fairyarmadillo
commented
9 months ago I think proboscis is reasonable as a severe consequence of mutating, but the main thing that both mutations are intended to do (drink from flowers) makes no sense for a human-sized mutant. Even a tiny mutant would not be able to get an appreciable amount of sustenance out of a flower.
The ability to drink from flowers should be removed entirely. It could be added back for special triffid flowers, but certainly you shouldn't be able to waltz up to a bluebell and get anything out of it, no matter how your mouth is shaped.
Proboscis could also give insects access to an acid barf attack (like the Brundlefly), or serve as a gateway to being able to safely drink mutant blood from corpses like #70797 can. The idea that you're not quite sure what kind of mouth or diet you'll wind up with as an insect could be pretty interesting.
IMO we should nix hummingbird beak entirely. The mechanics of it don't make any sense at human scale, and unlike proboscis I don't see it offering anything interesting for the player to do. #70443 pretty much removes Bird's ability to rely on melee weapons, so their beak is extra important. Different beaks with different capabilities might be cool, but giving them one that forces a savescum is kinda wack.
We could also add a "SLURRY" tag to some solid foods that would make them drinkable via proboscis. Oatmeal, yogurt, that kind of thing. Crafting recipes to crack raw eggs into a glass or throw a bunch of meat and water in a food processor would be reasonable, too.
We've discussed giving Insect different "paths" post-threshold, but I'm not sure how @Venera3 wants to proceed there. Ideally I'd love to see it if insect could gain some kind of affinity with butterflies, ants, roaches, or bees, and the ability to do something interesting if they had taken or lucked into one of those mutually exclusive paths - maybe this would involve doing something outside of the typical mutation system. I'm imagining triffids ignoring a horrible butterfly mutant who shows up to drink from their huge flowers and pollinate for them, and it'd be cool if you could chill with the bugs like Apis does.
The ultimate dream would be using pheromones to induce bees or roaches to follow you around, because emerging from a manhole and unleashing a swarm of roaches to do battle with the zombies in your hometown would be hilarious.
Venera3
Coach-mdl
github-actions[bot]
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Proboscis mutation has a number of issues, one of which it shares in common with hummingbird beak, this being that nectar cannot cannot be consumed as picking the flower seems to override the option to drink from the flower.
There’s also a number of foods that aren’t considered liquid. This is mostly anything with the name “soup” attached to it, though there are some exceptions such as maple syrup, sauces and jams which while thick and may take some time, could be consumed. There’s likely many more as it’s an old mutation. I may open a separate discussion to put any offending food items I come across.
Solution you would like.
To solve the issue of not being able to drink nectar, when the mutation is active, drinking from the plant should take priority. As a bug, picking the flower greatly offends me. Nectar itself also doesn’t seem to be liquid, as it couldn’t consume the nectar from the one flower I could drink from. I can’t remember what flower but it was a red flower like salsify in the Ultica tile set.
Many foods in the game aren’t considered liquid. We can assume any from the “drinks” category are safe but things such as woods meat soup and maple syrup cannot be consumed with the mutation. Raw eggs could be cracked and consumed too. Perhaps some of the soft fruits and other things could be impaled and slurped from the inside, maybe even live creatures if you’re brave enough. One far fetched suggestion could be to allow the food processor to liquefy food as an option for those with power. Mmmm, liquefied cheeseburger. Also don’t forget to add calories to nectar.
The proboscis mutation is a post thresh big mutation and genetic chaos really wants me to be a bug, so how about some more bug related things to the proboscis. Is it sharp? If it is, I have an overweight friend in my camp and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I “borrowed” a few of his calories. Drinking from corpses could also be nice. This only applies if it’s like a mosquito proboscis rather than a more peaceful creature. Proboscis could be left broad or it could be separated into carnivore and herbivores versions.
Describe alternatives you have considered.
Another method could be to bring the nectar item back. It could even have some neat uses for things like beekeeping in the future.
NPCs not being able to craft fluids has forced me to be the chef this time.
Additional context
Hopefully some of what I said is helpful. Maybe instead having a “drinks” section in crafting, there could be a liquid section. Not necessary at all though. Also I hope none of this came across as rude.