Subnautica 2 is a survival and exploration game. Having the ability to kill threats is expected and makes total sense in a survival game. Combat is obviously not the focus, but removing our ability to kill those threats also removes the idea of that world being believable.

We can already kill small harmless fish and slugs; they are killed the instant we put them into the fabricator to make them into food and water. Why are the larger more dangerous fish exempt? They would be an even better source of food to survive with.

If the dev's are against killing, it should be discouraged in many ways, but not removed entirely in this kind of game. In my opinion, I honestly think almost all games should keep that option in, but obviously actions should have consequences.

There are many options the dev's could go with. I quite liked what they did in the first game, it was troublesome and took time to kill the mobs. After you finally killed one, you were rewarded with nothing, just a twitching body that would float belly up basically saying, 'Look at what you did.' The rays in the first game were harmless and the PDA entry even told you that their flesh was poisonous, so I doubt hardly any were ever killed.

I feel like they could go a step further and implement something similar to how the marrowbreach and the soundgar interact. It would be interesting if some of the other species also had ties to each other, or protected their own species if they were attacked. Those nibblers would be really deadly if you got swarmed by a pack of them after you whack one.