Rope/Towing Winches

[small terrace]

An item that you can buy/craft. The winch can be placed down on the ship (much like a placeable item), players can use the winch to grab the end of the rope in their hand or it can be attached to any diving suit. Said end of the rope has a slot for an item (Unless it's attached to the diving suit, then no item). The wire itself can be quite long (around 300-500m length), can pass through doors/hatches and it can be cut down by monsters or malicious divers. If a rope is being used players inside the ship can use the winch to drag the end of the rope back to the placed winch.

[runic musk]

this seems... kind of useless. outside of extremely niche instances like someone being killed while out in the ocean but not having their body eaten quite yet, and the winch being fast enough to pull them back without the monster being able to close the distance?

it's just way, way too niche.

not to mention you'd need oodles of rope physics to bend around every corner that you swim around so it doesn't crunch you against a surface.

[small terrace]

for rope physics, i think having them mostly bend on the ship's hull, ancient ruins walls and cave walls should suffice (since having to consider doors and hatches could make some problems down the line).

and to address the nicheness of the winch, other idea that i can propose

• for easy traversal back to the ship, ropes can have some texture light (it doesnt emit the light, but it has a simple texture that can be illuminated in the dark).
• the end of the rope has a slot for the container items (ie: backpacks, toolbelts, cargo scooter, etc)
• make the rope much stronger, by having it only be destroyed by large monsters or cut down by a player (you would see a "cutting" bar if someone initiates it)
• have the end of the rope illuminate the area around it

that said, i do notice a problem of what to do when the end of the rope is blocked by a door (since we're assuming it's solid, compared to the non-solid rope). Maybe stop the winch and play a "stuck" sound effect?

[proud rune]

It kinda sounds interesting, but on it's own it would be useless, there were disscussions about harpoon turret and cargo thing I forgot, turret had a purpose of being the cheapest turret + granting the ability to drag monster bodies to the ship to loot them, secont idea was to have something to get staff from wrecks/caves/ruins to the ship faster.

basically, if you combine turret, thing and this rope idea, you could have a turret with stuff I mentioned + when you shoot it into a wall/wreck wall/ruin wall it will stick to it and divers will be able to attach cargo to it to retract it to the ship.

in case you need to get divers with this thing - shoot the diver

[small terrace]

it's one of the reasons why i thought the winch should have been a placeable item, but i understand that it's also interesting from a design perspective to make a tradeoff between making EVA's slightly easier or more guns on the ship.

[proud rune]

more guns more good, Gorka love guns, but I like Morka, and he lokes guns more
happy monkey noices

[small terrace]

other purpose that i thought right would be using it as a bait (if said ship had no depth charges), like attaching an explosive and a sonar beacon to the end of the rope which can be detonated remotely (probably using a logic component or a ui button on the item itself).

However, upon retrospect i think this might be too convoluted for a makeshift depth charges

or even the problem of figuring out if anything caught the attention

[proud rune]

would be fun to atrackt abbisal creature with shuttle to the sub(that holds charge) so that it would get close to a bomb and you detonate stunning creature

but at the same time you can just time depth charge

for same result

[runic musk]

i still one day want to see harpoon guns be expanded on. being able to hook yourself to the ship and ride it, have it be a dedicated support tool for controlling fights, that sort of thing. i think it'd be a lot more versatile that way.

[small terrace]

well, it was worth throwing that idea out to see if it would work or not

[proud rune]

I love harpoon turret idea

Give it to me

Please 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🥺🥺🥺

[calm parcel]

Isn't that a thing already ? I think you can permanently attach urself to something if you don't release mouse button after firing harpooon

[proud rune]

Is it strong enough to do so?

[runic musk]

last i checked you have to go veeery slow

submarine can easily outpace it and the rope can't keep you reeled/hooked long enough

kinda wish you could hang on no matter how fast it went

[calm parcel]

yeah - I dream of hammerhead racing 🤤

[dull sphinx]

Violently ripping myself out of a wreck with a high acceleration ship

[final haven]

The harpoon hook reminds me of the old conversation i had with someone.
It started as alternative fire for turrets launching a big harpoon with a steel cable allowing to lower the mobility of some enemies. Then it grown to ideas like pirate traps that launch the same harpoon attaching a anchor to the ship to send player in the abyss.

[dull sphinx]

Yo, abyss monster harpoon

Single fire ammo

[thin scaffold]

Not at all useless if I am understanding this right. You can be dragged along while the sub is moving, right? So if you have enough speed from Mechanic's & Captain's speed talents, you can just send someone out there with a steam cannon and drive just slowly enough that the monsters clump up.

[proud rune]

yeah, but it's much safer to just use ship weapons

and it's niche

[runic musk]

no amount of swim-speed boosting talents are going to have you outrun the vast majority of creatures in this game, let alone the submarine.

at best he'd be getting dragged at the very back/front of the sub like bait

if you speed boost the submarine, you can typically keep most monster's at arms' length anyway

...and just use explosive coilgun ammo.

it's faster, more reliable, way less janky to use.

[chrome turtle]

I'd kill for a way for even the AI to operate it when looking a wreck/ruins/beacon station or even minind ...deifnitely not ueselss as people are seeming to think!1 .... no more getting lost when mining in a caveAND you can fill upa container on the end and have your crew pull it back in without you having to come back manually each time (one extra load you can return per 'trip' basically) ... if you set it up vertically, they might even be able to lower it down again to you at the entrance to a POI so you can keep loading it quickly and dragging up to the sub. --- Extra bonus would be if this winch bypasses airlocks/sub walls so it'd grab a crate right into a cargo room basically through the hull of a ship. = much time saved,and easy access for sorting

.. it'd also make for some good 'clowning' moments and traitor missions who could maybe sabotage it to dangerous recall speeds, or hook it somehow, or to someone, inside a ship and drag them allover the place

[dense herald]

Would be cool if they added missions to tow a sub or a wreck or something