'm in really dangerous territory with Leviathans and my turning it on to move draws them in before I can hit Silent Running. I like that smaller creatures like the sharks pretty much can't damage the thing anymore, but now I'm torn between whether or not it encourages you to be smart about where you park the Cyclops or just a big hassle all the way around.
Comments
I'm not much for being forced into reaper territory either, but I would like to be invited. Like a cache I'm free to skip but that's there all the same if I want to give it a try. Or the aforementionedly desired exit out of the ALZ -- reapers aren't that hot after the sea dragon. Rare plants maybe. In the other thread where I proposed reefback plating as freebie planter spots, why not have at least one of the three territories rich in them like an elephant graveyard deal with an achievement for planting ten plants, "Greatly Committed Gardener". The Crash Zone's actually interesting for its loot, but to get (much of) it I have to leave the Cyclops (hence my suggestion for a Cyclops-powered stasis field; that could turn the tide).
My blueprint wish'd be Precursor tech to make those water/air forcefield doors myself. Not necessary at all, but I'd love to have those for my bases.
They would have to be rare of course, and as said there would need to be ways to actually survive them early game. With the Cyclops we are getting what we need. Problem would be the Seamoth and before. Having to shy away before you get gears isn't a problem, but if they just appear as you were in a wreck and kill you without any chances... what's the point?
Another reason we'll never get that, is that eventually we would need to have seabase get attacked. Too much work to come before an expansion.
Wasn't it a cyclops feedback thread before?
First, we still have the bad maneuverability. It's now quite managable but far from being fun. That includes direct controlling as well as bad info display management and the bad turning and vertical facing quality of the Cyclops.
Second, the stealth gameplay seems to be too much for the devs. Right now you mainly have a stop and go stealth mechanism with total immunity on engine stop. Good stealth games are much more sophisticated. There are ways to lure enemies from the path and if your enemies get too close you have a quick escape mechanism that ends with getting back to a safe hiding.
It's good that the devs plan to focus on Leviathans vs Cyclops, as the leviathans are rare and stealth can be better planned for that. But a leviathan close to a Cyclops should always see and attack it. Otherwise the devs get stuck on the engine turns off stop and go stealth route.
Just imagine this stop and go stealth with games like Dishonored, Thief or the other stealth games. The assassin stops walking and immediately gets total immune to detection. Then it takes time to walk again and again if the assassin gets detected he immediately stops motion and poses as a statue. Everyone runs blind around his statue until the place is empty and the assassin can move again. Bad stop and go stealth. No real gameplay like throwing a distraction event, luring mechanisms, chasing from shadow to shadow.
What would the good assassin strategies be for a submarine fearing leviathans? (as the war strategy is forbidden and the outmaneuvering strategy is technically impossible)
Thanks for the suggestion. To be honest, I've never gathered resources from the Sea Treader area. But after your suggestion, I'm definitely gonna head that way! Thanks!
Look at the movie "Dune". There the people used thumpers to lure the giant sandworms away. That would work with those leviathans in Subnautica as well. Hiding the Cyclops in stealth fields would work as well and balanced, if the stealth would consume energy.
Right now you just move and stop engines ... repeat. If that's the vision then something is wrong. Of course everything would change if you could outmaneuver a leviathan, but right now that's impossible as the Cyclops can't dive around a leviathan.
Better, but Silent Run ability is like all or nothing. Too powerful while active. Instead it should dampen 80% noises from the Cyclops while running and draw massive energy while running. Then the Cyclops would still need to be careful and could not overuse it, but you could decide to run dampered in flank speed or slow speed. Dampered slow speed would be total silent, while dampered flank speed would make noises like regular speed.
So my suggestion: A sonic damper field module for the Cyclops as a necessary requirement for the silent running and energy drain instead 90 secs with cooldown.
Personally if I find things like silent running to be too powerful (which I don't) then I would just not use it.
Well, once you keep cool and don't panic, you quickly realize that you just need to turn off engines and watch the leviathan through your cam until he's far away, then restart and move on until he gets to close. No real skill needed other than "don't panic".
Now with a long time total silent running your second option is to go silent to bypass the leviathan without stopping.
So I've found out that all I need is slow and standart speed with engines turning off sometimes. I ignore all other tech like silent running, flank speed and shields.
What you need is a reason and a mean to move at the very limit of detection.
- Reason can be made easy, just surveilling the distance of the target.
- Limit of detection is the hard part, it's the brunt of the mechanic "do I get detected if I impact a wall ?", "Do I get detected if I impact a fish?", could be your priority.
In my mind it would mean making silent running not timed.
It's that or I enter some of my personal suggestion about having the Cyclops "silent running" meaning no infinite O². Aka: you can park your cyclops silently but if you want O² autonomy you'll need to make some noise. And so on.
Actually, after taking some time to look into this... there's a big problem with those suggestions. Which is that... well, simply put, this isn't an assassin game because these aren't human beings - they're deep-sea creatures that, for all we know, don't even see in the same visual spectrum as a human. Some might see in infra-red or ultra-violet, or are outright color-blind and rely on other senses to distinguish threat from prey and vice-versa. Some might have sight that operates on motion rather than detail, like a toad, or use echolocation like a bat (hell, the Reaper Leviathan's roar is confirmed in it's data-entry to be precisely that; echolocation).
As a result, "assassin strategy" isn't necessarily reliable either, because these things aren't assured to have the same range of sight as us - for all we know, they might in fact not be able to see you in the conventional sense no matter how close you are to them. Granted, that doesn't necessarily remove minor hax-issues like a Sea Dragon not recognizing you as a potential rival due to size and trying to drive you out, but it does create more leniency in why suddenly shutting off all power and/or sounds makes you practically invisible.
Glad I haven't yet, now you are reminding me that whatever I applied to to "subs" interaction should also concern players presence (like body heat)
Well we don't need an assassin game, it's just that assassins game know how to do stealth right or they would be immediately out of buisness. It's always "learn from the master", so I don't think it's wrong to look a bit at good stealth games.
In underwater games we have no bushes to hide, but we can have a noise attraction range and vision attraction range like in stealth games. But Subnautica just seems to have no workable creature_react-noise-vision-range-table and vehicle_creation-noise-vision-range-table to establish a functional stealth gameplay. The Sea Dragon should be attracted from afar by too much noise and visibly the bigger or nearer the vehicle is getting. So stealth would mean bypassing silently around his path or decoys luring him away. When he's too close you could only use an optical stealth with engines off or simply escape or sacrifice your sub. If you think about it, there could be dozens of different strategies with simple noise and vision ranges combined with decoys. Unfortunately the game is half hearted into this. Even the silent running as an ability is half hearted, as noise isn't dampened, but just cut to 0% and then stopped by timers, because with this 0% niveau it's completely overpowered. Also the silent running is no tech module.
I'm not sure that actually addresses what I said, though; again, this isn't really the sort of situation you can apply assassin game logic to. These aren't humans tasked with guarding a spicific person or treasure, nor do they have any reason to search for you specifically when compared to any other creature. They're just animals, operating on territorial instinct, having no spicific reason to begrudge you any more than you do them, and they might even use the same senses.
Above all else, though, an assassin game revolves around seeking out and eliminating a spicific target for which you circumvent everything else to do - that's not the purpose of an open-world exploration-driven game; your goal is to survive and discover, not to seek and destroy. So it comes across as learning from the wrong master - the conventional stealth tactics used in those games; there's no such guarantee they would work in this kind of situation when the creatures here aren't even liable to see you, figuratively or otherwise, the way normal humans would.
But you're not acknowledging that these sea creatures might not even "see" the way we do - like I said before, some of them might hunt via motion-detection, so you wouldn't even need a bush to hide behind in the first place; you'd just have to sit still. Hell, as I mentioned in the last post, Reapers hunt through echolocation - if you can hear the roar, they can find you (or that's how the PDA data-entry describes it) - so the conventional stealth tactics you outlined already wouldn't work on the likes of them. It doesn't translate well to this because it's not a case of sneaking past humans - it's a case of trying to outmaneuver animals with non-human senses and instinct-driven impulses.
Optical stealth, again, might not even be a factor with the Sea Dragon - for all we know, it's color-blind and wouldn't recognize the sub as a threat via visual input. It might rely on a mix of colorless imagery, sound and scent to determine threats and prey respectively, explaining why it dive-bombs/aggros for anything small like the player so quickly - for all we know, optical stealth wouldn't prevent it from detecting the Cyclops' presence in the water at all.
I'm not going to say you don't have some merit to the idea of the Sea Dragon not showing overt aggression to something large entering it's territory, but it also feels like you're being a bit too critical in asking for options that might not even be feasible for this kind of setting. Also, I never said anything about the silent running being a tech module or not - I said that the fact these creatures might not even see the same spectrums we humans do would make it easier to justify why they're seemingly blinded to you if the noise and power gets shut off.
P.S. - In a nod to the original OP on current Cyclops changes, a recent vid on YouTube (not sure if it's acituanbus's, Mobius or Awsomecrunch) details that the Cyclops is apparently now immune to/unable to be harmed by bonesharks, sandsharks and the like, but can now be damaged by Shocker Eels with their electrical bursts; aside from those, the sub can only be damaged by Leviathans (and maybe River Prowlers? Have to test that when I enter the game again).
I didn't write that I want to have an exact assassin type game copy. You even quote me with that. I wanted to copy the base principles of stealth and not the assassination part, as this game isn't about killing. And you forgot that you can play Dishonored without killing and getting seen, called Ghost Achievement. So the focus of discussion isn't about assassination, but stealth. That means getting to the goal without the enemy getting aware of you. And how you can escape if you get caught. Subnautica has improved the Cyclops gameplay, but I think it needs more polishing towards general stealth principles like distraction, observation and moving around leviathans.
With seeing I rather mean a short range location sense. The devs have stated that some creatures react to light and have given the Sea Dragon eyes to see. And I didn't even talk about creatures using echolocation to catch their prey, which usually greater sea mammals can do. Otherwise all their prey would just learn to play dead and the predators without a close range sense would simply starve.
And maybe you forgot that sometime in the future the devs want to implement base attacks. As bases don't move they only need to not have noisy machines running and there couldn't be creature attacks, as the bases would be less detectable as a Cyclops with engines off. You might pull a miracle explanation how to do that, but I'm off if leviathans can't find a Cyclops with engines off, but find a non moving base with no noisy parts.
It would all be better if each creature had a unique sound and vision range. If your vehicle is silent and far enough away from sound range it works. If it gets into vision range it must use escape, decoys or cloaking to get out of range again.
Not to speak about the most strange thing: The diver doesn't make as much noise as a vehicle with propeller, yet every creature magically finds him probably because all Subnautica creatures can hear tiny air bubbles from miles away.
Actually, I never once said you wanted "an exact assassin type game copy" - I said that these mechanics and base principles you wanted carried over from them, had no guarantee of feasibly working in this setting. I said that an assassin game in general was the wrong thing to take tips from for the idea of stealth in this game, due to the potential differences in sensory input/output of the game's creatures compared to the humans of an assassin game.
And you in turn are forgetting that Dishonored is not only largely based in arcane magic and stealth, as opposed to exploration and discovery, but that it's also based on land with humans as opposed to in the ocean with creatures that can likely find you through ultraviolet, echolocation and movement rather than the kind of sight we use. So I'm not sure you can use the Ghost achievement comparison in these circumstances since it's pretty much impossible for something in the water to not be aware of you - just that you have to mitigate whether or not it sees you as a threat. There's also no real "sneaking past" some creatures, like the Reaper - you often have to avoid them outright unless you have a Cyclops.
To make a long story short, again, you're trying to superimpose stealth principles that might not even work the way you're intending, simply because of the difference in how these creatures act compared to normal humans - a difference it doesn't feel like you're accounting for.
That doesn't change the context of my words at all, though; you're not illustrating how them seeing in "a short range location sense" would in any way change whether or not that sight is based in the same spectrum as a human's. And I never said you brought up echolocation - that was my whole point; the fact you didn't bring up how creatures in the game like Reapers were already confirmed to "see" the world through different means like sound-detection rather than conventional sight. We already have had it confirmed in-game that at least some of these beasts like the Reapers use sound to hunt - and in the case of the sandsharks, some did evolve ways of hiding themselves - though the Reaper itself developed a countermeasure in how fast it can swim and in the mandibles on it's face to grip something; if it struggles, it's alive. So it wouldn't be starving anytime soon. Hell, why would you assume echolocation (which translates to sonar underwater) only worked in long-range, either?
No - more like you've forgotten that echolocation doesn't actually rely on movement alone; creatures with echolocation are also very sensitive to sound-waves in general, meaning that they can seek out loud machinery even if it's completely stationary. If they didn't have hearing that could pick up sound-waves like that, they wouldn't even be able to hear the echo of their own sonar pulse. And considering that noisy machines do in fact look like a part of bases already (pumps for the water-filters, low-level humming of power conduits and air vents, etc), a silent base doesn't seem like it's in the cards as anything besides a possible upgrade as opposed to a starting feature. Not to mention that in the case of a Reaper, the echolocation on a powered-off Cyclops could make them mistake it for a reefback as opposed to a large aggressive creature like another Reaper, whereas the form of structure suddenly appearing somewhere out of seemingly nowhere... might not get the same passivity in it's response.
But again, cloaking might be a completely pointless feature in and of itself to use since, unlike humans, a "normal" range of eyesight being blinded might not impact any of these creatures in the slightest. Bonesharks, for example, seem to see ultraviolet - or rather, they hunt things with bright lights as a guide, like the trace bioluminescence of the creatures or, for you, the lights of the subs. You turn your lights off and go still while it's night, it's harder for them to see you than in the day - and any base you build in their territory basically couldn't have windows. For a creature like that, cloaking would be completely unneeded - you'd just need to switch out the lights rather than finagle with such a comparatively-complex piece of tech. Also, you're once again assuming that having a different type of vision as us means they somehow are more limited in range; they've got other senses like hearing and scent to fall back on that normal humans don't, so again, cloaking would likely be all of useless if they can still smell and hear you - it doesn't feel like it would have any real use in-game.
Prey for those creatures usually is the player's size, you know. Especially for the leviathans - anything smaller than you wouldn't be worth much if they have the choice. Same with the sharks - they're similar or slightly larger than the player, so why wouldn't they pick you up with the same ease they would each-other? Especially if some of them are territorial and have to fight off other breeds that encroach on the territory?
At a core level I agree with @The08MetroidMan 's logic against those stealth mechanics, but I haven't really seen him offer any alternative. I think @zetachron 's main point here is that we have heard time and time again from the Devs that we are not meant to be fighting these huge threats. So stealth is the ONLY alternative. and it's a system that may need to be refined a little bit more than it currently is.
If we're going to focus on the other things @zetachron was suggesting in that original post, I think he has a lot of valid points.
Although subnautica isn't a stealth game at it's core like Dishonored or Hitman, we are not only expected to use stealth to bypass larger threats, but forced to since it's really our only option. Subnautica's stealth mechanics are simplistic and easy, and perhaps too much so. Using these games that have refined stealth already - despite how exact mechanics may not transfer flawlessly due to differing settings - is at the very least a good place to look for reference.
But if you're going to ask me, I don't think the cyclops is even meant to be your 'go-to' stealth vehicle. It's big, it has terrible maneuverability , it's slow, and it's loud. More than anything, I feel like it's meant to be your hauler, and a lot of these features with silent running aren't meant to be relied on as much as they're supposed to be emergency buttons to get you out of situations you'd otherwise be screwed in.
Honestly, I don't think it's possible to get the cyclops in a situation where it's stealth mechanics are perfect. It's one of those things that's either going to be way too easy to use, or won't work at all. Much like adding a drill arm to the cyclops as discussed here earlier. If it was easy to use the PRAWN suit would be trivialized. Which brings up a good point.
If you were REALLY trying to be stealthy, you wouldn't be trying to use the industrial-sized submarine to sneak around. You'd use your much quicker, much quieter, and much smaller seamoth or PRAWN suit. I really don't think you're meant to bring the cyclops into the lava zones. I've gotten to both the thermal plant and PCF using only the prawn suit without getting grabbed by the Sea Dragon once. You just have to be smart about it; use your environment to your advantage, and stay vigilant. Wait for the openings and use them. I think the area around the lava castle is designed absolutely-fucking-amazingly to support being stealthy. The more I think about it, the more I realize the game has good stealth mechanics in about everything except the cyclops. Besides, it doesn't make sense that the cyclops would, or should be able to be super stealthy. I don't really think that's what it's role is. You don't build a bigger sub to be stealthier.
If I came across as "mudslinging" in how I go on long textblocks of explanation, I apologize. I just tend to be... well, wordy for lack of a better word. Also, I admit that a lot of the time, I don't feel like zetachron is getting the gist of my posts, so I sometimes type up longer posts to try and explain myself more thoroughly - it's not meant to be patronizing, so sorry in advance if it comes across as such.
In this context, my disagreements are more that I think that traditional stealth really isn't the way to go for Subnautica, let alone the "only alternative", since the aspects normally associated with stealth gameplay (cover mechanics, alternate paths, bait and eliminate) aren't really factors here - you have to either lure, make a break for it, get something too tough for them to bust or just avoid them outright. As for why I'm not offering any other ideas... it's because the ones in game are, at their core, good premises to start with; they just need refinement, though how much is needed likely varies from person to person.
Well, like I said before, a lot of the simplicity for the stealth is - at least in my opinion - largely because these are animals we're dealing with instead of humans. They're instinct driven and, due to being sea-creatures in a relatively open space, see and perceive the world in different ways even just from land-dwellers, let alone humans. Games like Dishonored or Hitman have those more refined systems because we're supposed to be dealing with a more refined intelligence - we're trying to outwit and/or avoid other thinking, self-aware sentient beings and advanced, sometimes multi-level security systems.
In sharp contrast to that, Subnautica is a place where the goal isn't infiltration, extraction or recovery - it's exploration, discovery and survival against beasts of the ocean that really cannot be cleared out. In turn, the player-character in this is not a trained professional assassin, soldier or even born killer - he's a company employee aboard a transport vessel that was meant to set up gateway tech; he probably wasn't even given training for any job outside the Aurora, let alone an alien world. He's not had lifelong training in behavioral analysis and combat like Hitman's Agent 47, nor a vast array of arcane powers and gadgets like Dishonored's Corvo.
Again, I admit it's personal opinion... but there just doesn't seem to be enough basis to suggest the kind of settings from those games would be a good reference, due to the massive difference even just in core concept, let alone the type of beings we're trying to avoid and how they see the world compared to humans and security systems.
I admit that's true in the conventional sense... but that's if we're talking a comparison to human-based detection system. The Cyclops' Silent Running system likely isn't as advanced as that of a full-on military grade Alterra war-sub - it wouldn't be enough to get past other humans and their tech. But they're not who we're trying to avoid - it's a mass of creatures who, aside from the noise and energy emissions, might not even have the perception needed to recognize it as a threat should those things be muted. It's not a good stealth sub for infiltrating other human territories and their sealed borders, but for exploration on an uncharted alien world with no (or at least no known) indigenous advanced civilization? In that situation, it would serve it's purpose in mitigating risk from the native fauna.
By contrast - again, in my personal opinion - the Seamoth and Prawn don't have the needed faculties to support that kind of insulated system. The Seamoth, for the sake of maneuverability, was likely designed with only the minimum features needed and with lightweight materials - there'd be no room for the sound dampeners and energy insulation needed for a stealth mode. Same for the Prawn, what with all the room it's heavy hydraulics systems, storage bay and thruster pack takes up as well as the reinforced armor needed for traversing deeper depths. Both of these are designed to escape threats by way of stalling via add-ons like the torpedo arm, or simply being able to fit into places large predators can't reach like between lava spires or shallow caves (although, as zetacrhon has noted, the Sea Dragon can sometimes clip through terrain, and it's being tweaked by the devs so that it's size creates a suction as it moves it's arms that can draw you toward it if you're not careful). In the case of deep-sea exploration, you actually do arguably need a bigger sub to be stealthier, because anything smaller wouldn't have the kind of gear needed to avoid detection - all you'd have is your own skill and whether or not you can use it in such a way as to flat-out outmaneuver them. It wouldn't be a matter of if you can avoid them, in my opinion - only whether or not you can find shelter before they definitely detect you.
In turn, there's another factor to consider in all this when it comes to the "you just have to be smart about it" aspect - and it's that not everyone is as good on the draw, for lack of a better term. Not everyone is as skilled or as good with reaction time to make such a strategy work - or at least not without it becoming more stressful than it's worth; something that's been a perpetual sliding-scale issue in this game between the survival-driven players and the exploration-driven players. The Cyclops, in retrospect, is probably the devs attempt to help support the latter of these - the ones who don't want to risk losing their Prawn and possibly a good chunk of progress on whether or not they can outmaneuver or outrun a Sea Dragon.
Also... just a note, but sorry if this is a bit verbose; I'm prone to building walls of text when expositing on ideas, beliefs, etc XD
And it's unrealistic that we'd be able to build something that this giant fireball-breathing monster wouldn't be able to damage. Heck, something as big as the cyclops is actually designed for a 3 man crew. Anything bigger a single person would just not be able to maintain on their own.
And I wouldn't mind a more refined way to lure creatures away. But the funny thing is this option falls victim to your own argument. How do we know any of these lures we make would even be able to be detected by the creature we're trying to lure away? We don't.
Which leaves avoid them entirely. Well, we can't. They reside in areas we simply need to go to in order to progress. You can't just avoid the inactive lava zone entirely. you HAVE to enter the Sea Dragon's territory. It's just not avoidable, unless you're planning to just chill on the planet till Carar kills you.
I'll put it this way. We're just 'a company employee aboard a transport vessel that was meant to set up gateway tech.' Like you said. Which is true. We know nothing about this planet, or the way the creatures 'see.' So what do you do? You work with what you know and you pray it works. For all we know before we see the Sea Dragon, given the information our computer friend provides, the damn species is extinct! So face to face with a 112 meter monstrosity that a player on their first (blind) play through would not know ANYTHING about, we're forced to make assumptions. We don't have time to think, "what if it see's in X or Y?" Well if it does, you're probably screwed no matter what, so sucks to be the player, and you rule that out as a possibility since you can't work confidently with a "What if." This is a life or death situation. And the natural human instinct is going to be to run and hide and see if it works. And the thing is, it does. If you hide behind a pillar and there's no line of sight, it doesn't know you're there. And the entry on the Sea Dragon gives me no reason to think those eyeballs aren't used for seeing.
You keep saying "What if this, what if that," but these guesses are irrelevant when we have sufficient evidence to conclude what the reality of the situation is. And for the Sea Dragon, we can conclude that hiding and sneaking around work well enough. It doesn't take Agent 47's training to know that hiding behind something lessens your chance of being detected. I'm totally willing to give the Reaper Leviathan situation to you since the game tells you it uses echo-location when it reality we have little reason to believe that based on its behavior around silent running currently.
There might be some technical lore-reasons for why stealth may or may not be effective, but from a game-play perspective, they don't really matter. You're right in the sense that the game is largely about exploration. But realistically, there WILL be dangers in while exploring an uncharted worlds. And it's not realistic that getting past these dangers would be easy. When you have zero information on the creature trying to kill you, hiding (or going somewhere it can't reach you) and praying is probably your best bet in that emergency situation.
Yes, the devs have to cater to a more casual audience, but they have done so in COUNTLESS places already. You lose nothing important when you die, food and water become a non-issue the second you unlock farming and the filtration machine, the game (currently) holds your hand and leads you to all the exact locations of facilities, even the enemies are almost entirely a non-threat once you realize you can just stroll past them or avoid them entirely (the one exception being the Sea Dragon, and even he is easy to avoid if you're trying). The 'casual' side is so much of the game frankly.
And as much as you are right in a lot of your points about stealth and why it might not work, the game is months away from release, and was clearly designed with stealth-like features in mind. These things are and should be available for the players to utilize. And it WAY too late to change anything that core to the game. Like it or not, stealth is here to stay.
I disagree; in my opinion, one of the best defenses out there is simply to not get hit - and in turn that how big or powerful it is (or in this context, whether or not it can fit the sub in it's mouth) is utterly moot if it can't catch it in the first place. In that context, it's actually far more realistic to outmaneuver or outrun your hunters rather than fight a losing battle - it's a resort, period; whether or not it's the first or last depends on what mods you put on the thing, what your terrain is, etc.
Again, I disagree; if it can't hit it, it doesn't matter either way what's being thrown or not. The Cyclops' size works to it's advantage in this instance because it's the only vehicle large enough to house the gear needed to insulate and/or dampen the energy emissions and sound it generates. Also, that's not entirely accurate - the Cyclops was recommended for a 3-man crew, but it specifically a single experienced pilot can operate it just as well.
Actually, that's not true; ranged deployment like, say, launching it at a fair distance via torpedo deployment system, would put more than enough distance between you and the lure and thereby give a decent amount of certainty that anything following the lure won't just lock on to you anyway. The Cyclops' flaw was that it's torpedo deployment is vertical rather than horizontal or lateral, but Silent Running mitigates that issue a bit.
Actually, we can; skirt around the edges while they're on opposing sides, drop down into areas they can't fit into (the corridors of the Lava Castle for example) - hell, zetacrhon himself went even further by saying he plays chicken with the things using the stasis rifle to freeze them up long enough for a getaway (though I think only people with skill/experience in FPS games will be able to replicate that feat). Nobody said anything about avoiding the Lava Zone - I said you have to avoid the creatures within it and avoid confronting them; that's avoidable.
That still doesn't make sense to me, though; if you're effectively someone who's only training basically amounts to a desk job rather than field-survival work, what would you "know" in that situation? What previous experiences would you have to draw on for this situation to make any kind of reasonable assumption with? What would you have to recall from to have any inkling on what you even can do, let alone what you should or shouldn't? If you have no such previous expertise to utilize and you "don't have time to think", you're more liable to flounder and panic than you are to actually make a decision in those circumstances.
Honestly speaking, I feel the "we don't have time to think" argument is somewhat flawed, because doesn't take into account the fact that people who haven't gone through it before, let alone not been trained for it, are more likely to seize up purely because they don't know how to react or what they should/need to do. Heck, you yourself just illustrated one of the big fallacies of the argument - if you need to take the time to deliberate what you can and cannot work with, yet are constantly in a situation where you don't have that time to think, than it's a self-defeating premise; there's literally no right answer for someone who's not been trained to handle it.
Also, no offense, but your example kind of contradicts yourself - before we know about the Carar, we have no reason to believe there was an extinction of anything on the planet, let alone that most of it's native species are dead; likewise, upon learning about Reapers, we have no reason to think there isn't anything larger than it out there. Hell, if we know nothing about the species before first seeing it, why would we ever presume it's extinct? Furthermore, again, I point out how other predators like the Boneshark reacts to light, therefore likely sees ultraviolet spectrums, or how the Reaper roars to find prey, therefore it likely sees using echolocation - given those contexts, you're not giving a reason to think those eyeballs are evolved to see us through sight alone; no reason to think the Sea Dragon primarily hunts through something other than or stronger than it's sight. Hell, the thing picks up the player the moment they're outside the Cyclops even when it can't see them, so doesn't that alone make that argument on it's eyes moot - especially since your argument is based on an assumption that it needs to see us, which is the same kind of "what if" situation you said people in survival situations needed to avoid?
I apologize in advance if I sound ranting or patronizing - it's not my intention. It's just that your argument doesn't make sense to me.
But honestly speaking, you're doing the exact same thing in several cases - you just earlier made guesses as to how hiding from the Sea Dragon would work, despite in-game experience (where the thing starts beelining for you as soon as you're in the water) proving otherwise; if you had banked your life on the idea that avoiding it's eyeballs meant it couldn't see you, you'd be dead. And I keep bringing up the what ifs because that, in my opinion, is in and of itself is one of the key elements of survival. When you have no back-up and limited resources, you literally cannot afford to go into anything without as much info beforehand as possible.
Want to build a base? You need to ask "what if" - what if there's little resources, what if there's worse predators, what if I find a new discovery and it becomes inconvenient to go back there, etc. Want to go to a new area? You need to ask "what if" - what if there's something my current gear can't handle, what if I get wrecked along the way and can't make it back up, etc. For these things, I feel that guesswork and learning before you take the plunge are the furthest thing possible from irrelevant - they're key to making sure you don't take the plunge only to crash and burn. Especially since, again, the conclusion you're claiming isn't true in-game - even zetachron, who I was disagreeing with here, not only agrees with me on that but was the one who first brought to my attention how easily the Sea Dragon aggros even if you're on the opposite side of the ILZ; he made the same assumption you did and nearly got roasted.
Ergo, it actually does feel to me like it takes Agent 47's training to know what to do here, because someone like Agent 47 would likely never assume he knows the limitations and workings for the senses of an alien creature that, again, is not human. A novice worker who has no clue what to expect, or no idea that he shouldn't expect human sensitivity limitations from alien creatures, wouldn't be guaranteed to fair so well. Also, I actually thought up a theory on that during all this; perhaps the Cyclops' Silent Running might mean it dampens the sounds around it when they impact the hull, absorbing it the same as how it absorbs the sound inside - and thereby blunting the Reaper's echolocation.
Again, I really do disagree on this; from a game-play perspective, I think they make all the difference, because you're not dealing with a human being. Look at how a human behaves in the stealth game you mentioned; Do they operate on plain raw instinct? Are they aquatic and therefore have full free-range movement in a fluidic space as opposed to land-based and gravity-bound? Do they lack the comprehension of technology to recognize they're fooled by a decoy the moment it's in eyesight as opposed to after they bite into it's shell? Do they possibly lack the same depth perception or spectrum of color that a normal human has? With all these different factors, both physical and behavioral, why would any of these things not matter for the game-play perspective when it's the difference between coding a gravity-based game and a zero-gee game?
It isn't the danger that was in debate - it's that the form of threat is so different from the kind you'd see in a traditional stealth game that I do not feel that the mechanics would be a good point to draw from. Whether or not there's danger is completely moot - it's the fact that these dangers don't seem the kind you could approach the same as in a stealth game like Hitman or Dishonored; it's not realistic to think that getting past these dangers would be the same as getting past the ones posed by a security system or a human guard. It's not realistic to assume that what would or would not work on humans would have the same effect here - it doesn't feel feasible to take that rulebook for human-to-human stealth, apply it to deep-sea alien creatures and expect it to function the same.
I admit that some creatures in this game (Reapers, Bonesharks, etc), you can hide from just by being still and killing sound or lights; With some creatures (Sea Dragon), running away for somewhere it can't reach you is the better solution rather than thinking it can be conventionally blinded or hesitant like a human may. But what it doesn't feel like you're acknowledging is that it's equally presumptive to assume this will always be the case - if we don't know anything about a creature, why should we make an assumption on what the best bet is going to be? Depending on the situation, the creature, the environment and the equipment you have, what is or isn't the best will always be subject to change.
That feels a moot argument to me, though; whether or not they have or have not done so in "countless" places or not doesn't mean more should or should not be done to work on the scale. Furthermore... I don't mean to be rude, but part of what you're saying feels an exaggeration; Hardcore mode, where you only have one save slot and no respawns, sinks a lot of what you're saying and makes food and water a constant concern since you can't ever risk running out at a bad time. Also, maybe it's just a difference in game or gameplay, but I have never once been able to "just stroll past" any of the creatures in this game unless I had the Cyclops' silent running - and even than, I found out the hard way that the early version of it was bugged so that the creatures saw the lights/heard the noise from your external cameras if you used them, so I'd often get hit anyway. IDK if you're more hardcore at it than me or if I'm just too casual, but I've honestly yet to see the "casual side" equate to a majority of the game.
But that in and of itself is my point; "stealth-like features" does not necessarily equate to being the same as or functioning similarly to a full-on stealth-based game, due to the large difference in the core setting, premise and the nature of the creatures in mind. My point is that it may be "here to stay," but it's not actually stealth that's staying - it is, at best, advanced evasion or exploration tools rather than an actual, true stealth gameplay mechanic. Hence why I believed that taking from other stealth-oriented games wouldn't be the right way to go.
Would be great if some people could become a bit more succinct as it can't be great for any devs reading this and trying to get a good idea of what the playerbase wants.
As someone who really trends to waxing on about a topic and really has to edit himself down every time, I agree. I think there are great points here. I'm just a bit tired and couldn't focus enough to read or skim to latch onto much.
Except that if there's threat, you either avoid via stealth or speed or confront with conversation or violence. I think Subnautica is more about avoidance and things are getting better in Experimental. Will have to see how that progresses.
And including this is probably petty, but for the record:
"Be advised: the Cyclops is designed to be operated by a three-person crew. Only experienced helms-people should attempt to pilot this vehicle solo."
― PDA, Dialogue (after crafting the cyclops)
"As long as the best strategy against attacks is to turn the engines off to be immune, there is no gameplay, so the devs should skip that and improve escape maneuverability of the Cyclops and efficiency of the decoys."
Yes and no; it's more that the message is "don't look towards stealth game to refine Subnautica's non-stealth mechanics", because there's not enough to it to be actual stealth - evasion tactics, maybe, but it's not real stealth like in Hitman and Dishonored. The creatures aren't like humans - not smart enough or having the same sensory capacity needed for those kind of mechanics to translate, to say nothing of the 365-degree free-range environment as opposed to flat-earth, walkways and rooftops. The rest is just explaining why I think that is, though it often feels like a catch-22 for me in that regard - too little, and it feels like points are misunderstood; too much, and it feels like points are missed.
Also... bit of a notation to your "probably petty" part, but:
Please note the bolded; you yourself literally just confirmed what I said about how the Cyclops is factually-operable by a single person, albeit it's recommended they be experienced... which runs contrary to how you seemingly claimed it wasn't possible to operate at full capacity at all without a 3-man crew.
Hope that doesn't sound rude or patronizing; I just don't get why you decided to make that of all things an issue out of everything else I talked about.
And unfortunately, those will be my last words on the subject. I'm out.
Actually, your exact words were as follows;
The way that sentence as structured, it came across like you were use the Cyclops' being designed for a 3-man crew as evidence that a single operator couldn't manage larger vehicles on their own. It's precisely because you didn't say anything about the drive-ability of the Cyclops that it seems like you were ignoring that a single person could operate it, in relation to the belief that we couldn't build something the Sea Dragon couldn't destroy... even though that wasn't even what I said in the first place. I'd said that building something a creature couldn't destroy was one of the optional methods of getting past the predators, not that it was universal to them all - or in other words, a misunderstanding took place somewhere.
Again, I just don't get why that was the thing you decided to take the most issue with out of everything else, let alone to end off on
Says the one who tried to end it off on a note they themselves admitted was petty? (this is supposed to be humor - I tend to be bad at it, though)
All (attempt sat) joking aside, I disagree that everything to say about it has been said. For instance, I do agree with @DrownedOut on the fact that actually maintaining the Cyclops resource-wise is still an issue - until you find the Thermal Generator upgrade they put in the Bulb Bush zone (I think?) as well as the efficiency module from the Aurora, power can be an early issue. Especially before you visit the Aurora and pick up all the extra power cells - crafting them yourself with the copper shortage isn't a good option since there's now so much more you need it for. Upping the chances of copper drops would go a long way to mitugating that, I think.
Furthermore, as @zetachron mentioned before, maneuverability for the ship is a big issue that likewise ties into DrownedOut's complaints about there being little efficient way down to the ILZ if things like the Crash Zone passagway gets closed off - it seems the devs are so focused on railroading down to the Lost River that they forget having a single path means restricting gameplay methods as well. I can't tell you how many times I myself decided to just leave my Cyclops in the DGR and use the Prawn or Seamoth to try and survey the LR. Gameplay-wise, the Cyclops needs to be more maneuverable - and if the devs can't do that, than I think they should either widen the passagways to the LR or just leave the Crash Zone passage alone as so many others have suggested they do.
That being said, I'm actually not sure of the engine on/off thing, especially if I'm in really dangerous territory with Leviathans and my turning it on to move draws them in before I can hit Silent Running. I like that smaller creatures like the sharks pretty much can't damage the thing anymore, but now I'm torn between whether or not it encourages you to be smart about where you park the Cyclops or just a big hassle all the way around.