Butchering is way too fast

As much as I enjoy the free survival skill points I get when I clear towns of Zombies, it’s a bit of a cheat, and rather ridiculous when I have enough time to fully butcher a Zombie as others are approaching.

Someone look up how long it takes to properly butcher a carcass, and approximate the various in-game butchering times based on that.

If it used realistic times it would be impossible to keep zombies down while keeping yourself fed. Now, if we could burn corpses to keep them down…

Maybe there should be a dismemberment option? That should be quicker and still get the job done.

[quote=“acehawk, post:2, topic:6196”]If it used realistic times it would be impossible to keep zombies down while keeping yourself fed. Now, if we could burn corpses to keep them down…

Maybe there should be a dismemberment option? That should be quicker and still get the job done.[/quote]

There technically is, you can pulp them by (s)mashing the body, it smashes all corpses on the tile and stops them from rising, but I think it can damage some weapons.

[quote=“Datanazush, post:3, topic:6196”][quote=“acehawk, post:2, topic:6196”]If it used realistic times it would be impossible to keep zombies down while keeping yourself fed. Now, if we could burn corpses to keep them down…

Maybe there should be a dismemberment option? That should be quicker and still get the job done.[/quote]

There technically is, you can pulp them by (s)mashing the body, it smashes all corpses on the tile and stops them from rising, but I think it can damage some weapons.[/quote]

Neat! I had no idea, thanks! In that case I’m all for this idea. It should be based on the size of the carcass of course.

Yup. Pulping corpses should be the default way to keep Zs down, especially in the middle of a fight. I don’t bother at all now because of the free skill points I get from butchering.

I need to force myself to implement something like this into the game:

  1. Make butchering take longer time. 2-4 hours would be appropriate for something human sized.
  2. Grant all zombies a small chance of giving bionic(s) after butchery.
  3. Butcher zombies 24/7.

  4. 5. Profit! Become a killing-machine.

Another thing would be to revise (and by revise I mean, make them more plentiful) butchering rewards and base them mostly on size of the corpse, not on on players skill. But how currently the wildlife is extremely plentiful (which is attributed to the spawned wildlife’s inability to leave the reality bubble as the time goes on) this may throw of the scavenging aspect completely out of window.

Ha! I was wondering about the hordes of animals that would show up when I set up camp for an extended period of time. I assumed it was related to my scent.

Actually I had planned to do this when we added corpse smashing, but never go around to it :confused:

The other thing I use Butchering for is ‘make this corpse go away’. Meat vanishes quickly, whereas the corpse would normally lie around for ages being untidy.

Lighting the pile of stuff on fire will help clear stuff up as well.

[quote=“RadaRadaRada, post:6, topic:6196”]I need to force myself to implement something like this into the game:

  1. Make butchering take longer time. 2-4 hours would be appropriate for something human sized.
  2. Grant all zombies a small chance of giving bionic(s) after butchery.
  3. Butcher zombies 24/7.

  4. 5. Profit! Become a killing-machine.

Another thing would be to revise (and by revise I mean, make them more plentiful) butchering rewards and base them mostly on size of the corpse, not on on players skill. But how currently the wildlife is extremely plentiful (which is attributed to the spawned wildlife’s inability to leave the reality bubble as the time goes on) this may throw of the scavenging aspect completely out of window.[/quote]

Uh 2-4 hours is way too long of action to do anywhere but safe at home. I suggest that you dismember instead of butcher and then fillet later to get the goods. Just take giant pieces at a time. Ribcage. Whole legs. Big ol chunks of meat. No need to do specific cuts or anything, just meat and limbs maybe ribs if anyone thinks it could make more enjoyable meals.

2-4 hours is more than a bit excessive. Ive seen pro slaughtermen take a sheep completely apart in less than 30 mins. If you only want to take very basic cuts, eg, take the legs/arms off/debone a bit with some practice 10-15 mins doesnt seem crazy for a human sized carcass.

Hrm, considering how important an action it is, field dressing might be a reasonable thing to add, in which case the current “butcher” action would become field dressing, which would take 5-30 mins depending on skill and target animal (think squirrels on the low end)
The output of which is one or more much more portable corpse type items (which in the case of zombies would be incapable of reviving), and some amount of waste items. You’d then take the items you want home to butcher at your leisure, which might be a special butcher action, or it might be a crafting recipe.

How’s that sound?

Pretty sure this has come up before, and there were no strong arguments against, but it just never happened.

that would be great.

I would favour a command over the recipes, but ultimately both work well.

Oh, for the most part it would be a disassemble recipe, so you’d still access it with butcher… hmm that’s a bit of a problem, because one of the use cases is “field dress a pile of animals”, and you don’t want it accidentally triggering a (really long) butcher action.

I disagree. You’ll likely be interrupted at some point, but given you’re allowed to “resume tasks”, that’s not unreasonable.