A more living ecosystem

So I was doing a challenge when I came up with this idea a more living ecosystem now before you say anything yes there were 2 ideas like this about fish eating fish but hear me out. ok you listening, good. let me explain. also sorry for how long it is.

so all the others had the same thing make bigger fish attack smaller fish yes that would be good but here is how mine is more different kinda for the rest yes for the fish eating fish thing no until the rest.

so bigger creatures can eat smaller creatures while others when they eat them they leave behind a body a carcass and this body will sink to the floor if no creature eats it so if it falls to the floor scavengers could start eating it and revealing the skeleton underneath and overtime that skeleton will decay and disappear to avoid lag while other times in more saltier areas they can be preserved and collected as biofuel or if future creatures live on and eat bone could actually digest it.

so adding onto the existing one creature starvation an idea i thought of because if we can starve why can’t the fish. so fish can starve but for balancing issues what I would do is if out of range suspend their starvation freeze it to prevent unnecessary lag but you do you. and so some creatures of the same kind would target creatures more often then other’s of it’s species, like maybe you’ll see one pack of nibbler’s go after more halfmoons and some not as much and leviathans get an exempt from this rule in my opinion it makes alot of sense keep them unkillable machines. some creatures could have different creature preferences and have it described in their pda entry. now onto my favourite part of the idea distracting.

distraction in SN2 is just throw a flare and watch them act like a cat and stare at it like ryley seeing a mesmer and it calling him but anyway off topic kinda so you can feed hungry creatures and make them not hungry so they hopefully won’t try and eat you. this could have a chance to fail and the creature which we’ll use a marrowbreach for the example it’s coming at you and you drop a fish and 3 outcomes it either eats the fish and swims by eats the fish but is still hungry or completely ignore it you are the 5 course meal and it is hungry.

killing fish with your tadpole let me explain so you ever hit a fish in SN1 and it goes lifeless ragdoll yeah kinda like that but it would also damage your tadpole so different creatures behave differently hammerheads and leviathans don’t care if you ram into them your tadpole will be damaged but they do not care. anyway but yeah in summary your tadpole gets screwed while those ones wouldn’t be fased and I would make all collisions would do damage to the tadpole and I would make damage depend on speed and what creature it is.

anchored life being lifeful so some anchored life could actually grab food and eat it like a venus flytrap or that one dew plant the Cape sundew maybe some of the anchored life could be filter eaters and eat whatever micro things in the water with a hint of metal so wait would that technically mean they have a taste for blood. hm. try not to think about that to much.

creatures that survived a nibbler or marrowbreach. so back to the eat other fish some fish could actually survive injuries but suffer consequences like some could have fins damaged and where they are damaged could affect movement like for example the peep I mean halfmoon if the Anterior fins were damaged turning and reversing are slowed and could have different stages of damage and another example the marrowbreach if it’s Caudal fin is damaged it’s lunges are slower and weaker and scars of what damaged them and some scars could be deeper some could actually affect their movement some injuries could not notice like half their head missing.

and now why I think this would fit you have updated the collector leviathan and it is now terrifying spoilers if you haven’t played the experimental branch crawling on the ground grabbing the grab and interacting with objects so why not make universal mechanics to make the wildlife feel natural and make some look unique without adding too much.

but these are all ideas you could do if you want just wanted to make this because thought of it during a challenge (it was fun to do) and well thought it adds alot to the overall environment but in the end these are merely suggestions of how to make fish murder without making fish murder.
it is like 4 in the morning by me writing end I’m going to bed after I post this