Did you update your game? It's in the September build. I don't personally know if it's experimental or stable, but given I was never given an option which one to download, I'm assuming it's the Stable build.
We somehow need difficulty in the "survivor" mode, it can come in many forms and energy management is one. Subnautica offers different modes, some of them remove difficulty, everyone is happy.
I prefer it to remain. It would be boring if everything would be easy.
Not to mention, it wouldn't make sense that a base needs power to produce oxygen if it doesn't take energy.
The problem, though, is that it's causing the Seamoth, exosuit, and Cyclops to bleed energy like a slashed artery right now. A large base with loads of renewable power sources like thermal plants and solar panels don't suffer much, but vehicles with non-renewable power cells need to carry veritable truck loads of spares just to stay outside the base for even an hour. Currently, a power cell lasts anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes in a Seamoth, so you'd be carrying over 10 spares in your personal inventory if you wish to be roaming around for an hour, which is silly and game breaking. And then you still need to recharge all 10+ cells when you get back to base, which ties up at least 5 charging stations for over 20 minutes while you sit and do nothing.
And that's just the Seamoth. Imagine the Cyclops that uses 6 power cells instead of 1.
Having the solar charging mod on the Seamoth helps a little ... but not everyone has that mod. And honestly, not everyone even has the power cell charging station.
I understand you want realism, but this has gone way past realism into the territory of people who literally enjoy pain. I advise you to think of it from the perspective of newer players who don't already have every blueprint in the game and are still spending most of their time exploring new wrecks for supplies.
EDIT: Perhaps offer different 'difficulty levels' of Survivor? Some of us like having to eat and drink and craft power cells without spending ALL our time doing nothing but that.
So take tonight as example: base has 700/700 power. I'm running around moving things. Night happens and suddenly the lights go out and the base is filling with water. Damage I thought, but there's nothing to fix or weld. No warning message. Nil on screen to tell me. Nada! So why did I suddenly lose power? My power source is a mix of solar panels and nuclear reactor (which was still active!!!) .
Is this oxygen draining power? if so it's way too much and means every night we'll have to retire to the pod. *shakes head*
I heard that the Devs were planning to implement the pipes to provide O2 to bases as well as having plantlife (I.e. living walls) passively produce it.
I play on stable and like Fathom I don't see the energy levels of my base affected. I do see my oxygen level "struggling", but it doesn't tie to the base's energy.
It's not unheard of that different saves do different things, like how since the previous update there've been reports of people encountering hordes of predators in the Safe Shallows. I can't imagine either of our experience is the intended effect of implementing "energy for oxygen", because base-wise, all it changes for me is that my oxygen level rapidly dips one below maximum and returns over and over, while for you base-living is essentially impossible.
As for the vehicles, I've only got the Seamoth yet (and my Seaglide probs clipped through the terrain) and while I do notice a stronger drain, it's nothing that gets in my way as an experienced player who knows where to go first and use my resources to maximum efficiency. For new players, I imagine the situation to be bad. The drain is heavy enough to discourage exploration or make exploration by savescumming the more attractive alternative. A small reduction for longterm gameplay purposes is acceptable (say, 20%?), but this is excessive. Not to mention I'm fairly certain extracting oxygen from water doesn't take that much energy to begin with. I'm also not quite certain why the time I need to refill my oxygen tanks in vehicles has been lengthened. What improvement is it to force me to sit around longer before I can continue my activities?
Heck, I'm not even that happy as an experienced player because I hate destroying the environment and these days it takes a lot of resources before you can start farming. I don't get the impression plants and coral grow back, so I swim around endlessly to get everything needed with minimal obvious damage. If resources would respawn/regrow, that'd take some of the artificial early-game pressure away.
So take tonight as example: base has 700/700 power. I'm running around moving things. Night happens and suddenly the lights go out and the base is filling with water. Damage I thought, but there's nothing to fix or weld. No warning message. Nil on screen to tell me. Nada! So why did I suddenly lose power? My power source is a mix of solar panels and nuclear reactor (which was still active!!!) .
Is this oxygen draining power? if so it's way too much and means every night we'll have to retire to the pod. *shakes head*
Exactly why I've started moving everything to a land base
The way of getting oxygen from water is electrolysis. For one person that would take 5.925kJ/min to supply a grown person with oxygen.
One square meter of solar panel generates around 1KW which converts into 60KJ/min so around 30 cm squared of solar panel should generate enough power for one person to breath.
So there should be no problem breathing in the base.
As for the seamoth, if a power-cell was the same size as a large car battery power wise, (because it is the future and they made battery's smaller) equaling 1KW/h, then it would take 10 hours for the seamoth to use up it's charge just via using oxygen.
So after all that I am fine with this feature as long as they balance it to real life or just all round balance it, (as long as 10 hours = around two days, and they don't have time magically going faster too much. )
I'm withholding judgement until they decide to give bases batteries or not. If not, then they need to ditch the drain. If we can compensate with batteries then they can leave it in.
The 700 power to 0 overnight has to be a bug, or you were running multiple moonpools, charging multiple vehicles and multiple batteries/power cells and fabricating like a mad man. Once I built a nuclear power plant, I ditched my solar panels and only ran out of power once. And that was because my four rods had depleted. Even with today's standards, fuel rods last years, not days so it caught me by surprise. Once I realized that I need to maintain the fuel rods and never let the second one turn into nuclear waste, my power never went below 200/500. Since then, I've added a bioreacter as an emergency backup in case I ever forget to change out the rods, because if you are only using nuclear power and it fails, you have no fabricator to make more rods, or anything else.
And the Cyclops, with it's 6 power cells, is actually an infinite power source. You can build one power cell charger on the Cyclops and once two cells are depleted, put them in the charger and they will be charged long before the third cell is depleted. Instead of moon pools, you could just build two Cyclops, which are almost as cheap as moon pools to build, and they can charge your other vehicles and themselves and everything else in the game. With it's 1200 power supply, I'm sure the reason the devs have not created a docking port for the Cyclops is because people could just build one long hallway with multiple docking ports and have a Cyclops base with so much room and power there would literally be no need to build anything else.
With the new Sept. 2016 build (in Freedom mode), I too have noticed a very large and rapid drain on the Seamoth's power cell just from it refilling my O2 tanks upon reentry.
I always carry a spare when I go exploring, but even with two, the actual time I can spend away from my base has been cut by almost 75% compared to what it was with the last update in August.
That seems more than a bit excessive when the games main draw is supposed to be Exploration.
Perhaps using this new depletion rate should be kept only in Survival mode?
>shrug<
My vote would be for it to be kept for Survival mode and toned down in Freedom mode.
In bases I'm mostly fine with it, but from the sounds of things it could probably stand to be balanced a bit more for sea vehicles. Just because we can recharge batteries and cells now, doesn't mean they need to have an insect's lifespan.
The devs we planning to remove certain modes upon release, creative is a given but freedom might be gone as well. So saying "hey if you don't like it just change modes" can't really apply if it's going to break the game upon 1.0
Maybe this should be restricted to hardcore mode instead.
I did not vote (yet) because I need to play more to judge. If the worst with baseS is stay out of them at night to avoid draining power than so be it, I have gotten used to working in the dark anyway. But it's the gimping of the prawn and seamoth that I worry about. I'm hoping the solar charger for the moth and the thermal charger for the prawn will counter the effects easily enough to be manageable with a couple extra cells.
If not it sounds like they really want to force us to fill our inventory with pipes which I just refuse. I will stop playing the game if I can't collect resources because I have to carry pipes around, it's enough that I already have to have a separate deep diving loadout to fill my inventory with tanks and batteries and the damn sea glide. If I have to fill the rest with pipe it will defeat the purpose of diving in the first place and thus defeat the purpose of the game.
The devs we planning to remove certain modes upon release, creative is a given but freedom might be gone as well. So saying "hey if you don't like it just change modes" can't really apply if it's going to break the game upon 1.0
Maybe this should be restricted to hardcore mode instead.
I did not vote (yet) because I need to play more to judge. If the worst with baseS is stay out of them at night to avoid draining power than so be it, I have gotten used to working in the dark anyway. But it's the gimping of the prawn and seamoth that I worry about. I'm hoping the solar charger for the moth and the thermal charger for the prawn will counter the effects easily enough to be manageable with a couple extra cells.
If not it sounds like they really want to force us to fill our inventory with pipes which I just refuse. I will stop playing the game if I can't collect resources because I have to carry pipes around, it's enough that I already have to have a separate deep diving loadout to fill my inventory with tanks and batteries and the damn sea glide. If I have to fill the rest with pipe it will defeat the purpose of diving in the first place and thus defeat the purpose of the game.
I don't even use the Pipes.
If they are going to make it so one HAS to use the pipes, then I might adapt, but more likely, I'll just move on to another game.
They really need to keep the two modes separate: Survival for the Hard-Core players with all the restrictions and Freedom for the Casuals with minimal restrictions.
Driving folks like me away because they want to cater to the Hard-Core players, is not a very smart move (IMO).
The devs we planning to remove certain modes upon release, creative is a given but freedom might be gone as well. So saying "hey if you don't like it just change modes" can't really apply if it's going to break the game upon 1.0
Can anyone confirm this? I've never played anything but survival, but I know a few people who play minecraft always on peaceful or in creative and they would love this game, unless creative/freedom were removed. What would the point of removing these be? I can see either removing or blocking areas that would give survival end game secrets away, but that can be done easily enough without scrapping all the work put into those modes.
It's been 10 days since I started a new game and am going to do so today, to try things out myself. I'm hoping it's hard enough that I have to pay attention, but not so hard that I have to remember to save every few minutes because I die so often. For me the Seamoth is a means of transport, to get to places I'm going to farm/explore and I tend to carry 3 reserve power cells already. If that's not enough to completely and thoroughly explore even the biggest of wrecks, and make a couple of stops on my way back to fill up my inventory, then I may jump on board the pity train. Otherwise, I'll chalk this up to things being different enough to yank people out of their comfort zones of knowing how to do everything and requiring them to learn new ways to operate. Changes like this are definitely frustrating, but it also provides for the feeling of accomplishment when they are overcome.
In bases I'm mostly fine with it, but from the sounds of things it could probably stand to be balanced a bit more for sea vehicles. Just because we can recharge batteries and cells now, doesn't mean they need to have an insect's lifespan.
They're going to add pipes to bases (where you can connect them to your base), where you'll also be able to pump oxygen from the surface (or from your base), so this isn't that bad and it makes base power something that you need to think about. It also means that you can't just use solar panels and forget about all other power options, which is fair. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to add a bioreactor to your base. Also, they *might* (or are thinking about) allowing plants to produce O2 in bases. Right now it might seem bad, but if the above options are added, I can see it as being balanced.
Anyway, that's just my opinion.
Regards,
Hybrid
I wasn't happy with the recent O2/power change, but after playing around with it I'm fine with the changes now. O2 consumption in bases tick constantly but it doesn't drain power at all, even at night with solar panels. The only way you could lose power is if you're using excessive power or charging stuff like before. I think though the power usage is a but much in vehicles but I'm fine if they leave it as is.
The devs we planning to remove certain modes upon release, creative is a given but freedom might be gone as well. So saying "hey if you don't like it just change modes" can't really apply if it's going to break the game upon 1.0
If this is true then I'm going to be switching to "uninstalled" mode and moving on to something better.
Is power really being drained? I started a new savegame today to check things out and so far I haven't seen it yet... I also noticed that solar panels now store 50 energy instead of 25. And here's the new base located in the kelp forest that has no stalkers in it...
The way of getting oxygen from water is electrolysis. For one person that would take 5.925kJ/min to supply a grown person with oxygen.
One square meter of solar panel generates around 1KW which converts into 60KJ/min so around 30 cm squared of solar panel should generate enough power for one person to breath.
So there should be no problem breathing in the base.
As for the seamoth, if a power-cell was the same size as a large car battery power wise, (because it is the future and they made battery's smaller) equaling 1KW/h, then it would take 10 hours for the seamoth to use up it's charge just via using oxygen.
So after all that I am fine with this feature as long as they balance it to real life or just all round balance it, (as long as 10 hours = around two days, and they don't have time magically going faster too much. )
Incorrect. According to maths done by people debunking those "trion gills" rebreather thing, you need to process 6L of water per breath, at 100% efficiency. That's an insane amount of pumping for a man-portable device, but not so bad for a pump mounted on a seabase. It's a 1/4 horsepower pump pushing water through a large oxygen exchange membrane, I guess?
Now that I look at MORE MATHS though, it might actually be more efficient to use electrolysis, as 1/4 hp is MORE energy than 5.9 kJ/min. Or perhaps passive exchange (FUTURE TECH!!!!) membranes hidden in bases, letting the water move past naturally...
As for the vehicles, I've only got the Seamoth yet (and my Seaglide probs clipped through the terrain) and while I do notice a stronger drain, it's nothing that gets in my way as an experienced player who knows where to go first and use my resources to maximum efficiency. For new players, I imagine the situation to be bad. The drain is heavy enough to discourage exploration or make exploration by savescumming the more attractive alternative. A small reduction for longterm gameplay purposes is acceptable (say, 20%?), but this is excessive. Not to mention I'm fairly certain extracting oxygen from water doesn't take that much energy to begin with. I'm also not quite certain why the time I need to refill my oxygen tanks in vehicles has been lengthened. What improvement is it to force me to sit around longer before I can continue my activities?
If I'm understanding it right (which I'm probably not, to be at all fair and honest) it would be possible to produce a humans worth of oxygen via electrolysis with a single solar panel with today's level of technology. So I can see burning 25 power on a daily basis for oxygen inside a base which I think comes out to about 12% of a single powercell's worth. Of course, this should be less in-game since the tech in the game is far advanced from hours.
The devs we planning to remove certain modes upon release, creative is a given but freedom might be gone as well. So saying "hey if you don't like it just change modes" can't really apply if it's going to break the game upon 1.0
Where did you hear this? I've never heard or seen anything suggesting this and really doesnt make sense. This is a big deal so if you could provide a source I would be most appreciative.
SidchickenPlumbing the subnautican depthsJoin Date: 2016-02-16Member: 213125Members
I have the new patch installed on stable, and this is not a thing. Entering my base at night does NOT drain the power. The seamoth DOES lose power quickly now, but I'm actually OK with it - once you've got the moonpool you can solar power that sucker and then it's business as usual.
SidchickenPlumbing the subnautican depthsJoin Date: 2016-02-16Member: 213125Members
Regarding the idea of removing modes, there is a card on the trello roadmap for "Rework game modes into custom UI", which is scheduled for December and has no info as of yet as to what that actually means. I read it to mean we'll be able to tweak our game settings to taste, and if so, I'm all for it. But we'll have to wait and see. Regardless there's not a smoking gun "Get rid of creative" card for anyone to get all upset about, so I suggest we all chill with Sammy the Safety Reaper and wait and see.
Now that I think of it, the whole development chain seems a bit loopy, looking at all the stuff that got nerfed;
Creepvine
Tanks (used to hold twice as much, but couldn't stack)
Fruit
Batteries
MP rooMs (not nerfed but gated)
Uranite being radioactive
Now Oxygen
Yes. Its too EZ to breath. Make game harder plz. I should be choking on my own blood constantly, requiring a steady input of nutrients to live. If I'm not constantly on the verge of death the game is way too lax.
Comments
Not to mention, it wouldn't make sense that a base needs power to produce oxygen if it doesn't take energy.
And that's just the Seamoth. Imagine the Cyclops that uses 6 power cells instead of 1.
Having the solar charging mod on the Seamoth helps a little ... but not everyone has that mod. And honestly, not everyone even has the power cell charging station.
I understand you want realism, but this has gone way past realism into the territory of people who literally enjoy pain. I advise you to think of it from the perspective of newer players who don't already have every blueprint in the game and are still spending most of their time exploring new wrecks for supplies.
EDIT: Perhaps offer different 'difficulty levels' of Survivor? Some of us like having to eat and drink and craft power cells without spending ALL our time doing nothing but that.
Is this oxygen draining power? if so it's way too much and means every night we'll have to retire to the pod. *shakes head*
It's not unheard of that different saves do different things, like how since the previous update there've been reports of people encountering hordes of predators in the Safe Shallows. I can't imagine either of our experience is the intended effect of implementing "energy for oxygen", because base-wise, all it changes for me is that my oxygen level rapidly dips one below maximum and returns over and over, while for you base-living is essentially impossible.
As for the vehicles, I've only got the Seamoth yet (and my Seaglide probs clipped through the terrain) and while I do notice a stronger drain, it's nothing that gets in my way as an experienced player who knows where to go first and use my resources to maximum efficiency. For new players, I imagine the situation to be bad. The drain is heavy enough to discourage exploration or make exploration by savescumming the more attractive alternative. A small reduction for longterm gameplay purposes is acceptable (say, 20%?), but this is excessive. Not to mention I'm fairly certain extracting oxygen from water doesn't take that much energy to begin with. I'm also not quite certain why the time I need to refill my oxygen tanks in vehicles has been lengthened. What improvement is it to force me to sit around longer before I can continue my activities?
Heck, I'm not even that happy as an experienced player because I hate destroying the environment and these days it takes a lot of resources before you can start farming. I don't get the impression plants and coral grow back, so I swim around endlessly to get everything needed with minimal obvious damage. If resources would respawn/regrow, that'd take some of the artificial early-game pressure away.
What like breathing :P
Exactly why I've started moving everything to a land base
One square meter of solar panel generates around 1KW which converts into 60KJ/min so around 30 cm squared of solar panel should generate enough power for one person to breath.
So there should be no problem breathing in the base.
As for the seamoth, if a power-cell was the same size as a large car battery power wise, (because it is the future and they made battery's smaller) equaling 1KW/h, then it would take 10 hours for the seamoth to use up it's charge just via using oxygen.
So after all that I am fine with this feature as long as they balance it to real life or just all round balance it, (as long as 10 hours = around two days, and they don't have time magically going faster too much. )
I always carry a spare when I go exploring, but even with two, the actual time I can spend away from my base has been cut by almost 75% compared to what it was with the last update in August.
That seems more than a bit excessive when the games main draw is supposed to be Exploration.
Perhaps using this new depletion rate should be kept only in Survival mode?
>shrug<
My vote would be for it to be kept for Survival mode and toned down in Freedom mode.
Maybe this should be restricted to hardcore mode instead.
I did not vote (yet) because I need to play more to judge. If the worst with baseS is stay out of them at night to avoid draining power than so be it, I have gotten used to working in the dark anyway. But it's the gimping of the prawn and seamoth that I worry about. I'm hoping the solar charger for the moth and the thermal charger for the prawn will counter the effects easily enough to be manageable with a couple extra cells.
If not it sounds like they really want to force us to fill our inventory with pipes which I just refuse. I will stop playing the game if I can't collect resources because I have to carry pipes around, it's enough that I already have to have a separate deep diving loadout to fill my inventory with tanks and batteries and the damn sea glide. If I have to fill the rest with pipe it will defeat the purpose of diving in the first place and thus defeat the purpose of the game.
I don't even use the Pipes.
If they are going to make it so one HAS to use the pipes, then I might adapt, but more likely, I'll just move on to another game.
They really need to keep the two modes separate: Survival for the Hard-Core players with all the restrictions and Freedom for the Casuals with minimal restrictions.
Driving folks like me away because they want to cater to the Hard-Core players, is not a very smart move (IMO).
>shrug<
Can anyone confirm this? I've never played anything but survival, but I know a few people who play minecraft always on peaceful or in creative and they would love this game, unless creative/freedom were removed. What would the point of removing these be? I can see either removing or blocking areas that would give survival end game secrets away, but that can be done easily enough without scrapping all the work put into those modes.
It's been 10 days since I started a new game and am going to do so today, to try things out myself. I'm hoping it's hard enough that I have to pay attention, but not so hard that I have to remember to save every few minutes because I die so often. For me the Seamoth is a means of transport, to get to places I'm going to farm/explore and I tend to carry 3 reserve power cells already. If that's not enough to completely and thoroughly explore even the biggest of wrecks, and make a couple of stops on my way back to fill up my inventory, then I may jump on board the pity train. Otherwise, I'll chalk this up to things being different enough to yank people out of their comfort zones of knowing how to do everything and requiring them to learn new ways to operate. Changes like this are definitely frustrating, but it also provides for the feeling of accomplishment when they are overcome.
Exactly !!
Anyway, that's just my opinion.
Regards,
Hybrid
If this is true then I'm going to be switching to "uninstalled" mode and moving on to something better.
Incorrect. According to maths done by people debunking those "trion gills" rebreather thing, you need to process 6L of water per breath, at 100% efficiency. That's an insane amount of pumping for a man-portable device, but not so bad for a pump mounted on a seabase. It's a 1/4 horsepower pump pushing water through a large oxygen exchange membrane, I guess?
Now that I look at MORE MATHS though, it might actually be more efficient to use electrolysis, as 1/4 hp is MORE energy than 5.9 kJ/min. Or perhaps passive exchange (FUTURE TECH!!!!) membranes hidden in bases, letting the water move past naturally...
Or just put plants in bases, idunno.
To add onto this... https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/493cvg/request_how_much_power_would_a_human_require_to/?st=itk653lt&sh=ea5f1c5c
http://www.gogreensolar.com/products/helios-3t6-145-145-watt-off-grid-solar-panel
If I'm understanding it right (which I'm probably not, to be at all fair and honest) it would be possible to produce a humans worth of oxygen via electrolysis with a single solar panel with today's level of technology. So I can see burning 25 power on a daily basis for oxygen inside a base which I think comes out to about 12% of a single powercell's worth. Of course, this should be less in-game since the tech in the game is far advanced from hours.
Where did you hear this? I've never heard or seen anything suggesting this and really doesnt make sense. This is a big deal so if you could provide a source I would be most appreciative.
Creepvine
Tanks (used to hold twice as much, but couldn't stack)
Fruit
Batteries
MP rooMs (not nerfed but gated)
Uranite being radioactive
Now Oxygen
Yes. Its too EZ to breath. Make game harder plz. I should be choking on my own blood constantly, requiring a steady input of nutrients to live. If I'm not constantly on the verge of death the game is way too lax.