Aquatic Critter Crowding

[Wharflord]

As it stands, aquatic critters only feel crowded when there are too many other critters in the same body of water with them, not just in the same room. This standard 96 tile ranch should max out at 12 beakons, but took 240 before crowding because the room is connected to the ocean. Crowding should require both a large enough room, and that the room be filled with liquid so it acts like a standard land based ranch.

[ChrisPBacon000]

There is something weird happening with how ranch occupancy is determined at the moment.

 

I had a ranch, about 90 total tiles of water, fully enclosed by mesh tiles with a pneumatic door for access.  It definitely was a separate room.

 

Adjacent to this room was a small maybe 5 x 5 pool, where I dumped overflow beakon fish. For some reason, the ranch was getting over crowded even when I had only 8, because the total critter count seemed to be "seeing" the connected water as part of the same pool.

 

By separating the ranch using solid tiles, I was able to correct the issue. Whether this is intentional or not is unclear, but it appears crowding is determined by checking the room size, but the population is determined by connected water tiles. It seems like an inconsistency but I can't quite nail down the mechanics so far. 

[Carib94]

Aquatics will check for bodies of water and not room size, so even if you limited the aquatics pathing as long as any tiles or doors that let liquids pass through they will still only check for bodies of water. This was done a long while ago to stop the infamous 1 tile pacu starvation ranching(it was OP then) so this is intended. 

You can make that room a proper 96 tile room but you will have to use airlow or regular tiles and Mech Doors to actually separate the room and the rest of the ocean and then your fish will only check for water space in that room. Also why the heck you have 240 beakons in there in the first place XD, population control my friend.

Adjusting this would be bad because Orehulls kinda need this mechanic if you want them to feed of live Kelpoles especially when they just patch Kelpoles to check other critters in the same water.

Edited May 31 by Carib94

[Wharflord]

35 minutes ago, Carib94 said:

Also why the heck you have 240 beakons in there in the first place XD, population control my friend.

Lol, yes. I didn't get around to building shipping and then saw the ranch overpopulated and wanted to see how far it would go. Klei could resolve this issue without reintroducing the infinite pacu pool my checking MIN(Room_Size, Liquid_Tiles). That was you would need both, so the pacu pool would only be considered a 1 tile room while also allowing multiple connected aquatic ranches.

[Tigin]

It should probably be better clarified/documented that aquatic critters don't use the same crowding mechanics as land critters. It's consistent that aquatic critters only look at the pool size for every aspect of their design (crowding, cramping, fish release, confined). Using solid tiles to make separate pools makes a lot of visual sense as well (although there's no need to shoe-horn yourself into 96 tile pools, there's nothing magical about 96 tiles for aquatic critters) What I'd like imo from a QoL POV is automation on the fish release, and an aquatic critter sensor that counts fish in the pool rather than the room.