• wrath_of_grunge
    81•1 year ago

    sounds like somebody has never heard of Dwarf Fortress and the time they updated the cats.

    “I added taverns to fortress mode, so the dwarves will go to a proper establishment, get mugs, and make orders, and they’ll drink in the mug,” Adams said. "And, you know, things happen, mugs get spilled, there’s some alcohol on the ground.

    "Now, the cats would walk into the taverns, right, and because of the old blood footprint code from, like, eight years ago or something, they would get alcohol on their feet. It was originally so people could pad blood around, but now any liquid, right, so they get alcohol on their feet. And then I wanted to add cleaning stuff so when people were bathing, or I even made eyelids work for no reason, because I do random things sometimes. So cats will lick and clean themselves, and on a lark, when I made them clean themselves I’m like, ‘Well, it’s a cat. When you do lick cleaning, you actually ingest the thing that you’re cleaning off, right? They make hairballs, so they must swallow something, right?’ And so the cats, when they cleaned the alcohol off their feet, they all got drunk. Because they were drinking.

    But the numbers were off on that. I had never thought about, you know, activating inebriation syndromes back when I was adding the cleaning stuff. I was just like, ‘Well, they ingest it and they get a full dose,’ but a full dose is a whole mug of alcohol for a cat-sized creature, and it does all the blood alcohol size-based calculations, so the cats would get sick and vomit all over the tavern."

    after the update there were so many dead cats everywhere. alcohol is a solution, and all that.

  • gullible
    51•1 year ago

    You have to picture this feline invasion of Scotland from a realistic perspective to fully understand the long-term strategic implications involved in the purge. Getting cats to engage in guerrilla warfare is like herding cats. The whiskered menace will obliterate every available source of food within the week, leading to complete systemic collapse and infighting. Morale will drop, fraggings will spike, and the kitty command structure will fall. Not to mention the strategic advantage yielded by humans tolerating small amounts of water on their feet and this being Scotland. I think the scots have a fair shot at this if they can ration resources.

    • @Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
      9•1 year ago

      If I had the time, I’d use Pathfinder stats to run a full simulation. What I know is that in Pathfinder, a commoner has 3 HP and can thus survive 1 round (albeit staggered,) and a rifle wielded by a commoner has a 35% chance to kill ~95% of a cat on average (1d10 damage vs 3 HP.) Also cats have +14 Stealth and I assume they wouldn’t be charging through an open field, so a commoner has ~10% chance to notice one (nat 1 or nat 20 required.)

      This is assuming those are all housecats.

      • @Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
        12•1 year ago

        Let’s say an average Scottish military member is a level 2 warrior with +1 in each physical ability score, Weapon Focus, 2 ranks in Perception, and leather armor.

        13 HP, 13 AC, +3 to hit, 1d10 damage, +5 Perception.

        50% chance to hit a cat, same 95% kill. Only now the cat has to make 14 hits, and each is only a 60% chance to hit. The cat’s advantage is still 3 attacks per round.

        I’m running a quick Python script to simulate this, rolling proper damage. Survey says a cat has ~1.3% chance to kill a soldier. Since all the cat’s damage output is nonlethal, we can assume it heals between fights. Bump that down to 1.2% after factoring in a 10% chance that the soldier sees the cat coming and shoots it from afar.

        That means an average soldier should be able to kill ~83 cats before going down. Scotland doesn’t stand a chance.

  • FuglyDuckEnglish
    12•1 year ago

    so the thing is… with the exception of some feral Parisian cats… I don’t think they’ll work together.
    If the scotts work in coordinated skirmishes, they can probably defeat the cats in detail.

    the real question is… why would they want to? I mean, seriously. All true scottsmen embrace their feline overlords.

    • @MissJinx@lemmy.world
      5•1 year ago

      truth but… have you try to bathe or clip some cats nails? 114 of them would win even if they didn’t work together

      • FuglyDuckEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        well. no. Unfortunately I’m not entirely at a place where I can manage a pet. I do get to babysit a carrot thieving menance on occasion though. he’s turned into a cat-burrito for nail clipping. (and no, that’s definitely not a purrito.)

  • Enkrod
    10•1 year ago

    There are around 2.5 million ants for every human on earth.

    If the ants collectively decided we should go, they could kill all of us in a day. The only places that would be safe are Antarctica (population varies between 4400 and 1100) and Greenland (population 56,643).

    And don’t expect some scientists at the south pole or Greenlanders to repopulate the world, the scientists couldn’t and the Greenlanders wouldn’t out of spite.

  • Rhynoplaz
    7•1 year ago

    I’m actually surprised that there aren’t more cats than that. People are getting close to 8 billion, and there aren’t even 1 billion cats? I expected their numbers to be much closer to humans.

  • @jordanlund@lemmy.world
    6•1 year ago

    Fortunately, Scotland is on an island. I think the English Channel is going to do more to protect them from the cats than anything else.

    It’s not like they can get invaded by cats across the North Sea.