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subnauticmods ([personal profile] subnauticmods) wrote in [community profile] fishesoutofwater2016-02-13 02:56 pm
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Test Dive #1








≡U.R.S.U.L.A. NAVIGATION
TEST DIVE MEME


For information about the animals and locations, be sure to check out the BIOME and BASE pages!

A1: Go Fish
You! Yes, you! Your friendly neighbourhood AI has a task she would like to encourage YOU to do! After all, you can’t forget the most important fact: you’re here to make the planet habitable. Which means cataloguing, capturing and studying potential threats to anyone’s life. That includes a swarm of Stalkers that have been hanging around the waters awfully near the base, which presents a perfect research opportunity! At least, URSULA seems to think so.

Don’t go in willy-nilly waving your knife around, though. URSULA doesn’t want you to bring in tonight’s Sashimi Surprise™, she wants you to bring in a Stalker that’s still kicking. Which means you have to capture a live one. So hold back your crazy power or trigger-happy instincts!

How will you take one in alive without ending up dead yourself? You could go in the brute-force way, slamming its jaws shut and bagging it, though it’s pretty strong itself… or you could be a bit more cunning, taming it with bait or giving it shiny metal salvage to play with before luring it into a tank to bring it into the base. You might want to get a helping hand with this task, since it’s not exactly an easy one-man job.

A2: Go With Fish
So, now you’ve got a live and very disgruntled Stalker on your hands! Hopefully, said hands don’t have to be amputated (it’s okay if they have to though, URSULA will fix it. Try not to watch the nanites go). What do you do with it? You could keep it as a pet and observe its growth! You could dissect it and study its anatomy! Or you could… eat it. (After going through all the effort to bring it in alive?!)

B: The Abysmal Sea
You’re stranded.

One of the planet’s troublesome signal-interfering pulses has just made your communication devices 100% nonfunctional. No matter how you try to call URSULA for help, she isn’t able to respond. The database strapped to your wrist is just a useless chunk of metal now, leaving you without a useful library of knowledge to survive off. If you were driving any underwater vehicle prior to this point, it’s broken down. And unless you’re a mechanic, it’ll be pretty hard to get it jumpstarted again.

Don’t fret! The communication systems always come online eventually, so if you stay put, it’ll boot back up and give you directions straight back to base so you can finally get home. But can you really afford to stay put? The sunlight’s slowly streaming out of the sky, leaving the waters darker and darker with each passing second. Soon, you won’t be able to see five feet in front of you, and the only warning you’ll get of any approaching threat is through sound, if they even make any.

You have a few choices: take a daring risk and try swimming back to base, but on the off-chance you don’t remember the directions correctly from before you were cut off, you’re going to get even more lost, in the darkness of the night no less. Or, you could huddle in, with any friends if they were unfortunate enough to be with you, and start focusing on getting warm. Because spending the night out here in the vast oceans with the entire world against you is becoming a very, very real possibility.

C: It’s dangerous to go alone. Take them!
URSULA’s technology is breathtaking. With enough materials, she could make practically anything: weapons, vehicles, all those human comforts and entertainments she forgot to build... or perhaps she could expand the base to give everyone even more leg room. But there’s a catch: you need to get those materials to her in the first place, and scavenging can be a monumental task.

The planet Iniidae has a plethora of materials to provide, but you’ve got to go find them first. Some are easy enough to get, by plucking off the ground or breaking a rock. But some are a bit more challenging, such as Crash Powder, seeing that the Crash defending it will literally explode in your face if you get too close. And then there’s materials such as Blood Oil, only harvestable within the Blood Kelp Caves several hundred meters underwater in the pitch-black darkness… remember, you have to gather resources with your two bare hands. No such thing as driving around and conveniently collecting them within the somewhat-relative safety of an armored vehicle.

Since it’s so dangerous to go alone, URSULA will encourage you all to leave the base in pairs or groups if you’re going to try collecting some of the more precarious materials to harvest. She has heard that most lifeforms find being reconstituted from nanites traumatic, so try not to die in front of each other!

D: Hide and Seek Help
URSULA knows that everyone needs downtime, and no one can go salvaging or gathering specimens all the time. So what do you do for fun on an alien ocean planet when the AI who made your base forgot to make any kind of entertainment room?

Why, play hide-and-seek, of course! There’s a lot of places to hide away from others, and it’s challenging to find anyone. (Sometimes, too challenging to find them… ever… but that’s not the point.) The area around the base and submarine is relatively safe, so anyone can hide away in a coral structure or a cave, and telepathy makes it easy to taunt your seekers without revealing where you are.

Of course, you may encounter a Bone Shark or even a stray Stalker, and you won’t have time to get away or even scream as it attacks you, but hey. What other way to make hide-and-seek more thrilling than to turn it into hide-and-hope-you-get-found-as-you-shout-for-help-to-anyone-who-can-hear-your-telepathy?

E: Toilet Humor
Really, it was bound to happen eventually. Someone's in the bathroom observatory, doing their 'business', and someone is trying very hard to catch a fish for dinner outside. Your eyes meet. Someone has literally been caught with their pants down.

And in that moment your telepathy goes a little wonky, because it's good to have open communication about this incident.

F: The Caverns of Dream
The ocean calls you. Of course, it's much easier to dismiss it as nightmares. You'll probably think that's all it is after you have them. Flashes of screaming sea creatures writhing in agony, pleading for help, but these creatures can't ask for help, can they? Something huge, beyond the scope of imagination, moves in the ocean of your dreams and calls out to you to go deeper into the darkness. It pleads and begs but not with a voice you can hear or words you can understand.

You wake up in a sweat with the unrelenting desire to take a swim, even though it's late and everyone is asleep. Or maybe someone else just had the same nightmare as you? Are you willing to take a swim and try to understand the dream?


BASED ON CODE BY TESSISAMESS AND SUPERSUITS


leftinme: ("... captain's orders.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-18 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
[... Brett still can't get used to the feeling of being in the water, as he experimentally moves his limbs. He'd like to just travel via phasing through the floor, but it's a long trip and he's better off saving his energy for the way back when they'll have something to carry.]

Yes. Now let's get going.
discardia: (All proper ladies must shank)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-24 04:01 am (UTC)(link)
Understood!

[ Swimming... is still awkward for Cardia too, but she'll start moving through the water. Clumsily, but it's forward progress. ]
leftinme: ("i can't fathom why.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-24 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
[Brett, while not horrible, isn't exactly a professional swimmer, and so already annoyance is starting to creep on him when he realizes that this is, indeed, going to be a long trip. All the more reason not to delay, though, as he does his best to steadily move through the water, his shadows continuing to swirl around him all the while.

The captain would probably advise him to turn off his ability and save his energy when his wings are useless in the water, but this is precisely the kind of situation that Brett wants to have it on: if anything attacks, he'll be ready. As things are, what with them being underwater, he's already at a disadvantage. He can only hope that this girl can defend herself so that he won't have to do it for her (her being human in particular doesn't make him feel especially inclined, though duty would call even if he's pretty sure this isn't part of the police force's jurisdiction anymore).

Eventually, they reach the Blood Kelp Caves, and... yeah, it's pitch-black. It's not a problem for Brett, but he remembers that humans aren't necessarily great with this kind of thing, and so he turns to his companion.]


Can you see?
Edited 2016-02-24 04:23 (UTC)
discardia: (The pick-up lines they hurt)

[personal profile] discardia 2016-02-24 05:20 am (UTC)(link)
No.

[ An immediate, honest answer. But Cardia's never been one to be dishonest in the first place, and what good would lying do? She may not be your average human girl, but seeing in the dark? Not her forte. ]
leftinme: ("i'll do all i can to assist you.")

[personal profile] leftinme 2016-02-24 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
[... He thought as much. Cardia might hear a displeased, vaguely wordless noise making its way into the telepathic connection (no offence, but he's not quite one to hide his feelings when it comes to humans) but in spite of that:]

Then stay close to me, and if you think we've been separated, tell me. I'll try and send you what I see while we move.

[He's not entirely sure how well he can handle this whole telepathy thing—that is, how well he can transmit his visuals—when it's not something he's accustomed to, but the reality is that between the two of them, he's apparently the only one who can see where they're going. He might as well give it a shot, seeing as how it's debatable how much assistance this girl will be if she has to constantly fumble around in the dark. Regardless of how much he may or may not care for her kind, there's nothing to gain by deliberately being uncooperative in this scenario.]