Base-building in single-player games can be a lonely job. You deck out a massive palace only to wander its empty halls admiring your own handiwork. Personally I enjoy exploring for materials in crafting games more than building, but Early Access underwater survival game Subnautica might just change my mind.
Redditor KrankenwagenKolya recently shared an album of pictures of Avalon, an extensive seabase they built “in accordance with the terrain”. Avalon is nestled amid a forest of creepvines and contains labs, gardens, aquariums and even an emergency shelter. Architecturally, the long hallways and stacked pods seem right at home on the sea floor.
Sort of like Frank Lloyd Wright meets Jacques Cousteau.
There’s not a lot you can do with your base in Subanutica just yet, but KrankenwagenKolya has embraced the game’s research roleplay in style by preparing a home worthy of any underwater scientist. For instance, here’s their office where, thanks to Subnautica‘s latest update, they can finally sit in that chair.
Captain’s log: Look at all this water. Kinda makes you need to pee.
And who doesn’t love a lot of signage, even in a base where they’re unlikely to get lost?
Seriously. The best part of any crafting game is putting signs on stuff.
Their agriculture wing has plants sorted by types so KrankenwagenKolya can get their recommended doses of fruits and vegetables.
KrankenwagenKolya writes, “Most rooms in this area are uniform, only differences were what types of plants were being cultivated.”
The living walls are a great touch.
The agriculture wing from outside, with external growbeds.
KrankenwagenKolya even has some tanks for raising their own predators in case they, I don’t know, want to get eaten in their own home.
The only place for a stalker is locked behind glass, in my experience.
The sandshark tank. Don’t be fooled by its friendly smile.
Avalon contains some more pleasant animals too, such as this tank full of tasty, tasty peepers.
They see you coming to eat them. Don’t pretend you don’t feel bad.
By paying attention to their environment, they get a pretty good view.
Subnautica‘s focus on exploration and crafting as opposed to combat gives players a lot of freedom to do their own thing. While KrankenwagenKolya made Avalon in the game’s creative mode, which means they didn’t need to search for blueprints and supplies, they note that “I was able to build almost an exact copy that had everything but the interiors for filtration and the aquariums,” in case you want to try your hand at replicating it in your own game. You can check out the whole album for inspiration here.
All images credit of KrankenwagenKolya.
Comments
8 responses to “Player-Made Subnautica Base Is Extremely Impressive”
I’ve been curious about this for a while now, although have a phobia of the sea lol. I’m not sure if my PC could run it, it struggles to run ARK on medium settings (high is just too damn laggy)
If it struggles to run ARK you may find it difficult to run Subnautica, although it has a bunch of settings you could turn down which would help at the cost of graphical fidelity.
But there’s definitely some issues with the popping in of objects and textures which sometimes causes major frame drops, but hopefully they’ll get these kinks optimised and ironed out before release. It’s a beautiful game; my only wish is that it weren’t always the same map. Some randomness or procedural elements would make this game much better, imho.
Nop not true. It is very easy to run subnautica. if you can play low on ARK for low setting and get 30 fps then you can run subnautica normal setting for 50+ fps. I have a gtx 640m le
Personally, when you build a base that nobody sees, its sad. Theres often a lot of effort that goes into getting it just right, and it feels wasted when its not used.
I liked that about Saints Row 2 where the base gradually developed, and had people in it, albeit NPC’s. Other games have done the same, but thats the main one I remember. Was well handled.
When you start getting people into settlements in Fallout 4, thats nice as well, though I tended to just focus on the one settlement.
I’ve only played it for a couple of hours, but it’s pretty good. Still in Early Access – will be very impressive when complete.
From what I gather, this will be a pretty standard-sized base. Though, at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be much point in actually building a decent sized base – a problem that I hope they fix 🙂
(ie. make more things for a base to have – we need reasons to do things! Well, some of us do, anyway…)
I think adding scientific research and more involved manufacturing machines and processes would really gel well with this game.
Something like having to find and/or build a simple tabletop scanner in the base, then having to collect items (creepvine samples, blood kelp, etc.) to scan for a small amount of time. The results of these would then allow one to understand which machines are required to break the items down into their constituent parts in order to craft usable items (Fibre Mesh, Silicone Rubber, etc.). These then one would assign the computer to design after another wait, and subsequently construct once the requisite materials have been collected and provided. This way one could augment one’s items’ attributes and improve their chances of survival while providing purpose, direction, and more interesting and involved gameplay. How cool would that be?!
Something like that is coming soon, apparently. There is a hand held DNA transfuser and a scanner room you can build, and you will be able to fuse DNA onto yourself or other creatures. Apparently you can spawn the transfuser in via the command console – its not in the game yet otherwise. You can read about it in the wiki: http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/DNA
Yeah, I’d read about the DNA Transfuser a while ago but haven’t played around with it yet. I always feel like I’m cheating by spawning in items so I try to stick to the implemented gameplay.
I usually also trawl the dev’s Trello board to see what else is on the roadmap and although they’re planning to add some new things like the Exosuit, the Jetpack, Grappling-Hook Dive-Reel, a Time Capsule (?), Sea Emperors, and the Species Analyzer, I still think this game would’ve benefited greatly from procedural terrain generation.