Change the dynamic of power consumption of space suits.

Wilhelm shared this feedback 20 days ago
Not Enough Votes

The simple summary of this feedback is, can someone explain why your character on a temperate planet (normal ~25C temperature) with oxygen readily available and absolutely zero needed life support, needs constant power consumption from your space suit to remain alive? I get that you (only currently I hope) can't open your suit visor so you need to have your oxygen recycled in your suit, but the suit should have a simple manual vent to solve that engineering problem. (or take the blasted helmet off)

On Verdure in the non snowy (or desert) areas where suit temperature control isn't needed, you should be able to survive more or less indefinitely without constant suit power draw. Your suit light should drain power. Your jetpack should be a power draining atmospheric jetpack on the planet surface (don't get me started on equipping three kinds of jetpack (atmosphere, ion, hydrogen) with different pros/cons), using your tools should drain power.

However, standing in a field or just walking down a valley should not drain any power! I should be able to walk entirely around Verdure without using tools, lights, jetpack or the like and generally stay at 100% backpack power.

If the huge cargo capacity of the character's backpack is because of some sort of battery-fed robotic enhancements to the suit like some kind of power armor, then add in that the power drain increases when moving under heavy load. In this case, if the pack is empty, then minimal/no battery drain. Make it so that when your character's weight carried is over normal human levels, then you can toggle on 'suit carry assist' which eats battery power to carry more than a human load.

In any case, unless the temperature is below freezing, or super hot, why the heck would your character suddenly start to die/take damage because the battery runs out!? Again, if it's because the helmet visor is closed, then I would assume that if the visor is openable (or suit removable) the battery running out should limit your power-based features like tools, lights, jetpacks and the like, but under no circumstances should your space engineer die on a normal earth-like planet in comfortable temperatures and perfect oxygen.

Replies (6)

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Side note: This should also be true in a climate controlled space, like a sealed space station or ship. The life support on the ship should be maintaining perfect conditions for humans, why is the suit drawing (any) power if tools aren't being used and certainly why would they die quickly when the suit runs out of juice?

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Yes, it is ridiculous and tragicomic that in a game set in the distant future, the "in-game" spacesuits don't even match the quality of the American A7L lunar suits, which are more than half a century old. Not to mention the EMU suits from 1982, modernized in 1998, or the Russian Orlan suits from 1977, last modernized in 2017...

In fact, the heat generated by the human body alone should be sufficient to regulate internal temperature—even at outside temperatures as low as -50 °C. A spacesuit is the perfect thermos.

The A7L spacesuit initially had batteries with a capacity of ~280 Wh; on later missions, the capacity was increased to 390 Wh. This was sufficient for 6–7 hours of operation. The EMU has a battery with a capacity of 820 Wh (20.5 V/40 Ah); the Orlan reportedly has a similar Li-ion battery with a capacity of around 850 Wh.

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Right, I can see the case that if you're in a 'deathy' environ where you need added heat/cooling/oxygen circulating or the like to maintain healthy living and your suit runs out of power, start taking damage. If tools, lights, jetpack (if battery powered as above), etc are all off and no power is drawn, Space buddy shouldn't take damage in anything but the most severe environs. None of those conditions exist on earth-like planet, nor in sealed space stations.

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Ah, nothing like nearly dying because I was standing still in a field of daisies on a nice 80 degree spring afternoon because my space suit ran out of electricity.

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That’s entirely possible... The electrical power in the spacesuit controls “everything,” from the air conditioning to the oxygen valves. So if the batteries run out, it’s quite easy to die, because the “game spacesuit” stops working. Real spacesuits have a safety feature in the manual oxygen supply valve...

The problem is that there is currently no “backup battery” in the SE2 spacesuit. The SE1 spacesuit did have a sort of “backup battery,” but in a nonsensical and practically unusable form. Despite that, it saved me a few times...


Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

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I disagree completely that it's 'easy' to die, unless you're saying that the suit is completely sealed and you require the suit to provide oxygen even when the environment does not require it. If so, that is awful 'space engineering', as the simple solution is, 'open a vent', 'open the visor' or 'take the helmet off'. Not directed at you at all Semtex, just pointing out that it's not good for us to wrap our own headcanon around why it's 'completely logical' that a feature design has a literal fatal flaw in it, such as a space suit that has the space engineer sealed inside to their potential death if power runs out.

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I assume that the environment on a living planet is always biologically extremely hostile and aggressive at the microbial level, so a "sealed" suit is essential. Earth's "meat-eating streptococcus" may be simply a demoversion of microbes from an living alien planet...

On the other hand, the suit should display energy levels and issue warnings. And the player should take the suit’s warnings deadly seriously, or else they’ll meet a miserable end.

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The issue of energy in the suit is a problem for the creators of space games (not just SE; this nonsense plagues almost all space games). Much like 100-kilogram oxygen tanks that last half an hour.

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Interesting concept about hostile biology, but also headcanon. This is a planet that has already been described as having earth plants and that people are intending to colonize. You already don't consume oxygen out of your suit reserves when you're on Verdure, it just seems really weird that you still need power. Your example would be then that the power is needed to run the oxygen filters, but we have unpowered MOPP gear (biological, radiological, etc) suits that would handle hostile biology if that's the explanation.

This also doesn't explain why the same suit behavior will also happen on an (eventually) sealed spaceship or space station. You stand in a space station with perfect climate control and you will die in about a half hour when your battery wears out. (I know they haven't put sealed space in yet, but this is SE1 behavior and they've demonstrated nothing that they won't do the same in SE2 given planetary examples)

It's clear that Oxygen and Power are your 'consumables' that they want to force you to maintain. It's only in certain areas (Verdure, possibly the upcoming water planet and on ships and stations) that you'd benefit from being able to survive indefinitely without suit power or tapping suit oxygen reserves. There are also a number of requests on the forum here for people to be able to remove their helmets/suits in this kind of environment. This is similar I suppose, but simpler since it doesn't require additional character model work.

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In that case, the question arises: what do space engineers on a terraformed planet... On a terraformed planet, it should be ordinary engineers and colonists who live and work there.

A space engineer should appear on a terraformed planet only as part of a rescue team or as an investigator in the event of a global catastrophe. Otherwise, their place is on unexplored planets and star systems, where they should prepare the conditions for terraforming planets and colonizing star systems, and build outposts. (That is my view of the systemic role of space engineers.)

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I think you've hit on one of the 'oddities' of the way this new SE2 story/campaign mode is. You're not the first ship to arrive in the system, there are bases everywhere and it appears to be pretty much explored (except by you) and settled. You are still engineering in space (part of the time), the suit should either be removable (as others have suggested), which required the devs to do more model work to make non-suited human models also, or just bleeping make it so the visor can open or have an invisible air vent that can open, etc. and your power and oxygen needs from the suit drop to zero when in places that can support life without space suits..

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Bumping this thread because I feel its important that more people find this.

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Thanks, yeah I mean people are working around this with the ridiculous 'build a battery and survival kit', recharge power, grind down battery and survival kit, walk a few kilometers on verdure, build a battery and survival kit...etc' strategy. I mean, they're going to do that on every planet even if it has oxygen (which is a problem on its own) so currently it's not like suit power is a real barrier.

It's just that constantly rebuilding and grinding a survival camp every half hour of gameplay is a lot more immersion breaking than just letting the engineer survive indefinitely if it's the right temp and has air.

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Refreshing this topic so it doesn't vanish into the archive black hole.

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