Astrobiology

Astrobiology. Plausible-ish Europan species filling out the gap between producers and predators.

No generative AI was used in the making of this mod.

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WAT

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Astrobiology is an immersion and environment-enhancing mod that introduces hard sci-fi, evolutionary plausible species to Barotrauma. It populates the oceans with passive creatures, filter feeders, and herbivores to create a fully functioning marine ecosystem.

5 new species of creatures(not background features) with vanilla loot items, custom behavior, photobashed textures.

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PIC

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WHY

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While playing Barotrauma with friends, i found myself thinking about the Europan ecosystem.

What do Mudraptors eat? Crawlers? But crawlers seem to be scavangers and opportunistic predators. Are hammerheads filter feeders? Then why do they have a massive calloused nose and why do they attack submarines? Maybe they use it to crush cave systems and eat concussed and crushed mudraptors, crawlers and treshers?

So everyone is eating crawlers, and crawlers are eating... crawlers? You can see some jellyfish and small fishes in the background, but they are just that, the background.

Surely this is NOT a working ecosystem. Which is why it got me thinking. There are producers - you can see a lot of seabed flora, Europan Ridge is all green, your ballast is constantly overgrowing. So there are plenty of producers. But who eats them?

In a functioning ecosystem, primary consumers eat primary producers, and get eaten by predators, which are eaten by top predators.

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FAQ

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• Are they interactible? Yes, they are. They are actual creatures visible in sonar, killable, and lootable.

• Is it Hungry Europans compatible? The developers of Hungry Europans did a great job on compatibility and any custom creatures can be butchered into "generic meat".

• Will it mess with vanilla spawns? No it will not, as i added separate spawn events. These fishes do not invade the vanilla progression events and as such will not replace the threats.

• What's the developer's number? She's really good looking! (very frequently asked, trust, 100%) I'm a skinwalker and do not have a single, consistent phone number.

• Is it compatible with Barotraumatic, Dynamic Europa, etc? I tested it, and yes, it is compatible. It does not replace spawn events, it adds new ones. A good rule of thumb for mods like this is to put them AFTER big overhauls.

• Can i modify/fork/create an addon? You can modify the mod locally, create forks, addons, use the mod to see how to add new spawns/creatures, you can create compatibility patches, i do not mind at all. Modding has always been a space of shared creativity. I believe a community that gatekeeps knowledge and experience is a community not worth being in.

• It's so laggy/It lags/It spawns too many creatures Please, for the love of Kraken, provide technical details on the lag. What is your modpack? Is the lag from RAM, CPU, GPU? What are your specs? Did the lag just appear with this mod? Did it appear after a specific update? I am happy to help you, but i cannot read minds!

• Would you rather have unlimited bacon, but no more games, or games, unlimited games, but no more games? Games, unlimited games, but no more games.

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It is still work in progress, but i am halting updates for some time since i want people to have a stable experience, and to not make this mod a chore for me.

Some of the sources for species textures were adapted from original photography by Hans Hillewaert, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons