Ideas for things you want to craft
Flayra
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Hey everyone,
I'd love to have some ideas for simple things you could craft. These would tend to me smaller, numerical upgrades and enhancements that would ideally change how you play.
You could "research" an ingredient that came from the environment: creature, plant, DNA sample, creature bone, seed, creature corpse or chemical sample (from acid pool, blood cloud), which would then unlock something new you could craft: an injectable serum, an upgraded or changed version of a submersible, equipment, or even software module.
Here are some examples:
- Researching a red cluster of "healgrass" to create a healing serum
- Studying our "Mesmer" (an creature that hypnotizes its prey with scintillating colors) to create a dive suit that can take on the surface attributes near you, as camouflage
- Studying a Holefish to research a metal that is just as strong but lighter (less mass)
- Studying Peepers (or their eyes?) to see better in foggy areas
- Studying a heat-sensing fish to make a serum or HUD that lets you see heat in your environment
I'd love to use this thread as a brainstorm. Any and all ideas welcome - don't censor yourself, just riff on some crazy ideas. Please don't critique or comment on other people's ideas. Just be inspired and write your own!
I'd love to have some ideas for simple things you could craft. These would tend to me smaller, numerical upgrades and enhancements that would ideally change how you play.
You could "research" an ingredient that came from the environment: creature, plant, DNA sample, creature bone, seed, creature corpse or chemical sample (from acid pool, blood cloud), which would then unlock something new you could craft: an injectable serum, an upgraded or changed version of a submersible, equipment, or even software module.
Here are some examples:
- Researching a red cluster of "healgrass" to create a healing serum
- Studying our "Mesmer" (an creature that hypnotizes its prey with scintillating colors) to create a dive suit that can take on the surface attributes near you, as camouflage
- Studying a Holefish to research a metal that is just as strong but lighter (less mass)
- Studying Peepers (or their eyes?) to see better in foggy areas
- Studying a heat-sensing fish to make a serum or HUD that lets you see heat in your environment
I'd love to use this thread as a brainstorm. Any and all ideas welcome - don't censor yourself, just riff on some crazy ideas. Please don't critique or comment on other people's ideas. Just be inspired and write your own!
Comments
There might be preliminary components required for the camera. Battery, metal, glass. Perhaps a computer chip, smaller mechanical parts, and a belt?
Movement outside your sub is a pretty big deal, especially since you start without one, so I'd like to see what interesting things you could do with it. At most it could have some really cool gameplay elements and at least it could make covering longer distances less tedious (thinking of making Link roll around in Zelda).
- Some kind of dash upgrade - quickly escape from immediate harm?
- A swim bladder upgrade - could let you lose/gain depth more quickly and control your buoyancy better.
- Maybe a flying fish upgrade - leaping out of the water could give you a speed boost that you could chain if for some reason you had to cover a long lateral distance quickly (oh god I think I just suggested bunnyhopping).
The specifics of those mechanics aren't so important, but what I'm interested in is fun/useful movement upgrades that can either help you out when it comes to the crunch, or just make the grindier aspects of loot collection more fun.
I don't really know how where you'd find something like that in the environment though, maybe a massive colony of plankton that makes it visible to the naked eye?
They could be used for a lot of things but mainly in repairing task be them on inert objects like the sub, player's equipment maybe, or on the player himself.
They could also do enhancements on the player although we already have the serums. Maybe, as the serums could be fabricated in the sub thanks to nanites they would be lesser versions of already found serums?
Edit: Just read something about cave diving made me think about recycler diving, basically allows for much longer dives and also makes no bubbles so you don't scare the fauna.
1) Compass - find my way around the world/navigate by sun/stars
2) Telescope - so I can look into the far distance
3) Metal Detector - find buried artifacts
4) Time-Piece - A Clock/Stop Watch to see the passage of time
5) Lifeform Pen - Able to make tall repellents which could enclose a school of fish in an area (possibly for breeding purposes)
More to follow
Drones that can harvest material or contain defense tech (learned from nature ofc)
Something like researching a school of fish to see how they stay in sync lets woud make a drone that can follow you around and preform simple tasks.
(like harvesting high value ingredients from areas that are too small/dangerous to venture into)
Also, from things like the warper can add aditional functionality to the drone (like the ability to create a portal back to your sub)
As far as simple things go
special flippers based on alien fish fins
enhanced digging equipment based on the sand shark's ability to burrow
special bioluminesant light from glowing mushrooms that do not disturb lifeforms, allowing you to get closer to study them.
Sounds like someone wants to craft sub upgrades. Autopilot could require crafting various range scanners, position sensors, and a board computer. That's late game stuff though.
I very much like the idea of improving the non-sub diving experience. Mainly because it feels good swimming around freely. So stuff which would enhance that would be cool. Repeatable enhancements could require increasingly rare materials.
- multiple levels of flippers upgrades (more speed, dash).
- multiple levels of tank upgrades (more oxygen, less size, less friction)
- dive suit upgrades (less friction, more armor, camouflage)
- glow sticks (dropable), flare gun, flares for exploring caves
- gadgets like scanners (alien vs. predator style), material detectors
Perhaps even permanently installable outdoor machinery like power generators, power lines, "street" lights, beacons, recorders (necessary for biome score), ziplines, "weather" stations, communication signal repeaters for accessing ship computer remotely.
I don't know how applicable these ideas are, but these are the types of items that have come to mind when I've played so far.
-Bait for luring predators away from resources
-Some sort of remote controlled mini sub/drone that you could send into places too small for the player to fit into.
Telemetry tags: tag and track various animals. These could have their own upgrade tree, starting off as just simple radio tags giving you distance and direction information. You could get more advanced versions that store depth and temperature data that they upload whenever an animal passes near a receiver, or upper tier devices that contain cameras and provide real-time data on the tagged organisms. Different version might also require you to get close to the organisms and manually attach them (maybe these will be more secure), while others may let you shoot tags from a distance.
Vision in different parts of the light spectrum: In addition to the fog reduction & other vision mods already discussed, changing the viewable light spectrum might serve to change visual contrast and highlight different aspects of the world. For example, a fish or coral seems drab or a single color in the visible spectrum, but is covered in complex patterns and glows slightly in the UV spectrum. Different predator and prey organisms, or poisonous creatures may have different degrees of visability or "warnings" in different portions of the spectrum. Further, this would allow players to study how different organisms see their worlds. Used in conjunction with suit and materials mods, you could try to design equipment that is invisible to particular organisms, or mimics the warning displays of a more dangerous creature.
Drag lines and grappling spears: If you're trying to capture a fast-moving organism, you could try to hit it with a grappling spear and either pin it to the ground, or allow the organism to drag you around. If the current, or something more sinister grabs you and starts moving you around, you could using these grappling spears to fight this be securing yourself to a fixed point.
Edit: Cleaned up some errors.
To piggy back off of that:
The equivalent of an underwater deer camera. Takes images when a tagged thing gets near it, or takes images when anything gets near it.
Yeah. From some kind of fast rising jellyfish? Or other invertebrate?
If you have the tech to get close to a deep sea vent without dying, some eel or microorganism could unlock research for heat resistance or hydroponic farming (alternative sources of nutrients).
If you're able to nab the carcass of a huge fast healing fish, you'll unlock improvements to repairing broken seals.
The nest of a deep tunnel worm yields better structural integrity for larger bases.
A tide pool bivalve yields stronger oxygen reserves.
Type of Ray that effortlessly surfs on transoceanic currents yields more energy efficient sub designs.
UV or sonic rangefinder. I personally like the idea of a creature that emits non-visible radiation to locate prey, instead of sound.
As for stuff I'd like to see:
- Rope/Cable. Tying stuff to other stuff is fun and often hilarious. Honestly, if it's buggy that just makes it more fun.
- Compass. It's been mentioned by everyone else, but I want to reiterate it because it's super important.
- Different ranges of quality for existing items. Having an upgrade progression for things like your flippers, tank, mask, knife, etc. expands the purpose of finding more rare materials and provides a soft gating mechanic to later, more dangerous areas. It's also just fun to upgrade from basic to intermediate to crazy overpowered for things like O2 supply and swim speed as the game progresses.
- Flares/glowsticks for cave exploration. You really ought to need a light source past a certain point.
- Various gadgets for helping identify or highlight materials in the environment. Metal detectors, deep sonar scanners, life-form trackers, motion sensors... you get the gist.
- Items that influence player buoyancy could be interesting; bladders/weight belts perhaps? I have to admit I don't actually know much about real-world diving, so I don't know how much this would make sense.
I too am solidly in the "jazzed" camp.
Subnaughtica - Underwater bondage, for science!
As you try to change the world to your will, you have to adapt to it in return, or something along those lines.
What might also be cool is to build small underwater stations, so that not only your submarine is a safe haven.
And something less freaky:
A movement detection device.. kinda like in alien
Imagine researching octopus types, and you make a similar looking drone.. The more breeds of octopus, the more advanced the drone. It would be able to research in areas a human can not reach due to size or form. (Of course superb camera should be a early upgrade if you want to have fun using this longterm?)
Finding certain fish and using research based on their tracking mechanisms to supplement your own.
Long long long research path for underwater breathing units. (no air supply needed)
For example with many many many different species needed for research before you can even remotely start with prototypes or something.
Mechanical peeper – Tiny remote controlled robot with camera used for scouting or going into tiny tunnels/caves. Or distracting bigger predatory fish.
Small fish/crab trap – Catch unusually hard to grab tiny fish/creatures
Peeper suit – Specialized suit that gets peeper fish to swarm around you providing distraction/safety from larger fish.
Underwater flare gun – Pewpew light!
Escape balloon – Use a % of total gas from dive tank to quickly inflate a very elastic balloon to surface from the depths. Probably the worst idea to use this on earth, but maybe there is no nitrogen on this alien planet? Could keep it for submarines only, like an ejection seat on a jet.
Quick dive anchor – Dropped from a sub, the player could hang on to quickly dive. Kinda like the thing above just inverted.
P.S. I didn't read any other ideas posted (to keep ideas from being morphed in my head) so if there is overlap its just coincidence!
- some device to catch animals alive (underwater taser, nets, stun grenades)
The escape ballon brought me on a new idea:
Small airbags should be filled with a tiny amount of explosives. If the sub is about to get flooded the player can ignite the explosive, which fills the airbags and gives additionaly bouyancy.
Another idea:
The sub itself could have a limited supply of battery power, fuel and oxygen.
The player could then use different methods to resupply each of those.
e.g. by bringing the sub to the surface to use solar models and refresh the oxygen supply. Burn fuel for electricity, electricity for oxygen, filter the air for oxygen etc.
I personally dislike the idea of a compass. In understand that it's a vital component for navigation, but the chance of another planet having a magnetic field is rather low.
Maybe there are other things the players could use to navigate
with all the benefits that entails. (engine attached to my bum, battery life, etc)
the only thing that's technically tricky is the drone. if it's remote controlled by you, and you have to stay still while driving it, that's pretty doable. but if it's meant to fly around on its own away from you, that gets tricky cuz we'd need to keep two parts of the world loaded. are there any games that do this? state of decay kind of does, when people go off on missions, but I suspect that's mostly faked. and it'd be harder for us to fake things, since our world is 3d.
Minecraft, while multiplayer, has an item, an anchor, to keep parts of the world loaded on the server even if there isn't anybody around. However that part is static.
-suit and submarine upgrades: more pressure resistance in higher dephts (less health / breach issues)
-submarine maneuverability upgrades: reactor (slight top speed increase, significant acceleration increase), another upgrade to increase turnspeed
-regarding self-injections: adrenaline and also the exact opposite for stealth and possibly oxygen conservation (increase or decrease in: speed, oxygen consumption, being-noticed due to body temprature etc.)
-deployable sensor thingies that send individual alerts to the sub that the player can see on a map (conditions for alert can be partially configurated by the player e.g. motion of a specific size range)
-deployable filters that are intentionally (or as a side effect for some other deployable technology) covered in... stuff (microbes?) upon checking up on them (could be different kinds: food, research material, bait, craft component...); alternatively, this stuff could occasionally accumulate on the sub and become a minor(!) nuisance until some research prevents that
We're getting to the point where implementing a lot of this stuff would be pretty fast.
I was thinking more along the lines of a "stupid" drone. The kind that needs continual input (limited range). Useful for investigating small/dangerous areas or harvesting two things at once.