a REBREATHER makes nearly no !BUBBLE! sound.... case it's a CLOSED loop system. The sound would be more like Darth Vadder... :-)

Instead the near shore and any vessel on surface should make a loud noise. And maybe marine life too...

I dont remember that this also happend in FARCEY 3 ???

It's not only a grafic issue. You can spot other divers easily by using this bug. :-(

a Diver swimming on the surface should be affected from water and wind and the combination of this two elements.

Underwaterhabitats are well known from 1950...19070 This is no SciFi.

The question is: Would it be usefull for the gameplay???

I also mannaged to look true a Rock when staying very close to the shore and then turning around.

With a Diver Soldier.

It's also important for ballancing. Because the limmited vision affects the combat between Divers!

The CAVITATION Effect would create a Bullet Trace even when the Weapon is not fired from air into Water.... But of coarse the Trace would be smaler then the known pictures from shooting into water...

When Soldiers have to SWIMM to a mission point, the should put there stuff in plastic bags.

In Reality the use there raincoats and make a big bundle with all the gear that floats. this "little raft" gets the weapon on top and the swimmer is pushing it.

Very easy. B U T - takes some time for preparations!

By the way: Archimedes say: "not the weight itself is important for floating." It's the overall density.

So it is very realistic that You can still swim with a gear - to heavy to lift it up on land. But of course it would need a lot of extra boyancy!

And this makes a swimmer slow and clumpsy. And vulnarable to CURRENTS - like in fast rivers or on a rocky shore...

Your body does not use more oxygen when You dive deeper. Oxygen consumtion depends not from the diving deep, only from metabolism = how fast You move.

Due to this fundamental behavoir a REbreather works very efficient. Because in this CLOSED LOOP System its only the tiny amount of oxygen what is replaced continually.

And in a pure 100% Oxygen Rebreather there is no father Diluent gas, that makes this gear so fantastic easy. But the major problem is the toxity of pure Oxygen under higher PARTIAL Pressures.

A solution is to use an so called Diluent gas - as a thinner. This gas has to be nontoxic and shall do nothing to the organism.

The best known Diluent/Oxygen mixture is NYTROX. Our athmosphere is a special mixture of Nitrox. (21/78) This works well down to deeps of aprox. 40-60m. For shallower deeps You would increase the amount of Oxygen... If You dive really deep with Nitrox, You run either into trouble with too high Oxygen Partial Pressure (toxic!) or to high Nitrogen Partial Pressure (narcotic!)

So this is the area for other Diluents, like Helium or Hydrogen...But the become also problematic under extrem high partial pressure.

So the basic Issue for diving in a wide spreaded area of depths is to control the partial pressure (= the percentage in the mixture) of the Oxygen over all depths. Therefore it is essential to have Oxygen Sensors and Control Valves. This makes a Rebreather for higher depths simply more complex. Bigger. Heavier.

But theoretically You will have the same dive time with the same Oxygen supply - regardless of the depth.

But of Course You will have the problem of becoming free of the dissolved Diluent gas - depending of the time You was under higher partial pressure. So a Decompression procedure becomes mandatory.

For the Game Play:

I would say at least there should be a time penalty to leave the water after deep dives. And - as mentioned before - deep diving gear should be bulkier and demand more inventory space. Diving deeper with a "normal" gear should result in an injury countdown.

There are people (Freediver) the can go down to 120m and more with only taking one breath.

So it is possible to dive 60m and not get hurt. IF You don't stay there long.

Other question is, how many soldiers would be freedivers with years of training?

I would set 20-30m as a limit for diving with NO equipment. Beyond this limit I would reduce the health dramaticaly over a short time.

But of course ESCAPES from Submarines are a different thing. There are known successfull Escapes without any gear from deeps about 60m....

In reality no soldier with all his equipment would dive deeper then 3-5m at all. I'm pretty sure about this. :-) And he would not stay longer then 1-2min.

A trained SEAL may beaten this numbers ... but not so much with a land combat payload.

For TACTICAL reasons I vote UP. Because - as allready sad -

1. there is either a very light and small diving gear with pure Oxygen = 6m for hours / but only minutes in deeps > 20m !!!

2. the are of course also rebreathers with mixed gases. BUT this gears a much bigger and heavier. = this should affect the Inventory!

So it depends from the MISSION, wether a Diver should choose the small one or the bigger (Tornister).

Today (1) is mostly used to get (only) ashore. (2) is common for finding and disarming mines - because the are often droped in deeper water...