User blog comment:Palidian7/Post V1.0 polish/@comment-34706482-20180215192828/@comment-34706482-20180216155101

- Prawn: I'm looking at this from three angles. From a Lore perspective: I'm taking real-world examples of machines that change tools without direct manipulation by the operator. These are mostly in manufacturing today, but the same concept can be applied to construction vehicles and certainly will be as technology advances and such equipment becomes more sophisticated. I'm taking this concept and applying it to the Subnautica universe where we have a handheld tool that uses magic laser beams to build entire facilities from digitally stored materials in a PDA. The Upgrade Modules installed in the Prawn are themselves described as "software drives", which includes the Storage Module. From the perspective of a fictional business, anything advancement that makes equipment and employees more productive than it costs to develop (or purchase) and use is most certainly going to be rolled out. A system that allows the Prawn to exchange tools without making the driver get out and manually exchange tool arms would significantly increase efficiency and productivity. Altera already has two things that make this a sensible addition; digital item storage and magic fabrication laser technology small enough to fit in hand-held devices and grapefruit sized drones.

From a Development perspective: I agree with you on my prior version of this suggestion. Making such a significant change to the assets of the Prawn Upgrade Interface at this is not realistic. On the other hand, I have a new suggestion that would probably be much more reasonable to implement. A "Tool Management System" upgrade module could be designed to allow a player to use Q, F, or even R (since the battery interface can't be used while driving the Prawn) to open the existing Prawn Upgrade Access interface. The upgrade module slots would be locked and any tool arm that could reasonably need to continue operating, such as the Propulsion or Grappling arms, would also be locked if they were in use when the menu was opened. Then the pilot could use their PDA to exchange an idle tool arm with a tool arm in storage.

From a Gameplay perspective:  This is a convenience I would greatly appreciate and would gladly sacrifice one of the Prawn upgrade slots to install. I think my revised suggestion is a reasonable trade-off between convenience and cost by making the player choose between this and other upgrades and it still makes the player open an inventory to trade out tools, just without the having to exit the Prawn and swim around to the Upgrade Access hatch to do it. I don't think having all tools available this way reduces their 'cool factor', and if people don't like the idea of this upgrade they don't have to craft it and install it. It's all up to the individual on how they wish to load out the upgrades. I already load Upgrades based on what I plan to do with a vehicle, this would be a welcome option for me.