Human Butchering OP

[Benis]

Throw those 30 dead tribals in the freezer and next time your pawns throw a party/wedding, you have a mood buff that more than negates full human butchery debuffs and lasts longer than those debuffs. This is strong on its own. What's stronger is that human leather is worth 3x standard leather.
With the upcoming nerf to the epic cannibalism meme, I think a reflection in abhorrence to human leather would be to bring it on par in value to regular leather, or even less ($2/unit, maybe, vs the $3 standard). As it is, each butchered human corpse yields ~$125 in meat and ~$360 in leather, even more if the leather is crafted.
Human butchery just shouldn't be so desirable for a colony that isn't full of cannibals and psychopaths. Let it provide some cheap meat only good for animal chow, sale to bulk vendors or emergency provisions, and some gruesome leather that sells at poor rates, so that the player is only incentivized to harvest it for cannibal/psychopath playstyles that encourage consumption of human-derived produce. Breaking taboos should be for fun, not the optimal course of action.

[Zhentar]

A17 reduces the value of human leather to 2x, and adds some mood impacts to wearing human leather.

[O Negative]

A17 reduces the value of human leather to 2x, and adds some mood impacts to wearing human leather.

That's actually really good to know. I always thought it was funny that people would get upset when butchering humans but not when they wore clothes made of human skin

[cultist]

Totally agree. I see you mentioned a nerf to cannibalism, does this include the trait? It's a really powerful positive trait with no real backside currently.

[mumblemumble]

I think a possibility to develop KURU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) Would be an interesting concept to add into cannibalism : low chance, but a serious risk for very long periods of cannibalism. Plus, it would be a little creepy to for instance, get a tribal prisoner with kuru, and knowing why...

[SkyBlueMuffalo]

I think a possibility to develop KURU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

That's a great idea! Since Kuru is caused by prions there'd be no way to vaccinate against it and treatment would require glittertech. "Mental break: Laughing uncontrollably" would be a nice price to pay for eating humans.

[mumblemumble]

Yes, laughing uncontrollably, slight lowered consciousness , talking, manipulation, and moving, getting slowly worse over time.

On the subject of being incurable, the article DOES mention a protean which seemed to grant immunity, and is currently being studied. However, this still sounds like it could be mild glitter-tech stuff. Its incurable with current medicine, but I suspect this may be different in say, 20 years.

If this is added though, I hope theres a mechanic in place to make very occasional consumption MUCH less likely, than regular consumption : I figure the body could still filtrate these things out once in a while, but regular, larger scale consumption is what indeed does it in these cases, with ritualistic cannibalism from tribals in new guini.

[SkyBlueMuffalo]

I must admit that I did not know about the immunity - maybe I should read the article. My knowledge of Kuru is a bit dated, but it's the kind of illness one remembers after reading about it.

I'm with you: Pawns shouldn't contract Kuru immediately after eating human flesh. Some sort of counter would be in order.

[mumblemumble]

As a basic rundown, they have found another protean in these tribes which is "extremely resistant" to kuru. This by itself could theoretically function as a vaccine or treatment for it potentially, by weakening the effects of the offending protean to begin with till there is no symptoms at all of kuru.

This is with modern medicine, being an idea, so with glitterworld, I think its very possible.

Counter sounds like a great idea : maybe canibalism under a certain amount per week / year could be just ignored in the dice roll for getting kuru : so a nasty week of having too much cannibalism, OR, having too much throughout a year can then give risk.

[dv]

I think the "cannibal" trait should be acquired by eating human remains, like drug addiction.

And when you do it, it effects your relations with other tribes/colonists.

So eventually you're just cannibal outcasts, raiding other groups and eating the tribal attackers, etc.

Or make human flesh a luciferium-like eat-or-die thing and make a "zombie" trait.

[mumblemumble]

To be honest, gaining / losing traits / abilities is like a wet dream of mine for rimworld : to have stories made far more interesting, with pacifists learning to fight in times of hardship, cold people learning to care when someone close is hurt, or traumatic events making blockades. Course, this would involve a simulation of pavlovian psychology almost entirely, and would be a lot of work, but hot DAMN it would be amazing

... sorry, thats off topic. In a word : agreed.

[SkyBlueMuffalo]

... sorry, thats off topic. In a word : agreed.

Seconded! The stories would be great! Just imagine: Three pawns in their first winter are starving and in their desperate hunger they consume the frozen body of a luckless raider. Two of them will carry the burden of this traumatic memory forever - one, however, really liked the long pig...

[cultist]

I think the "cannibal" trait should be acquired by eating human remains, like drug addiction.

Raw meat could function like a drug, each meal adding to tolerance, like alchohol or smokeleaf. Higher tolerance = higher chance of getting sick. That would add some risk to cannibalism and the cannibal trait. 

[Harold3456]

I didn't realize human meat was worth this much! I wil definitely have to get a cannibal/psychopath colonists STAT just to have them butchering.

As for negative traits on cannibals:
-Incapable of getting any kind of joy boost from meals, regardless of quality
- Mild (-5 or so) automatic dislike from other colonists.
- as per mumblemumble's suggestion, high risk of Kuru as cannibals will always prioritize human meat.

[cultist]

- Mild (-5 or so) automatic dislike from other colonists.

There is already a dislike factor in place for butchering people, but not for the actual act of cannibalism. I'm not really sure what the logic is here, but I suspect it has something to do with the complexity of tracking every meal ever eaten by each pawn.