I know that in sandbox we can turn off animal welfare as a whole but it would be great if we could also choose individual species to limit it to. For instance, since I've started playing my big zoo again now that franchises can be saved as sandbox, I have turned off a lot of options, but I've still kept animal welfare active, I guess because I want to make my animals happy myself, rather than the game just doing it automatically. But I'm constantly getting messages on my bongos being stressed, which I had in franchise, but honestly I'm kind of tired of it. I know you can also ignore certain alerts and send them to the trash, but if they are regenerated they'll pop up again, or if you have closed and reopen that save the option to trash those alerts doesn't seem to carry over. Just a thought i had while currently playing. Obviously, in sandbox only.
Advanced Options for turning off welfare (in Sandbox)
- Thread starter jcp011c
- Start date
I don't know how feasible applying it to individual species would be, but in terms of "advanced options" it would be nice to specify certain welfare requirements to turn off. For example I'd like to turn off space requirements, because most of them are overblown and unrealistic, but still maintain foliage cover or something.
On a similar note, I'd really like it if turning off welfare also got rid of temperature requirements, or to have a separate option for that. The most annoying message I get is the constant "Animal is not in ideal temperature range" even with welfare turned off. It bugs the hell out of me, especially knowing that reindeer and polar bears for example do perfectly fine in more temperate environments.
On a similar note, I'd really like it if turning off welfare also got rid of temperature requirements, or to have a separate option for that. The most annoying message I get is the constant "Animal is not in ideal temperature range" even with welfare turned off. It bugs the hell out of me, especially knowing that reindeer and polar bears for example do perfectly fine in more temperate environments.
I'd love that. Personally I'd like to keep foluage coverage, but not foliage type (not realistic (, but I don't know if it can be separate from each other.
I'd like to keep social and enrichment because of realism, but not temperature (unrealistic).
In one of my zoos (welfare off) I build habitats based on EAZA requirements. It's extreme how much PZ requirements is exagerating. With the polar bear being the worst with 400 qm real life land requirements minumum vs. 4000 qm PZ requirements minimum.
I'd like to keep social and enrichment because of realism, but not temperature (unrealistic).
In one of my zoos (welfare off) I build habitats based on EAZA requirements. It's extreme how much PZ requirements is exagerating. With the polar bear being the worst with 400 qm real life land requirements minumum vs. 4000 qm PZ requirements minimum.
Yeah the stress is annoying and super unrealistic. One way to solve it would be to give animals more personality. Including something like personality traits (sort of like in The Sims) would be interesting, where an animal with a shy trait might get stressed, but one with a curious trait just wouldn't. So you could have individual animals that are indeed more prone to hiding or keeping their distance (or staying in the middle of the herd), and others that like being the centre of attention or exploring. This could also give us some new challenges - playful animals could get bored more quickly with enrichment, for example.
Absolutely dream scenario and would step up the game for me A LOT and would also play into the management part of the game. If you have a habitat with huge visitor traffic, you would be careful to just put stress resistance animals in it.
In addition, I would love if not all animals of a species would get along and breed right away with each other. I need some challenge in the general animal management. Something real life zoos actually face - and no, it's not tempetature or lack of snow in the snow leopard habitat. -.-
That's a good idea and something that touched on prior to the original launch, that individual animals would have more personality and behave differently from one another. I doubt it was as intricate as you laid out above but I like your idea a lot. Have 3-6 different personality traits per animal, randomly coded in and non-adjustable in any other mode besides sandbox. In sandbox they'd be unlocked and we could adjust them how we'd like. And yes for sure, shyness would be among them. Sure, you'd have to change all your shy animals but that'd be okay. And if you wanted a challenge you leave them be...or of course in the other modes you'd have to work around that - although we as players should absolutely be able to see what their personality is made up of.. It wouldn't have to be extreme either, same species wouldn't have to have one hiding in the corner twitching and shaking at everything with another desperate to play with every human that comes along to look at it, but some variety would be nice. It's one of the few things that I don't think is in the game that was alluded to.
@Swjosdotschka I really like your idea too - I just couldn't figure out how to multi-quote. ha. You're absolutely right, they all behave around the same programming. While it's nice there seems to be a variety of programming actions within the animals so at least it doesn't look like they're all doing the exact same thing at the same time, they're still robotic in their behavior. Every one of the same species (and between species as well in cases) will only adhere to those same programmed routines, gender excepting for "birthing". All of them. Leave some out in some. put some additional ones in from others, instead of just having them all adhering to the same actions. I don't really know how I should expect that, what level of differentiation there should be, I mean, all actions are going to be programmed, how much is enough? a dozen? two dozen? Maybe have some actions be very rare within species. I think the differences in personality would be a starting point for that.
I don't know if you saw my thread here from back in the day, but I went more into detail about animal personality there. The thread was quite popular, but it doesn't seem like Frontier ever had it on their radar (though Bo was commenting). There clearly isn't just a few of us wanting a bit more personality in animals though.