I don’t understand temperature

[Nat1984]

Can someone please help? I’m talking about the habitat animals, not exhibits.

I see you can place heaters and coolers down in habitats but I don’t understand how they work? I had a message yesterday that my flamingoes had the wrong temperature so I checked the Zoopedia and to see what they should be and it was a very wide range. How do I know what to place and how do I set the correct temperature? I placed a cooler yesterday and opened up the panel but I don’t u understand what range means or how to set it between a certain temperature as the zoopedia suggests.

Could someone please explain it?

 

[Jaggid Edje]

If you select a heater or cooler after you place it, there's a dial that you can use to set what temperature you want it to maintain be moving the marker on the circular slide bar to the desired temperature. The range means what radius it will effect, up to 20m. If the habitat is larger you'll need more than one to maintain a good temperature.

Use the heat map-temperature setting to see the effective range that has been made comfortable (once it has had time to do it's job). The things are automatic in that if it gets warmer that what a heater is set to, it won't keep heating, and visa versa for the coolers.

Hope this all makes sense, if anything else is still unclear please ask.

 

[Dr4gon]

Be careful how many heaters or coolers you place. Since a few days now you have to pay for power. It is currently killing my, just started, test zoo.

Actually, it's struggling. I'll need to be more efficient. Antarctica is real hard to play right now at the beginning.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Heaters and coolers are pretty cheap to run, and if you research solar and wind power, things powered by those are free. Only things powered by a transformer cost $ to run and if you overlap a wind turbine/solar panel with a transformer the game is even smart enough to switch everything in range of the green energy sources to them and the transformer will only power things that are at the further range that those don't reach.

I actually often stack a wind turbine on top of a transformer to take advantage of free electricity in the circle radius that the wind turbine can reach, and let the transformer handle all of the outlying things because it has a bigger range. In the first zoo I started doing this I went around and stacked the turbines on all my existing transformers and my power bill went down by about $5k

I got wind power researched in my current (relatively new) zoo before I expanded past the free power provided by the zoo entrance. Never paid a dime in power costs since the day the zoo opened:

Shameless plug: You can download a stacked transformer/wind turbine decorated in classic theme style from my workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1928651488

 

[Dr4gon]

Okay, I'm gonna test that. Will delete all my transformer and replace them by solar. It will take some time, because I'm low on cash in that zoo. If it works, a whole new world will open

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Okay, I'm gonna test that. Will delete all my transformer and replace them by solar. It will take some time, because I'm low on cash in that zoo. If it works, a whole new world will open

It can be a real pain to sneak green energy into an established area of the zoo because the range on solar is way, way lower than the range of a transformer. Wind Turbine is a happy medium between the two. That's why I did the stacking thing in the zoo I mentioned....couldn't get solar or wind into a lot of places so I just went with putting them on top of tranformers to take what savings I could and let the transformers keep powering the things out of range of the wind turbine.

Unfortunately you can't put solar or wind underground, the game is smart enough to know they won't work below ground....

 

[Dr4gon]

It can be a real pain to sneak green energy into an established area of the zoo because the range on solar is way, way lower than the range of a transformer. Wind Turbine is a happy medium between the two. That's why I did the stacking thing in the zoo I mentioned....couldn't get solar or wind into a lot of places so I just went with putting them on top of tranformers to take what savings I could and let the transformers keep powering the things out of range of the wind turbine.

Unfortunately you can't put solar or wind underground, the game is smart enough to know they won't work below ground....

It's done, haleluyah! I was richer than I thought, and it's not that expensive at all.

Ps, hint for the OP, set coolers always at the highest temperature the animals can endure and heaters always at the lowest temperature. That saves a whole lot of energy.
When an animal highest comfortable temperature is 30 degrees, no need to cool lower than that. That saves a whole lot of cash.

 

[Klinn]

I actually often stack a wind turbine on top of a transformer to take advantage of free electricity in the circle radius that the wind turbine can reach, and let the transformer handle all of the outlying things because it has a bigger range.

That's a great idea! I've never used them yet, but don't the wind turbines need an access path for maintenance?

 

[Dr4gon]

That's a great idea! I've never used them yet, but don't the wind turbines need an access path for maintenance?

I bet he places the transformer under ground, and the wind turbine on top. Yes, a wind turbine needs access from a path.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

That's a great idea! I've never used them yet, but don't the wind turbines need an access path for maintenance?

Yah, they do. I really wish we had an option to install ladders for staff access.....it just makes sense to me for wind turbines and solar panels to be higher. I just build a stairs. @Dr4gon was kind of close to what I like to do. I don't generally bury my transformers (water treatment, often, transformers...rarely), but I do sometimes sink them just a little into the ground.
Even when I build wind turbines or solar panels all by themselves, I generally elevate them partially. Like 2-3m. For visual reasons, as I said, I just think it makes sense. I make decorated bases for them (and also use some from the workshop) so they also look nice and then just build a short stairs.

Here's an example of what I've done with stacking:

And this is what it looks like in the zoo proper, you can hardly make out the stairs in the image, but it is behind and a bit right of the turbine and then wraps around to connect to the main path going into the tunnel-access structure that's in the foreground (with the elephant mural on the side--I built that to cover the hole in the ground made by a tunnel going to a water purifier under a large habitat off screen to the right). Eventually that whole circular area was landscaped nicely with flora. I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. The visitor path is exactly the distance away required to prevent them from being negatively effected by the transformer and turbine.

And here's a standalone turbine strucuture that I made where it's only partially elevated, rather than a full 4m up.

 

[Dr4gon]

Or do this, not a good option, but from the right angle it looks glorious

I don't know how to make stair spiral.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Or do this, not a good option, but from the right angle it looks glorious
View attachment 154614

I don't know how to make stair spiral.

For sure, I like to put solar right on top of shops and facility buildings myself, seeing as it has 0 negative effect on visitors. I just use wind turbines more than solar because of the better range. With solar I find myself lacking power for a lot of education stuff at habitats and, resulting in building more power facilities than I'd like so I use wind more than sun.

P.S. To build spiral staircases, when placing paths turn on the check box for "curve on slopes".

 

[MrTux]

I don't know how to make stair spiral.

When you build a path there are two tabs in the path settings thing in the bottom right. The left tab has the sliders to change the width and length and such, and in the right tab you can change stuff like if the path has a railing or not and there is also a setting for allowing curved slopes. But I find spiral stairs kinda annoying because the smallest circle possible has a radius of 10m and not 8, so it's not easily possible to properly incorporate them into a building

 

[Klinn]

Nice enclosures Jaggid Edje, using the open arches is a great idea. I made blueprint to cover the power stations in my current zoo with something that blended in, but when by habit I added one over my first solar panel -- oops, no sunlight, no power.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Nice enclosures Jaggid Edje, using the open arches is a great idea. I made blueprint to cover the power stations in my current zoo with something that blended in, but when by habit I added one over my first solar panel -- oops, no sunlight, no power.

Thank you! I learned the same thing about solar, and wind, neither of them work if "inside". Fortunately the devs are super smart so they don't consider the arches as being inside. Either that or it's the lack of a roof.... I'm not sure which, or maybe it's both.

I always like to build something nice around any of my power or water facilities, simply because they are pretty ugly without it and being able to match it to the overall design/style of the zoo or the specific area of the zoo makes it look so much better.

because the smallest circle possible has a radius of 10m and not 8, so it's not easily possible to properly incorporate them into a building

That's one of the most annoying things in the game!!

 

[Klinn]

I learned the same thing about solar, and wind, neither of them work if "inside". Fortunately the devs are super smart so they don't consider the arches as being inside. Either that or it's the lack of a roof.... I'm not sure which, or maybe it's both.

The game appears to run a function to determine which areas are covered, which is seen most clearly when it snows and any ground with something over top of it, even a tree, is free from snow. So I assume the results of this code function is also used to determine if sunlight can reach a solar panel.

Just a guess.

 

[Chante Goodman]

Using eco-friendly powering sources is something James and Fearn touched on in our Facilities Developer Journal! I personally think they're the best option, and don't take too long to unlock via research! https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/developer-journal-facilities.521585/