How is Hard Shelter calculated?

[GunRunner89X]

Case study: Adopted some raccoons for the first time. 2 males and 3 females. MY GOD DO THEY BREED QUICK!! Anyway, made a simple 2x2 gridded shelter for them cos they're only small, and shoved in some small hay beds everywhere. Wasn't enough for the 5 of them... 8 square metres of a shelter wasn't enough for 5 small little raccoons. The hell? I went into more detail and looked at the shelter overlay, and each one needs the space of an elephant nearly?! Anyone know exactly how the game calculates shelter needs per animal per species? Like you'd easily fit 4 elephants inside a 2x2 grid (not space needs obviously but just size wise), and yet it's too small for a couple of raccoons?

Btw, after like 10 minutes of getting them first into the habitat each female had birthed 2 cubs.....

[HeatherG]

Hmmm yeah, I'm not sure if the shelter depends on their hitbox, meaning, and how much room they take up? I've not actually tested that. The tortoises are the same. They practically need 5 shelters for 10 of them, which is why I don't use them, and the babies are so tiny. I wonder if that's the same for Racoons.

[moorwiesen]

You can give them some underground shelter by digging a tunnel. I think it is just calculating what has "a roof" so you basically could place some glass tiles over the habitat and they would be happy.

[grampers62]

Maybe this helps.
The space seems to be calculated from the covered area the animals can access. So if we have just a roof hanging out in space the entire area under it counts. If we add a wall to that roof, the area that is reserved to keep the animal from clipping through the wall is deducted from that total. So if we have three walls the total is reduced considerably. The space required from a wall is dependent on the animal most of the small species its a bit more than half a meter. but larger animals it seems to be approximately half the defined width of the model used. Perhaps to make it easy they calculate that from the hitbox which includes slightly more than the farthest extent of the visual model.

[audiolady]

I just float things over the enclosure, like shops. The shops AND the paths also count as hard shelter. Plus, floating shop stands is cool, watching employees stand on thin air. Win-win.