Frustration with habitats

[Mewbone]

As I've gone further and further into the game and unlocking new species I've found it very frustrating how precise the habitat overlaps need to be
I recently set up one for ducks that took forever. when my goldfish habitat decided to move itself by a SINGULAR square down, causing all my ducks to move out
Now I'm spending ages having to dismantle the intricate web of habitats to it back to being stable.
It would be really nice if we could establish a forced perimeter or ''lock'' a habitat once it's there, preventing it from moving itself.
Or at the very least a way to kick out animals/get rid of existing habitats quicker so I can re-establish my old ones.

[Marie]

Locking habitats would be great. I have exactly the same issue with my crabs habitat, my goldfishes move because I accidentally trigger "empty spaces"-criteria and I can't move them back manually as the new one overlaps where it used to be. It's really frustrating.

[One (1) Lini]

Oh, locking a habitat would be really nice. I haven't had too much trouble with habitats moving yet, but my crows did shift a bit in an unexpected manner. While that worked out it'd definitely be very nice to make sure that an existing habitat stays in place.

[Pigoletto]

Yeah, the habitats moving is driving me insane. I'm loving the game so much, but I had just set up a functional river shark habitat and it was great at 175, when I decided to try to get it to house 3 sharks and changed a single thing when the habitat yanked itself to the right. It's completely ruined now.

Dismantling several habitats to fix a single issue is NOT fun. Is there no way to shift the habitat back? I've been trying everything I could think of to move the dang thing just one space to the left so I can fix this.

[Marie]

Originally posted by Pigoletto:

Yeah, the habitats moving is driving me insane. I'm loving the game so much, but I had just set up a functional river shark habitat and it was great at 175, when I decided to try to get it to house 3 sharks and changed a single thing when the habitat yanked itself to the right. It's completely ruined now.

Dismantling several habitats to fix a single issue is NOT fun. Is there no way to shift the habitat back? I've been trying everything I could think of to move the dang thing just one space to the left so I can fix this.

I've just restarted the day when this happens to me (exit to menu - reload) to get a new try, and taken a habit of pausing when I do changes to habitats I'm very fond of.

[t_spacemonkeys]

Exactly this! Why on earth are my carefully placed habitats shifting by themselves to less suitable spots? Please let us lock them in place or remove this mechanic - it keeps losing me animals.

Edit to add: the option to manually move them would also be welcome. And I just saw there was a megathread which I missed, sorry!

[felixader]

Single biggest issue of this game.

[GreatSphynx]

There are definitely some things that could be improved.
UI wise, I don't understand when you have no animal selected why you cant just click on an existing habitat or mouse over and see how much each thing is satisfied. Like I have fully researched ducks, I know exactly what they need, but its a little annoying to count every single tile and mentally put together how much of each resource is present. While also having to remember that it overlaps with the frog and the goldfish and i cant mess up their requirements too. It wouldn't be hard to just have an "advanced" overlay option with icons for the different land and plant values and a number next to them that shows how much is inside the current habitat when you mouse over it. For some animals it gets super annoying you place one type of terrain or plant and the number goes up but also down at the same time and then you're sitting there counting everything in every tile.
Locking or manual placement would be great too. Especially with empty spaces requirements I don't really get why there isnt like an overlay/tooltip if you are placing something in an existing habitat that shows it will - or + some requirement of the habitat. There are already little icons that show + and - to habitat size/quality that pop up when you place those things. Those should show up when you are hovering with a piece of terrain or plant too, so you know if you are going to mess something up BEFORE you click to place. Not click and place and hope it doesnt accidentally disrupt the habitat or shift it over by 1 square and cause some chain reaction of animals leaving.
The time in which an animal goes from being unhappy to straight up leaving also seems crazy fast to me, compared to how long it takes for an animal to show up. If i see something unhappy I almost dont even bother trying to fix it because its going to leave so fast, and if I rush and try and fix it I risk messing up another habitat a lot of times.
Still love the game though, the habitat mechanic just seems very rough in its current state.