Shuttlebugs. That's all there needs to be said.
CrazyAceking
New York, NY, 10003 Join Date: 2015-05-09 Member: 204307Members
New York, NY, 10003 Join Date: 2015-05-09 Member: 204307Members
These fauna are possibly, for lack of a better word, the least interesting fauna in the game. Whenever I see one, it't a non event. They are always swimming towards the wall, and they don't actually latch onto it like they're supposed to. They're not much to look at either to be quite honest. Sure, on their own, they look semi interesting. But compared to the rest of the creatures it shares a game with, it looks.... kinda bland. I don't know, tell me if I make sense.
Comments
And?
In all seriousness though, it's your opinion. I personally like them, if only because their design is so weird and creative that I've got to hand it to whoever thought them up
I'd like to see some of that. It would add just a little tiny bit more interest to the fauna behavior.
I can relate. After all, aren't we all essentially shuttlebug?
Woah. That's deep.
Kinda-sorta gets ya right in the swim bladder.
Got an issue with those as well you scoundrel!
That's what happens when the developer only works for 6 days and then has a rest.
Shuttlebugs are a little small, but I see no reason they couldn't be a candidate for "leftover Precursor larvae that don't ever mature to full size in the absence of their parents or some other missing factor". Honestly they're one of the best candidates because they're one of the very few Subnautica critters with actual legs, given that we can see the Precursors were comfortable out of water. I guess that limits us to the Sea Treaders, Cave Crawlers, and Shuttlebugs.
Having a critter whose presence says "there's a cave opening 'round here" is handy, no doubt. It is a little disappointing that they're that shallow, not useful for literally anything else gameplay-wise. Which is true of virtually every creature that only has one purpose (including "just being hostile").
Most critters have at least one or two things that make them distinct, one or two things that make them useful, interesting, or interactive (or some of each). The Rays are one exception, as they're basically living scenery, but at least you can breed them in captivity. You can't even do that with Shuttlebugs. Even the Sea Treaders can potentially hurt you and produce at least two useful resources (sort-of; poo needs rebalancing as a Bioreactor fuel if it's gonna have no other use and be so rare). On top of being kind of spectacular to look at, which Shuttlebugs are most definitely not.
Lastly... how do these things even eat? Through osmosis? There also seem to be a whole heapin' lot of 'em in bare rock caverns completely free of coral, plants, or "organic detritus" that their PDA entry says they eat. Just sayin'.
Maybe they eat their wounded and the PDA just doesn't see that...
Well put. (And I mean that.)
The vast majority of life is uninteresting. Is a housefly interesting? No. Seeing one is a non-event, always flying toward a window, and doesn't actually do anything it's theoretically supposed to. But they're there, nevertheless. Minnows, anchovies, fruit flies, focus groups that give us Dancing with the Stars - uninteresting things that just clutter up our lives. In fact, most of the world can be summed up as "relatively uninteresting, non-events."
'At's life for ya.
But the world has these things, and when games don't implement appropriate clutter - both animate and inanimate - gamers tend to react negatively. The world feels too flat or too dead. So, in Subnautica, we have the shuttlebug: a quiet, unassuming, inoffensive little creature that just exists to swim around and bump into stuff.
(I'm not sure how @Shuttlebug swims, but the in-game creature seems to be more or less a total miss on the description.)
Point is, we need the shuttlebug. (In game.) (And here, too.) It's one of the few things that doesn't try to kill us and just kinda populates the world.
Pretty much my role in society
I exist to keep the peace
But why don't these things do anything?
First off... cripes, this argument again? Wasn't there another thread about this a while back??
Second, your claim completely overlooks the fact that the Shuttlebug does have a stated purpose; a waste recycler. This reason for it's existence is front-and-center of it's databank entry, so I have no clue how or why so many people insist it has no reason to exist beyond "white noise clutter." Hell, that role honestly better fits the Crashfish, considering how it's self-destruct behavior seems completely counterproductive to survival.
Surely you're being deliberately obtuse and you don't really need anyone to explain the difference between mechanics and lore?
We're talking about mechanically, in the game, the Shuttlebug does nothing. It just swims about. You don't see it recycling any waste, so as a game element it's just window dressing. All the examples @scifiwriterguy gave have reasons to exist; flies, minnows, anchovies etc. The point is, you don't ever really see them doing anything but buzzing/swimming around even though they're part of the ecosystem.
The complete opposite is true of the Crashfish; mechanically it serves as a danger to the player, so it's existence in the game is well justified. Hence, no threads complaining about it.
Also, your point about them seeming completely counterproductive is valid, but short-sighted. They do seem counterproductive, but probably aren't. There are plenty of things in the real world which will sacrifice themselves to protect their colony or their young, and their tactics also seem counterproductive until you're educated on why they do it. There are lots of birds such as Plovers which will fake an injury, just so predators catch and eat them instead of others. Many worms and other invertebrates will let their young cannibalise them as their first meal. Male Redback spiders get devoured by the female after procreation, literally dying for sex, along with many other species. There are hundreds of examples just like these few.
I've always assumed the Crashfish are like bees, who die when they sting yet their purpose is fulfilled, they are protecting the colony and paying the ultimate price. If one Crashfish blows itself up, perhaps all the Crashfish for miles around are alerted and can hide from predators. Perhaps the Crashfish eggs or fry are saved by the parent's sacrifice. But we're straying into fan-theories now.
Later you are careful but don't see this behaviour again. It was some rare random unknown occurance turning these creatures aggresive. But since then you will always be more careful when swimming near shuttlebugs.
Concept: fear from unpredictability
Ah, but this isn't a horror game with badass evil like mimics or even worse things ...
I'm quite fine with lots of featureless fauna and flora. Maybe we should get featureless tech oddities to collect as trophies too?
No. No I'm not. Because these things go hand-in-hand - the Shuttlebug is a dung-scavenger, not a predator. If anything, it often feels more like people go out of the way to criticize the Shuttlebug in that regard.
A creature like that wouldn't be edible because of the bacteria count that'd be found in a creature that can digest dung, nor would it appear to do much to the naked eye since what it feeds on is likely spread throughout the sands. Ergo, the answer applies to both - mechanically, it's not supposed to do anything beneficial to the player, anymore than Reaper Leviathans are supposed to do anything beneficial to the player.
Hell, none of what @scifiwriterguy stated even countermands that - do we ourselves ever see flies, minnows or anchovies do any of what he illustrated ourselves? Because last I checked, the matter they feed on is often smaller than is visible to the naked eye unless you're using close-range microscopes - otherwise, we never see them "doing anything but buzzing/swimming around even though they're part of the ecosystem" either, rendering the argument moot.
Honestly... I fail to see how that works, because if anything it's the complete and utter reverse of that; the Crashfish serves no purpose lore-wise for it's functions. That it's an in-game danger to the player is severely undermined by there bing no tangible explanation for how it exists in-universe - how and why did it evolve in such a way and for what reason did it evolve that way as dictated by it's environment?
Without that kind of explanation, it makes the Crashfish feel like just an artificial obstacle and therefore is immersion-breaking. Arguing gameplay mechanics is academic in that regard - it still does not change the fact that, as far as the environment goes, it has no realistic reason to exist. Hell, even by your own standards, the Crashfish is the worse offender - if, according to you, an inability to see an animal contribute to it's ecosystem makes it useless in a game, than how does the Crashfish not contributing to it's environment in any way somehow get a pass from you? That it contributes a threat to the player doesn't equate to it contributing anything to the surrounding environment like the Shuttlebug does, making your argument/logic feel completely one-sided.
The Crashfish doesn't protect it's young; half the time it's self-destruct will destroy it's own nest and the eggs inside. The Crashfish doesn't help it's environment; if anything it causes more damage than I do. The Crashfish doesn't serve a role in pollination; it's body absorbs sulphur and the like. The Crashfish doesn't serve a role in the food chain; it's self-destruct and combustable insides make it impossible to feed on. The Crashfish doesn't fake it's injuries; it violently dies and chases the creature that attacked it down to do so. The Crashfish doesn't let it's young eat it; it's young grow up inside the crashfish-plant (which, again, it has no qualms about blowing up beside if it happens to be too close).
I'm sorry, but what exactly is bee-like about any of that? What is so "short-sighted" about seeing a creature like that as not realistically contributing to it's ecosystem and instead coming across as an artificially-placed threat to the player?
There's about 3 rooms in the Aurora with those if you care for them. Captain's quarters (currently only accessible with cheats), that one dude's living quarters (Sweet Offer PDA has the code), and the tech lab or whatever, that has the Repulsion blueprint (corruption detected in PDA blueprints).
Right. That's exactly my point... not sure what you're getting at, it seems we agree here. The reason for it to exist is it's scavenging which we don't see, mechanically, and that's okay. Like tiny insects fluttering around our gardens, they are just a visual element that we know performs a function we never (rarely) see. I've always supported the Shuttlebug's existence, both mechanically and in the game's lore.
So it seems like your objection to the Crashfish is entirely because there's no canon lore to explain it's bizarre behaviour. I can understand where you're coming from, and I really do sympathise if that's the way you feel, but I have to wonder if you have the same issue with other creatures in other games. Do you require orcs and monsters to have their entire biology explained lest you feel a break in immersion? Do you need to know how zombies are able to stave off rigor mortis when you play the hundreds of games which include them? How in the name of all that's holy are the people of the Fallout games always complaining about having no food when there's edible goodies scattered all over the world? As a player, you're asking a hell of a lot of the developers if you expect every little thing explained rationally.
It does often destroy it's own nest, but it might just be a very dumb creature. It could easily be helping it's environment, we just don't know how. Perhaps the nests give off some mineral or gas, helping to make the surrounding waters "fertile" for coral or other fish. Who knows how much wonderful chemicals are released into the water when one of those bad boys blows.
You say it doesn't serve a role in the food chain, because it blows up, but there are other things than predators to consider. Perhaps there are microbes or parasites living off it, which then leave to become food for other stuff. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I consider your inability to think beyond the canon lore you've been given pretty short-sighted, yeah. I'm not trying to be a dick or insult you, I just can't relate to your way of thinking.
You admitted with your first paragraph that the Shuttlebug does stuff for the environment (but we don't ever see it) so they are validated. What's so different about the Crashfish just because it's biology isn't written down? I really can't see how anybody could possibly fail to imagine any benefit the Crashfish might have to it's ecosystem, so why does it have to be written in stone, canon, in the PDA for it to be valid to you?
No - because your point is inherently flawed. You claimed that if we don't see the Shuttlebug doing anything in game, than it has no point mechanically.. and yet, we don't see flies, minnows or anchovies do anything in real-life, yet they do in fact have a point mechanically.
We do not in fact agree, because your argument was that it wasn't okay for it to do nothing mechanically... even though that is (A) not what the Shuttlebug is, and (B) it's in-game behavior is no different than flies in the real-world, yet you seemingly treat it differently. It is not only self-defeating, but makes it look like you don't even understand the argument being made - neither mine nor even your own. You claimed that we do not see them be part of the ecosystem; I'm arguing that is not true.
No; honestly, that's not it at all - it's it's bizarre physiology that has me objecting to your claims of it being a realistic component to any ecosystem. Under what circumstances would a creature develop so that literally it's only function is to explode when it's body impacts something? And again, no - if anything, it's because there isn't any such issues with the rest of the fauna that this is magnified, in an exploration-and-discovery game where the entire purpose of scanning a creature literally is to have their biology explained and learn how they fit into the ecosystem.
If orcs are in a game where one of the primary purposes of examining them was to learn about their biology, than of course not getting any sensible explanation would break immersion - just like an RPG without books and text-lore would break immersion, or an FPS without handguns. I most certainly would require knowing how zombies stave off rigor mortis if exploring, analyzing and and learning was one of the key purposes that game was described as having - you know, like it is in Subnautica?
Honestly speaking, how can you even ask whether or not it's required in a game where scanning the environment and using discovery as the basis of in-game motivation? Especially when games like Fallout do explain why there's edible items scattered across the world (dead past travelers, abandoned refuges, old stores, etc)? I'm sorry, but it honestly feels like it's more that you're not even aware of how different game genres demand different criteria be met, with the depths of each field changing depending on what their focus is on.
Reapers are dumb creatures, too - the dumbest in the game, according to their data-bank entries - and yet even they don't attack each-other and evolved useful traits (echolocation and gripping mandibles) to better their own survival. By contrast, the Crashfish's evolving to be a living bomb and yet not having the intelligence to distinguish when self-destructing is necessary or not feels completely counterproductive to it's survival - if the answer was simply that it was dumb, it conceivably would have wiped itself out already by attacking each-other's clusters of plants, of which they live in groups of.
Furthermore, we do in fact know that the nests do not give off any minerals or gas - because when we scan them, we find no trace of such emissions. The only thing we find is a sulphur-like residue on the inner leaves, left behind by the Crashfish itself - which in and of itself generally isn't good at increasing fertility if it's in a combustable state like this stuff is. It's scans specifically state that the purpose of the sulfur is to make it combustable - none of which are "wonderful chemicals" since volatile combinations like that are more liable to be toxic due to the needed reactions for combustibility. It's even outright stated in the data-bank that the explosion's purpose is self-defensive, not microbial-diversification - these "bad boys" only "blow" to assure mutual destruction; it is not in any way done to benefit their environment, and claiming otherwise is not supported by the in-data or behaviors they show. Also, it's actually the Crashfish that feeds of of microbes and/or parasites to gain the needed sulphur for their chain-reactions. This is also a stated fact in the databank... so no, there is no "perhaps" of anything in regards to what they're doing; only a lack of explanation as to how a creature like this could have ever evolved.
Likewise, arguing a "we don't know how" stance is academic; there's nothing in-game to suggest that - whereas on the other hand, what the Shuttlebug provides for it's environment is solidly-stated fact. You can't take supposition against fact and say with any certainty that something with the former is more beneficial to it's environment than the latter. "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps" means all of nothing when the other thing has a stated truth behind it to justify it's existence here and now.
That's just it, though; it's more the complete opposite - it feels more like you're the one that's utterly ignoring the canon lore because you are too short-sightedly focused on "mights", "maybes" and "I think"'s to actually stop, look, contrast and compare the Crashfish to all these other creatures. You're taking assumptions of other creatures and using them as justification without the foresight to actually compare them and see the differences - in particular how the Crashfish lacks the same criteria as the species you're citing it to be like.
Ergo, rather than me being short-sighted, it feels more like you're not actually understanding what you're arguing. Once again, I argued that we're not supposed to see this because what the Shuttlebug is feeding on (fish dung) is not something often visible to the naked eye (since fish dung is often mixed into granules of sand, thereby you'd be unlikely to know the difference between it and the rest of the sands, caves, etc) - I pointed out how it made sense that we can't see it visibly because this matches the role it was given in the lore as a fish-dung recycler. The Crashfish, by contrast, was not given any such reason to justify even the things we see from it, let alone what we don't see - nothing to justify it's self-destructive nature as anything more than an artificially-placed player obstacle.
So in conclusion, no - again, it's the opposite for me; I can't see how anybody could imagine any benefit the Crashfish might have to it's ecosystem, when it doesn't have anything to back that up even theoretically thus far, let alone factually.
P.S. If you're going to keep this up, can you please take it to PM? You argued with me at length the last time there was a Shuttlebug discussion page, too - I don't want another repeat of clogged up and derailing texts going back-and-fourth all day...
Mechanically as in gameplay mechanics. Yes, maybe they have a function in the lore, but we don't get to see it in the game at all. Is there anything other than a PDA entry that shows us all that?
They eat fish dung... which is so small that it's often blended into, if not often mistaken for, sand granules. Which would be strewn throughout the sands and cave walls - we may be seeing it all the time for all we know. Plus, I think there's animations of the Shuttlebug deploying those tripod-legs of it to adhere to cave walls - if they're not feeding when swimming about, they'd definitely be feeding then.
In terms of gameplay mechanics, it's a cave-dweller life-form that's harmless - much like every single manta-ray creature in the game - and in terms of lore, it's there to feed on dung. Those are all in stark contrast to the Crashfish, which mechanically is just a threat to the player but lore-wise has no reason to explain why it's like that/what purposes that kind of evolutionary trait serves for it.