Animal feed cost explosion

[Dr4gon]

It is just the meat. It is very expensive. When you have a male lion with three females, because that is what zoopedia tells us, every time when an birth explosion happens, your food price goes through the roof. That doesn't stop until you send them to the trade house. And that is something you can't do until they mature. And before you know it. there are more litters and it doesn't stop until your zoo is bankrupt. Believe me or not, it is no bug. Meat is just very expensive. After all my cut backs, I was still making a loss. Than I removed my lions from the habitats, because they finally mature, my profits went through the roof.

That is the last I have to say about this. You can complain that its a bug, but I don't think that's helping the game. I have that problem behind me and I have learned.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

It is just the meat. It is very expensive.

It's not just the meat. One makake in my zoo has 1k food costs per year on average (30 ingame year stats).
If the game gave us guidance in advance for planning, no problem. But there isn't any. However, imo gameplay should be balanced that you are able to achieve a zoo with every species and not being stuck with 10-15 animals, which are only vegetarians.

 

[Nerzul]

Suffering the same fate...costs are booming every month for no reason. I literally haven't placed a single new habitat. Nor the population of my habitats has boomed to justify it.

Placing decorations on my small zoo watching how food cost expenses have at least 5x while I was decorating the park, plus camera bugs that appeared on the last update, finding it hard to play.

 

[TheGaijin87]

this is becoming the second no mans sky

 

[Aiste]

That is very much OK to have a little bit of a "minus" challenge. Personally, I have no interest to play when I'm constantly sitting with millions in my bank.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

That is very much OK to have a little bit of a "minus" challenge. Personally, I have no interest to play when I'm constantly sitting with millions in my bank.

I'd even like the game more challenging overall. But having not the relevant and confusing information makes it guessing to an extent. I'd prefer having some initial guidance and all needed tools.

 

[Amoo]

I'm not sure the developers are actually following what the problem is with the sound of the recent bug fix.

The problem is pretty simple. If you have habitats that keep VERY strict control on animal populations close to their minimums, your donations are enough to keep your zoo profitable.

The further and further you go OVER the minimum number of animals, it compounds the food costs, but the donations don't increase enough to offset.

A zoo with 10 habitats and 20 animals will do better than a zoo with 10 habitats and 40 animals (assuming all the same species).

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I'm not sure the developers are actually following what the problem is with the sound of the recent bug fix.

The problem is pretty simple. If you have habitats that keep VERY strict control on animal populations close to their minimums, your donations are enough to keep your zoo profitable.

The further and further you go OVER the minimum number of animals, it compounds the food costs, but the donations don't increase enough to offset.

A zoo with 10 habitats and 20 animals will do better than a zoo with 10 habitats and 40 animals (assuming all the same species).

whats missing in the balancing - that a large variety of different species is beneficial to the guests and thus, to the income. That there is a limit of costs, e.g. for feeding costs, is a fair mechanism in general

 

[Vigilante]

I got that dirty ing bug again. -.- I really have no desire to start again from the beginning. :/ That would be then meanwhile park number 5.

And every time I try to compensate the minus with shops, the pet food costs for each shop are raised by 10k. Say no matter what I do, I don't get into the plus anymore, especially for every shop I add I finally get into the minus through the 10k faster, because the proportion is simply not right anymore.

Let's go see the managers here: Can I send my savegame over to you so that someone can take a closer look? I really don't want to start at 0 again. This simply isn't any fun anymore...

 

[Wolfen75]

That is very much OK to have a little bit of a "minus" challenge. Personally, I have no interest to play when I'm constantly sitting with millions in my bank.

So when you are playing a managing game about building up an industry empire and you're doing everything right, mastering the game mechanics,
you want a dice rolled that takes away 10-50% of your income to keep the game "fun"?
Your sense of fun is not mine i have to admit.
This is no challenge, this is an arbitrary annoyance.

I regret the dozens of hours i put into building new zoos and try to figure out what i was doing wrong or where the problem was rootet.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I got that dirty gently caressing bug again. -.- I really have no desire to start again from the beginning. :/ That would be then meanwhile park number 5.
And every time I try to compensate the minus with shops, the pet food costs for each shop are raised by 10k. Say no matter what I do, I don't get into the plus anymore, especially for every shop I add I finally get into the minus through the 10k faster, because the proportion is simply not right anymore.
Let's go see the managers here: Can I send my savegame over to you so that someone can take a closer look? I really don't want to start at 0 again. This simply isn't any fun anymore...

Currently, the only possibility you have is to keep the number of animals for each species close to the minimum amount (e.g. 3 grown-up Gorillas plus offspring) and to lower food level to II (they will still feel happy when everything else is happy). This is beneficial when you start having a zoo with approx. at least 10-15 different animals. Because from the latter point onwards, the increase in guest revenue is smaller than the increase in food costs. However, regardless of the the amount of species it also depends on which species you choose. Like the food for Apes and Elephants is way more expensive than Bisons or Great Pandas - and for Tigers much more than for Bisons, respectively.

 

[Amoo]

Images taken on Dec 31st to try to give some clarity. This is what happens when you have a lion enclosure (or other overly high cost enclosure). I went from 1 male and 5 females 3 years ago to them all having multiple babies, me having to sell off almost all of the female adults and waiting for the babies to mature.

https://imgur.com/4pP9dAE

https://imgur.com/XJskb3w

https://imgur.com/mUGiFrD

Also fwiw that African Herbivore enclosure has elephants and giraffe along with a bunch of other species.

I've had to get rid of most of my other carnivore enclosures to be able to afford to keep the lions in the zoo. I also got rid of all of my exhibits because they are just not fun to try to keep up with even though they are great for profit margin. Managing them is just too much with the speed of time and their life and breeding cycles.

 

[Aiste]

So when you are playing a managing game about building up an industry empire and you're doing everything right, mastering the game mechanics,
you want a dice rolled that takes away 10-50% of your income to keep the game "fun"?

I have no fun sitting constantly on the sack of money. When you are in reds, that is where the real fun begins. You begin to think. Otherwise, you paint the park.

 

[Wolfen75]

I have no fun sitting constantly on the sack of money. When you are in reds, that is where the real fun begins. You begin to think. Otherwise, you paint the park.

You begin to think "where can i spare money, where can i optimize".
Once again, random deviations are bad game design, no need to sweet talk it.
Obviously you either don't understand the problem in this special case or you didn't read the whole thread.
Either way, i am out of this.

 

[Nameless_One]

You begin to think "where can i spare money, where can i optimize".
Once again, random deviations are bad game design, no need to sweet talk it.

You're right. There is something random in the feeding routine.
I've run a single habitat with some Timber-wolfs in challenge mode.
After a pup was born in Year 2, I raised the number to 4 a few years later to 6 and suddenly there were 8, cause my new Alpha had a quartet.
Most times there was a big plate and a hanging feeder, later I had to add a flute to meet the enrichment requirements. For four wolves the costs were about 3.6K per meal (stage 3)

My Observations:

• the amount of food stays the same until the number of animals change
• most times the food will be split between the feeders, the smaller ones will be filled fully up, the bigger only part wise
• The keeper always makes more food then needed, the amount varies (I think I saw sometimes 6 kg thrown away with the next cleanup, which means more than 1,000 dollars were wasted)
• Feeding time is once a year... until it isn't.

In Year 5 the keeper fed two times with the full costs each time.
Year 9 was odd, because the quartet was born in Q1 and the number doubled to 8. In Q1 the keeper fed the normal amount for 3.6 K. In Q2 he came again and fed the double amount of 7.2K for 8 wolves. But that wasn't enough, so he came again in Q4 to bill 7.2K again.
In Year 10 he came once again twice, in 11 it was only once and in Year 12 it was twice again.

 

[Wolfen75]

I think it has to do with food spoilage.
But i tried it on 7 or 8 zoos, unable to nail it, and now i am sick of it.
Despite the fact it spoiled the game for me for now, i somehow would like to know at some point, for i wasted so
many hours of lifetime to figure it out.
Ah well, maybe next year.

I guess next time i just start a nice zoo in sandbox.
I won't spent another 50-100 hours to build up a zoo in franchise or challenge to lose everything to a borked patch or to be unable
to play it then for weeks until/if/maybe something get fixed.

 

[Amoo]

I think it has to do with food spoilage.
But i tried it on 7 or 8 zoos, unable to nail it, and now i am sick of it.
Despite the fact it spoiled the game for me for now, i somehow would like to know at some point, for i wasted so
many hours of lifetime to figure it out.
Ah well, maybe next year.

I guess next time i just start a nice zoo in sandbox.
I won't spent another 50-100 hours to build up a zoo in franchise or challenge to lose everything to a borked patch or to be unable
to play it then for weeks until/if/maybe something get fixed.

The biggest problem with the game right now is we are unable to build the zoos we want and instead are forced to build the zoos Frontier wanted us to build. I'll agree, not exactly fun, I myself haven't logged in for over a week now except to take those screens.

That said, there is no reason right now anybody should lose their zoo financially. One of the good things that has come out of this thread is a bunch of us have shared how we keep our zoo profitable. Look at my animal breakdown. I'm currently sitting on $3.5Mil and 900K CC. I'd love to have my saltwater crocs, cheetah...etc back, but right now Frontier isn't letting me play that way. That said, I put my zoo in a stable enough place that if/when they do get these carnivore feed + too many same species issues fixed, I can roll right back into my zoo in a good place.

The lions I simply raise and release to wild. They're basically a CC farm. Everything else makes money. If I wanted to make more money I would stack exhibits again and load them up with donation stations. Unfortunately they are a PITA to run with the time settings so I took em out.

Bottom line is, if you figure out the tricks to make your zoo profitable now, you'll easily be able to succeed when they fix this.

 

[cheuk18me94]

I also have a similar problem, while the amount of fruit cost for gharials (7 juveniles and 2 adults) raise from 7k to 28k.
I pause the game, put the contraceptive in all my animals and run for 1 year in full speed, the cost drop to 19k.
I realize the problem is from another habitat that I have, that I have a population boom for nile population in which I have nearly 10 juvenile nile monitor is born at the year, I release 11 adult nile monitor from 26 nile monitor population in the next year, and the cost for gharials are reduced to 12k.

So I am quite curious that one species could affect another species so easily.

And I hope that we can have a way to release juvenile, waiting 4 years for the nile monitor to be mature and to be able to release is just a torture