- Expanded terrain requirements of Przewalski's horse (increased maximum sand tolerance) and the Bactrian camel (increased maximum soil tolerance) to allow their terrain needs to overlap for maximum welfare in mixed species habitats
I’m glad about the expansion of the terrain requirements for the camels and horses, but don’t the horses also need more grass than the camels handle while the camels need more rock than the horses handle?
That is correct. Soil tolerance was never an issue since the Przewalski's horses already had a minimum soil tolerance of 0%, so from a gameplay perspective, increasing the maximum soil tolerance for Bactrian camels doesn't change anything. It's
both types of grass for the camel and
rock terrain for the horse that do not overlap at the moment.
The domestic Bactrian camel (
Camelus bactrianus), which is the species of camel in the game, is more of a steppe/grassland species than desert. The desert specialist would be the wild Bactrian camel (
Camelus ferus), which is a totally different species. Therefore minimum sand tolerance for the in-game camel should really be 0%, and maximum grass tolerance (of both types) should be 100% like other grassland species in the game.
That being said,
soil tolerance in the game is usually high only for forest animals ('Tropical' as well as 'Temperate' and 'Taiga'), so the high maximum soil tolerance levels for both the camel and horse don't make a lot of sense from a consistency point of view when compared to other 'Grassland' and 'Desert' animals in the game. Although, perhaps Frontier might have a different reasoning here, a barnyard reference perhaps. Even then it doesn't add up, considering llamas have less soil tolerance (0-50%), despite also having both 'Temperate' and 'Taiga' biome tags that the horse and to an extent the camel is lacking. To be honest, it makes a lot of sense limiting soil tolerance for llamas, as they are associated more with open areas than woodland, but even in that case soil tolerance for the horse and camel should still not be higher.
I did comment on these issues on other threads, which are linked
here and
here, but I'll still summarize the main points below to help sort out the remaining horse-camel issues:
- Add 'Grassland' biome suitability to the Bactrian camel, to represent their primary biome in the game, in contrast to the wild species, which is more of a desert specialist.
- Increase maximum grass tolerance of both types for the Bactrian camel to 100%, akin to other grassland/steppe animals in the game. Many 'Grassland' animals in the game also have a minimum grass tolerance above 0%, but I wouldn't recommend that for the camel, since they can also be housed in purely desert themed habitats.
- 0-100% short grass tolerance - not recommending increasing minimum tolerance to avoid compatibility issues in full sand and rock habitats or during snowy weather.
- 0-100% long grass tolerance - not recommending increasing minimum tolerance to avoid compatibility issues in full sand and rock habitats or during snowy weather.
- Increase maximum snow tolerance for the Bactrian camel to 100%, making it identical to the Przewalski's horse, representative of the long and cold winters in their shared native range with many months of permanent snow cover.
- Decrease minimum sand tolerance for the Bactrian camel to 0%, making it similar to other 'Grassland' species, to allow the player to create fully grassland themed habitats. This change would highlight Bactrian camels as being primarily a steppe species that isn't necessarily dependent on deserts and would also prevent compatibility issues when the habitat is fully covered in snow.
- Increase maximum rock tolerance for the Przewalski's horse to ~40-60%, now that they also have 'Desert' biome suitability. This recommended figure is similar to the maximum rock tolerance of the Bactrian camel (60%).
- Decrease maximum soil tolerance for both the Przewalski's horse and Bactrian camel to 50%, to make it identical to the llama as explained above.
I would like to finish with a small warning regarding finding appropriate and up-to date sources on the Bactrian camel (
Camelus bactrianus). Since wild and domestic Bactrian camels have only recently been classified as separate species, a lot of public information out there can be misleading; a source that is trying to inform the reader on one species could be using the scientific name of the other species in the same article or book. Therefore care must taken when looking for up-to-date sources.
Edit: Removed the bullet point on sand tolerance for the horse, since this was already amended in the patch.
Edit 2: Slightly edited the soil requirements section after recalling Bactrian camels already have the 'Temperate' biome tag and could potentially benefit from the 'Taiga' tag. It could also be argued that the existence of the introduced Chernobyl Exclusion Zone population of the Przewalski's horse, as well as its historic range could potentially warrant a 'Temperate' tag for this species in the game.
