Dinos with social preferences different from their species?

[tracytigress]

A couple of days ago I befriended my first Utahraptor, which are supposed to prefer having a friend or two in their pen based on the journal info. This one seems to be a strange hermit though, since it hasn't one complained about not having another dino in the pen (I've checked with the journal multiple times, and their happiness goes to full without problems. The info about their pen also list only Loner under the Social, which I presume means it thinks there's a loner dino in the pen?

I wonder if it's a game bug, or if there are supposed to be some dinos in the game with personalities differing from the usual species norm?

[AlphaGodith]

what the pen says for population just means what the environment in the pen is, it doesn't refer to what the dinos IN the pen WISH it were like. so no matter what the dino's preference, if there is only one dino, it will say loner, cuz the dino is alone. likewise if there's 3 dinos in a pen, it will say both pack and herd, because of the overlap where a pack is 2-3 and a herd is 3+.

i've only seen a dino get UPSET about the population of a pen when a loner dino was forced to share. otherwise giving them the right number of friends gave them a BOOST to happiness rather than a lack of negative.

[tracytigress]

Originally posted by AlphaGodith:

what the pen says for population just means what the environment in the pen is, it doesn't refer to what the dinos IN the pen WISH it were like. so no matter what the dino's preference, if there is only one dino, it will say loner, cuz the dino is alone. likewise if there's 3 dinos in a pen, it will say both pack and herd, because of the overlap where a pack is 2-3 and a herd is 3+.

i've only seen a dino get UPSET about the population of a pen when a loner dino was forced to share. otherwise giving them the right number of friends gave them a BOOST to happiness rather than a lack of negative.

Thanks for the info, I had no idea the Pen info worked that way! I've had dinos specifically mention when their social need wasn't met (Lucky and the Ouranosaurus I befriended for example), so I presumed the Utahraptor was fine. I always filled their happiness meter to full too, so there was no hints of needing the boost.

[AlphaGodith]

Originally posted by tracytigress:

Thanks for the info, I had no idea the Pen info worked that way! I've had dinos specifically mention when their social need wasn't met (Lucky and the Ouranosaurus I befriended for example), so I presumed the Utahraptor was fine. I always filled their happiness meter to full too, so there was no hints of needing the boost.

you're welcome! the way happiness works, as long as their base needs are met (clean pen of the right size with enough food and a dreamstone) they will be basically happy, but then if you look at them with the book out you can see 'requests' (like buddies in their pen, a different biome for the pen, pets, treats, etc) that will give them EXTRA happiness that will then go towards turning them into a helper when the day rolls over, but that stuff is unnecessary once they are already a helper.