Don’t understand water depth

[Nat1984]

Can someone please help me? I’m trying to build an otter enclosure but what I have currently says the average water depth is 7.90m but the minimum requirements say 72msquared. Am I doing something wrong? I’ve done what I think is a big, deep area of water.
I appreciate I’m probably being really thick here!

 

[Nioell]

You need to make sure the water covers an area that is at least 72m2. So if that requirement isn't met make it bigger so it covers more of the habitat and make sure the area is actually reachable by the animals. If they can't reach it it won't count.

 

[Nat1984]

You need to make sure the water covers an area that is at least 72m2. So if that requirement isn't met make it bigger so it covers more of the habitat and make sure the area is actually reachable by the animals. If they can't reach it it won't count.

I think I’m being really stupid, but mine didn’t say m2 it just said m. I did a huge, deep area- the whole habitat itself was over 2000m2. Surely depth would just be in m and area size would be m2? Yet in the zoopedia they are both m2.

 

[jcp011c]

I haven't yet gotten to play but would that not be cubed instead of squared now, since they're dealing with depth (width/length/depth)?

 

[Nioell]

I think I’m being really stupid, but mine didn’t say m2 it just said m. I did a huge, deep area- the whole habitat itself was over 2000m2. Surely depth would just be in m and area size would be m2? Yet in the zoopedia they are both m2.

I just checked and built an otter habitat and they do need an area of deep water that is at least 72m2. So if yours isn't met it's either not deep enough, not wide enough (I assume it has to be one single area that covers the 72m2 so they're able to display the diving animation correctly) or they can't reach it.

 

[Dezessete]

Where can I see if the deep water part is wide enough? If I look at my habitat stats it only tells me the average depth but not the size of the area.

 

[Locce]

Unfortunately the deep water stuff is implemented in a bit of a roundabout way. I'll try to explain:

1. Deep water is any navigable body of water that is more than 4m in depth (theoretically, see 3. below). Once the water is deep enough additional depth does nothing. (The average depth seems to be an irrelevant stat.)
2. Unfortunately the game doesn't directly tell you the area that actually has deep water unless you already have an animal with a deep water requirement in there. The required area in m² is basically the area that would still be covered with water if the water level was 4m lower (again, theoretically).
3. It seems to be the case that not the entire space between the water surface and the ground is "navigable" to the pretty nebulous specifications of this game. I have used the terrain stamp to create a 5m deep basin and did not get any deep water from that despite 5m being more than 4m last time I checked. Excavating the basin to a depth of 10m gives you deep water, but even rather light terrain smoothing will eliminate a much larger portion of deep water than you might think considering that 10m depth is 150% over the stated deep water limit. (This should also be considered for some of the animals without a deep water requirement since you need deep water for the new underwater feeding boxes to function.)
4. Furthermore, it seems to be the case that "ponds" maintain more deep water than "rivers" after smoothing the edges which lets me speculate that the game considers deep water "navigable" if a square with a certain side length (definitely several metres) fits in there or something to that effect.
5. In conclusion, I would give the advice to start off with bodys of water that are not too narrow and much deeper than 4m before smoothing if you want to end up with a significant amount of deep water counting for an aquatic species' habitat requirements.

 

[Dezessete]

Unfortunately the deep water stuff is implemented in a bit of a roundabout way. I'll try to explain:

1. Deep water is any navigable body of water that is more than 4m in depth (theoretically, see 3. below). Once the water is deep enough additional depth does nothing. (The average depth seems to be an irrelevant stat.)
2. Unfortunately the game doesn't directly tell you the area that actually has deep water unless you already have an animal with a deep water requirement in there. The required area in m² is basically the area that would still be covered with water if the water level was 4m lower (again, theoretically).
3. It seems to be the case that not the entire space between the water surface and the ground is "navigable" to the pretty nebulous specifications of this game. I have used the terrain stamp to create a 5m deep basin and did not get any deep water from that despite 5m being more than 4m last time I checked. Excavating the basin to a depth of 10m gives you deep water, but even rather light terrain smoothing will eliminate a much larger portion of deep water than you might think considering that 10m depth is 150% over the stated deep water limit. (This should also be considered for some of the animals without a deep water requirement since you need deep water for the new underwater feeding boxes to function.)
4. Furthermore, it seems to be the case that "ponds" maintain more deep water than "rivers" after smoothing the edges which lets me speculate that the game considers deep water "navigable" if a square with a certain side length (definitely several metres) fits in there or something to that effect.
5. In conclusion, I would give the advice to start off with bodys of water that are not too narrow and much deeper than 4m before smoothing if you want to end up with a significant amount of deep water counting for an aquatic species' habitat requirements.

This is basically what I thought too, but I didn't had the time to test this yet, so thanks for the explanation.

I'm a bit unhappy with this. The habitat stats display a irrelevant information with the average water depth but don't show the important part of deep water area.
So to know if your habitat works you need to have animals in it first. Seeing how it already is quite a hassle to terraform habitats if you already have a barrier (or god forbid, a path!), having animals in the habitat while terraforming will make it even worse (and yes I know that you could pause the game, so the animals don't run around while you terraform, but it's still not a great way of building things).

 

[Locce]

Yeah, I think this is a problem with habitat building in general, especially in franchise mode. The game really doesn't tell you much about what the animal needs before you release it into the habitat. At least you can look up terrain type and plant coverage requirements online, but with deep water you don't even necessarily see if you have any that counts, and having to change bodies of water with animals already in a habitat certainly is a special kind of annoying.

 

[Nat1984]

Thanks for the replies. I wish there was a ‘decoy’ animal you could pop in there to set everything up. It’s a pain altering water and things with animals in there as, if they get in the way you can’t do anything.

 

[iloveyourzoos]

I haven't tested this, but if I had to guess... The river v. pond problem may have to do with the same traversability rules that apply elsewhere.

An animal has to be able to turn around a full 360 degrees in a space in order for their hitbox to count something as traversible. So crocodiles can't go through a passage that is large enough to fit their width (going in heads first, like they'd do in real life) unless it is also long enough to fit their length (walking sideways somehow). And sometimes it's more 360 degrees horizontally and vertically (so a giraffe, for example, might need enough space for the to lie down head to toe, not just enough to walk through the way they normally would).

Again, I haven't tested this fully, but my instinct is that if the deep part of the river was wide enough for the animal to go through at any 360 angle (swimming forward or swimming sideways), both horizontally and vertically, then it might count. But if they can't turn around 360 degrees in every 3-dimensional direction and still be within the 4 meter deep area at all times, then it won't.

This would also explain why you can't test the amount of deep water before placing an animal. Since different animals are different sizes (caimans v.s crocs, for example), the amount of space that is going to end up "counting" as deep water depends on how that particular animal can traverse it. It might also explain why going deeper doesn't help, if the original width of the rive isn't sufficient for them to twirl around in to begin with.

Again, this is just my hypothesis based on what I've read here and what I've seen elsewhere in the game.