Long time ago some of the pred mutations like claws or fangs had cutting characteristics. So basically if you had evolved to be able to do it then you could butcher corpses without carrying a knife.
I get why they changed it after all claws are for grasping and fangs are for killing but i really think that this leaves an important niche unfilled. I really like playing a super primitive, naked, freakishly huge beast mutant and i play completely naked and just have a few simple items around my den for crafting. Its a nice fun and challenging way to rp for me.
So maybe instead of just adding that characteristic we can add a couple post threshold mutations on all of the carnivorous branches that are like “carnivorous teeth” (ie carnassial teeth those are specifically evolved to shear meat from bone) that will allow the player to consume a corpse directly and something like “carnivorous digestion” which removes the health penalty for eating raw meat (carcasses).
If we are going for realism it doesnt make much sense that a huge carnivorous mutant would be unable to eat its meal. The predators they are based on have no trouble and if a mutant has specifically evolved for that purpose than it shouldnt automatically warrant a health penalty. Ofc parasites should still be a thing. Hell even an obligate carnivore negative mutation on felines, beasts and fish (since they are based on sharks or deep sea fish) could be cool where they have to eat only meat (acts as allergy for every other food type) but can extract all dietary vitamins from it and gets a boost to overall calories since they adapted to process it really well.
Even with blob guiding the general behavior of mutation to be functional instead of supercancer, that doesn’t negate the other risks. Humans already can digest raw meat, and do so regularly. Raw fish is pretty common, and its practically heretical to not leave the center of a steak mostly uncooked. You already highlighted parasites, but there’s also the myriad bacterial concerns that are generally captured under health debuffs. Natural, properly evolved animals aren’t immune to this either.
A Carnivorous digestion option is plausible, but the drawbacks would be significant. The digestive structure of an animal life a wolf or dog is significantly shorter which helps inhibit a lot of bacterial growth, along with higher acidity in the stomach. The loss of digestive efficiency would be immense, a significant number of foods would practically become nutritionally useless for us, and we’d get far less out of anything we eat in general with that change. You’d also get a significant caloric energy reduction in general, the short digestive track and difficulty digesting raw meat in general regardless of gut type means you’d have to eat far more of it. Its easy to forget that cooked meat and our slow, complex digestive tract lead to immense energy return benefits for humans, that are lost on other organisms.
Claws should be able to butcher meat, but even the more optimist takes on how big mutant claws would be, would still leave them severely lacking compared to something as simple as a pocket knife. They should work, just be pretty crap at it compared to a real tool.
But at the end of the day, Mutants are never guaranteed to be functional organisms. The whole point is that something twisted an existing living creature into something else, not that they were carefully assembled as a functional whole.
Even with blob guiding the general behavior of mutation to be functional instead of supercancer, that doesn’t negate the other risks. Humans already can digest raw meat, and do so regularly. Raw fish is pretty common, and its practically heretical to not leave the center of a steak mostly uncooked. You already highlighted parasites, but there’s also the myriad bacterial concerns that are generally captured under health debuffs. Natural, properly evolved animals aren’t immune to this either.
A Carnivorous digestion option is plausible, but the drawbacks would be significant. The digestive structure of an animal life a wolf or dog is significantly shorter which helps inhibit a lot of bacterial growth, along with higher acidity in the stomach. The loss of digestive efficiency would be immense, a significant number of foods would practically become nutritionally useless for us, and we’d get far less out of anything we eat in general with that change. You’d also get a significant caloric energy reduction in general, the short digestive track and difficulty digesting raw meat in general regardless of gut type means you’d have to eat far more of it. Its easy to forget that cooked meat and our slow, complex digestive tract lead to immense energy return benefits for humans, that are lost on other organisms.
Claws should be able to butcher meat, but even the more optimist takes on how big mutant claws would be, would still leave them severely lacking compared to something as simple as a pocket knife. They should work, just be pretty crap at it compared to a real tool.
But at the end of the day, Mutants are never guaranteed to be functional organisms. The whole point is that something twisted an existing living creature into something else, not that they were carefully assembled as a functional whole.
Sorry, but like 99% of what you said here is basically pointless. Calories/digestion/claws/whatever don’t really have any bearing on this at all. It’s a videogame and he’s just asking if it’d be possible to have some QOL for the mutation - arguing on whether or not mutant claws’d be good cutting tools is just pointless pedantry.
So to the original poster I suggest he dive into the jsons to see if he can give such an attribute to the mutation, and if he can, to push a PR for it on github.
Its hardly pointless when the goal of the game is to accurately represent things first and foremost. To quote the current state of the design doc;
DDA presents an uncompromising survival scenario to overcome, but also presents a huge variety of options for problem solving, both of which are deeply rooted in a reality-based view of the post-apocalyptic scenario. This grounding results in sometimes unexpected inversions of gaming tropes, where storage capacity of clothing is more important than armor, or weight of highly effective gear outweighs its effectiveness.
So concepts like how effective something would be and the side effects of the associated changes are extremely relevant to the conversation when discussing additions that can be assessed with Realism in mind. Food and calories are explicit, detailed mechanics it the game with a realism orientation, and digestion changes would affect that. Quality levels of cutting items are already in the game and impact butcher, so discussion of the effectiveness of class is perfectly reasonable.
I’ve had this on my radar for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it, indeed a sufficiently “feral” mutant could/should develop the ability to eat directly from a corpse (technically nothing stopping you from doing so as a regular human either, it’s just very liable to make you sick, and humans are super bad at it).
It absolultely does bring up issues such as digestability, infection (a lot less so than you might think, there’s a reason most top predators only eat very fresh kills), and loss of ability to digest other foods, but that’s all part of the fun!
If it worked like a typical obligate carnivore, things would get pretty Not Fun , considering they spend practically all their time either hunting or resting. That’s not accounting for cooking, better weapons, and brains though. A humanoid obligate carnivore that can use a bow, much less a gun, would have an immense leg up on comparable (by body mass) terrestrial carnivores simply because success rate for hunts would go up immensely, factor in better hunting strategy and lack of competition, and it would likely end up downright easy. Yes you likely would need to eat quite a large volume of meat on a very regular basis, but it would be pretty manageable, and based on how carnivore metabolisms usually work, you might go a week between meals.
I much prefer this approach to the hack of turning claws into butchery tools.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the digestibility issues are already addressed in the negative Carnivore mutation. I was testing some things with the post-threshold mutations and found that the predator line (Culler, Hunter, Predator, and Apex Predator) does somewhat address eating from a corpse (Still had to butcher, but eating it raw immediately after). I still need to test, so may not be 100% accurate, but Hunter and onward doesn’t seem to mind eating raw meat. In fact Predator and Apex Predator appear to enjoy eating raw meat in flavor text. (Note, I am wholly unfamiliar with the nutrition in this game and did not test for extended periods of time, so it may not work as a long term strategy.) Assuming this is just flavor text and eating raw meat is still unhealthy, these digestibility issues could just be baked into the Carnivore (and Herbivore) mutation, even an extra (possibly post-threshold) mutation that needs Carnivore as a prerequisite, or simply be part of those “predator” post-threshold mutations.
As for the butchering concern that I also share, I could see two possible solutions that wouldn’t require any tool qualities added or whatnot.
There could be a new butchering option of just “tearing” or something along those lines that anyone can do without tools. For a normal person, it may be painful/exhausting, time consuming, and yield little, but, ya know, desperate measures. Certain mutations could just ignore many of those downsides, perhaps even getting more meat, but if you don’t have other mutations it still won’t be healthy or enjoyable. Obviously harvesting other materials like skins and organs with this method will be near-impossible if at all.
The other way could simply give certain mutations like fangs and snouts/muzzles an active that basically does the same thing, just not through the butchering menu. This could possibly also lead into doing the liquifying stuff spiders do.
, considering they spend practically all their time either hunting or resting. That’s not accounting for cooking, better weapons, and brains though. A humanoid obligate carnivore that can use a bow, much less a gun, would have an immense leg up on comparable (by body mass) terrestrial carnivores simply because success rate for hunts would go up immensely, factor in better hunting strategy and lack of competition, and it would likely end up downright easy. Yes you likely would need to eat quite a large volume of meat on a very regular basis, but it would be pretty manageable, and based on how carnivore metabolisms usually work, you might go a week between meals.