General
Aqueous Engineering adds several new machines and devices for Seabases, adding convenience tools, automation machinery, and other infrastructure. It also greatly expands on ACUs, making them more visually interesting and more useful.It also adds outdoor versions of the small plant pots for convenience and decoration purposes.
Machines
Seabase Sonar Antenna
Continuously fires sonar pulses from a seabase.
Creature Repellant Pylon
Discourages close approach of creatures to the seabase.
Seabase Beacon
A beacon affixed to the seabase that broadcasts location and status information.
Ampeel Antenna
Draws small amounts of power from passing ampeels to maintain power in a seabase. Most effective at short range. Not capable of sustaining high power loads.
Autofarming Unit
Automatically harvests from mature plants in nearby growbeds. Will not completely kill the plant.
ACU Cleaning System
Keeps the ACU clean of debris, including excreted waste from the contained animals.
Scanner Camera Relay Antenna
Eliminates the distance attenuation from scanner room camera signals for the attached seabase.
Seabase Battery Bank
Generates no power, but significantly increases the maximum storage of a seabase, allowing it to last longer between intermittent power cycles. Stackable effect. Displays charge state using color indicators.
ACU Feeding System
Periodically adds small amounts of plankton to the ACU to top up food supplies for herbivorous fish, increasing their fertility. Does not stack. Only available if Ecocean is installed, as it uses its plankton as a "fuel".
Plankton Feeder
Disperses plankton into the water to attract filter feeders and help encourage their reproduction in a wild setting. Only available if Ecocean is installed, as it uses its plankton as a "fuel".
Item Display
Holds an item in suspension above it for decorative purposes.
Dome Light
A small light that illuminates in all directions.
Precursor Power Tap
A device that can siphon a tiny fraction of the power flowing through active precursor power conduits.
Stasis Pylon
A device which can be commanded to trigger a stasis pulse around itself, to temporarily freeze local fauna to allow safe entry or exit into the seabase. Manual input required - cannot fire automatically
Control Terminal
Hosts controls for other devices.
Rock Crusher
Breaks down large resource deposits into hand-collectable chunks.
ACU Expansions
Byproducts
Larger creatures in ACUs now serve a purpose beyond decoration; they will consume food if it is available and generate small quantities of waste. This waste is like a smaller version of that which is obtained from Sea Treaders, and can be used as bioreactor fuel, and as a crafting ingredient to make the larger item for other mods' crafting recipes.
What happens when it is left to accumulate.
There are also other items that can be situationally obtained from specific species. For example, if stalkers in an ACU have access to shiny metal (scrap, titanium, or silver, with the last giving the highest yields) dropped inside, they will also drop stalker teeth, resulting in the ability to "farm" them.
Overall, this mechanic pairs well with the ACU cleaning system.
Ecosystems
AE adds an "ecosystem" mechanic to ACUs. This means that building consistent and/or healthy ecosystems will boost productivity, meaning increased breeding rates, increased byproduct generation rates, and more. Here, 'healthy' is defined as containing a complete and balanced food chain and appropriate creature density, following a few specific rules:- At least one plant
- At least one herbivore
- At least one carnivore
- At most four herbivore "units" per plant
- At least six herbivore "units" per carnivore
- At most 1.5 carnivores per ACU in the stack
"Herbivore Units" is a reference to the fact that some larger herbivores count as equivalent to several smaller fish for the purposes of this calculation.
Biomes And Visuals
If all the species - plants, small creatures, and large creatures - share one and only one native biome, the ACU will take on a "theme", and change its appearance to emulate that biome's environment. This change is not purely aesthetic; consistent-theme ACUs further increase the bonuses described above. Sparkle peepers and cuddlefish are counted as valid for any theme, and will not affect selection, even for biomes where they do not naturally occur.
Several of the different biome themes in ACUs. Kelp is visible above.
Note that the biome list is slightly simplified to be more "biome archetypes" than literal game-defined biomes. While things like the shallows, kelp forest, jellyshroom cave, lost river, or grand reef have direct counterparts, less "ecologically unique" biomes like the crag, crash zone, dunes, and underwater islands are lumped into "other".
Configuration Settings
This mod contains several config options to modify values and behaviors - such as for balance or server safety concerns, or simply personal taste - to your preferences. Note that several settings may have bounds imposed on their values, either logically or explicitly; these can usually be seen in the actual settings files or ingame. These are listed in order found in the source code, which is generally the order in which they were added; They may be present in a different order ingame or in the configuration files.The settings for the mod, when installed, can be found in the mod's install folder.
ACU feces drop rate
Type: floatCurrent Default Value:
1.0F
Vanilla Value
Value:
0.0F
Minimum Value
Value:
0.0F
Maximum Value
Value:
4.0F
Seabase Battery power cell storage equivalence
Type: intCurrent Default Value:
2
Vanilla Value
Value:
0
Minimum Value
Value:
1
Maximum Value
Value:
5