I think this one would fall too far away from the realm of realism. You'd need about 700 plants to produce 50 liters of 02 (a human uses roughly that amount, per hour).
That just means our CVs have to be properly mothership-sized. I accept this challenge. Or I would request hydroponics tank blocks filled with algae. I understand it tastes somewhat like spinach, so it can do double duty.
We are assuming that the O2 will be volumetric right? Then the hydroponics is supplementary and we also need a CO2 scrubber to renew the atmosphere. You still need some CO2 for the plants to make sugars that it need. The unmet needs can be met with electrolysis of water. This water can be brought up from the planets or from refining icy cometary fragments. It would be nice to catch up to one and ride in its tails to harvest the goodies. Or, there should be an Ort cloud of sort for each solar system that we can visit to mine icy comets for water.
At this point in time the oxygen system seems to work well. However one thing that constantly drives me crazy is how you start to drown immediately upon entering water with your helmet off. It sort of disrupts the immersion factor for me. I mean, we should have at least 30 seconds or so of "holding our breath" before we start to die from lack of oxygen. It would also be nice if we could improve the mechanics of swimming in general. Transitioning from swimming underwater to swimming on the surface should be seamless. It should be natural and easy to "swim upward" or "swim downward". Instead when you are on the surface it feels wonky trying to get underwater (unless you just equip a weapon and sink like a stone). And when you are swimming underwater, you have to try to use the jump button to get on the surface, but jump just a fraction of a hair to hard and you splash back down underwater again. Also on the (somewhat off-topic) subject of water, we need sea life! The lakes and seas on Akua feel empty and rather pointless. A sprinkling of underwater plants and sea animals would make the world seem that much more alive, and give a reason to explore the depths. Also, if you agree it makes sense to develop in that direction, how about eventually adding a class of submersible vehicles for fighting and exploring underwater? Thanks for your consideration! Best regards, Sof2man
2nded, & to further add to it, maybe in the future we could improve the Athleticness of our Character so we can hold our breath longer & last longer on Oxygen we got? (Kinda like a mental discipline kinda thing where ya train yourself to stay calm & keep your nerves steadier to avoid Oxygen wasting things, like panic fast breathing.)
Holding ones breath does no good in vacuums or toxic environment. In vacuums your lungs would explode In toxic environment your skin would burn/ melt. This includes holding your breath in a pool of acid. You think all planet have safe water sources. Now skills on conserving oxygen are some what better. A Slight Increase to max O2 levels.
What about when holding breath underwater with Helm off after the Crash Landing on Akua? Also good for not burning through Suit Oxygen Supply as fast in tense situations, like in middle of raiding a Omicron Alien Base. I never asked Zen Chi magic to give us mystical defense against vacuums or toxic environments. Dunno where THAT came from. Calm Soldier Suit Oxygen Supply vs panicking space civilian Suit Oxygen Supply... which will get expended & need reloaded faster & more often while doin stuff like trying to survive with your Helm on, on Omicron?
CO2 Scrubbers are currently active on the ISS and able together with few plants they have onboard to replenish their oxygen supply. So this kind of works irl already, hence if you have proper airlocks (tiny space with one door on both end) in the entrance there shouldn't be any need to hold helmet inside bases or capital vessels. Also 99% of planetary rings are made of water ice so you could just park your capital next to rings of Saturn or Jupiter and go fetch some small vessel sized hunks of ice for consumption. Algae here we come!
I'd have to agree that dying by puddle is the most annoying aspect of the game right now. I feel like the wicked witch of the West. You are a futuristic genetically engineered space cowboy. You should be able to hold your breath like an Olympian.
As I wrote on the food system section, I think the time given on the food bar and oxygen bar should be increased, or the speed at which they run out slowed. I have yet to take a base where I didn't have to run back to the ship or base for food and oxygen. And the portable O2 tanks (the ones that refill the oxygen bar by using them from your inventory) should be made larger. Two O2 tanks, when used to refill from an O2 station, fill my suit oxygen up fully. Why does it take over 5 portable tanks, each made from one regular tank of O2, to fill up the same bar?
Actually, that's 10 emergency bottles xD. Each emergency bottle is 50 air and your capacity is 500. And yeah, we need more air or at least the potential to have more air. I'm confident we'll eventually get a way to craft more air storage.
I have to agree, emergency bottles suck. This is why I usually strap an oxygen stations to all my small vessels or use my "Mini-Raid" small vessel to do the clean-up, since it can fit almost everywhere where you can walk in. Funnily enough in any sort of vessel you don't need helmet even if you're out in the passenger seat that is open to elements. You can even travel underwater or space in an open seat without needing helmet currently What bothers me more on the oxygen side, is that even when you build double door airlocks everywhere and have over 50 plants inside the air inside base or cap ship is still not breathable. I understand if you'd just leave all the doors open in a place where there's no atmosphere at all, if all your oxygen and rest of the air would be gone pretty quick. Alas there's no way to do this properly no matter how much you try and we can't currently even build very basic CO2 scrubbers, which are very much doable and currently active aboard the ISS-spacestation. So our current tech can maintain breathable atmosphere inside tiny space station for few crew members, but in game where we have warp drives and plasma weapons, yet we don't have a simple CO2 scrubber or plants which produce oxygen....
Exactly... if the big bottles provide say 100% of your O2 gauge (you get two ~50% refills per bottle right?) and the small ones 10%, then what happened to the other 90%?! Your constructor must be super leaky. I know it's supposed to be tough, but you've also gotta bear in mind that people can do basic math. Maybe just make the bottles cost metal sheets, or make O2 harder to come by in general.
IMHO the current O2 system is boring. All you do is shuffle the bottles around and click on a station. That is, if you dont want to make emerggency bottles at a loss... I think getting O2, keeping your reserves up as well as managing the rate of use should play a more significant role in the game. You could make an entire tech three centered around O2. Managing this vital resource could be really rewarding. Currently, all that really impacts your range away from any given source of oxygen is how much of it you are willing to bring with you. I'd much rather have more ways to get O2 along the way, a more eficcient suit, a rebreather unit or hey - simple 60 secconds of a "breath-bar". That would be enough for a lot of situations.
I agree on the water part. I'm sure the player can hold his breath for more than 4 seconds. Also we definitely need a breath bar as explained above... similar to what many MMOs use.
As of 1.5.4 I feel like the O2 system works well enough. If I had to change anything maybe I would allow a couple more O2 tanks in the small containers and make a device that can extract the O2 out of the jugs of water if you are stuck in space.
What I would like to see to be honest is as mentioned many times before... sealing your ship and having your own oxygenated environment in your ship/base. Very similar to take on Mars.
Would be nice if there'd be a setting for oxygen refiller in a vehicle to automatically top-up suits of people entering it. Other than that, I like the feature quite much, even if it only matters on Omicron in the beginning of the game, later oxygen is plentiful and becomes just another bar to refill from time to time. Maybe use of jetpack could require some of it to function (or even better, to avoid having players stuck without jetpack - half of its "power bar" would be as it is, the other using oxygen, thus makign it being used only for the longer jumps). I also wouldn't mind it if on planets with little air/in space suit tearing due to some of the sources of damages could lead to decompression in form of increased speed of oxygen usage till some patch (goo made from some plants or proper patches fabricated from resources) would be put on it (or, in the future, till some better, tearing-resistant spacesuit-armor would be equipped). Of course, this would also require both slightly increased max oxygen capacity of the default spacesuit (I mean, we will get different wearables in the future, if I am not mistaken) and increase of how much of oxygen is repleted with emergency and regular oxygen tanks so regular work wouldn't be more of a chore requiring constant refills because of jumping.
