Cargo depth charge

[modest epoch]

When encountering a wreck or taking down a hostile submarine, most of the players would spend a lot of time salvaging the loot from them. The problem with salvaging comes from the time needed to deliver the loot back to the submarine, usually it can take a decent portion of the gameplay and is not very engaging for most of the crew. This problem is most noticeable when the crew is around 2-3 players in size.
The usual process of salvaging includes one of the players going to the wreck and spending some time trying to break inside doors. After unlocking all rooms on the wreck, the player will spend a lot of time going between subs. The amount of time needed to collect everything increases drastically if the player decides to collect all ammo boxes and railgun shells. Also, some time might be lost because the player will try to place loot in the relative place depending on their category, like meds, ore, ammo and clothes.
The idea of CDC (cargo depth charge) is simple, it’s an object that can be placed in the Depth Charge Loaders, it cannot explode on impact and deals no damage to monsters or hulls that would be on its way after the shot. CDC will have multiple slots for cargo storage that can be loaded with loot from wreck or with ammo and meds to help the diving team. Pressing the button connected to the Depth Charge Loaders will result in CDC being lunched from the submarine. It will have a steel cable connecting the charge with the sub, pressing a button connected to the Depth Charge Loader for a second time will result in a CDC retracting back to the submarine, after which it can be taken out by the crew members.
Using CDC will save some time for the crew, while the diving team is collecting the loot, the team on the sub can use this time to sort out the loot from CDC.

[coral solstice]

Cargo elevators!

[winged rover]

Sub docking with wrecks

[sly forge]

EK utility bro

[copper oasis]

Goddamn what an amazing idea

👍

[upper fern]

ek was discontinued?

[coral solstice]

Always has been

[rose plank]

I don't have my PC available atm, but I am working on something with nearly the same mechanics.
If I can get that to work, I will give this a shot too ; )

[modest epoch]

Yes and No. Last time i checked the original 4 mods for EK are discontinued, but there some people that took it under their wing. However it seems that they don't add new stuff and are mostly working on supporting the mod and re-balancing some of the items.
But the EK itself does not have a good way to optimize this issue, big backpacks and comically gigantic diving scooters with infinite power supply still require the diving team spend some time going back and fourth. And besides, i played with EK for a good amount of time and I really want to NOT include it in my next campaign.

[modest epoch]

Cool. Can you give me some info on it when it's ready? I really want to look at it.

[winged rover]

I am gonna grab ek and actually make it balance

[modest epoch]

A task worth of the most stubborn of the sea wolfs, so if anyone is going to do it i can only wish them not to go husk-shit insane in the process.

[winged rover]

Just rebalance some stats and increase the crafting price of some items

How hard could it be

[wide coral]

There’s literally an ammo type for the coil gun that is infinite ammo but it drains from the super capacitor more (potentially ignorable via upgrades). It’s also a lazer which means bots (potentially, needs to be tested) have an easier time hitting things. There’s also rechargeable pistols and rifles (although they are weak). Water sprinklers eliminate the need for watering cans at the cost of 75watts. Straight up combine handheld sonar with scooter along with other combinables (arguably does nothing as you still need to bring a crate into wrecks/ruins). Utility suits that give 20 mech & 10 engineering that also can use hull oxy, reduce paralysis by 75%(?), three additional inventory slots that can store heavy weapons (including both vanilla and EK’s one handed riot shield), all at the cost of 10% less physical resistance to the normal diving suit. Craftable handheld status monitors/search but they need batteries. Utility pouches that can store 8 items (I.e. 8 morphine fills up the entire pouch; you can’t have a stack of an item in a single slot. If you have Neurotrauma, add this). It’s not so much of a balancing issue it’s more of a “is encroaching on the mechanics handheld status monitor talent OKAY for this campaign b/c our sub is big?” or “Is having infinite potassium/sodium/carbon that big of a deal if it comes at the cost of steel plastic and fpga circuits?” Or “Are these guns really overpowered in the grand scheme of things? You could have shot that vet raptor on the exterior guns, or cheaply craft an emp grenade for those fractals (for each individual one even!)” or “is some plastic and some steel, and loosing out on the possibility of looting ammo an equivalent exchange for when you use a riot shield to exhaust the enemies ammo?” Or “THE ENEMY SHOT ONE EXPLOSIVE AMMO SHOT AND NOW ALL THESE WELDING FUEL TANKS ARE NOW UNSTACKABLE AND I DONT WANNA DEAL WITH THIS NO MORE GIMMIE BATTERY WELDERS” etc

Meanwhile Enhanced Armaments say “have max Vigor (50% damage resist) forever, lol”

[winged rover]

Ngl tltr

[wide coral]

There is no rebalancing it, only reworking it. In the process of reworking it, you will have to calculate, playtest, and ask yourself multiple times “Should this aspect exist at all in the game? If it should, is the power of this worth its cost? If not, how can I make this cost appropriate (if at all) without affecting vanilla aspects? (Such as plant growth output, giving abandon station pirates suits, having it being unlocked via talents, etc)”

You will have to tackle the deal of “the player can make emp grenades to trivialize Fractal Guardian encounters, or just get this mod for big gun and make boolets. Sure, the first one has a 3s fuse time and you may need to bandage yourself but the end result is the same: enemy is dead. Is there really a difference?”

[winged rover]

Which gun you mean sorry?

[modest epoch]

What he means is that EK in it's core is not to be balanced, so don't sweat it.

[winged rover]

Yhea but has some cool features that if balance could be interesting, mostly stuff from Utilities which is the one that I mostly use.
Arc welders could be a bit slower and instead of being a welding tool but with electricity be a slower less efficient version. Jetscooters could just go with the cargo scooter perk of the engineer making that talent more usefull and as a side grade of the cargo scooter as some examples

[winged rover]

Electril drills are already a bit annoying to use to mine as they are a bit finicky on the positioning so they are OK on that, and now will be kinda worse since O2 of the plasma cutter could be use to recharge the o2 of the tanks

Rebreather could be too op as it's only downside is mostly not useful in gas caves, the price is OK but may be make it part of a talent so it could be restricted

Or add dementionite to make it more late game, actually lots of op items could be more balanced by just adding dementionite to its recipie, as it is a mid/late game item with some few shitty uses

[rose plank]

I'll let you know as soon as it is ready.
I do not have access to my PC atm, but that should be a non-issue by the end of the month at the latest.(But could be in as little as a week).

[sly forge]

Don’t forget that it should be lore friendly, dementonite is used mostly in alien-like things

[winged rover]

ah yhes, the most alien thing of them all, portable pumps 💀