Reduce the water requirements of the hippopotamus

Dodoraptor

D
Being large animals, hippos should absolutely require ample habitat space. As such, it makes sense that its land requirement is that high, at 1004 square meters+502 per additional individual (it may be slightly too high, but not by that notable of an amount)

But the fact that the water requirements are the same is absurd.
For comparison
The water requirement for a single hippo is the same as that of 15 sea lions.
The second highest requirement is that of the polar bear (720 square meters), who has intentionally absurd requirements to represent the difficulty of keeping them in captivity.

And the collective requirements of land and water mean that the hippopotamus requires the most additional space per added individual in 1004 square meters (502 for land and water each). More than polar bears (550 land+360 water=910 total) and more than the largest animal in the game, the African elephant (667 land+74 water=741 total)

And those requirements for water don’t make sense, with large hippo herds in captivity being content with far less.
In addition to making habitat design more difficult, as it requires the decoration of vast amounts of water, with fewer options than on land.

So, all in all, the water requirements of the hippopotamus should be lowered.
In my opinion, the base should be 300 square meters. 4th highest in the game, after polar bears, California sea lions and American beavers (which that requirement also sounds too high for the rodent…) and equal to grey seals and gharials.

To keep the water requirements per an additional individual the among highest in the game, I think it should be 100 square meters. Still very high, but not on an absurd level. Lower than polar bears and slightly lower than saltwater crocodiles (though it may be too high for the crocodilian…)
 
Last edited:

Dodoraptor

D
sympatrick said:
I think the hippopotamus requires an overall reduction in space requirements, not just water. Additional space required is especially a big problem.

Land requirement shouldn't be more than an Asian elephant, for instance. In fact land and water requirement combined shouldn't be more than an elephant's.
Click to expand...
You just made me realize how low the space requirements of Indian elephants are in the game (base is 882 square meters for land, 67 for water. Additional are 204 for land and 34 for water)

This is exceptionally low. Many animals far smaller have a higher base space requirement (for example, non fox canids), and all other animals that weight over a tonne have higher space requirements per additional individual.

I thought that perhaps land requirements should be lower to 300-400 square meters per additional individual so combined with the lowering of the water requirements, it’ll be less than white rhinos (550 per individual), but you just showed a very notable inconsistency, that’s perhaps more towards Indian elephants requiring too little.

Scrolling through I also noticed other inconsistencies, like black bears requiring more space than the larger brown bears, and the tiny sun bears requiring more than both.
 

Spiderhawk

Spiderhawk
I stopped using hippos due to the space requirements, often times I will edit their habitats and somehow the water and land balance gets thrown off. Plus they can update the hippos just like they did with polar bears with space requirements and they can properly dive. I have never seen guests go to underwater viewing for my hippos even though the hippos are walking on the water floor.
 

Atiggerx33

A
Spiderhawk said:
I stopped using hippos due to the space requirements, often times I will edit their habitats and somehow the water and land balance gets thrown off. Plus they can update the hippos just like they did with polar bears with space requirements and they can properly dive. I have never seen guests go to underwater viewing for my hippos even though the hippos are walking on the water floor.
Click to expand...
To be fair they shouldn't dive like typical animals. Hippos actually can't swim, they walk around on the bottom, pushing themselves off and to the surface to breathe (if they're in over their head). So they should walk/run along the bottom and occasionally bounce up to the surface before sinking back down. That being said they should actually have a deep water requirement. Deep water should be 1m taller than they are (so a bit over their heads).
 

DrBurrito

DrBurrito
Atiggerx33 said:
That being said they should actually have a deep water requirement. Deep water should be 1m taller than they are (so a bit over their heads).
Click to expand...
Them and polar bears are the two species lacking a deep water requirement the most at the moment. In fact, in the case of polar bears, they are probably the only animal in the game right now with a minimum depth requirement of 3 meters (deep end of the pool) according to actual husbandry manuals. This means the one animal that requires 3 meter deep water the most doesn't even have it in the game.

1659448821372.png


Interestingly, patch notes from an update back in 2021 actually mentions deep water requirement being added for polar bears, but that never showed up in-game for some reason:
1659448684482.png

forums.frontier.co.uk

🐾Update 1.6 and Africa Pack Out Now! 🐾

Hayo Zookeepers! Ready for your next adventure? We're so excited to announce that the Africa Pack and free Update 1.6 have just arrived for Planet Zoo! Update your game now to start playing with this exciting new content! Update 1.6 is free for everyone, and comes with amazing new features...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

Edit: Although I'm not sure how a deep water requirement for hippos would work with their custom underwater navigation system. The game might be requiring actual diving animals for the deep water requirement to work; so it might be impossible to add it to hippos, as they will never deep swim. However, if a custom porpoising system is added to hippos in place of deep swimming, maybe that could work.
 
Last edited:

Spiderhawk

Spiderhawk
Ah good point I did not know that about hippos
But I’d like frontier to “add diving mechanic” to them, what I mean by that is guests will acknowledge that they are underwater and go to an underwater viewing as a crocodile would. Instead of guests saying the view isn’t great when you meet bare minimum requirements and they are underwater.
 

Frobacca

Frobacca
Definitely something for the game to look into, info and space requirements for all animals in the game. obviously not just size of the animal determines area they need. It would be interesting to look at AZA or ZAA or a similar organizations and use or base requirements off of what they require. Possibly do some research and talk to individual zoos to figure out what works best for the animals
 

snoogins

snoogins
I've noticed that a majority of the time the hippos won't even go under water. They just tend to stick to the land section of their habitat despite them being able to enter the water section. I don't really know what changed since they always went into the water section in earlier versions of the game. Also speaking of hippos, will they ever get unique animations in the water?
 

PlanetJameson

PlanetJameson
This is a very frustrating animal to build habitats for. Anyone have any tips on how to meet the space requirements but also not have the habitat comments from guests be “I guess this view is fine” or “you can’t even tell that’s a hippo.”
 

Eletan888

Eletan888
PlanetJameson said:
This is a very frustrating animal to build habitats for. Anyone have any tips on how to meet the space requirements but also not have the habitat comments from guests be “I guess this view is fine” or “you can’t even tell that’s a hippo.”
Click to expand...
I build a huge backstage holding/pool and put literally nothing in it. They still spend time in it for their hard shelter but it allows me to make a realistically sized habitat from a guest perspective.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom