It's time to overhaul carcass harvesting and meats

[Vulp]

Well, right now we can harvest some meat, the hide and the guts. It's been this way for a long time now, and frankly I find it too simplistic. For one, we are leaving valuable parts of the deer behind, being the antlers, bones, and hooves. Also, I think the ability to drag the carcass a distance would be practical, and atmospheric. But of course you should burn more calories and become exhausted faster, as a payment for getting this massive animal into a shielded , warmer location. Also, a easy way to hunt in the long dark is to corner a deer until it has to run either past you or right through you. Those antlers aren't just for deciding who mates, they help ward of predictors. Like people and even occasionally wolves. I'm not saying that they should try to hurt you, but I wouldn't want to be skewered by those things either, it would do more then bruise.

Also, in the late game I'd imagine that the player can get pretty tired of eating dry cooked meats and fish exclusively. Now I know that there aren't many options in what is basically a tundra. But, one of the favorite things to do in my family is to cook up what is left of a ham or turkey carcass is to slow cook it, add some mushrooms and leftover veggies, and eat it. We even eat the bones. Even in the cold winter, this would be a greatly appreciated soup, as it conserves calories from the meat, and would give you the warmth buff ( I can't remember what it's called or what it does but you get the idea).

[SteveP]

the snow shelter can greatly aid carcass harvesting I  think. I have not tested my theory... yet. Lack of time.

I think we have to recognize that prioritization needs to happen. I'd like to see somebody collate the suggestions and let us prioritize what we want in some type of ranking. Current Poll implementation is problematic. No ranking possible.

I think we had some polls at one time that asked to pick top 5 or top 10 wishes. Hard to find them.

[Vulp]

Yeah, if Hinterland (nudge nudge) created a pole where we could rate  what we think is the highest to lowest priority and use the data to focus on upgrading those aspects of the game, that would be really smart and productive.

[Dirmagnos]

Guy who can barely carry his own weight, as even at 30 kilos(including clothes that hes wearing) he start to get encumbered, would be able to drag deer(that can weight up to 100 kilos easy) thru snow for significant distance. Riiight !

And im to chose between dried meat and soup made of all those leftovers, i will always go with meat. Because meat is "cleanest" of them all. Eating various dishes made out of internal organs is a great way of contracting something really nasty. Considering that there is no emergency services to fix you, il rather stick with dried meat.

[alone sniper]

10 minutes ago, Dirmagnos said:

that can weight up to 100 kilos easy

It is true !!

So , i guess 10 kg meat per 100 kg deer is low, isn't it ???

deer should provide at least 35-40 kg meat !!! 

[Jebru]

19 minutes ago, Dirmagnos said:

Guy who can barely carry his own weight, as even at 30 kilos(including clothes that hes wearing) he start to get encumbered, would be able to drag deer(that can weight up to 100 kilos easy) thru snow for significant distance. Riiight !

Yes. He's right. It would wear you out, but it would be possible. You can drag a lot more weight than you can lift and carry. I know the game doesn't show this, but would it be easier for you to believe if he set his pack down first? 

Even if we can't have a mechanism to drag deer or wolves, I do think we need to be able to pick up the rabbit carcasses to harvest them elsewhere. Something that small shouldn't have to stay in place for you to harvest it. 

[Dirmagnos]

23 minutes ago, alone sniper said:

It is true !!

So , i guess 10 kg meat per 100 kg deer is low, isn't it ???

deer should provide at least 35-40 kg meat !!! 

There could be higher amount of meat from animals, but its harvesting would also become progressively hard, eg player first go for prime cuts and only then he starts digging in to get it all(25 for 25, 25% more time for every next 25% of meat). From what i found is that ideal venison gain is 65-70% of carcass weight. Presuming that does in game are an average weight for whitetail deer and around 65 kilos, 35-40 seem to be reasonable.

It would be nice if field dressing skill would also have modifier for that, as less proficient hunter will waste a lot of perfectly good meat. Instead of this crap with harvesting meat with bare hands. Skills in general have rather weird bonuses. As well as badges(out of 6 id prefer 4 having different bonuses and even with remaining 2 im not exactly happy, but dont know what to replace them with).

29 minutes ago, Jebru said:

Yes. He's right. It would wear you out, but it would be possible. You can drag a lot more weight than you can lift and carry. I know the game doesn't show this, but would it be easier for you to believe if he set his pack down first? 

Even if we can't have a mechanism to drag deer or wolves, I do think we need to be able to pick up the rabbit carcasses to harvest them elsewhere. Something that small shouldn't have to stay in place for you to harvest it. 

You can drag a lot more weight, but a lot depends on conditions. Ya know "give me a place to stand and with a lever i will move the whole world". In this case were dealing with extremely weak person and extremely unfavorable conditions. As result efficiency of dragging would be reduced to none.

Id say that player chanced at dragging are higher with backpack on, as it can be used as counterweight. And yeah, rabbit transporting was discussed be4 and should be added into game. They are small and light, there is no reason to sit in the cold field dressing it.

[Vulp]

@Dirmagnos Dragging around 30 kilos of weight is a lot, that transfers to about 66 lbs. I personally don't know many people who could lug around that much weight for up to 13 hours of daylight, so I wouldn't underestimate our character's strength. Besides, it only makes sense that we would be able to drag these animals around, even if at max they weighed 50 kilos or over 100 lbs, you would still be able to drag them in the snow a distance. I don't mean to brag but just last summer I helped buck 9 tones of hay. Each bale weighed about 70 pounds or roughly 40 kilos. We stacked it on the trailer then stacked it in our barn, BUT I wouldn't be able to carry as much weight on our back as our character can.  And you are telling me that moving around a dead animal is impractical due to how heavy it is? Besides I'm not saying we get to move them far, I'm saying we should be able to move a dead deer from the clearing outside the trappers homestead into the shack that represents a storage shack for dead game. It would have trade offs, such as a big hit to your exhaustion meter, and calories.

Bringing rabbits inside is simply a great idea, they are pretty light and it would make trapping as effective as it should already be.

Also the idea of being able to harvest more meat from carcasses over time is wonderful! I realized that we probably weren't harvesting all we could but I never realized that we were missing out on so much meat!

[Dirmagnos]

@Vulp Youre forgetting that those 30 kilos include everything, even clothes of player back or quarters in the pockets. If it would be pure backpack content weight, then i would be more-less ok with it. Altho even then its not really that much, considering that there are 100+ l backpacks on the market, that would be easily good for 50-60 kilos in total carriable weight.

Dragging a 60 kilo carcass for couple of meters, sure. Wont be easy and rather exhausting, but doable. I was mostly referring to anything of note, 10+ meters.

[iSUGGESTthings]

I also would like carcass harvesting to be more complex and varied, meshing with the crafting/cooking skills in meaningful ways.

[SteveP]

On 11/6/2016 at 10:16 AM, Jebru said:

Yes. He's right. It would wear you out, but it would be possible. You can drag a lot more weight than you can lift and carry. I know the game doesn't show this, but would it be easier for you to believe if he set his pack down first? 

Even if we can't have a mechanism to drag deer or wolves, I do think we need to be able to pick up the rabbit carcasses to harvest them elsewhere. Something that small shouldn't have to stay in place for you to harvest it. 

Well if you could quarter the deer, then you could carry it but you'd need to drop the firewood, rifle and other stuff. OTOH with a sled, it would be possible to easily move several hundred Kg. On ice the coefficient of friction of wood is .05 meaning you can haul 20 times more weight with equivalent effort. Coefficient for steel on ice is .03 so ~30 times more weight on a sled. On dry snow with wood the coefficient is .04, on wet snow, it's .14. It's important to note that any slope changes the mechanics drastically! In other words, if the slope is greater than 10% you start to pick up speed on your sled/toboggan.

I don't know if they will make it more realistic; in-game deer are very common but don't give much meat. The caloric value is about half the real value. It's a game. You need to be busy and how can you be busy if one deer lasts you several weeks?

[Vulp]

I understand that it isn't that realistic and it's intentional, but the fact that we can't move the carcass is more of a hassle then a actual problem in higher levels.Sleds could be a hard thing to craft or a rare spawn, not something easily accessible to early game players. But at higher levels it would be such a luxury item.

[mystifeid]

On 06/11/2016 at 4:16 AM, Jebru said:

I do think we need to be able to pick up the rabbit carcasses to harvest them elsewhere. Something that small shouldn't have to stay in place for you to harvest it. 

Wait - you can't move rabbits?

[iSUGGESTthings]

18 minutes ago, mystifeid said:

Wait - you can't move rabbits?

Show me a screenshot of those same rabbits on the floor of a building?

[Vulp]

Mmmm, I think that's a place where rabbits run back and forth along a given path due to terrain and AI, so it's probably just a troll who is good at shooting.

[mystifeid]

4 hours ago, Vulp said:

Mmmm, I think that's a place where rabbits run back and forth along a given path due to terrain and AI, so it's probably just a troll who is good at shooting.

Bow and arrow actually - I only play Interloper. But if I could pick rabbits up and put them anywhere, what would be the net effect?

It would nerf my game.

Interloper is already too easy so I must spice it up a little by denying myself things like snaring/fishing and moving constantly seeing how many wolves I can bring down in 200 days. Does that sound like a struggle for survival to you?

A lot of the ideas above might be great for the easier modes but just once I'd like to see suggestions for increasing the challenge instead of decreasing it and then scrambling to find half assed ways to maintain the same challenge.

[SteveP]

On 11/11/2016 at 6:23 PM, Vulp said:

Mmmm, I think that's a place where rabbits run back and forth along a given path due to terrain and AI, so it's probably just a troll who is good at shooting.

Or he had some snares there and those are the empty carcasses. They last a few days.

It makes sense that you could take a rabbit home. Duh. Well maybe they will change it once you get advanced on butchering game.

[mystifeid]

1 hour ago, SteveP said:

Or he had some snares there and those are the empty carcasses.

 

On 11/11/2016 at 4:28 PM, mystifeid said:

Interloper is already too easy so I must spice it up a little by denying myself things like snaring/fishing and moving constantly seeing how many wolves I can bring down in 200 days. Does that sound like a struggle for survival to you?

I can't remember the last time I bothered to make a snare. Those rabbits were killed with a level 3 bow. Of course they were moving along the same path and yes, I am very good shot. Most Interloper wolves killed is 107.

Now I'm having to play Interloper as follows

- No snares
- No fishing
- no feat buffs
- no reading skill books
- kill more than 107 wolves

So when someone suggests making it easier I'm not very happy. What next? No clothes??

[cekivi]

On 2016-11-11 at 1:28 AM, mystifeid said:

Bow and arrow actually - I only play Interloper. But if I could pick rabbits up and put them anywhere, what would be the net effect?

It would nerf my game.

Interloper is already too easy so I must spice it up a little by denying myself things like snaring/fishing and moving constantly seeing how many wolves I can bring down in 200 days. Does that sound like a struggle for survival to you?

A lot of the ideas above might be great for the easier modes but just once I'd like to see suggestions for increasing the challenge instead of decreasing it and then scrambling to find half assed ways to maintain the same challenge.

Being able to harvest rabbits inside would nerf your game? How?

[mystifeid]

It would mean that I don't have to spend an hour outside sometimes in very cold conditions to harvest each one. It means that I am not risking being caught in a blizzard with associated condition and clothing deterioration (and chance of getting lost). It means that I can go out at dawn in Pleasant Valley with a feels like temp of -30C or less and quickly bag food for half the day or more when I would normally wait for hours longer.

Having done my fair share of rabbit hunting in real life (for food) I am not opposed to carrying rabbits per se - prima facie it is an eminently sensible idea. Except that it would make it easier. And that's without snaring them.

If I snared them and could pick them up then there are places like the mountaineers hut that have three or more rabbit areas in close proximity and these places would become veritable gardens of eden. You wouldn't have to do anything else for food ever again except run around every day for 15 or 30 minutes collecting your rabbits.

[cekivi]

You'd still have to thaw the rabbit enough to gut it (axing apart a rabbit would be an excellent way to lose most of the meat) and hopefully Hinterlands would compensate by having you do something with the carcass (burn it, bury it, etc.) so as not to attract wolves. And you can still have a "garden of Eden" even with the current mechanics. Once you know the maps well enough (or mark trails) moving in poor weather is trivial and you can still harvest for an hour at -30 and pop back inside for a nap to regain any lost heat or condition.

So, sure, picking up rabbits may make the game fractionally easier but I'd bet many players wouldn't even notice.

[mystifeid]

Yes at the moment you can pop back inside to regain warmth (time/cf penalty) or you can light a fire (resource penalty). Looking at the screenshot above, if I want the hides/guts as well as the meat (and I did), I have to make some hard choices. Do I want to spend around six hours harvesting and regaining warmth or do I light a fire and use a resource that is more valuable than anything else to me as I move around with the risk that it will be blown out by a freshening wind five minutes after I light it? Or can I simply pick the rabbits up and take them back to my place of warmth where the resource cost for lighting a fire is often very small compared to lighting one outside (and where there is no risk of the fire being blown out)?

Another example. I've been weather bound by daytime blizzards in that horrible Red Barn three times lately. The first time I stuck it out for six days and nearly starved. The second time I stuck it out for three days then left at night and nearly froze. The third time I stayed for two days then left with less than one hour of light, ran into a wolf pack and died (yes, day 167). If I could have gone out each night and brought back a couple of rabbits that I'd shot, these would have been completely different stories. Hell, if I was snaring them, I would have gone out in the blizzard each day to get them.

Fractionally easier? I'd have to disagree.

As I've said, I have nothing against the idea itself and it seems absurd not to be able to pick up rabbits but unless a decent compensatory mechanism can be provided, I'll live with the fact that it is no more absurd than a thousand other things in this game.

[floogy]

First of all, dragging deer is something almost all hunters have to do at some point. Whether it's a few yards or a few miles, hunters can and do drag their kills out, sometimes through very challenging terrain. Sometimes with sleds or tarps if they want to preserve the hide. A hunter in decent enough shape to actually go hunting will be able to drag a pretty large deer. I think our survivor, subsisting on 3000 calories a day would be able to do this, considering they carry 66lbs of clothing and gear all day. 

Secondly, it's unlikely that someone trapping or hunting small game would dress them out on the spot. They'd bring them home, to a water source for cleaning or pick them up and tie the legs to a branch to pull the skin off. It just doesn't make any sense that someone would expose themselves to the bitter cold to harvest a rabbit that could easily be carried to shelter. Even in mild weather, there's little reason to dress small game on the ground when they can be moved to a more suitable location like a creek or tree stump. 

It's a game, there needs to be some sort of balancing, but requiring the player to dress out an animal that weighs very little in the name of balance or challenge is unnecessary. There are 100 other things that could make the game more challenging without the need for artificially forcing something on the player that no sane person would do in real life. Real survival is about making things as easy as possible and conserving as much energy as possible. Using snares would likely be one of the only sources of protein other than fishing in reality. Hunting requires huge amounts of energy and time, fishing and trapping require very little.

I think that the numbers of rabbits snared should be lowered. Even an experienced trapper would be unlikely to catch more than 3-4 animals every day or two if they put out 10 traps. With 9-10 snares out, I don't even need to harvest more than 1 kg per rabbit to survive on rabbit alone. The extra bit of meat isn't even worth the cook time or wear on the knife/hacksaw. I think a success rate of 10-30% would be much more realistic. I think it would be reasonable on the higher difficulties to get skunked even with a dozen snares out. Right now it seems a lot of the long runs are relying almost solely on rabbits. Without the certainty of rabbits always being there, it would force players to do other things like fish or hunt rather than go collect their daily rabbits which are almost guaranteed. I could easily set 15-20 snares and have more rabbit meat than I'd ever be able to eat. That's more of an issue for challenge and balance than being able to move a carcass.

Just throwing some numbers out, pilgrim might have 40% success with snares while interloper might only be 5%. With rabbit populations to match, hunting them wouldn't be an easy meal either. Getting just one rabbit a day with ten snares in real life would be successful. It seems closer to 50-60% success on voyager per day. I'm pretty sure I even snared a couple more rabbits while I harvested their brothers.

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @floogy 

@mystifeid: Just some points to consider:

• The game isn't being mechanically designed just for players who prefer the extreme (i.e. Interloper). Being able to carry a rabbit may provide a slightly easier time but possibly on Stalker and definitely on Voyager and lower you wouldn't notice it.
• You can still go outside in a blizzard to harvest things. I crossed almost all of Pleasant Valley in a Blizzard on Interloper just to avoid the wolves that are everywhere. You can still harvest the rabbit and then run back in albeit a bit cold.
• If you can pick up rabbits they should need to be thawed before you can gut them indoors. Makes sense to need to spend the firewood.
• I would hazard a guess that most people don't hunt rabbits with a bow and arrow. Maintaining a trap line is likely what many people do. The fact you can easily (I would say at will) harvest a rabbit doesn't invalidate the desire of players who do trap to want to pick up their frozen rabbit to being indoors.  

[mystifeid]

3 hours ago, cekivi said:

I would hazard a guess that most people don't hunt rabbits with a bow and arrow. Maintaining a trap line is likely what many people do.

I think I realize that. Wait till they get level 5 archery. Shooting a rabbit is about as hard and time consuming as picking a cat tail. By that time, Ive stopped shooting them for any real reason. I just shoot them because I can. If I'm mobile though and can pick up the next days food while on the hoof, I'd be crazy not to. I'd never have to stop anywhere to hunt deer for food.

3 hours ago, cekivi said:

If you can pick up rabbits they should need to be thawed before you can gut them indoors. Makes sense to need to spend the firewood.

I like the idea but by itself I don't think it is enough for Interloper.

3 hours ago, cekivi said:

I crossed almost all of Pleasant Valley in a Blizzard on Interloper just to avoid the wolves that are everywhere

On what day? and carrying what weight?  Past day 40 I'm flat out going between the Crossroads and the Abandoned Bunker on a blue sky day and stopping to warm up beside two coal fires with hot drinks on the way. Blizzards start out pretty mild but I can't imagine crossing PV with a felt like -80C or -90C. I don't even want to think about walking into the wind.

3 hours ago, cekivi said:

The game isn't being mechanically designed just for players who prefer the extreme (i.e. Interloper). Being able to carry a rabbit may provide a slightly easier time but possibly on Stalker and definitely on Voyager and lower you wouldn't notice it.

Well that's fine for the other modes but I can't understand the rationale for making Interloper easier at all. I want it made harder.

4 hours ago, floogy said:

I think that the numbers of rabbits snared should be lowered. Even an experienced trapper would be unlikely to catch more than 3-4 animals every day or two if they put out 10 traps. With 9-10 snares out, I don't even need to harvest more than 1 kg per rabbit to survive on rabbit alone. The extra bit of meat isn't even worth the cook time or wear on the knife/hacksaw. I think a success rate of 10-30% would be much more realistic. I think it would be reasonable on the higher difficulties to get skunked even with a dozen snares out. Right now it seems a lot of the long runs are relying almost solely on rabbits. Without the certainty of rabbits always being there, it would force players to do other things like fish or hunt rather than go collect their daily rabbits which are almost guaranteed. I could easily set 15-20 snares and have more rabbit meat than I'd ever be able to eat. That's more of an issue for challenge and balance than being able to move a carcass.

Just throwing some numbers out, pilgrim might have 40% success with snares while interloper might only be 5%. With rabbit populations to match, hunting them wouldn't be an easy meal either. Getting just one rabbit a day with ten snares in real life would be successful. It seems closer to 50-60% success on voyager per day. I'm pretty sure I even snared a couple more rabbits while I harvested their brothers.

That's more like it.

Pick up rabbits. Fine. But it is ideas like these that provide real balance and more.