An absolute MUST HAVE feature needed - animal management policies

[Xrystal]

It doesn't even have to be difficult at the start. Just a simple "Keep X females and X males in my exhibit" to start and place all extras in the trade center. Later on, perhaps it can get more intricate and go to "Keep X females and X males - preference goes adult > newborn > aged".

I don't really even care about the selling part, that's fairly easy. I can do that and it doesn't have to be automated. But the constant filtering of animals in my zoo to see which ones have too many animals and clicking each one I want to sell....it's like an unnecessary amount of clicking.

I want less clicks managing animals and more clicks managing my overall zoo. I feel too much like a caretaker or animal handler then I do as a manager of a zoo.

It probably would work better with a bigger trade center. 30 animals storage including the ones you have bought for future use could mean it could get filled quicker than if you managed it yourself, unless of course you added the option to send to a home, sell for CC, sell for money, store for later options allocated to your animals ( by default , aged > send to a home, adult ( sell for CC, sell for money ) and babies ( store for later )). Meaning you only have to adjust those that go against that default setting.

Apologies for the in depth description .. its the programmer in me, I tend to consider the long term design rather than what do we need now, less programming time.

 

[VladK02]

its not just frogs.

you build large enough, you gona have problems with birds, ruminants, pretty much everything that breeds.

you can give contraceptives, but, if you are large enough, instead of selling half the time, you will be buying replacment animals that died of old age. And clicking mouse hundreds of times to move them from office to habitat.

there absolutely must be a function to let keepers select best animals, and maintain population levels at steady - and sell off unwanted animals automatically.

even galapagos turtles give this problem. You would think an animal that takes 25 years to reach adult level would be easy to manage, but no. they breed like rabbits, and are too slow to crawl to water, so they always get thirsty. Turtles give me more alerts then insects. Doesnt mater that there are 10 water sources RIGHT THERE - thirsty. Dehydrated. Alert, alert.

 

[KimoKat]

Uh I run 8 exhibits all off contraceptives and am not going grey yet! The Zoo>Animals tab is your friend, use it. I run my little insanity breeding of exhibit and enclosure animals purely from there.

 

[Sol Vex]

Uh I run 8 exhibits all off contraceptives and am not going grey yet! The Zoo>Animals tab is your friend, use it. I run my little insanity breeding of exhibit and enclosure animals purely from there.

I want to breed my animals though.
I want to breed my animals and be bale to sell their offspring... but I want to play planet zoo. I don't want to play a clicker game where getting money is based off clicking a bunch of animals to sell.

Your gameplay experience won't change with a toggle-able autosell, but many many many others will.

 

[jooxis]

They can go middle-ground here - allow the option only for exhibit animals to have keepers either

[x] sell parents
[x] sell offspring

After every mating. The options don't need to be any more detailed than that - cause if you want to only sell specific offspring you can do it yourself, therefore providing the player with the option of quick and painless vs. micromanaging and getting better results

 

[Sol Vex]

They can go middle-ground here - allow the option only for exhibit animals to have keepers either

[x] sell parents
[x] sell offspring

After every mating. The options don't need to be any more detailed than that - cause if you want to only sell specific offspring you can do it yourself, therefore providing the player with the option of quick and painless vs. micromanaging and getting better results

Warthogs reproduce every 5 real minutes.... this needs to be an option for non-exhibit animals.

it would be harder to code but I'd personally prefer this the most:

every exhibit has a new sub-tab under "genetics" or some other tab.

There is a togglable option (like the birth control pill toggle) which enables "auto trading" "auto release" and "put into storage"
Each of these will be a drop down menu with the sliders we also have for the buying animals tab.
These sliders will come with 2 slider bars, so that you can select a range ex: size: 20-80 , fertility 0-50 etc, each tab will have its own filter bars and will do said action based on the filter bar. There will also be an option for filtering ages ex:

under "auto quick sell" toggle: off
under "auto release" toggle: on
size: 0-80
life expectancy: 0-70
fertility:0-60
immunity: 0-100
auto -elderly animals: toggle: on

under: "put into storage" toggle: on
size: 50-100
life expectancy: 90-100
fertility: 90-100
immunity: 90-100
auto-elderly animals: toggle off

another drop down menu will enable you to auto-move baby animals once they are born:
Auto move female babies to: (select habitat) (toggleable)
Auto move male babies to: (select habitat) (togglable)



In habitats: the same thing

under "auto quick sell" toggle: on
life expectancy: 0-80
Fertility: 0-80
Auto - elderly animals: toggle on

under "auto release" toggle off

under "put in storage: toggle on
life expectancy: 100-100
fertility: 100-100

Each individual animal also has a "protect from auto actions" toggle


This would enable me to actually work on an enclosure without having to pause or do a "release round" every 5 minutes

 

[City Builder]

+1 to the op, I'm growing completely frustrated with the amount of time that I must spend culling the animals that I'm about to only buy or adopt females and just replace them when they die.

 

[MightyRevenge]

I'd agree with the OP. Part of management includes devolved authority. I did create a post in the suggestions part of the forum (this is in feedback), but why not have a role for senior zookeeper and once a zookeeper reaches level 5 they can be trained to be a senior zookeeper. That role in turn is assigned to a habitat (or range of habitats) and you can set policies per species accordingly. The higher the training level, the more accurately they follow the policies.

I like this idea little more than OP's suggestion for automation.I think as a management game you're supposed to feel a little challenged and handle multiple things at once. And as many have state, yes use the pause button often. It's really easy for this game to slip into a "lull" with enough automation. I want to be engaged and active while playing a tycoon-simulator.

I think the first real problem here is the time pacing in the game. Every goes a little too fast. An immediate solution is to actually slow down animal aging in your settings. This will stop your animals from breeding as much. The second issue here is the genealogy panel. It just plain sucks. The tabbed layout that it has makes it impossible to properly visualize which animals are related to which other animals. It's impossible to keep track of the sheer number of combinations by going through that interface alone. I think part of the frustration lies here. If this interface resembled a tree layout or a graph perhaps it would be easier to keep track of which animals to actually apply contraceptives to.

Things I keep in mind before applying contraceptives:

• Can this animal possibly inbreed?
• Does this animal have good genes? or potential? Do I want this animal to mate?
• If an animal has really good genes and I don't need it to mate with other animals to improve the gene pool, I'll just release it to the wild.

To accomplish the above ^, needs you to use the geneology interface, and it's quite impossible to do so.

 

[londonx]

I think it makes gameplay sense to both. Extra devolved management should come at a cost, a unique building type, upgrade-able and unique staff to pay that will allow you to access the devolved management of animals. So in the beginning when you are low on excess cash you will obviously manually manage the animals, the costly devolution options would be an additional incentive to get the finances in order.

 

[felinora99]

Warthogs reproduce every 5 real minutes.... this needs to be an option for non-exhibit animals.

it would be harder to code but I'd personally prefer this the most:

every exhibit has a new sub-tab under "genetics" or some other tab.

There is a togglable option (like the birth control pill toggle) which enables "auto trading" "auto release" and "put into storage"
Each of these will be a drop down menu with the sliders we also have for the buying animals tab.
These sliders will come with 2 slider bars, so that you can select a range ex: size: 20-80 , fertility 0-50 etc, each tab will have its own filter bars and will do said action based on the filter bar. There will also be an option for filtering ages ex:

under "auto quick sell" toggle: off
under "auto release" toggle: on
size: 0-80
life expectancy: 0-70
fertility:0-60
immunity: 0-100
auto -elderly animals: toggle: on

under: "put into storage" toggle: on
size: 50-100
life expectancy: 90-100
fertility: 90-100
immunity: 90-100
auto-elderly animals: toggle off

another drop down menu will enable you to auto-move baby animals once they are born:
Auto move female babies to: (select habitat) (toggleable)
Auto move male babies to: (select habitat) (togglable)



In habitats: the same thing

under "auto quick sell" toggle: on
life expectancy: 0-80
Fertility: 0-80
Auto - elderly animals: toggle on

under "auto release" toggle off

under "put in storage: toggle on
life expectancy: 100-100
fertility: 100-100

Each individual animal also has a "protect from auto actions" toggle


This would enable me to actually work on an enclosure without having to pause or do a "release round" every 5 minutes

I looove your idea of togable options ! They could implement this bit by bit (for exemple on the beginning, not giving us the possibility to send in another habitat, nor giving us different choices according to the age).

For all of those who say "just press pause", I do, I almost always play in pause. For 3 hours of irl playing, I spend a year or two in game. Because all of the time, I press pause to deal with a ton of issue.

This is not management, as many stated before. I have been studying management for 4 years now. Can you imagine a company where the manager would have to deal with sooo many little and repetitive things all the time ? It exists, but it is a huuge red flag. A good management and a good team is having people who can make micro decisions (for exemple, feeding starving animals without having me to order them to do so ), so that you, the manager, can focus on the bigger plan (Do I want inbreeding to have albinos, or avoid it for better stats ? Which animal should I add next in my Zoo, so that it is still financially stable ? What new service do my guests want ?).

According to their level of formation, keepers could deal with more and more things (eg level 3 of formation, when animal are starving, they automatically run to feed them), and at level 5, they could, as someone proposed earlier, become Senior Keeper, and thus have the experience to deal with offspring, according to the rules WE set (as soon as offspring with these kind of stats become adults, sell it to the automatic price already decided by the game in CC/money / release it).

It would thus be more focused on a real management thing, and give a stronger meaning to keeper going to formation, and be less a click and play pseudo management. At the beginning, we would have to supervise everything a lot, as in real life, and as time goes by, we could focus more on what we WANT to do (for example, a fully endangered species breeding zoo). As many stated, the game lack of a rewarding effect, it is the stick and the carrot, except the carrot feels smaller and smaller compared to the stick.

 

[lilvix]

While I don't think this is a must have mechanic and I am managing fine without by pausing and using contraceptives... This is something I would absolutely love if it was an option. It'd allow me to focus on other areas while still enjoying the breeding aspect and the profits of that.

 

[Adarra]

This is not management, as many stated before. I have been studying management for 4 years now. Can you imagine a company where the manager would have to deal with sooo many little and repetitive things all the time ? It exists, but it is a huuge red flag. A good management and a good team is having people who can make micro decisions (for exemple, feeding starving animals without having me to order them to do so ), so that you, the manager, can focus on the bigger plan (Do I want inbreeding to have albinos, or avoid it for better stats ? Which animal should I add next in my Zoo, so that it is still financially stable ? What new service do my guests want ?).

THIS! This is exactly what I've been trying to get across as well! There's a big, big difference between having to micro-manage EVERY SINGLE THING and being a /good/ manager who knows who to ask for what task/job so he/she can focus on the bigger pictures (finances, guest happiness, breeding programs, etc.) I have what I think you'd consider a fairly medium-sized, maybe even large, zoo and right now, especially after the update and patch, it's utter MADNESS to try and get things done. I have to manually fix EVERYTHING. I have to keep an eye out for fighting animals and separate them, there are several habitats where the keepers - after update/patch - suddenly don't clean as often or efficiently as they did before, I have animals still going thirsty in certain habitats where before that wasn't a problem, and I really need to take the time to look at my education rating, my vendors, etc. But I can't! Because the other stuff constantly needs my attention and sorry, but pausing my zoo practically all the freaking time is NOT a solution. It should be perfectly possible - like before the update/patch - to sit back and enjoy my zoo every once in a while, due to my management decisions, instead of having to press pause all the time.

 

[felinora99]

THIS! This is exactly what I've been trying to get across as well! There's a big, big difference between having to micro-manage EVERY SINGLE THING and being a /good/ manager who knows who to ask for what task/job so he/she can focus on the bigger pictures (finances, guest happiness, breeding programs, etc.) I have what I think you'd consider a fairly medium-sized, maybe even large, zoo and right now, especially after the update and patch, it's utter MADNESS to try and get things done. I have to manually fix EVERYTHING. I have to keep an eye out for fighting animals and separate them, there are several habitats where the keepers - after update/patch - suddenly don't clean as often or efficiently as they did before, I have animals still going thirsty in certain habitats where before that wasn't a problem, and I really need to take the time to look at my education rating, my vendors, etc. But I can't! Because the other stuff constantly needs my attention and sorry, but pausing my zoo practically all the freaking time is NOT a solution. It should be perfectly possible - like before the update/patch - to sit back and enjoy my zoo every once in a while, due to my management decisions, instead of having to press pause all the time.

I (obviously) fully agree with you. I hope we can have some options to improve this, like the Head Zookeeper !

 

[MightyRevenge]

For all of those who say "just press pause", I do, I almost always play in pause. For 3 hours of irl playing, I spend a year or two in game. Because all of the time, I press pause to deal with a ton of issue.

I'm hearing you! Yes, micro-management is fun up-to a point. However, I think we really need to think about how to implement this from a variety of angles. I think the key here is to do it in such a way that gives you variety and richness in control, that lets you truly manage your zoo in different ways. At the same time, this could be really tough to balance.

This is not management, as many stated before. I have been studying management for 4 years now. Can you imagine a company where the manager would have to deal with sooo many little and repetitive things all the time ? It exists, but it is a huuge red flag. A good management and a good team is having people who can make micro decisions (for exemple, feeding starving animals without having me to order them to do so ), so that you, the manager, can focus on the bigger plan (Do I want inbreeding to have albinos, or avoid it for better stats ? Which animal should I add next in my Zoo, so that it is still financially stable ? What new service do my guests want ?).

I hear you here as well, but again, remember a game that reflects real life too 1:1 is also not very fun. At the same time, I agree some level of realism implemented is fun. (which is already done in the game) Finding a good balance is the tricky part! I totally agree with you that something that would make the game more rich is having more control over what your staff do and don't do. For example, one popular request is setting shifts for staff! So yes, I do believe it can add to a rich management style, but it can't be rushed.

 

[felinora99]

I'm hearing you! Yes, micro-management is fun up-to a point. However, I think we really need to think about how to implement this from a variety of angles. I think the key here is to do it in such a way that gives you variety and richness in control, that lets you truly manage your zoo in different ways. At the same time, this could be really tough to balance.


I hear you here as well, but again, remember a game that reflects real life too 1:1 is also not very fun. At the same time, I agree some level of realism implemented is fun. (which is already done in the game) Finding a good balance is the tricky part! I totally agree with you that something that would make the game more rich is having more control over what your staff do and don't do. For example, one popular request is setting shifts for staff! So yes, I do believe it can add to a rich management style, but it can't be rushed.

So I replied to you in the other thread, the two really are similar or I went away from the initial point I don't know x)

I agree with you, a bit of micro management is still fun and part of the game, especially in the beginning ! I just want the game to feel rewarding, the longer we have managed our zoos, the less micromanagement we can have (but not compulsory, let each player play the way he wants), and the more big picture tools we can obtain.