Animal Migration (or temp extinction)

[Mudder]

Forgive me if this was mentioned before, I recently joined the forums and truly cannot be bothered to hunt through all the previous possible suggestions. I have two suggestions, either would be a great addition or they can work together.

First:

It would be awesome to both see animals moving around the map. Hunting rabbits a lot near Trappers Homestead? They should move away a little to a safer location. Wolves hunting the same area forever? They should move around, focusing on areas with more food. This way, wolves will drive other animals to migrate around the map and thus they will sort of follow.

Second:

If I murder all the wolves in one spot, I'd like to feel that change. Maybe it takes them awhile (15-20 in game days?) to increase numbers again. Same with deer and rabbits. It should feel like a more finite resource that you carefully hunt and try not to reduce numbers too low, or they'll become more rare overall. Almost like a rudimentary "breeding" respawn system.

[danicusrex]

I do like the the idea of mobile herds/ wildlife.

[saxel]

It would be more realistic to have the number of animals be finite, and only be replenished by animals migrating in from areas off the map. It is realistic that once you kill all the deer on the map, for there to be none until one walks in from the outside someplace. It would also be possible for the animals to breed to replenish their numbers, but the breeding rate would be annual (300+ days). This would also require the implementation of a juvenile version of each animal, and gender differentiation between the animals.

This would be balanced off by changing the amount of meat you receive from butchering an animal, because I believe it is un realistically low at the moment.

Also the possibility of freezing the meat for future use would also be realistic.

[nicko]

I like the idea of juvenile animals, so say you seen a few deer out there, one was small one was larger, shoot the larger one = more meat/food. let the young one grow up/breed for you next hunt.

If you did decide to shoot it the younger one might = tasty meat but less of it and also less deer to hunt next season.

[Mudder]

Problem with making the animals too finite is that wolves hunt relentlessly. You'd have to massively reduce their numbers very early on in the game.

[saxel]

Well, I think the wolves should be finite too. Logically you would attempt to lower the wolf population as fast as possible so to reduce the competition for the remaining deer population. Eventually once both populations were reduced enough, you would have to go on hunting expeditions from zone to zone to find enough animals to hunt for sustenance. While we are at it, there should also be a finite number of fish in the pond in pleasant valley, it does not look too big and I suspect that a single person could eventually affect the fish population. Less so for mystery lake (because its much bigger) and not possible for costal highway (or desolation point if it ever gets a fishing hut, or if there was one and I did not see it when I was there) because its the ocean.