I don't think the game has a dynamic where some animals get along better than others or form specific friendship/enmities within the species. It's pretty formulaic when fighting occurs, and who picks on whom first in a habitat seems to be random, aside from pretty basic linear hierarchy stuff that is definitely over simplified in many cases. Aside from the mating thing with permanently monogamous species like wolves, anyway. It would be kind of cool if we saw animals preferentially hanging out with certain buddies or avoiding one another, but I guess that's too complex a dynamic for the game right now.
In the game it seems that a male and female will eventually pair up if monogamous, or at least mate, if placed alone in a habitat together. It's true that in real life some animals won't mate with a member of the opposite sex for reasons that aren't always clear. I remember seeing a zoo documentary where a male fishing cat killed the in-estrus female placed in his habitat. That sort of thing would probably be a frustrating and depressing bit of realism for many players, though.
They've simplified dynamics for some of the polygynous and polyandrous species where the dominant individual of its sex gets to mate more often. For instance, with chimps and mandrils, if there is more than one mature male in a group that also has females they ALWAYS engage in dangerous fighting in game (and seemingly within moments of a young male becoming mature) which is not how they behave in the wild, or even in captivity. They also tend to ignore the dominance relationships the females of these species have with one another too. I suspect it's hard to program something as complex as the social alliances that form between members of the same sex (which can affect dominance hierarchies too) within these species?
Yeh, I see what you mean about the friendships between animals being hard to actually program, as they all act upon their own needs as a priority i assume. I guess maybe some could be issued with a similar system to the hierarchy system where the relationship between two animals is scored out of 10 or 100 etc, then they become more likely to play or hang out with that individual in the future. That could lead nicely into a development of this where a fight for example would lower the score meaning they wouldn't interact so much. That in turn would mean the beta in this case would run to avoid fights as a normal animal would do. Would be helpfull as that would increase the ability to have multiple mature adults in an exhibit without constant fighting and vet trips and unhappy animals and guests. They engage or chase but not always physical fighting.
Yeh I agree with the killing of another animal because they don't like them is a bit morose, though we do have the predator and prey function already in the game which could activate in 1 in 1000 matches or something. And the fact zoo tycoon allowed us to keep carcuses in our exhibits as feeding stations, what? When I wrote about that bit I was thinking of a safari park in the UK that put two cheetas together. They got on really well but never mated. As soon as one was paired up with another partner, they had a litter. They had got worried he (I think) wouldn't be able to father another litter but did with a different partner. So generally I was thinking the not mating rather than hating the other animal could be interesting and make the challenge of breeding some species a bit more interesting. Anything for less fighting though! Haha.
I do really love the game, however I do feel although the movements of alot of the animals are good, their interactions with things and eachother could be improved too. We seem to have so much detail on everything the guests interact with, even with the addition of tables for restaurants etc, that the main focus of the game (the animals) have maybe had some of the realistic behaviours etc, especially in zoos missed. Big cats for whatever reason, some think boredom, others say tracing the edge of tetory etc, tend to patroll along the borders of their exhibits, whereas in game they don't show this behaviour at all. Other bits I'd like to see would be the pack animals moving around the habitat in closer packs, and the likes of them responding to things in their environment. If animals get sad they become morendisruptive and damage things like in zoos, again something that was included in ZT2. And if I was really going out on a limb, maybe something like the chimps mimicking people if they are looking through a glass wall etc or getting closer to investigate the people.
Either way, thanks for reading my ramblings! It's nice to know I'm not the only one thinking of these things!
