Hey all, I've run in to a very specific issue that's challenging my fatigued brain this evening... I started a fresh Reforged Eden game on an Ocean planet. I just found a "Crashed Titan Back" POI - looks like the older model - deep in the Ocean. It has a few components I've like to retrieve whole on it, such as thrusters. However, my issue is that it's over 150 metres below the surface of the water, well beyond Wifi range so I cannot pick up those large items into connected storage. Even diving to 100 metres - max Wifi range - then sending the Drone the rest of the way isn't enough due to the depth of this wreck. Once upon a time, SV's could "fly" pretty well under water - oceans were generally shallow puddles back then, funnily enough lol - but they've been buoyant for ages now, unable to function under water at all. So, is there any way to salvage such deeply submerged wrecks? The only thing I can think of is to place a Core on the Wreck, build a tower of blocks on said wreck, placing a Wifi block on top, and pop a temporary storage container or two on the wreck. I'd then recover components into the temporary storage, before connecting to it remotely from my SV hovering above the ocean surface. A workable solution, yes, but quite a length to go to lol. Quite a while ago now, the devs did talk about ocean going vessels but no more came of it. Considering this current Ocean Planet I'm is a treasure trove of wrecks and various Ore-bearing rocks (Cobalt, Pentaxid, Promethium) it'd be fantastic to be able to explore the depths in a vessel. Note: it might be a Reforged Eden thing, but I've never encountered Oceans this deep in vanilla, so having some sort of submersible vehicle would be great. I've got this urge to build an underwater base, but the game's not quite there yet. Some interestingly possibilities here though. Scoob.
I went with that plan in the end. I placed a Core on the POI, looted any Cargo into one box, then, using linked storage, salvaged a load of truss blocks from the POI. I used these to build a tower 40+ blocks high. I had no Wifi block on me at the time but, when standing on top of said tower of 40+ truss blocks, I was in range of my SV's Wifi - still about 70m below the water's surface though. Standing on this tower, I was able to transfer stuff to the SV. After offloading the first batch of salvage, I returned to the POI with a Wifi block. I placed this on top of the tower to make future cargo transfer easier. I stripped everything of value off the POI, popping it into local storage, before heading back to my SV. After several trips I'd carried all I could back to my base. However, there were still several heavy items that my SV could not carry - two Advanced Thrusters and two Advanced RCS's. Luckily the stuff I'd already salvaged enabled me to get my WiP CV functional. With it's extra storage I was able to transport those remaining items. Of all things, I'm now out of Cobalt, so need to hunt for more of that. To the Moon! So, this worked great, but it would have been amazing to be able to deploy a small MV (Marine Vessel) to explore the ocean floor. One day hopefully! Scoob.
Easiest way I can think to address this would be by building a WiFi Extender - a simple piece of equipment consisting of a Base starter block, a small fuel tank, small generator, and a WiFi block - or simply add a few hundred blocks to the bottom of your SV with a WiFi block on it, and remove them when you're done salvaging. Having never touched a single mod, I can't say if the RE team has made any modifications that might change the functionality of things like WiFi but for a vanilla game, WiFi extenders are great.
Any additional BA starter block I built would have to be on the sea bed - sadly there are not floating blocks yet, enabling placement on the ocean surface. Wifi blocks work the same in RE as far as I'm aware, about 100m range from what I can tell. Without the ability to fly underwater, these somewhat clunky solutions are all we've got at the moment. I do hope under water vessels are considered again in the future, along with the ability to automatically displace any water in any underwater BA when pressurised. Under-sea gameplay has much to offer considering the resources I've found strew on the ocean floor. From ample food to many resource-bearing rocks. True under-water deposits would be cool also. Still happy with the solution I chose, it worked well, just want that underwater gameplay Scoob.
I'd welcome Underwater gameplay as well - from vehicles designed for sub-aquatic operation to the ability to pressurize a base and push the water out and replace it with air. BUT... This is not an easy feat to accomplish, and would very likely require a great deal of work to implement. Subnautica is proof the Unity engine can handle sub-aquatic environments, but Subnautica was designed to be a sub-aquatic game, and it does a good job of it. We'd also need a lot of additional resources - underwater life forms, unique materials, and the like, to really make the seas of the various worlds be more than just an unbreathable environment - and don't even get me started on the water system... and all that adds up to either some impressively optimized coding, or a whole lot of people complaining they can't run the game on the PC's they cobbled together dumpster diving.
While I agree it would be a lot of work, I think it'd be worthwhile work. Also, considering the devs appeared to be wanting to go this route - at least they did, some time back - perhaps it's something we'll see. From my perspective, just giving us a type of Thruster that works underwater would be a huge step forward as there are already things to explore / salvage / collect on the sea floor. SV's were perfectly capable of being flown underwater once upon a time, but that ability was removed. How that ability was removed, I don't know, maybe a simple "Works underwater" flag, or something else. Considering water in Empyrion is somewhat unsubstantial - it cannot be interacted with on a terrain level, I'd hope it'd be relatively simple to add an underwater thruster. If it is relatively straight-forward to add a Thruster (let's say SV class to keep things simple) that operates under water, then that's a huge part of the job achieved. Being able to have hybrid craft that can both fly using regular thrusters and switch over to marine thrusters when in water would be pretty cool. It would be interesting to hear the devs thoughts on this. Underwater craft were on their list once upon a time but, back then, there really wasn't anything to do under water. Things have changed, certainly in the Reforged Eden Scenario I'm currently playing, with collectable resources and POI's in the form of crashed ships. So, from a vehicular stand point, unless there's some other factor involved, re-enabling under water functionality for a new thruster type should be relatively simple. Having a method to "remove" water blocks if an area has O2 also sound doable - we can displace water permanently by just placing a block after all. Fully simulated flowing water though...well, I don't really see that as an option in the foreseeable future. However, I suspect some approximation of this could be cheated in. Personally, I'd happily settle for a "This base has O2, insta-displace all water" in the same way as vacuum / non-breathable atmosphere is displaced the moment the O2 comes on line in a regular base. Of course, I don't know how things work under the hood, but from what little I can tell - and based on how things used to work - the basics of underwater vessels and, to a degree, true underwater habitats are possible, even without a proper water physics simulation. Once these "cheating" basics are in, additional underwater fauna - ones that swim rather than walk along the sea floor - can be added over time and, I suspect, additional flora would be fairly easy as there's already plenty. Resource rocks of course already exist on the sea floor, but for regular resource deposits to be added, we'd need a way to simulate any excavations filling up as the player digs. If all this happened during the Alpha phase, I think people would have been perfectly happy if things were a bit janky initially as we tested the evolving feature set. As the game is technically release now though, it might look bad to have an unfinished feature like this. Extensive Experimental stage is where it should be. At the end of the day, even in their current form, the oceans can be interesting places with lots to do, if only we could fly / drive to the deepest depths in a vessel. Scoob.
The new flight mechanics and simulated "drag" were inexistent at that time, and flight was merely an arcadey thing with very simple motion. This was probably the reason why "flying underwater" could be done even if it was not planned to allow it. I think someone tricked the game by having the core way up above the ship (SV?), so it could be in the water and move around while the core was above water. As for "Subnautica" can terrain be modified the same way as in Empyrion ? Is building the same with blocks and shapes ? What physics engine is used ? I know it keeps players busy dreaming about possibilities, but it's not realistic expectations for what can be achieved here.
Yeah, I had assumed the new flight model probably changed things in that regard, but I'm not of course totally sure of why flying underwater no longer works, only the devs can answer that. I think Core location may be the deciding factor, i.e. some of my designs can dunk into water only to immediately stall, others have to be like 50% submerged before they stall. Like I said, I think there's enough underwater content now for the addition of submersible thrusters / some other way for vessels to work underwater to be a fun addition to the game. The question - for the devs - is what is stopping this being viable currently? A simple "works underwater" flag being set on a new group of Thrusters, or a Core engine limitation since aerodynamics was added? It's conceivable that the addition of aerodynamics might make underwater traversal via vessel easier to implement as the density of the medium the vessel is going through is already a thing... It really depends on how things have been changed / implemented. Sure, without the other stuff being done, such as a better simulation (even if very rough) of water and having water able to be displaced / fill holes made in terrain things might feel a little janky. I still feel there's gameplay value here though, even with water being what it is. I certainly would have welcomed being able to traverse the deep oceans on this particular RE planet. Scoob.
I think the water volume is blocks just like everything else. Just drill down on the ocean floor more than 1 block equivalent depth and you magically are back in an oxygen environment. (for those planets that have it) However the water/ground plane is calculated at generation time, once you get below that 1 block depth you have O2 again. I discovered this quite by accident some time ago trying to mine promethium crystals from the bottom of the deep ocean in thick brush, and I would lose them often. So I would dig a small hole for them to drop down into and lo and behold...air.
Yeah, how water "works" is rather surprising the first time you realise what's going on lol. It was - not tried recently - fully possible to make an underwater base by placing blocks, then removing them as the water remained displaced. Hence it was possible to create an underwater, yet seemingly air-tight Base. I seem to recall there were potential issue when leaving / returning to the playfield though. However, I've not played with this in a while. Water is weird as it overrides everything else. I mean, the second the player goes under water - even if sat in a sealed (CV/HV) Cockpit or on a sealed CV bridge - the player's O2 is cut off if not wearing a helmet. Water passes through everything in this regard. If water could be treated like regular atmosphere - so displaced via a sealed space with O2 supply - and visually be displaced too, that'd help with the "going underwater in a sealed vessel" angle of submarine exploration. I think that's the largest hurdle as I see it for underwater vessels, allowing sealed vessels to work. The game already does the work to seal an environment of course - it was added ages ago in an Alpha update - so I suspect having vessel seal under water would be fairly readily achievable, the visual side less so. Purely speculating here of course. I know the devs were interested in expanding the underwater aspect of the game with vessels able to function in this environment. However, it's not been discussed again, as far as I'm aware, in a long time. Scoob.
The first iteration of this allowed to have big holes act as "seals" because the game only checked for whole blocks to define the volume, so we could make a simple walkway in the void with thin shapes like windows or thin wall with the invisible part pointing up, and in that "space" temperature and O2 were like in the interior of the vessel. When they changed that so that O2 could pass throught half blocks some time after then it was not possible anymore. But be it in space or in a planet atmosphere, the "volume" is the same in terms of physics and render. Defining the volume contained by a ship or base geometry and simply triggering "put your helmet" does not require to change the render and physics of the environment around the player. Water has different physics and visuals, and it would be problematic especially in cockpits, where there is no such thing as O2 debugger tool to find leaks : they are sealed but it's based on the whole model and not on some check for holes in the geometry. This would require a different solution than whatever they could do for other "sealed spaces".
