Human Devouring for Dionaea

[BurgerBB]

I don't really know how to fluff this up, but I'm coding a thing where the devour is better codewise and gameplay wise. Along with this update, I'm thinking of making it so that Dionaea can devour humanoids. The whole thing is implemented, but obviously there will be people who won't like it.

Currently, devouring isn't instant. It's an over time thing which is the equivalent of doing bite attacks over and over on the target, but at increased damage. The goal is that it takes 3 minutes to devour a humanoid from 0 health to maximum health. During this process, the target and the attacker must be still or else the devour halts. Devouring can resume again, and it does not reset your progress.

There are several balancing options I can implement to prevent userbase rage. Here are some of them:

- Add a mechanical limitation so that only antagonist dionaea can devour.

- Add a mechanical limitation so that only dead humanoids can be devoured.

- Make it so that the devoured humanoid isn't actually devoured, so that there is still a body to clone.

The justification for this is that in lore, there is actually a man eating tree that's thought to be a dionaea. There was also a lore thing where the dionaea crashed into a ship and consumed every single organic lifeform on board.

[BurgerBB]

I'm thinking of making it so that people can't get completely devoured because if you gib someone you're devouring, you take like 6 million damage from the organs hitting you.

[Asheram]

Puuuurge. Purge the shrubberies.

But in all honesty, I'm not sure whether to upvote or downvote this.

On one hand, it's a legit, canonical thing.

On the other hand, it'd make Dionaea a bit iffy to employ and give them even more significant advantages to the other races.

[BurgerBB]

I mean, all species can kill eachother. This is just another way for dionaea to kill others.

It's not like they have to eat other people, it's an option.

[SleepyWolf]

i vote yes. i spoke with others about this when i was lore dev for dionae, i suggested 'Only dead people, let them eat the limbs only so the torso is still left.'

real curious what @jackboot and @Elohi think tho

[LanceLynxx]

WE VORE NOW BOIS

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

let them, if they have enough time, pick the person clean and leave only a skeleton behind for proper spook

[LordFowl]

If Dionaea want to eat people they can do it like everyone else and dismember them first. Even if in lore Dionaea eat people, unless they have giant mouths they don’t do it in 3 minutes. There is a lot of person ina people.

[Sebbe]

Finally, it's time to add this. I'm all for going all the way but as Fowl said, 3 minutes is a bit short but more than 6 minutes is a huge kick to all antags and takes out time for interaction with crew. Keep it around 5 minutes and I'll be happy, and I wouldn't mind if we ate everything The closer to the source-lore the better ^^

[BurgerBB]

If Dionaea want to eat people they can do it like everyone else and dismember them first. Even if in lore Dionaea eat people, unless they have giant mouths they don’t do it in 3 minutes. There is a lot of person ina people.

 

Dismembering corpses is quite difficult unless you have a non-standard knife. In code, you can devour a giant spider in less than 2 minutes so I was using that as a standard.

[LordFowl]

Giant spiders are not people. The logic of a Dionaea consuming a human is still questionable. A tree can consume a human, but it will take quite a while. All canon mentions of Dionaea eating people are to my understanding Dionaea of a size much larger than a mere worker gestalt, which is at least moderately sensible.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

The simple mobs of giant spiders are far different from a playable character. Especially when the result of this action is the obliteration of the player's ability to have the character cloned. Spiders do not have the same expectation of good sportsmanship as players.

I would think that if this is a full consumption, 6 minutes is fair. But on that same coin, sitting prone for 6 minutes to get eaten might be incredibly boring for both parties

[Kaed]

Sorry to be that guy, but have you considered the actual logistics of a Dionaea eating a full grown human? The current devour code used by unathi is already borked with issues as it is, with the capability to eat entire giant spiders and bears without issue, and consuming a small mob whole provides you with so much nutritional value that you can go from starving to chubby from a single mouse.

Using this code to draw a relative comparison between timing of a new piece of code assumes what we have already makes a bloody lick of sense.

One station Dionaea are somewhat bigger and bulkier than humans, but not by a significant enough margain where a whole human could just vanish into one. Where is it fitting all that human flesh? Wouldn't the diona become a walking meat factory, dripping blood and bits of meat everywhere as it struggles to hold in all that delicious human meats?

[TishinaStalker]

Sorry to be that guy, but have you considered the actual logistics of a Dionaea eating a full grown human? The current devour code used by unathi is already borked with issues as it is

 

coding a thing where the devour is better codewise and gameplay wise

 

Yeah, he must've considered it, evidenced by his opening post saying he wants to make it better codewise. He can't start doing that without considering the problems it has.

[BurgerBB]

Devouring mobs larger than simple mobs has been reworked. Devour code is really bad, rumor is that it was ported straight from vore, so it's being tweaked to be less sexual and more functional.

[zyymurgy]

Thank god. I'm kind of tired of the whole "prey dies in your stomach" aspect of eating whole, live chickens. And then feeling 'less full' as you digest it. I don't need to know those kinds of things about the food I'm eating.

[Itanimulli]

Can this come with Taj devouring for Unathi.

[Kaed]

Thank god. I'm kind of tired of the whole "prey dies in your stomach" aspect of eating whole, live chickens. And then feeling 'less full' as you digest it. I don't need to know those kinds of things about the food I'm eating.

 

I mean... that's kind of realistic, and you just ate a live creature. I was unaware that this was a specific problem that needed to be addressed rather than just the broken coding of sizing.

[Elohi Adanvdo]

Yes, hello, it is I here to rear my ugly head.

I already had ideas on Dionae eating carbons, and had in fact discussed it with both a group of Dionae players, and with other staff on this a while ago. The reason why I haven't posted a suggestion for it yet is because I'm trying to fix some old issues and smaller tweaks/additions and work my way up. This is a massive change, and people are already pretty salty about the greentide, AKA greytide nymphs, running around and doing some small-time antaggery (which this will open them up to it as well)- and I was met with opposition when I suggested this to staff... Which is completely understandable.

I am somewhat uncomfortable in the fact that this was already coded, as is a bit ahead of schedule in comparison to some other things I wanted to address first to try and soothe things over to make way for it. I had ideas on how I would like devouring to go specifically for Dionae, and it would have to be discussed more in depth on if it is theoretically agreeable and possible to code or not, and how much of a headache it would be to the coders.

However... Yes, this is in their lore. Devouring should be possible for Dionae. And although whatever you have planned for them may be different from what I have for them, this could make for an excellent placeholder experiment to see how it is handled ICly and OOCly at first, and can be tweaked to what I had planned later but still give players something to have in the meantime. But I would like a few things before it actually goes anywhere:

- More feedback. This is the number one thing. I know that I am weary of adding this simply because of the feedback that I have been given by weary staff and community members. If this is to be added, and I'm sure we all know this, the majority has to be nodding their heads.

- More information. I'd like to further discuss with you what this new code of yours is capable of, as right now there isn't much- how does it differ from the old consume mechanic?

If this does go through, I would like to keep it rather vanilla using these, which I hope are agreeable:

- A five-minute timer. Seems reasonable enough to do with a game stimulating eight hours of work condensed down into three.

- A body left behind so players aren't removed from the round. Dionae mostly drink blood anyways because it's easier and they gain knowledge from it still, so it makes sense, right?

- Make it drain blood. See above. Will create some juicy conflict with vamps, too. Time to start pointing fingers, everyone.

- LITTER the body with Dionae evidence. You can't give the succ without getting a little dirty :^) This will provide the detectives the means to hunt down greentide.

-Leave behind some blood/DNA from the meal. See reasons above.

There is no need for it to be resticted to antag this way, as it would still leave behind a cloneable corpse. Dionae don't really get to antag much anyways as they're rather slow. So yes, I do suggest it to be allowed for live mobs too. I have faith that the ISD are capable of bringing the greentide to justice.

And for some personal support, I actually have some characters that request burial by Dionae like my Skrell and Unathi characters, considering the nature of all species involved. Please take my approval as one from a player and not a loredev, as I want to see what the majority thinks first.

Sorry if my reply is a little shoddy, feel free to ping me for better clarification or whatever.

[Sebbe]

Snippity snap son.

 

Perhaps we could make it a two stage thing where blood draining is stage one and actual feasting is stage two? Where at the end of stage one you get the full benefit of learning any language the person/squid/reptile/feline/insect (not sure about the cute little ants) and at the end of stage two you leave behind some gibs and that's it.

[BurgerBB]

Devouring is basically scripted attacks. You're basically doing auto attacking to a corpse over and over again with your mouth while gaining nutrients. It's equivalent to taking a dull steel knife and hitting them repeatedly.. Nymphs can't devour like this, only gestalts. You'd be better griefing some other way.

The devour code used custom blood splatters, which was fucking garbage because universal blood splatters already existed. Dionaea will get bloodied if they devour a corpse. Devouring would deal hallos and cloneloss for some fucking reason, now they do a proper brute loss.

There were plenty of exploits in the code. You could devour a human, bring them to the edge of death, heal them again, and then bite them and you'd remove their entire body because of bad code.

[Scheveningen]

As Elohi said, I think "rip and tear" is a little bit of a silly way to go about this.

I think treating them more like aggressive plants that absorb biomass slowly over a period of time (and thus desecrating a body in a manner different from a slaughter demon) is a more interesting way to link in the 'devouring' interactions.

[Elohi Adanvdo]

Snippity snap son.

 

Perhaps we could make it a two stage thing where blood draining is stage one and actual feasting is stage two? Where at the end of stage one you get the full benefit of learning any language the person/squid/reptile/feline/insect (not sure about the cute little ants) and at the end of stage two you leave behind some gibs and that's it.

 

That was also an idea as devouring would be far and few between with hunger levels.