Ridiculous shelter requirements

[Roxxsmom]

The hard shelter requirements aren't so out of whack for large ungulates, but they really seem extreme for some of the smaller mammals and carnivores (like wolves) who shelter in very small burrows in their natural habitat.

For example, I just made a wolf habitat with a huge underground cave. There should be room for a dozen or more wolves in there with room to spare, but two adult wolves only had about 40% of their shelter needs met. And with the really small mammals, like meerkat or fennic foxes, if I make a small habitat that meets their needs space wise, I can't even create a shelter (using rocks or building materials) that is big enough for them unless it takes up most of the space. Google "wolf den" to see what size they actually are at real zoos, or in the wild. Would love to see more realistic requirements.

 

[DrBurrito]

The hard shelter requirements aren't so out of whack for large ungulates, but they really seem extreme for some of the smaller mammals and carnivores (like wolves) who shelter in very small burrows in their natural habitat.

For example, I just made a wolf habitat with a huge underground cave. There should be room for a dozen or more wolves in there with room to spare, but two adult wolves only had about 40% of their shelter needs met. And with the really small mammals, like meerkat or fennic foxes, if I make a small habitat that meets their needs space wise, I can't even create a shelter (using rocks or building materials) that is big enough for them unless it takes up most of the space. Google "wolf den" to see what size they actually are at real zoos, or in the wild. Would love to see more realistic requirements.

Shelter requirements in the game can be so out of proportion at times that it can actually surpass the total space required if a habitat is very crowded. I agree that this is a stat that needs to be revisited. It has always bothered me since launch, that since the additional shelter requirement for every additional animal can be more than the additional habitat space requirement in some species, it eventually ends up being larger than the entire enclosure when you have too many juveniles or the species in question can tolerate many adults of its kind. The only way this can be balanced is by making sure the additional shelter space required is never more than the additional habitat space required. This would largely fix the issue mentioned in the original post, but some base shelter requirements can also be revisited as well, if required.

 

[Veah]

Smaller hit boxes would surely help, as more space would be available as both shelter and habitar.

 

[Roxxsmom]

Smaller hit boxes would surely help, as more space would be available as both shelter and habitar.

Is the reason the hit boxes are so disproportionately large on the smaller animals to prevent them from escaping by walking through the walls of their habitats? Maybe this is a trade off with the way the game engine works with collisions? I notice that when you look at traversable area for a habitat, the area on the inside of the barrier isn't included, which has given me some headaches when I'm trying to design small animal habitats at the smallest usable size. Same for the space around rocks and trees and so on. So if the area right next to the barrier isn't traversable to the animal, why can they still walk through barriers sometimes?

The space required for smaller animals also seems proportionally a lot greater than at real zoos, but I assume this is because the 4x4 tile size is the smallest resolution for placing objects and for navigation?