Herd Management

[countryboy85]

I'd love to understand herd management better. I've seen a few youtube videos of people thoughts, which have been helpful. I guess I'm wondering, is herd management real? If so, how important is it? As an extreme example, if I take out an entire herd of bison, will they never come back? Or, will they all respawn in the same weight class? Also, how long does it take animals to respawn? Will all the animals I've killed respawn when I start the game next? Or does it take a certain amount of in game time for animals to respawn?

IRL, I might hunt an area and harvest a few deer for example, then go somewhere totally different to hunt. Is that something that plays out in COTW? Does any of that make a real difference in the long term?

Also, does population increase with herd management? Will have I have larger and/or more herds by harvesting select animals and by finding need zones? Or, do need zones just help me figure out where the animals will be at a certain time?

I think it would be so cool and add a great element to the game if herd management, in some way, really affected the animals longer term.

It seems every youtuber, and player, has their own theories about these things. So I'm wondering if there is anything hard and fast, or at least a consensus. TIA

[Pinger]

only thing that is fact the number of animals is fixed and doesn't increase. What can make it look like there is more, is if you have dark pink hunting pressure on map and the animals move away to use other need zones.

As for respawns general consensus is kill low rank males to get high rank males as a respawn which can take a week or more to happen.

[countryboy85]

Yeah, that is basically what I thought. It would be really cool if herd management had a long term affect on the reserves. For instance, perhaps I wanted to manage the black bear population and the blacktail deer population on layton, and maybe you wanted to focus on Whitetail. We would have totally different looking reserves after a while. I know that would be a big mechanic to add, but it would be cool to know that I'm not just pointing and shooting. I can actually impact my herds and animal population based on what I'm shooting.

[Defiant Dan]

Originally posted by countryboy85:

Yeah, that is basically what I thought. It would be really cool if herd management had a long term affect on the reserves. For instance, perhaps I wanted to manage the black bear population and the blacktail deer population on layton, and maybe you wanted to focus on Whitetail. We would have totally different looking reserves after a while. I know that would be a big mechanic to add, but it would be cool to know that I'm not just pointing and shooting. I can actually impact my herds and animal population based on what I'm shooting.

But it would be death for Multiplayer when it would be realistic.
I mean when you would keep the Legendarys alive and kill all weak males, so they reproduce and sometimes later have many Kids which also have high chance of becoming big and strong... Then people would consider other Player more as dangerous Poachers and would be afraid that their big breeding Bucks would get shot by someone.

[ATOMIC]

Within the scope of the current game, I see herd management as simply killing only the males that belong in a group so that the need zones for that group remain intact. The goal is to make finding them again easier when they respawn. That's about it. Others may have something else to add, but this is all I see that might be worth doing.

The game ECO has a mechanic similar to what you have envisioned. The population of any animal in the world depends on several factors and it is possible to make one extinct. I don't think they have it where one species can affect another just yet, but they are working on it. Multiplayer issues are solved by servers behind passwords and also by enforcing government laws. I think it might be a little too complex for this game.

[Denricky]

There is no realistic aspect to it the way that I have found it best to do in game is let’s say I want more diamond or great one white tails I am going to try and find every need zone that I can for them from there I am going to only kill the level 3s in the herd because it is the middle because level 5 is max for whitetail and I am going to go zone to zone at the correct time doing this until there are very little level 3 on my map or none I am then going to kill the level 2s and then when they respawn as either a level 2 or 3 I am going to kill then I am going to keep doing this until once again there are little to none level 2 and 3s on my map and they are all either 1,4 or 5 and because this is all I am going to start killing the level 4s and you could get to a point where there are almost nothing on your map other then level 1 and 5 you are going to want to kill troll level 5s because they only damage the disparity on your map if done 100% perfect you will literally only have level 1s guaranteed diamond and great ones this is how some players have as many as 30 great one there is a great video on YouTube by lady legend where her friend explains how he went about getting 27 great ones

[four321zero]

Originally posted by до біса росія:

There is no realistic aspect to it the way that I have found it best to do in game is let’s say I want more diamond or great one white tails I am going to try and find every need zone that I can for them from there I am going to only kill the level 3s in the herd because it is the middle because level 5 is max for whitetail and I am going to go zone to zone at the correct time doing this until there are very little level 3 on my map or none I am then going to kill the level 2s and then when they respawn as either a level 2 or 3 I am going to kill then I am going to keep doing this until once again there are little to none level 2 and 3s on my map and they are all either 1,4 or 5 and because this is all I am going to start killing the level 4s and you could get to a point where there are almost nothing on your map other then level 1 and 5 you are going to want to kill troll level 5s because they only damage the disparity on your map if done 100% perfect you will literally only have level 1s guaranteed diamond and great ones this is how some players have as many as 30 great one there is a great video on YouTube by lady legend where her friend explains how he went about getting 27 great ones

Thanks. This is quite helpful but what if after you kill all level 2s and 3s, and then start with clearing the 4s, the 4s start respawning as 1-2-3s? I mean how do we end this cycle or going back to 2s and 3s? And how do we get diamonds by doing this though?

[Soltyk]

Originally posted by four321zero:

Thanks. This is quite helpful but what if after you kill all level 2s and 3s, and then start with clearing the 4s, the 4s start respawning as 1-2-3s? I mean how do we end this cycle or going back to 2s and 3s? And how do we get diamonds by doing this though?

Here is what you do: HM works in two phases: First you want to create as many low level animals as possible. So you start by shooting all middle tier animals. For WT that's L2, for Moose L4 and L3 (maybe keep the L3 with the wonky rack that are < 150TR, also keep diamond potential L4). For Red Deer and Black Bear shot L5-L8. Keep the max level animals for now, this encourages the game to spawn lower level animals.
Phase two starts once you've got the middle tier thinned out. At this point you will already have several max level animals on your map. You can then start shooting everything above the lower tier. The re-spawns will be much higher level than usual, because the game wants to compensate for the many low tier animals.

[four321zero]

Originally posted by Soltyk:

Originally posted by four321zero:

Thanks. This is quite helpful but what if after you kill all level 2s and 3s, and then start with clearing the 4s, the 4s start respawning as 1-2-3s? I mean how do we end this cycle or going back to 2s and 3s? And how do we get diamonds by doing this though?

Here is what you do: HM works in two phases: First you want to create as many low level animals as possible. So you start by shooting all middle tier animals. For WT that's L2, for Moose L4 and L3 (maybe keep the L3 with the wonky rack that are < 150TR, also keep diamond potential L4). For Red Deer and Black Bear shot L5-L8. Keep the max level animals for now, this encourages the game to spawn lower level animals.
Phase two starts once you've got the middle tier thinned out. At this point you will already have several max level animals on your map. You can then start shooting everything above the lower tier. The re-spawns will be much higher level than usual, because the game wants to compensate for the many low tier animals.

Thanks Soltyk - but what is stopping the game from respawning the mid-tier kills back as mid-tier respawns in the first phase?

[Soltyk]

That will also happen. Even most of the time. But you shoot them again. And again. Until they re-spawn as a low level.

Edit:
Let's assume your average Red Deer population has a level distribution like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921977147

After phase 1 it should look something like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921977807

[four321zero]

Originally posted by Soltyk:

That will also happen. Even most of the time. But you shoot them again. And again. Until they re-spawn as a low level.

Edit:
Let's assume your average Red Deer population has a level distribution like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921977147

After phase 1 it should look something like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921977807

thank you . How can i get these graphs for my game?

[Soltyk]

Originally posted by four321zero:

thank you . How can i get these graphs for my game?

I'd rather not link it directly, but you can google for 'animal population scanner'.

[four321zero]

Originally posted by Soltyk:

Originally posted by four321zero:

thank you . How can i get these graphs for my game?

I'd rather not link it directly, but you can google for 'animal population scanner'.

appreciate all your help. this was the best explanation i received for HM so far.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Soltyk:

That will also happen. Even most of the time. But you shoot them again. And again. Until they re-spawn as a low level.

Edit:
Let's assume your average Red Deer population has a level distribution like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921977147

After phase 1 it should look something like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2921977807

do you have a rough estimate of about how many harvests it took you to get to that second population count?

[Soltyk]

Originally posted by brian_va:

do you have a rough estimate of about how many harvests it took you to get to that second population count?

I'm not sure. It took at least 500 kills but it could've been two or three times as many.

[brian_va]

Thanks