It's not just the size of the body parts, it's the power of the bodyparts.
Basically, we can do a stupid/hacky fix on bite power by just ramping up the "attack velocity" to make alligator bites more powerful, but it's also a bunch of research, as well.
I was thinking of making parts the appropriate size and letting DF's combat model take care of the rest. Even if that weren't enough to swing fights in the right direction, it would be a necessary first step.
Hopefully, I'll be able to get a nice animal behaviors suggestion going, but we can get some data on how to make proper animal attacks, having animal skins that are properly thick (so that alligator hide is thicker than human skin), and all sorts of other much-needed work on making decent animal bodies and behaviors.
I suggest splitting attacks into different types that function for all creatures and work in concert with the predator tags. Some very quick examples:
[ATTACK_METHOD:CHOKE] Creature attempts to take and keep hold of a [THROAT] body part wherever possible.
[ATTACK_METHOD:BITE] Creature uses bite attacks wherever possible.
[ATTACK_METHOD:TAKE_DOWN] Creature attempts to disable a [STANCE] body part wherever possible.
In the case of multiple attack methods being available in one turn, the first one would take priority. A takedown-choke-bite creature would try and cripple a target before choking it with whatever part it had free, preferring to use the mouth for this purpose. A bite-choke-takedown creature would bite the throat if available, the rest of the body if not, and any crippling attacks would be secondary. How the creature would decide which attack to use... I dunno, calculate the attacks as normal and then add a number of 'points' to any attack that fulfils the attack method criteria? This would allow Toady to program some basic behaviour into animals, but leave plenty for the modders to work with.
Where'd the 'outsource the raws' comment come from? I looked on the forums and on Google.
Uristocrat just struck one out of the park on mineral densities. If we can make suggestions on "here's a list of bite strengths" for things like dogs and alligators and such, and then have something for a suggestion of "alligator skin strength" and "cow skin strength" and some other things to make leather no longer completely useless, (plus maybe a boiled leather type of armor,) we could get some things that are likely to get action.
Just so I know what you're talking about here, are you suggesting the addition of explicit bite strength and skin strength values as a quick fix for everybody until Toady reworks animals so that these things come as a natural result of the creature's proportions and composition? 'Cause, yeah, animals can be properly proportioned through modding, but not everybody will use that mod.
Now to create a new world to check it out.
Spawn them in the arena, it's a zillion times quicker. Don't forget to make them all on the same side, instantaneous bloodbaths do get old after a while.
Add 'aa' to the creature name -- [NAME:aa blah:blahs:blah] -- so that they get pushed right to the top of the arena list. If you set caste names they'll be displayed correctly there, but they'll always be 'aa blah' in the arena.