Need some info from those of you who use cannibals...

[sbmarauderman03]

On my current game I had a drop pod crash in and the pawn inside had some good skills including cooking, which I really wanted so I could have a back-up cook. Had decent traits (ascetic and teetotaler) but was also a cannibal. Then I noticed he was also an ex-lover of my lone female colonist, who is engaged to someone else in my colony, so I decided to strip him and leave him to die. He ended up getting up and walking off the map, however.

I've never dealt with cannibals before, so if I had been able to rescue/recruit him, what kind of mood debuffs would I have to put up with? I know everyone else in the colony will get debuffs from him butchering humans, but how bad are the debuffs? How bad is the debuff if the cannibal does not eat human meat?

TIA...

[Rio]

I don't remember a cannibal ever getting a debuff from not eating human meat.

[Constance]

Cannibal won't get a debuff from NOT eating the human meat or any other meat for that matter...

They just don't care/mind if they eat human meat.. lol.

[sbmarauderman03]

Originally posted by Sashie:

I don't remember a cannibal ever getting a debuff from not eating human meat.

Originally posted by Constance:

Cannibal won't get a debuff from NOT eating the human meat or any other meat for that matter...

They just don't care/mind if they eat human meat.. lol.

Well crap. I knew they get a mood boost from eating human meat...I thought they get a debuff from eating 'normal' food.

Next time I get a cannibal with good skills/traits, I'll keep him/her. Wish I would've known this an hour ago. The dude was a 9 skill with passion at shooting, 7 skill w/passion at melee, 7 skill w/passion at cooking and 8 skill at crafting...incapable of none. Would have been a great addition to my colony, despite the ex-lover drama...unless the mood debuffs from butchering humans is too much?

[Rio]

You don't need to butcher humans unless you truly run out of food. I think only the cook gets a debuff for butchering humans if you say make kibble from human flesh and just use it for animals.

But I might be wrong on that, its been ages since I've have the need,

But if your gonna do that if you have flesh eating animals you can always make a human corpse stockpile in a cooler your pawns never visit (Besides drop off) and restrict the animals from other food areas and they can eat the corpses. And the animals are fine with eating corpses.

[sbmarauderman03]

Originally posted by Sashie:

You don't need to butcher humans unless you truly run out of food. I think only the cook gets a debuff for butchering humans if you say make kibble from human flesh and just use it for animals.

But I might be wrong on that, its been ages since I've have the need,

But if your gonna do that if you have flesh eating animals you can always make a human corpse stockpile in a cooler your pawns never visit (Besides drop off) and restrict the animals from other food areas and they can eat the corpses. And the animals are fine with eating corpses.

If a cannibal does not get a mood debuff from eating 'regular' food, which it appears is the case, then I agree there's no need to butcher a human. Now that I know this, I will not shy away from having cannibals in my colony from here on out.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Originally posted by Sashie:

You don't need to butcher humans unless you truly run out of food. I think only the cook gets a debuff for butchering humans if you say make kibble from human flesh and just use it for animals.

But I might be wrong on that, its been ages since I've have the need,

Everyone in the colony get the debuff, except anyone with a trait that makes them not care about it. Cannibal, Psycopath, forget if there are others, maybe bloodthirsty?

[sbmarauderman03]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

Everyone in the colony get the debuff, except anyone with a trait that makes them not care about it. Cannibal, Psycopath, forget if there are others, maybe bloodthirsty?

How much of a debuff is it and how long does it last?

[Constance]

I believe it's whoever doesn't care for violence..

Cannibal and Psychopath for sure don't care at all about butchering humans.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by sbmarauderman03:

How much of a debuff is it and how long does it last?

If anyone in the colony butchers a humanlike, then all non Psychopath, Cannibal and Bloodlust pawns will get a "We butchered humanlike" mood debuff, which is -6 mood, lasts for 6 days, and doesn't stack. It's honestly trivial. If the person who does the butchering doesn't have one of those 3 traits then they get an additional "I butchered humanlike" debuff which is -6 and stacks 4 times, which is a bit more of an issue but can be dealt with.

Even without any cannibals in your colony you should be butchering people instead of burning them if possible, you can get a ton of silver from selling human meat and skin. Use somebody who has a high mood or low break threshold to do the butchering if you lack any of those 3 traits, it's worth it.

Cannibal is one of the best traits in the game, it's all positive with no downside. Psychopath and Bloodlust come with serious downsides.

[avil]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Cannibal is one of the best traits in the game, it's all positive with no downside. Psychopath and Bloodlust come with serious downsides.

What is so bad about psychopath? It's just social "no care", and that's it. My psychopaths are usually most chill characters in the colony. Weirdly enough...

You can make kible and pamican with human meat, too, to feed it to your animals (if you can't grow enough hay, or they're predators, for example).. And your canibal will prefer pemmican over normal food for mood boost. Too bad game doesn't allow to separate dish stacks, so human meat dishes don't mix with normal ones.

[Orpheus]

Originally posted by avil:

What is so bad about psychopath? It's just social "no care", and that's it.

They have effectively NO social interaction with others. They don't make friends, they don't usually have lovers (though I have seen it happen occasionally), and therefore they never benefit from the mood buffs associated with these things. So although they tend to get stressed less than "normal" colonists, if they do get into a bad state it's a bit harder to bring them out of it.

[Astasia]

The lack of social related buffs isn't even the worst part about psychopaths. The thing with psychopaths is they gain no positive social thoughts (other than trait or relationship ones), but they get full effect from every single negative one. Psychopaths in a colony will eventually hate everyone and constantly get into fights. If you have just one in a large colony it might not be very noticeable, but if you make a full colony of psychopaths it devolves into chaos and you can't go a single day without social fights which eventually cause deaths. It's worse than Bloodlust after a while.

[avil]

Originally posted by Astasia:

but if you make a full colony of psychopaths it devolves into chaos and you can't go a single day without social fights which eventually cause deaths. It's worse than Bloodlust after a while.

Wow, well, that's really weird to me. I tend to like and welcome any psyhopaths in my colony (my last game is ~ 20 game years). It seems it's just because my psyhopaths also were easy to please and never unhappy or something. Especialy "main one", which had a maximum mood from cannibalism all the time (I cooked pemmican for animals, and he always used it). I had 3 psyhopaths out of 9 colonists.

[Astasia]

Mood shouldn't matter, it's just social opinions that factor into it. The problem is they get stuck in a downward spiral. They can't build any sort of relation up, they stay at neutral for a while, then at some point one of them is just going to slight another because RNG, and that slight leads to insults, and insults leads to fights, then they hate each other and will fight constantly, and there's no way to avoid this other than to keep them seperated as much as possible.

If you lock two psychopaths in a room, one of them is going to kill the other eventually, that's just how they function.

I suppose that particular issue could be avoided with scheduling adjustments and base design. It's going to depend on how much interaction they get with other people, if you reduce that interaction they might be fine for a while, but then you still have to deal with their inability to gain large mood boosts from other social interactions.

Still I've tried a few times to do a psychopath playthrough, being able to freely sell and harvest prisoners, and just kill any pawn I don't care about, sounds like an interesting game. It has just never worked for me though, they defeat themselves. Those are the only games I remember that I really feel like I "lost" and had to give up on.

[Rio]

A night owl can trait can help reduce interactions. While I haven't tried it, I suppose you could give a psychopath a night owl schedual.