Where large bodies of water are concerned, the nearly infinite approximation is ok; where small bodies of water are concerned, it's really not. Which is to say that I would like to see the issue of water generators giving infinite water from tiny pools of water to be fixed. Players would simply let in a bit of water to form the pool and then seal up the ground again. Particularly dedicated players would tunnel hundreds of meters to a water source, let some in, and then seal up the tunnel. In any case, the result would be the same: infinite water wherever you want it, and thus as secure as everything else in your base. The bottom line is that the devs are going to have to decide if they want to support dynamic water; if not, the combination of relocatable water and never-depleting water will generate balance issues (for example, consider taking a small amount of water to the moon; now you have an infinite oxygen source right in your moon base).
There's other methods that could be used for water generation, placement and removal. Less realistic, less laggy, minecraftish alternatives. 1: Surface layers of water determine the area that will fill with water if exposed to sky. This water is infinite. If you dig out terrain under a lake/ocean, it'll automatically replace with water. A sealed tunnel/cave underneath the ocean will not fill as the interior space isn't exposed to the sky. Digging a hole in the ceiling of that tunnel to the ocean/lake above exposes it to the sky and will fill the tunnel with water in the size and shape of the hole, it does not flow along the tunnel for performance reasons. 2: Ventilators on a planet will replace pressurizable rooms containing terrain water with terrain air blocks upon activation of successful pressurization (Base only, because I have no idea how this could be done with a moving ship). In the event of a breach of an underwater base, the room would no longer be pressurizable and the terrain air would be auto-removed, resulting in function-1 refilling that room with water. 3: Water can be placed in a block state (behold! minecraft physics!). Water placed by the player (probably using an HV-mounted tool) is finite and will be consumed by a water generator. Water is placed as a block. Yes, it's unrealistic, but it's the most performance-friendly method with the most practical uses.
Now I'm imagining someone building a base out of water blocks . . . maybe some glass/plastic could be included in the recipe just to motivate the water maintaining a cube shape? In any case, the tricky part would be in making the water consumable; ideally the level of water in the block should decrease as it's consumed, and water would flow across boundaries with other water blocks. At worst, I suppose water blocks could have a "amount remaining" indicator which would be decremented when drawn upon by a water generator, but without any change in their visual appearance. This approach would also allow for completely decorative water blocks to be crafted without water (a bit strange, perhaps). Of the non-dynamic-voxel-water options, this one might be the best (in terms of not breaking anything mechanically; the physics is highly questionable, but I'd much rather avoid infinite in-base water exploits than have exact physics).
Now you've gone from flowing water to transporting it manually. Nobody said anything about moving water from one place to another in containers. Besides, with a vacuum, water boils away, so taking it to the moon would be pretty pointless. Having said that, it has been suggested that we have huge water tanks that we can fill from a source to provide water for Oxygen and Hydrogen manufacture for space and moon bases. This water remains in the tanks and is used up by the process, that's not difficult to do considering we already have containment for Oxygen and Promethium that is used up. However, the tank would have to be really huge, thousands of gallons taking a 9x5x3 block space and take several trips using a smaller SV based tank with a pipe on it (used to collect water and deposit it in the main tank) to fill up. An easy fix for player made underground base pools would be: Sealed unnatural containment means the water slowly soaks into the ground and disappears. The ground around a water source is saturated and will not allow any more water to soak into it, build a nice tunnel and the water will have to saturate the ground there before it remains filled. Let's just presume that will take more water than the source can provide and that blocks will leak the water slowly. That means you can keep digging the tunnel to the source and refilling it before sealing the tunnel up, but it's not going to be long before your water disappears again no matter how many times you do it. You want to dig the hole and reseal it every couple of days, that's up to you. Otherwise, the only way to keep the water from disappearing is to leave it unsealed, that makes it only really useful for PVE or hardcore PVP players who can defend the opening.
I thought that was one of the main points of having something approaching dynamic water: to be able to move it around, and make pools of it where you wanted it, not just where it happened to spawn at world generation. Once water can move, how it gets to its destination doesn't matter terribly much; it's the fact that it can be moved at all that is important. Not if it's in your base. One could easily imagine a sealed base with drill-deposited rock inside forming a basin to put water in (and coincidentally making a surface on which to place a water generator. Sure, I'd love to have large water tanks. And I'd definitely make dedicated cargo ships to haul liquid resources (hopefully SVs would have access to large tanks, because that would be a silly restriction otherwise). BA-based water extractors would round out the equipment and would mean an end to large arrays of water generators in mid- and late-game. Then players will simply make extremely narrow tunnels that have just enough cross-sectional area to keep the water flowing. This raises the related questions of where all that water is going (when it's draining into the ground), and how are surface water sources being replenished. Also, there's the issue of how you define "natural" and "unnatural" containment, and the potential for shenanigans by covering up all the pools of water near someone else's base (not to mention the exclusion of future generation of underwater lakes). Also, would BA blocks contain water (and if not, why not?)? Basically, I wouldn't call this proposal an "easy fix."
Realised today just how many boats I had made... Was nice to see them all spawned and explore inside each one again
Usually floating water is a huge beast of a task, that is easier to do wrong and laggy than the other way around. Imo, with some creative thinking, there are means to get more watery goodness inside the game without much strain for the devs. Transportation: - There is a viable option to make a submarine even now - make a HV, park in on top of a lake, get out, dive in and build a long vertical column of blocks downward into the lake. Make a small platform at the end, place a cockpit here and some lights (optional). This way you can enter this submerged cockpit and drive around at 40 m/s while technically being under water! Extra score for the harvester What it lacks is the elevation change. This design could use a special bathysphere device - a closed cockpit suspended on a retractable cable below the mothership, that can go up and down freely. - HV is constrained hard with its drive mechanics. Real 3D underwater navigation may be impossible without major overhaul, so the best thing, imo, is to let it submerge at will, let have any reasonable altitude while in water (like 0-3 meters above, -30-0 meters below; 1,5 and -15 for green hovers) and cap the underwater speed at 50% or give different engines a different underwater rating and use it instead (jets should do better). As a bonus, it would be able to resurface by itself, instead of crawling to the shore. The "drop down" is already in place - if you plummet a heavy and underpowered HV at high speed into the water, it will sink, while maintaining lower speeds and higher altitude helps it to "climb" the surface and move on. - There can be at least a hand-held hydrojet, that works like motorcycle, but allows quick swimming. It can be limited to water only, refusing to go above the surface. It is a simple and separate entity, not breaking the existing drive/flight mechanic at all. Liquids and barriers: - The water shader is quirky. One can manipulate camera (V, alt-look) around so that underwater landscape shows as clear, non-water one, or that above-water landscape is blue and watery (when sitting in the "drowned" HV). There can be a "waterfield" admin device, that uses forcefield air blocking mechanic to determine the closed volume below itself and imply water shader on all entities inside, making an illusion of indoor pool (or even summon "virtual" water voxels in such closed volume instead of O2 objects). Drowned ruins, anyone? - There can be a forcefield that renders water voxels "non-existent" altogether in some volume when powered, reusing the offline protection mechanic. When you core the underwater base, the device shuts sown and water voxels become real again, flooding the base instantly. That would be much less CPU-intensive that the free-flow suggestion. - As for the "half-full" water blocks - there are already several models for each block, representing damage levels. Water blocks could have such models too, being full, 3/4 full, 1/2 full, 1/4 full (or with 1/8 steps for smoothness) with strict downward facing. Filling the block with water is equal to repairing, taking water from it is equal to damaging (the tool to do it is probably a bucket), and direct damage can be assumed as boiling it away, so water armor for ships can be a real thing The free flow in this model can be imitated with averaging the values across the connected blocks, not an intensive algorithm either.
Hmm water..... I dont know if anyone else has commented on it, but how many here are fed up of drowning in water when you are standing in the shallows because the game is designed that, to go in water you must put your damn helmet on? I mean every survival game I have seen in existance, allows the player to swim on the surface of water without drowning because they aren't wearing the damn helmet. This game has been in Early Access now for how long 4 to 5 years? swimming in water without drowning is survival game BASICS and they still have done nothing to solve it. Its like their interpretation of humans of the future are incapable of holding their breath for a couple minutes without needing SCUBA gear to survive
You can hold your breath now for about 5(?) seconds (which is minutes in the game world), and you can swim at the surface without a helmet so long as your hands are empty. That said, some kind of breath meter would be nice to have.
geostar, that is total and utter BULL I was on this game on Sunday, 16th Decemeber, building a new expansion on my base over a lake, I was KNEE DEEP, the game insisted I put my helmet on. I started to drown with 3/4s of my body in an oxygenated environment, because my knees were under the water... it is pathetic. KNEE DEEP do you know where on the human body this location is? Why do you need to hold your breath for 5 seconds, when your mouth isn't even in the water? Go into your nearest Lake, River or Surf upto your knees and record how long it takes you to start drowning to lack of oxygen because you are NOT wearing scuba gear........... 3 1/2 years of Early Access, and they STILL haven't got the basic mechanics EVERY SINGLE OTHER survival game I have ever played, got right on DAY ONE of release.
If there are water mechanics, maybe also tidal and waves effects depend of the distance and mass of celestial bodies like moons.
Well, I don't know what to tell you, as I just tested this, and seem to be fine standing in water nearly up to my neck. If you can reproduce it, file a bug report.
Its always been like that as far as I know, struggling to breathe in knee deep or waist deep water, though you can swim on the surface and breath. Not tested this in a9 though. The mechanics of water are a non issue for eleon and never really have been so they have no reason to make any changes in that area yet. (with exception of recent hv sinking bug) Unless it is reported as an issue by players, they will probably never change the drowning in knee deep water issue. I personally would like to see that fixed at some point but even for me this is a non issue. A player can easily enough avoid doing it. In the future eleon may start to build more onto the water structure of the game. This thread is just for ideas toward that possible eventuality. That 3 and a half years early access has been well spent advancing elements of the game that required advancing. They will get to the water eventually but even hummel stated that water stuff is less than trivial for the dev team at this time.
Hey there, would be cool to see a pic of your over lake extension and if anyone else has some water works pics please by all means share them ! I will post pics of my little boat house docks later.
subnautica is free till december 27th on epic games (supplier of fortnite) Gonna give that a try till 9.0 is ready
This does sound like a bug. It's this a new start or from an earlier save? Have you filed a bug report?
Played A9 a bit, new Talon POIs use colored reflecting surface as a water substitute, so the demand is already there. A simple way to make waterways would be making a solid wall block or even a thin plate with a water surface shader/animation on it and a "splash-splash" sound instead of footsteps. That would cater for immediate needs for now.
A "liquid" block, with some basic block shapes. Could be the different colors of water, as well as lava and glowing toxic slime, etc. Would really help out in POI creation too.
The day I could build a pressurized base under water would be a happy one for me. That's all I'd need.
