Animal feed cost explosion
- Thread starter Vigilante
- Start date
Not sure where it says that?
They only mention 1.0.3 as a work in progress.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=703080&appgroupname=Planet+Zoo
Doesn't matter really anyways.
When 1.0.2.1 came out the news post in Steam said 1.0.3 which causes the confusionNot sure where it says that?
They only mention 1.0.3 as a work in progress.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=703080&appgroupname=Planet+Zoo
Doesn't matter really anyways.
I think people are goign to continue thinking there is a problem though due to the inconsistancy in which animals are fed. If a keeper feeds most animals once one year and twice another year that equates to a huge difference in a large zoo.
Just something to be aware of. I think the system (other than that bug) is mostly "working as expected" from a design standpoint, but from a player standpoint is confusing and will continue to spawn these questions.
One way to resolve it would be if we had the ability to actually schedule specific months in a year that a keeper WILL feed but that doesn't seem to be cohesive with the current design of intervals rather than schedules.
Ah, I see.
I have been testing the latest patch approx 5 ingame years (200 in total). Two remarks:
1. the feeding costs have dropped in some cases, most of the cases are constant(ly high).
2. The costs for some species, esp. apes are still insaneley high. See the attached screenshot (at the end of year 5).
3. The sums of the donations for Orang Utans in this year were approx. $30k and 20$k for Makake, respectively. I got 8k visitors in my park on a very constant level. These both species are located in the busiest part and have the highest annual cumulated donations of my park. My bottom line: there is no way to have larger groups of these species and be profitable, at least if you segregate the income/ cost for each of these species.
3. Since the patch every few minutes I am receiving an alert that an animal (4-5 different species) are hungry (though feeders are full). Newly introduced was the frequent alert that animals are thirsty. Both alerts I hadn't have before this patch.
Is there any chance that your team will review the costs again? @Chante Goodman
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Aint the bug fixed in todays patch? Says so..
afaik only the bug with moving animals creating a cost explosion bug this seems to be due to double feeding compared to single feeding in a year. so id say THIS is not fixed.
My post and the one from Wolfen referred to the situation after today's patch
The problem is this isn't really a bug to fix. Its more just a byproduct of the design and the tools available to the players. Year over Year keepers are going to feed a habitat more or less often. Even if NOTHING changes otherwise. It just happens because of the way the system works., Between having a lot of habitats, and how expensive some of these are per feed (which is not the per feed cost indicated, that is actually per kg), the year over year costs are GOING to fluctuate greatly. There just isn't any way around it.
Now we can argue and provide feedback that the cost to feed is higher than it should be, and we can argue that we want the ability for keepers to be more regular in their job - such as giving us the ability to make SCHEDULES rather than rely on FREQUENCY but as it stands this is how the game is currently designed so its "working as intended" for the most part.
I do dislike how the habitat says the costs are "per feed" when they are actually "per kg of food", meaning the actual cost "per feed" is actually much higher. That may be a bug but I suspect its actually just a mistake in the UI.
Now we can argue and provide feedback that the cost to feed is higher than it should be, and we can argue that we want the ability for keepers to be more regular in their job - such as giving us the ability to make SCHEDULES rather than rely on FREQUENCY but as it stands this is how the game is currently designed so its "working as intended" for the most part.
I do dislike how the habitat says the costs are "per feed" when they are actually "per kg of food", meaning the actual cost "per feed" is actually much higher. That may be a bug but I suspect its actually just a mistake in the UI.
Easiest option (rather than changing the entire system) is to either lower the cost of food in general, or to increase donations for enclosures (so they can pay for themselves)
We shouldn't need to keep a huge exhibit banks collecting donations, just to be able to pay for our enclosure animals food. My zoos tend to have at least 15-20 exhibits just to offset the food costs of 4-6 enclosures (I don't like running my zoos at a negative profit, even if it is completely viable at the moment).
...
And on the topic of exhibits, I hate managing exhibits! Even with long-lived species, I'm always constantly replacing animals (and putting them on contraception). Why can't my keepers just buy a new animal every time one dies and stick it in the enclosure (on contraception) - that really shouldn't be hard to automate. How did they manage to make it take so many clicks to do something so simple! I hate them but I need the donation money to keep my zoo running.
Every time you replace an animal it's hellish - you have to:
We shouldn't need to keep a huge exhibit banks collecting donations, just to be able to pay for our enclosure animals food. My zoos tend to have at least 15-20 exhibits just to offset the food costs of 4-6 enclosures (I don't like running my zoos at a negative profit, even if it is completely viable at the moment).
...
And on the topic of exhibits, I hate managing exhibits! Even with long-lived species, I'm always constantly replacing animals (and putting them on contraception). Why can't my keepers just buy a new animal every time one dies and stick it in the enclosure (on contraception) - that really shouldn't be hard to automate. How did they manage to make it take so many clicks to do something so simple! I hate them but I need the donation money to keep my zoo running.
Every time you replace an animal it's hellish - you have to:
- click the enclosure
- click the animal tab
- Click view exhibit animal market
- scroll through a huge list to find the animal you want (why can't it automatically filter from the animal exhibit I clicked from)
- click the animal
- click adopt
- click move
- move it to the enclosure (which I find to be extemely finicky to target)
- click the animal tab
- select the animal
- apply contraceptives (repeat if you bought more than one animal)
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Soo.. i got two baby bears and the food costs got from 4000 a year to 11000 a year. I dunno, but i dont think a baby bear eats more then their parent combined..
And no, before someine jumps at me, i did not move them or box them at all.
Info: i have a north amerikan themed zoo, there are only flamingo and bears at the zoo atm.
flamingo food costs was 500 a year with a stable population before the bears moved in. With both bears it got to 4000 a year. with the two babys (and still flamingo on same population) it raised to 11,000 a year...?
And no, before someine jumps at me, i did not move them or box them at all.
Info: i have a north amerikan themed zoo, there are only flamingo and bears at the zoo atm.
flamingo food costs was 500 a year with a stable population before the bears moved in. With both bears it got to 4000 a year. with the two babys (and still flamingo on same population) it raised to 11,000 a year...?
Maybe they should have simply asked someone who has at least a little experience in managment games how to balance this thing.
The financial aspect of the franchise part is .
Another funny little number.
My African Bison habitats cause 5.000 (up to 10.000 because haha) $ food costs.
My Lion Habitat with roughly the same amount of animals cause 65.000 to 98.000 $ food costs.
I mean different food should have different prices and it should be alot more expensive to feed lions than bisons, but
the prices for some food is just ridiculous to begin with when you compare it with to income.
When you then add the complete out of place fluctuation, it is nigh impossible to survive on the long term with a mid-sized zoo.
The more kind of animals you get, the higher is your chance to lose on the roulette of crap thats rolling here with the animal food price.
The financial aspect of the franchise part is .
Another funny little number.
My African Bison habitats cause 5.000 (up to 10.000 because haha) $ food costs.
My Lion Habitat with roughly the same amount of animals cause 65.000 to 98.000 $ food costs.
I mean different food should have different prices and it should be alot more expensive to feed lions than bisons, but
the prices for some food is just ridiculous to begin with when you compare it with to income.
When you then add the complete out of place fluctuation, it is nigh impossible to survive on the long term with a mid-sized zoo.
The more kind of animals you get, the higher is your chance to lose on the roulette of crap thats rolling here with the animal food price.
That's a bug, IMHO.
I've lions, bears, different kinds of tigers, elephants and a lot of other animals (it's currently a 7000+ visitor zoo). And for my whole zoo I don't come close to the cost that some people here mention.
(In line with this, I got two million $ in the bank and I assume that's quite normal for a zoo that has the age & size of mine.)