Hello! Didn't think this fit into custom subs, so I put it here. Thought it would be cool to have a thread for design suggestions on your submarines.

The purpose of this thread is for people to suggest features/design choices on submarines, so people can look here for tips.

I have a couple tips:

Do not put your reactor one the outer edge of your submarine if you can help it. If you can't at least armor it, preferably with bumpers and things like that.

Make mini airlocks in between hallway segments and/or other rooms. This makes it so other segments of the submarine won't be flooded when you open the door, and therefore can repair a segment without making a bigger mess. Its basically just a two doors, one open, with a button on the outer sides and one in the middle. All three buttons are attached to both doors. Like this: oIoIo; the o = button, I = door. Hope that wasn't confusing.

Make a room for junction boxes. Don't put your junction boxes all over the sub, it makes it that they are broken more often as they can be easily flooded if they are all over the sub. They are also harder to find and repair. Instead, have a room for junction boxes. That way they can all be easily repaired at the same time.

It's possible to partially isolate the engine from the main grid as a way to reduce the effects from dynamic power changes.
Instead of wiring a junction box with the engine, wire it first to one or more batteries and then wire the output with a relay component and finally wire the relay to the engine.

This will cause the main grid to only account for the batteries, which will in turn power the engine through the relay component. You will notice the lights won't be affected by the power fluctuations from the engine, and appliances like crafting stations and the navigation terminal won't turn off and on at certain intervals anymore. This also helps with fires since all the heavy lifting is being done by the relay component. So only the relay component will short out or burst into flames instead of getting a random number of junction boxes do that. You can also wire the relay to a lamp as a way to tell if the relay is still operational or broken. You can even wire a button to the relay so you can cut the power to it at will from anywhere in the sub.

The only downside is that someone needs to keep an eye on the batteries and set their recharge speeds so they don't run out of juice.

Thanks chikoeduardo I just used the relay component tip to fix up my older subs, appears to have fixed the power surge problem they've both been plagued with for ages!

Tips from me:
-Avoid having horizontal entrances to ballast tanks when possible, and when you do have them clearly mark them as such. I've seen quite a few crashes from somebody opening a ballast and screwing with buoyancy.
-Don't underestimate the importance of light brightness/color to create atmosphere
-Connect light components to buttons to provide a visual confirmation a button was pushed/effect happened (ex: sealed off section of the ship), this can be a huge help when lag hits and a nice notification to other crew
-Perhaps not sub design per se, but please load diving suits/welders with oxygen/fuel when placing them on sub this can save needless fumbling on the player end in a crash

Glad to be of help!

Another tip:

You can build bumpers around a submarine to absorb collision or attack impacts.
They can greatly decrease the chances of hull breaches most of the time and monsters will sometimes attack the bumpers instead of the submarine walls.
It's best to keep them separated enough from the main walls so divers can swim between the walls and the bumpers.
The bumpers at the bottom of a sub can work as anchors if you shape them similar to landing gear. So if you are sinking and the sub crashes on uneven terrain, the leg-shaped bumpers can prevent a submarine from moving to the sides and fall into a possible abyss hole.

Here's a pic of a submarine with bumpers. It has 2 corner bumpers around the bridge in the upper deck, a large one on the front and 3 "landing" ones at the bottom.

if you are into wiring you can make pretty amazing stuff. like burst-fire railguns (like the one on my kestrel sub), having A LOT of balasts and making them detach if they are breached(currently making sub with this). simplest thing you could do is self closing doors and wired reactor shutdown to prevent griefing. you can do pretty much anything

etet2 wrote:if you are into wiring you can make pretty amazing stuff. like burst-fire railguns (like the one on my kestrel sub), having A LOT of balasts and making them detach if they are breached(currently making sub with this). simplest thing you could do is self closing doors and wired reactor shutdown to prevent griefing. you can do pretty much anything

Detachable ballasts sound interesting. I have no experience with the add a submarine function so I'm wondering how to make them work with the main sub's navigation terminal. :O

Wireless signals work with navigation controls and engines/ballast target levels. they work across submarines and seem to not mix on sub versus sub modes to different main submarines. so its possible to make a multi-part submarine that makes use of all its smaller submarines.

I don't know if a docked shuttle could propel a submarine or cause it to rise/sink in the exact same way than if it was part of the submarine itself however, I think it should behave correctly though but somebody would have to try it

nilanthanimosus wrote:Wireless signals work with navigation controls and engines/ballast target levels. they work across submarines and seem to not mix on sub versus sub modes to different main submarines. so its possible to make a multi-part submarine that makes use of all its smaller submarines.

I don't know if a docked shuttle could propel a submarine or cause it to rise/sink in the exact same way than if it was part of the submarine itself however, I think it should behave correctly though but somebody would have to try it

i am currently making sub with detachable balasts

I have a small recommendation but maybe add some lights outside of the ship where the cannons are, so people can see any monsters nearby, also make sure vents are in every place they need to be, one time I was making a lot of corrigodone as a medic and I lost oxygen due to the fact the Medical facilities in the ship had no vents.

I have a suggestion. For a medical fabricator, as well as deconstructor and fabricator, make an emergency battery which gives power to the fabricator etc. Via relay. This way you can still craft things while the submarine is flooded, which could be essential if you are out of fuel rods and you can only get more by crafting.