Scanner Room (Below Zero)

The Scanner Room is a Seabase module. It is constructed with the Habitat Builder, and allows the player to generate a 3D map of the surrounding Biome, scan for resources, and conduct scouting via controllable Camera Drones.

The player must find a Data Box to unlock the Scanner Room's blueprint.

If a Scanner Room is constructed in an unpowered Seabase, it will not function. The Scanner Room always draws a small amount of power from a base to display its holographic map, even if it is otherwise not doing anything.

Description
The Scanner Room in construction terms functions like a Basic Compartment: while it is circular in form, only two sides are connectors. These are indicated by rectangular blanking plates which can be used to help orient it: it is often necessary to use the rotate function when building one to get it at the proper angle. It will automatically join to any suitable module on the same horizontal level at close range, generating a short length of corridor in which Bulkheads cannot be built. Hatches, Reinforcements or Windows can be placed on the Scanner Room's end panels. It does not support any form of vertical connection.

The Scanner Room's interior has three interactive components: two are parts of a display on one wall, while the other is a Mini-Fabricator and four Upgrade Module slots on the opposite wall. The display panel incorporates a circular screen, the drone controls, and a menu, the scanner controls. In the middle of the room is a holographic terrain map which displays the local topography as a blue wireframe and any camera drones within the Scanner Room's scan radius as green dots, regardless of whether the scanner is active.

Scanning
The player can use the Scanner Room to search for nearby resources, identifying them as orange blips on the central hologram. It has a base scanning range of 300 meters. The scanner can only search for one resource type at a time and has a base scan time of fourteen seconds, during which it uses large amounts of power: the scan proceeds in a radial fashion, detecting outwards from the Scanner Room's location. Scanning is initiated by selecting what to scan for from the menu next to the drone controls: this usually has multiple pages which are scrolled through a page at a time. At any time, the player can choose to abort a current scan by pressing the "X" that appears below the "scanning in progress" message. The scan will continue (and continue drawing power) until it is either manually deactivated or the base runs out of power.

The Scanner Room actually auto-detects what is inside its search radius when it is built, and the list of items it can scan for will only include what is actually within its search radius. This means that without even turning the scanner on, the player can rule out the presence of any materials that are not on the list. It will not detect items inside any kind of Storage, though it does still detect Eggs placed inside an Alien Containment chamber.

Note that any resources that do not normally appear on the ground in single form, such as Titanium or Silver Ore, will be Large Resource Deposits, unless the player has manually dropped some of this resource on the ground within the scanner's range. The scanner cannot identify what is actually inside Outcrops, and so they do not appear when scanning for materials they could potentially contain. In the case of materials like Quartz or Lithium that can be found in both single and Deposit states, the scanner provides no indication of which type a particular "contact" is. In addition, it should be noted that HUD markers for Large Resource Deposits do not disappear even if the Deposit in question has been mined down to nothing.

Camera Drones
The drone controls are used to operate small remote-controlled camera drones, which can be used to safely explore its surroundings. Drones have an automatic beacon marker like other vehicles, so they can be left in place near a point of interest and used as a waypoint to swim there. If the scanner is currently active, anything it has detected will be highlighted with an orange-yellow circle with a note saying what it is when controlling a camera drone. Unlike the previous game, the Scanner Room currently does not come with Drones and they must instead be constructed manually using the module's fabricator and then discarded outside the base before they can be controlled.

Interacting with the circular display switches to controlling the first camera drone in numeric sequence, and the player can switch to other drones as they desire. Interacting with the console after doing so previously will default to the last drone the player was controlling. Drones can be controlled from infinite range, but starting at around 300m their view will become increasingly full of static, becoming completely blank at around 600m. It should be noted that scrolling through the list of drones will include the drones of all Scanner Rooms, not just the one the player is currently using: in addition, since the game will always select drones in order, a different Scanner Room will start out controlling the "wrong" set of drones. The range of a drone for purposes of interference with its camera is its range from the Scanner Room the player is currently using, not the one it "belongs" to. Controlling a distant drone can require a fair amount of loading, which is concealed using a "connecting" icon in the camera feed.

Drones have a limited power supply: if they run out in the field, the player will have to manually retrieve them. They only use power while being controlled. Each Scanner Room has two charging sockets for drones, and they can only be charged at these sockets. When controlling a drone, a special beacon will appear indicating the Scanner Room to assist in returning to it. A drone will be "grabbed" by the socket if it passes close enough to it in a similar manner to docking a vehicle to a Moonpool. While docked, the player can look out of the drone's camera, but cannot rotate its field of view.

Drones are usually ignored by animals, but can be stolen by Sea Monkeys. They can even grab the drones right out of the charging sockets on the Scanner Room itself. If a drone is damaged it can be repaired with the Repair Tool.

If the player deconstructs a Scanner Room with drones still present in its charging sockets, the drones are deleted along with the room.

Fabrication
The Mini-Fabricator in the Scanner Room is only capable of producing items for the Scanner Room itself. Similarly, the four upgrade slots can only accept modules produced by a Scanner Room's Fabricator. These items cannot be made in any other type of Fabricator.

The scanner's search speed and range can be increased with the Scanner Room Range Upgrade and Scanner Room Speed Upgrade, which are constructed using the room's built-in Mini-Fabricator and plugged into a set of four upgrade slots next to it. These upgrades can be stacked to improve their effects: four speed upgrades will take the scan time down to two seconds, while four range upgrades will increase the scan range to 500 meters. Increasing the scanning range will also increase the size of the holographic area map the room generates.

The Fabricator also produces Camera Drones, which need to be taken outside and discarded in order to function, and one other item. This, the Scanner Room HUD Chip, allows the player to see the circles designating items the scanner has detected, which are normally only visible when controlling the camera drones. These circles only appear when the scanner is active, and fade out after a short time when it is turned off. Unlike the other upgrades, the HUD Chip is not equipped to the Scanner Room itself, and instead goes in the chipset slot of the Paperdoll UI.

Recipe
The blueprint for this item is unlocked from a data box in the Twisty Bridges or in the Rocket Island Base. It is almost directly below a floating Alterra site resembling a shark-proof cage, at a depth of 55 meters.

Power Consumption
The Scanner Room is the only base module that uses energy passively, draining 0.5 energy per second. The room can be disabled with a Control Room to prevent passive energy use, though this will also prevent use of the scanner until it is re-activated.

While scanning, the room has a fixed drain of 3 energy per second (180 per minute), which is not altered by upgrades to the Scanner Room. This is by far the fastest energy consumption of anything in the game. The only single power source that can keep pace with a running Scanner Room is a Nuclear Reactor: any other type of power plant will require multiple instances to avoid running out (not less than 4 Bioreactors, 12 Solar Panels, or 3 Thermal Plants, even with the latter two under ideal operating conditions). If power runs out while the scanner is running, the current scan will end and all icons designating detected resources will disappear after a short time.

Using the exterior charging sockets to recharge docked Camera Drones will also drain power from the base's reserves until they reach 100% charge.

Possible changes
Dev logs show that there is an intention to modify the Scanner Room's function in Below Zero. Specifically, rather than conducting a wide-area scan centered on the room itself, it may be changed so that the scan is carried out at a short range around the Scanner Room, and also around the locations of any Camera Drones. This has so far not been implemented.