The Przewalski's horse and Camel terrains are still incompatible
Common ostriches, meerkats and aardvarks also fit that Namib desert mix
Hippos not handling classic savannah terrain (though I think that they're still compatible with most savannah species)
Also aardvarks, despite being compatible with most African rainforest species, not handling all of them and having terrible foliage tolorance
Outside of Africa and back into Asia, Bornean orangutans and proboscis monkeys having incompatible grass needs (why do so many rainforest species require grass?)
Hippos are an extremely annoying species in the game. Their area requirement is rediculously unrealistic, meaning you can't have large groups, they are incompatible with savannah biome animals, and they actively fight with the rhinos, depsite many safari zoos displaying them together.
They are also extremely oversized, because "along the curves" values are used for "between pegs" measurement in the engine - we are talking about 6 meter long hippos.
Huh. TBH I barely use them because of their requirements, so I never noticed. I usually just use the pygmy hippo, which has reasonable needs and great model.
I reckon their huge size adds to the habitat space requirement issues. If they had a smaller hitbox, maybe Frontier would be more willing to lower the requirements.
The problem isn't the initial size, but rather the fact that it almost doubles for every extra hippo.
Here is a ~30 members hippo herd in the Ramat Gan Safari zoo, my local zoo. Note how they mostly congregate together:
Their lake is large, but a herd like this in the game would require covering half the map with water which they never use.
I agree that the main space requirement issue for hippos is additional space needed for each animal added, but the base requirement isn't the best either - more than double that of the Indian elephant for instance. Accurate model sizes would help make the base requirement somewhat smaller too, thanks to smaller hitboxes.
Well actually, it would require about 15,000 square meters both with water and with land...
Still stupidly absurd requirements that beat elephants and polar bears, but "only" 3% of the map space.
I already wrote about the idea of how to lower its water requirements, while still staying high. But honestly, most animals in the game have their water requirement far too high.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/reduce-the-water-requirements-of-the-hippopotamus.596997/
The Indian elephant is probably one of the few animals who have their requirements be too low.
The Indian elephant does indeed have a pretty low space requirement in the game, which is surprising, since they are one of the headline animals when it comes to stereotypic behavior in captivity.
However, even with this in mind, the hippopotamus still has a disproportionally high base requirement. Let's compare a few:
- 882+67=949 m² for the Indian elephant
- 1000+37=1037 m² for the Indian rhino
- 1275 m² for the white rhino
- 1004+1004=2008 m² for the hippopotamus
This is part due to Indian elephant females being undersized, but either way, highlights the issue quite well. The oversized tiger, timber wolf and giraffes are also visible in the pictures.
Oh, I fully agreed that the space requirement for hippos is absurd.
Just mentioned that the requirement of Indian elephants is too low.
Oh yeah, I know, didn't mean to share all that info particularly in response to your comment. Just wanted to share some of my findings on the topic.
Absurd hippo requirements aside, when compared to the two rhinos and the African elephant, I would have expected the Indian elephant to have a base requirement of around 1500-1800 m² for it to be proportionally balanced, wonder what caused this exception.
Himalayan brown bear is yet another example to this actually:
- HBB - 550 m²
- Grizzly - 750 m²
- FBB - 950 m²
- Giant panda - 900 m²
- Sun bear - 920 m²
- Nile monitor - 375 m²
- Komodo dragon - 600 m²
I've been always surprised by the big difference between bears (polar bear aside), especially with the sun bear needing more space than others despite being the smallest one.
It could really come down to the most up-to-date best practice manuals we have on each species at the moment - the brown bear manual Frontier used could be older.
For instance AZA's new best practice husbandry guidelines for sun and sloth bears recommends the following:
- Absolute minimum: 279-465 m²
- Recommended: 465-929 m²
However, even if we are to assume that the brown bear husbandry guidelines they used for the two brown bears had smaller requirements, the abstracted difference between the grizzly and HBB is still too much (+200m²), more than 36% to be exact, compared to the 2-3% difference between the other three. If the HBB had a requirement of around 720 m², a reasonable difference to the grizzly, then I guess we wouldn't even be having this conversation.