Wild Hogs

[Hilayla]

This is nothing major but I can't help wondering why, with all the farms around, there is not a wild pig or hog. I'm from the Southern US and maybe they don't exist up north like they do here but someday, if all the planets align, I think they might be a useful addition to the game. I did a search and didn't see this mentioned anywhere. At any rate, I just wanted to throw this out there since it is a wish list.

[stratvox]

Not a chance. There's no way there's pig farms up there (if Great Bear Island is where I think it is I can guarantee you there are no pig farms at all) and even if there were the winters up there would completely see them off without humans to help keep them alive.

[hozz1235]

Now, Cougars would make sense.  BC has the greatest concentration in the world.  I'd love to see a wolf-cougar fight!

[Guest kristaok]

I'm not sure about hogs, but I would love to see some sort of big cat. Canada is supposed to have Bobcats, Lynx, and Cougars (Mountain Lions). 

[stratvox]

Yep, that's completely true. They are all those things. But, the closest real world analogue to Great Bear is Banks Island in the Haida Gwaii. Here's a rundown of the wildlife populations there: http://www.gohaidagwaii.ca/images/uploads/gHg wildlife land.pdf. Seriously, go look at it on Google Maps and cast an eye on the Coastal Highway region through to Desolation Point and I think you'll see what I mean. There aren't any pigs there now because they can't survive there. Where I live in Canada, you can have a wild pig population, because I'm in south eastern Ontario. Ontario, Quebec, and a lot of the maritime provinces can easily have wild pig populations because they're far enough south for pigs to survive in the wild. But Banks Island is nearly four thousand km from where I live, and nearly 1200 kilometres north. There are no pigs there now because they can't handle the conditions, so there's no reason why there would be after the First Flare.

It'd be awesome to get a version of the game that had a functioning ecosystem going based on northern species that could run and have you predate upon it, where it's important for the player not to knock out parts of the food chain for truly long term survivability, and I would totally pay extra money for that. I don't mean that I expect a good simulation of the island per se, just one that works in the context of the game and was totally about northern species like say caribou instead of deer, and arctic hares instead of rabbits. It'd be so cool if all the interactions (predation, flight from, territory, migration, caribou herding behaviour, wolf packs working as a team, bears as omnivore foragers, mountain lions as solo predators, etc) were modelled appropriately so that you could set up a running system that would work and could be observed by the player to see emergent behaviour by having all the animals be reasonably complex agents based on their place in the food chain. It'd be really cool to have the game work like that... could really make the long game a thing in a way that it isn't now. I've got a long game going (six hundred days is within striking distance) and I've pretty much got survival licked, in that if I don't do stupid things there's no reason for my guy to die for a long time yet. To be required to manage the populations long term so you don't screw up the food chain for yourself could really add a lot of challenge to the long game.

 

[Hilayla]

Thanks for that link. I figured the island may too far north for pigs. I still can't help wondering what all the hay was for if there is zero sign of any kind of livestock. What were they using it for?   (I haven't been in all the areas yet though either.)

[stratvox]

2 hours ago, Hilayla said:

Thanks for that link. I figured the island may too far north for pigs. I still can't help wondering what all the hay was for if there is zero sign of any kind of livestock. What were they using it for?   (I haven't been in all the areas yet though either.)

Well, part of what's going on in the game (warning: MHO only  ) is that the game is a long love letter to the northern BC wilderness, and has areas that exemplify various areas in the province. When you look at Pleasant Valley, what you're seeing is a representation of the premiere fruit growing area, the Okanagan Valley. The Okanagan is a LONG way south of the Haida Gwaii, is in the BC interior, but it's also one of the truly iconic locations in the province, and as such merited inclusion into the game. This is because the game is not real, and not a simulation; it's first and foremost a game, secondly a beautiful representation of the kind of country found in northern BC, and last of all a simulation. Simply put, don't try to make too much of it make sense; the artistic sensibilities of the game plus the gameplay aspects of including a representation of the Okanagan outweigh the "realism" factor completely, as it should to support a good game.

Further, there is livestock to be found in some of the far northern areas of BC, but it's important to remember that they are wholly dependent on human aid to survive. If cattle have a heated barn and food from humans, they can survive, but without those supports they'd quickly die off... and given that the backstory says these areas were largely abandoned a decade before the game, any livestock left behind would have died in the first winter. They simply aren't adapted to the climate up there. It's quite similar to what happened to the livestock that was imported into Greenland by the Vikings when they got up there about a thousand years back; there were cattle there, and they survived as long as the Vikings did, but when the Vikings went away, so did the cattle.