Why are swamps in this game filled with salt water?

It’s even more weird if you think about the animals that live in the swamp areas in CDDA as per the new swamp revamps in the experimentals: Slugs and frogs would dehydrate from osmosis and die, and yet they continue to survive and even mutate heavily. Lobsters spawn in swamps currently if I’m not mistaken, lobsters are marine crustaceans and them being in the swamps implies that they are coastal salt water swamps (The game doesn’t have a representation of the coastline yet, but w/e) Crayfish do spawn as well and fit the swamp theme if the swamps in the game are meant to be otherwise normal freshwater wetlands that have been salt-ified for whatever reason though. Is it something to do with the cataclysm ruining things for life (like it often does)?

I feel like there might need to be a distinction made between saltwater swamps and freshwater swamps but maybe that’s just me. I think I might have heard something about nuclear weapons the last time I tried looking into this but I forgot completely what the answer said.

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Here’s a small survival tip - if you harvest a cattail from a pond then the water under it will be fresh water.

Not sure why there’s salt everywhere - it would make more sense if we had oceans in the maps.

It makes little sense for swamps to be salt unless they’re coastal, so my guess is that it’s because the devs wanted to provide a source of salt water somewhere (e.g. for tanning). Sure, there’s a lot of salt in households, but that that source is available only if there are houses available to the player (I don’t think they are in wilderness worlds).

I don’t see how nuclear weapons would generate salt, though.

Maybe they are supposed to be ‘stagnant’ really. I’ve been through some boggy areas where you wouldn’t want to drink that stuff.

I don’t think so, as there is a separate modeling for how great the risk is of getting an infection from water from different sources.

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Nobody worked on making swamps contain non-salt water. Feel free to start working on https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/72

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I would have thought somebody did work to make swamps salt originally, as all other (well, there are bottles with salt water) sources are fresh (though most aren’t clean), and so might have had a reason for it, rather than everything being salt by default and the other sources manually having been fresh water, but the swamps missing out.

Anyway, that issue is an interesting reference.

I believe a lot of the wetlands of New England consist of saltwater bogs. I don’t specialize in their ecology so take that with a grain of salt (ha)

I’d love for actual oceans and shores to one day make it into the game so that saltwater marshes and deltas could be implemented properly. New England is somewhat well known for its maritime culture after all. Think of all the insane mutated sea life that could exist!

But in the meantime just for the sake of variety and the ecology making sense I think I’ll look into json and coding a bit to start out with separating saltwater/freshwater swamps in the game. IDK if I’ll even do it, but seems like a worthwhile prospect.

That sounds like a useful addition. I’d probably start with trying to get an ocean in so there can be some logic to the placement of the salt water swamps, but even just making swamps randomly salt or fresh (with different plants and animals present as a useful extension after that) out to provide additional useful variety to the game.

Ocean voyages with pirate factions and ship to ship combat and boarding, as well as deep sea diving for treasure and fighting zombie Krakens, when.

When you’ve implemented it.

The Lobstah would be terrifying!