Hmm. That's weird. I always play aquatic, it seems, I just love it. I currently have a game with maybe 15 flooded habitats, and I am not getting those numbers as you are. (I play on the previous 3.7, I hear they changed habitats in 3.8 so I don't know whether that might have something to do with it). But I suspect this might be happening: I can see through the transparency there are two pops. If one or both of them does not have the "aquatic" trait, that would definitely explain it. Distinguish also between the "ocean preference" and "aquatic" trait - it's the trait that gives you the bonuses.

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

Hmm. That's weird. I always play aquatic, it seems, I just love it. I currently have a game with maybe 15 flooded habitats, and I am not getting those numbers as you are. (I play on the previous 3.7, I hear they changed habitats in 3.8 so I don't know whether that might have something to do with it). But I suspect this might be happening: I can see through the transparency there are two pops. If one or both of them does not have the "aquatic" trait, that would definitely explain it. Distinguish also between the "ocean preference" and "aquatic" trait - it's the trait that gives you the bonuses.

I only have my primary pops there (which are aquatic). You can actually see the name of the species in the tooltip that it applies to. "Ukamar" are my primary species.
I suspect the -20% penalty is being applied here due to a bug. Otherwise you just get +20% for aquatic and -20% overall, which just cancel eachother out. That has to be a bug, otherwise it's a terrible trade off.

I just flooded a habitat with a aquatic species. Flooding a habitat will lower its habitability by 20% but aquatic adds 20%. However the other bonuses from aquatic, housing usage and such, do apply. The habitat i just flooded went from 12 available houses to 16 available houses from the housing usage reduction.

The bug is still around.

Flooding a habitat reduces its Habitability by 20% across the board. Because it now counts as an Ocean world, Aquatic species gain their +20% Habitability, as well as the usual bonuses for living on an Ocean world - specifically -15% Housing Usage and +15% Food/Minerals/Energy Output bonuses (-10% and +10% normally, boosted by half from the Hydrocentric perk).

Normally, an Aquatic species on a habitat loses an additional 20% Habitability - a normal 40% Habitability habitat would have only 20% for an Aquatic species (or 10% if they're Hydrocentric, as the negative effect is boosted by half). Flooding the habitat means that this penalty is waived, as well as that caused by the flooding itself.

So yes, flooding a habitat DOES improve Aquatic habitability, by either 20% or 30% (depending on whether the Aquatic species is the owner and has Hydrocentric or not).

What Hydrocentric does NOT do, I've noticed, is boost the Aquatic Habitability bonus on Ocean worlds by half.