Question about human-corpse-butchering

[MrKampfCookie]

Is it more efficient to have raider-corpses in a freezer for my dogs to eat them as a whole or is it more efficient to cut the corpses up using a psychopath-budger? If the second option is true: Is it better to feed the human meat directly to the dogs or do I make kibble from it?

[MortVent]

I usually do kibble, because it has multiple uses. And it skills up the cook making it.

Same one that does meals for the colonists or assists with them

[Astasia]

It's much more efficient to butcher, you get more nutrition and you get leather and it takes almost no time to do.

Kibble will extend the nutrition by mixing hay into it, but it takes a lot of time to do, and dogs will just eat raw hay anyway so there's little point in worrying about their nutrition efficiency. If you have wolves instead of dogs, it might be worth considering if you find yourself running low on food. I never find kibble worthwhile to make, but some people like to use it as a way to train cooking.

[M.K.]

Originally posted by Astasia:

and dogs will just eat raw hay anyway

Nope

[Astasia]

I guess I am wrong about that. They have the same listed dietary options as other animals that eat hay, but there appears to be the same hidden restriction on them eating hay as humans. I've never trapped a dog in a room with hay before to see what would happen. =P

They do eat rice/corn/etc. so that doesn't really change the value of kibble for them at any rate, it's still more efficient to let them eat vegetables than worry about crafting kibble.

[Hoki]

Originally posted by Astasia:

but there appears to be the same hidden restriction on them eating hay as humans

being that hay falls into the same category as live plants

[Astasia]

Makes sense, in terms of the game mechanic anyway. I was 99% sure they had live plants listed in their diet, but I may have been thinking of seeds.

Edit: Never really put any thought into it, but I guess the whole diet system is pretty messed up. The only "vegetable" is the potato, which is also a "live plant." Corn and rice are grains, which the game calls seeds, and also classified as a fruit like berries. I guess humans and dogs wait to eat corn and berries until they dry out, because they can't eat live plants right, so no fresh and juicy there. I don't know how they deal with raw potatoes, is there a point when an uncooked potato is both "dead" and edible?

[M.K.]

I suspect the game oringinaly planned a *much* more complex food sourcing-and-preparation system, as the current setup seems to contain stubs and types to support vastly more complex setups.
Maybe, like the graphic system, the current food setup was a mere placeholder which later got accepted as 'good enough' for the final game?

[TwoTonGamer]

Something to consider is the colony-wide mood debuff for becoming a human butchering colony.
It can drive the sensitive mad.

[Kittenpox]

If you do decide to make cannibal kibble, I'd recommend this mod - it may help save a colony if your own people face an unexpected food shortage and need to resort to animal feed.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558455017 (Also highly useful if you have cannibals in your own colony, but that goes without saying.)

[MayoCulpa]

I like to run smaller colonies, so for me it's often feasible to send all my regular colonists out on a short caravan trip. That way the cannibal / bloodlust / psychopath pawns can butcher up all my frozen corpses and everyone else avoids the mood penalty.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

If you do decide to make cannibal kibble, I'd recommend this mod - it may help save a colony if your own people face an unexpected food shortage and need to resort to animal feed.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558455017 (Also highly useful if you have cannibals in your own colony, but that goes without saying.)

All of those can already be used with human meat in vanilla. What is the reason for the mod? Do they actually prevent stacking, and thus cross-contamination? If so, that is pretty nice.

[MayoCulpa]

There was another method for cannibal meal separation in vanilla (iirc this is something Astasia said awhile ago, I could be mistaken!):

Set the food restriction for all non-cannibal colonists to Fine and cannibals to Lavish. Make Lavish meals only with human meat. That way even if a cannibal colonist drops their meal due to being downed, a non-cannibal will not pick it up and eat it by mistake.

I've also tried it the other way around: set my cannibals to Raw and never made the human meat into meals at all. The cannibal mood bonus still offset the raw food penalty for a net positive. But they got food poisoning from the raw meat a bit too often, so I stopped doing it.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

There was another method for cannibal meal separation in vanilla (iirc this is something Astasia said awhile ago, I could be mistaken!):

Set the food restriction for all non-cannibal colonists to Fine and cannibals to Lavish. Make Lavish meals only with human meat. That way even if a cannibal colonist drops their meal due to being downed, a non-cannibal will not pick it up and eat it by mistake.

I've also tried it the other way around: set my cannibals to Raw and never made the human meat into meals at all. The cannibal mood bonus still offset the raw food penalty for a net positive. But they got food poisoning from the raw meat a bit too often, so I stopped doing it.

Yep, there are definitely work-arounds. And also just micro managing. Curious if this mod alleviates any of that.

[Hoki]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

All of those can already be used with human meat in vanilla. What is the reason for the mod? Do they actually prevent stacking, and thus cross-contamination? If so, that is pretty nice.

the reason for the mod is that by seperating purely cannibalism meals and normal ones you can assign the C-meals to be used by cannibals specifically.