Oxygen depth penalty and Rebreather balancing
Gr4phene
Germany Join Date: 2015-03-05 Member: 201731Members
Germany Join Date: 2015-03-05 Member: 201731Members
I was wondering if the Rebreather actually did something, so I got out of my Seamoth at 400m and watched my O2 meter drain. Turns out the oxygen drains about twice as fast at this depth, but I don't think this is enough. I would like the oxygen consumption to increase every 100 meters like
because this would more accurately represent real diving air usage (in reality the formula is the same with 10 instead of 100 meters). In addition, this would make you use five times more oxygen in 400m depth, so you can only stay in the water for twenty seconds with two tanks, or eight seconds without tanks. This would make the rebreather actually necessary.
Another thing is that you can't use an Airbladder from great depths in real life because your veins would literally explode at the surface from the expanding gases. The only way you can survive a quick ascent is by not taking a single breath in the depth, like freedivers do it. There should at least be a health penalty for quickly ascending, like taking damage if your breathing ratio decreases by more than 2% in one second. This is equivalent to a speed of 2m/s at the surface, 3m/s at 50m depth, 4m/s at 100m depth, 5m/s at 150m depth and so on. A possible equation would be
Please give me feedback if you like these ideas or what you would change! This is just a try to make breathing more realistic in Subnautica.
breath=(normal breath)*((depth/100)+1),
because this would more accurately represent real diving air usage (in reality the formula is the same with 10 instead of 100 meters). In addition, this would make you use five times more oxygen in 400m depth, so you can only stay in the water for twenty seconds with two tanks, or eight seconds without tanks. This would make the rebreather actually necessary.
Another thing is that you can't use an Airbladder from great depths in real life because your veins would literally explode at the surface from the expanding gases. The only way you can survive a quick ascent is by not taking a single breath in the depth, like freedivers do it. There should at least be a health penalty for quickly ascending, like taking damage if your breathing ratio decreases by more than 2% in one second. This is equivalent to a speed of 2m/s at the surface, 3m/s at 50m depth, 4m/s at 100m depth, 5m/s at 150m depth and so on. A possible equation would be
damage=(breath_1/breath_2-1.02)*10000, which means you take 100 damage for every percent above 2%. This sounds like a lot (instakill), but it's really not because a difference of 3% is impossible to reach except maybe with a current generator. You would have to rise from 12m to the surface in one second to die from the damage.
Please give me feedback if you like these ideas or what you would change! This is just a try to make breathing more realistic in Subnautica.
Comments
However don't lose sight of the fact that this is a game! Primary concern should be "is it fun?" and "does it add anything worthwhile to the gameplay?"
I don't think it's going to be fun or adding anything to the gameplay to have these sort of realistic depth/damage simulations. Especially when the other part to your argument is that the rebreather is fine to mitigate all of the intended effects (which is not exactly realistic!) :P
There currently is a penalty without using the rebreather to avoid the player being able to go to huge depths without first crafting the necessary items. This is an artificial barrier and it's needed in a game like this to somewhat control the path players take in their route through the tech tree and trying to get the most out of exploring each biome or area as they go.
I think it's ok as it is, but could perhaps use a few tweaks. And I'm sure things will change a lot before release. I just worry that going too overboard with realism could harm the gameplay experience as this is not "Diving simulator 2015"
If you don't suspend disbelief for a while, then how can you create submarines from a 2x2ft platform with a laser replicator? How can you survive without any toilet facilities? etc. There has to be a certain amount of unrealistic behaviour in any game, movie, book to keep the 'plot' flowing.
My main point is that does adding this more complex system for depth and oxygen use enhance gameplay BEFORE or AFTER the rebreather is available? You say it would make depths more of a challenge, but wouldn't you just use a rebreather then, which would totally cancel it out? SO maybe the rebreather itself needs a re-think along with the depth/oxygen use?
I would be really keen not to see breathing and oxygen use become 'realistic' though. I really don't get the whole "let's make everything realistic" comments from people all over the internet these days with regards to games, it doesn't make sense. There should only be a certain amount of resource management and complexity to a survival game, otherwise you end up treading deep waters (sorry :P) into simulator territory and the whole game can easily lose track of the "is this fun?" and "does it add to the gameplay?" checks.
This change would basically make it so that gameplay wise, instead of equipping 4 tanks, you could equip 2 plus a rebreather to have the same oxygen supply amount (in seconds) which might well be a switch a player makes a little way into the game. Also it should be clearer to the player that going deeper uses up oxygen quicker, even if they only find this out by experimenting and learning the hard way, at least the text tooltip on the rebreather will hint at this
What's the name/location of the config file? I did some hunting in my Subnautica install directory but couldn't locate it.
If only it was simpler
Within the "\steam\SteamApps\common\Subnautica\SNUnmanagedData" folder is a file called "BalanceVars.txt".
There are tons of variables such as;
...
Global/variables/oxygenCapacity 40
Global/variables/oxygenPerTank 30
Global/variables/oxygenUnitsPerSecondSurface 30
...
In that specific game I also like the "keep it fun" over the realism, but we can keep some logics that add to the gameplay, a few examples I'd love :
- Variety of diving equipments, that would be made or acquired progressively, they would upgrade the player to get to deeper place without ill effects, can be better tanks, specials suits, improved rebreather, and so on.
- Add visual or game play effects going too deep without the proper equipment, could also have the same idea when going up in emergency to the surface with air membranes, make the player dizzy for some time or other appropriate effect
Would be cool to see something like that. That is one surly looking scuba diver. A deep dive suit would be cool but i think the exosuit may be intended to serve this role. Seems like its going to be used for deep sea mining and resource collection. Check out the model if you haven't seen it.
https://sketchfab.com/models/409628e44d7341a09ec085a63f884672
So would you kindly keep your opinions out of my inventory? You've exceeded your allocated space.
Meh, your just fulla air!
Agreed, it's one of my biggest complaints with the air system atm. Getting a decent supply of air actually impedes your ability to play and enjoy the game (though I never took it quite that far :P ).
Modifying the config file is ok for now, but would be nice to see the devs increase it for real... especially for additional tanks. Maybe once the paper doll equipment system is in...
Rebreathers are just chemical air, and may extend an oxygen supply, but they don't provide pressure. You need a regulator and a pressurized tank to 'dive' and not get crushed.
Yes I had seen the exosuit model, but I was hoping for something in between [-O<