Can YOU save my zoo!?

[Indiglow]

The last few patches really wrecked my zoo. The food bug and the refund patch pretty much trashed my zoo to the point where I absolutely had to take out 2 loans to stay afloat before I could attempt to save the zoo. After the patch fixes and patch revert, my zoo was on edge and dipping in the negatives. I fear there is no hope to return it back to normal.

I don't believe I can upload my zoo since it was a franchise.

I really don't want to start my zoo over, but that seems to be the case. Do you know of anyway to save a zoo?

Guest happiness is at 4.1 stars, staff are excited, my welfare on all animals is tip top. But it will not generate any money now to stay afloat. 1500 guests in the park with 78 animals.

These patches have completely destroyed it.

 

[Forever_Lona]

I have not yet had any problems making money in my Franchises. Not to say you are not the subject of a bug here, but I'll share what I do purely because its working for me.


1. Absolute minimum staff. I ONLY hire more staff if I am getting problems, ie too much litter, or animals getting hungry. Even with the hunger thing, I check that all my keeper huts arent full first. Staff costs are nuts.

2. Donation buckets everywhere. At least 3-4 outside exhibits. They generate huge cash

3. No bells or whistles. Forget construction, security cameras. If an animals needs to have a water pump to keep its exhibit clean, I dont keep that animal until I'm flush with cash.

4. Only as many shops as needed. People have to be whinging before I'll put more in.

5. Grade 1 food only

6. High rating animals. I wont spend heaps of money feeding peafowls when I could have lions raking in the cash.

I hope this is helpful and not just telling you to suck eggs. This ends up netting me easy millions, but I know there are bugs giving people trouble right now.

 

[Indiglow]

I have not yet had any problems making money in my Franchises. Not to say you are not the subject of a bug here, but I'll share what I do purely because its working for me.


1. Absolute minimum staff. I ONLY hire more staff if I am getting problems, ie too much litter, or animals getting hungry. Even with the hunger thing, I check that all my keeper huts arent full first. Staff costs are nuts.

2. Donation buckets everywhere. At least 3-4 outside exhibits. They generate huge cash

3. No bells or whistles. Forget construction, security cameras. If an animals needs to have a water pump to keep its exhibit clean, I dont keep that animal until I'm flush with cash.

4. Only as many shops as needed. People have to be whinging before I'll put more in.

5. Grade 1 food only

6. High rating animals. I wont spend heaps of money feeding peafowls when I could have lions raking in the cash.

I hope this is helpful and not just telling you to suck eggs. This ends up netting me easy millions, but I know there are bugs giving people trouble right now.

Thanks!

Minimal staff may be my problem. I have tons of staff...but that's because my area is demanding I have tons of staff. There is litter everywhere yet I have 100 trash cans out and like 15 caretakers...and there is still litter. Could be the bug.

I have 3-4 donation buckets for ever exhibit. No security cameras. I do have water filtration, but that's because I have a giant giraffe enclosure that needs it. I also only stay at grade 1 food only.

I don't have super high rating animals because of the horror stories I hear from lions and such that end up eating zoos alive from meat costs.

I'll try cutting staff first. Thanks!

 

[Indiglow]

I have not yet had any problems making money in my Franchises. Not to say you are not the subject of a bug here, but I'll share what I do purely because its working for me.


1. Absolute minimum staff. I ONLY hire more staff if I am getting problems, ie too much litter, or animals getting hungry. Even with the hunger thing, I check that all my keeper huts arent full first. Staff costs are nuts.

2. Donation buckets everywhere. At least 3-4 outside exhibits. They generate huge cash

3. No bells or whistles. Forget construction, security cameras. If an animals needs to have a water pump to keep its exhibit clean, I dont keep that animal until I'm flush with cash.

4. Only as many shops as needed. People have to be whinging before I'll put more in.

5. Grade 1 food only

6. High rating animals. I wont spend heaps of money feeding peafowls when I could have lions raking in the cash.

I hope this is helpful and not just telling you to suck eggs. This ends up netting me easy millions, but I know there are bugs giving people trouble right now.

I went to minimal staff and the zoo fell into further decline. I just went -$20,000. Some shops didn't have vendors, litter got worse, people demanded refunds. Animal food expense went UP despite the fact that my animal count went DOWN and I sold off extra animals.

There's no way out. The patches tanking my zoo causing me to try to save it via loans has destroyed the zoo. There's no way to turn it around now. It's over.

 

[Forever_Lona]

Sorry to hear Maybe pack all your animals into crates and use it as an opportunity to try out a new zoo design? I just did a really awesome circular zoo that I saw on Paulsley's Youtube channel and it looks great and is raking in cash. Cant wait to finish work and get back to it!

 

[Indiglow]

Sorry to hear Maybe pack all your animals into crates and use it as an opportunity to try out a new zoo design? I just did a really awesome circular zoo that I saw on Paulsley's Youtube channel and it looks great and is raking in cash. Cant wait to finish work and get back to it!

I'm giving up on it and starting a new one. Thanks though! It's extremely weird. One year I was making $80,000 and then the next it just tanked for no apparent reason.

 

[PeppyPepp]

I'm so sorry to hear that.

 

[NL_Mutso]

Sorry to hear that.

1500 guests in the park with 78 animals

That's a lot of animals for 1500 guests..
If you have 30 peafowls, that's not a big deal but if you have the more 'expensive food' animals. that could've been a problem.
Sometimes just having 1 or 2 animals from 1 species is the way to go, especially in the beginning...

I also work with minimum staff except for vendors.. It happens too often that a shop is abandoned, and they make decent money !

Staff and food are the highest prorities when you are having cash problems.

If you don't mind micromanagement: Breeding exhibits animals like spiders/snails, can help you with gaining that much needed $..
Getting 10k when selling offspring is very easy. And they breed fast !

Did you make a screenshot of your finances before closing?

Sometimes adding a new habitat, makes a lot of difference. But that really depends on your available funds at that time..

 

[Jileha]

Unhappy guests litter and vandalize stuff. Even with an overall happiness of 4.1, guests might acutally be complaining heavily about this or that. A good education rating keeps the overall happiness up longer and could cover up the individual guests unhappiness. Red faces in the guests’ comments might give you a clue what the problem is. Check the heatmap where you get unhappy guests and look at their thoughts. And once there are too many red faces, you enter a vicious circle: unhappy guests litter and vandalize stuff and then they have the nerve to complain about all the litter and vandalism in the zoo and get really upset about it...

Crowd control seems to be fairly important to avoid a lot of issues. Keep the guests spread out and moving through your zoo. Make sure they have several alternative routes right from the beginning and build out new habitats with attractive animals in different areas of the zoo so the guests spread out. If the food courts are too congested, build some more in other area. They seem to need more drink shops than anything else.

One problem is that often zoos run very smoothly until all of a sudden, they’re not, and it hits you (myself included) completely unprepared. But as your zoo and guest number grows, new problems pop up you didn’t have before in a smaller zoo.

If you still have the bug of guests using staff paths, make sure these paths are not shortcuts to a habitat. I’ve never seen this issue because my staff paths tend to not go anywhere beyond the staff facilities.

A recovery from being that much in the hole is probably extremely difficult. But I would still do some guest research to find the root problems so you can hopefully avoid them in your next zoo. Every new zoo gets a bit better than the last one! Good luck!

 

[Kai]

The only way I ever really keep my zoos in the positive is a stupid amount of exhibits surrounded with donation bins. It's how I start up every new zoo and how I pay for enclosure animal's food in every zoo (once the mechanical research is complete).

The exhibits are dirt cheap to run because there's no issue with insane food costs. The only real downside is it's pretty annoying managing a huge amount of exhibit donation bin batteries even if they're on contraception (I keep small zoos so I have around 12-20 exhibits for 4-6 enclosures). For a bigger zoo you'd probably need 50+.

I still consider the staff and animal food costs (and the entire refund mechanic) to be obscene, but unfortunately it seems frontier is happy with them.

 

[Indiglow]

Sorry to hear that.


That's a lot of animals for 1500 guests..
If you have 30 peafowls, that's not a big deal but if you have the more 'expensive food' animals. that could've been a problem.
Sometimes just having 1 or 2 animals from 1 species is the way to go, especially in the beginning...

I also work with minimum staff except for vendors.. It happens too often that a shop is abandoned, and they make decent money !

Staff and food are the highest prorities when you are having cash problems.

If you don't mind micromanagement: Breeding exhibits animals like spiders/snails, can help you with gaining that much needed $..
Getting 10k when selling offspring is very easy. And they breed fast !

Did you make a screenshot of your finances before closing?

Sometimes adding a new habitat, makes a lot of difference. But that really depends on your available funds at that time..

I started off with frog exhibits. I only had Giraffes, Peafowls, Okapi, Komodo Dragon, Gharial, Zebras and Buffalo in my zoo after that. The zoo was not very big.

Many of those 78 (22) animals were Gharials because they had a breeding frenzy so I stuck them in the trading center to deal with the food explosion. Unfortunately, they remain there until I can make money and slowly shift them out.

All my other animals are only a few (2-4) each except my Giraffes I have about 7 and some of the frogs I have around 6 so I can make money from breeding.

I didn't close my zoo, I just had to stop playing it. I couldn't open a new habitat because of money issues and I can't do anything to my existing ones. The Gharial food explosion + the bug is really what did my zoo in. The time for the 2 of them to breed 22 offspring only took about 20 in game minutes. You can't sell them or trade them and they take many many years to mature. It really destroyed my zoo. Then, the refund issue happened. It just went downhill after that. It was really a beautiful zoo, too. I made alot of money from shops and donations like I was supposed to. But you can't do anything about 22 Gharial offspring. The game speed is just way too fast before you can catch what's going on, even when pausing like a mad man.

 

[Dr4gon]

I can save every zoo, as long as you let me break it all apart. Once those pesky visitors are gone, employees are fired and all animals are in the storage, the real demolition squad comes. They will remove all the flutter, barriers and paths. It will cost you no CC, and all your research will be saved as well. Which leaves you room to build the best zoo ever.

 

[Indiglow]

I can save every zoo, as long as you let me break it all apart. Once those pesky visitors are gone, employees are fired and all animals are in the storage, the real demolition squad comes. They will remove all the flutter, barriers and paths. It will cost you no CC, and all your research will be saved as well. Which leaves you room to build the best zoo ever.

Can't get rid of animals that are not mature or too old so you have no way to "ditch" them. Your trade center will fill up. I have 22 Gharials in there I can't do anything with.

 

[Dr4gon]

Can't get rid of animals that are not mature or too old so you have no way to "ditch" them. Your trade center will fill up. I have 22 Gharials in there I can't do anything with.

Yes, they can be stored. And placed back after the renovation. I have currently 230 animals in my storage, of which many are just babies.

 

[NL_Mutso]

The time for the 2 of them to breed 22 offspring only took about 20 in game minutes.

Sorry, but you can't have 22 Gharials from 1 pair in just 20 minutes. (maybe in FFW speed)

2-9 offspring per mating event. (so at least 3 mating events)
Gestation/incubation + interbirth period = 27 months
27*3 = 81 Months = 6,75 years
1 year = 20 minutes (approx).. So that would take 2 hours and approx. 15 minutes if they mated directly after giving birth.

(or did I make an error ? In that case sorry, it's been a long rough day - already stopped playing PZ for today because I couldn't focus enough... Already put 2 cheetas in the lion exhibit )

How much were your refunds per year in the last couple of years ? Or estimate?

 

[KaoRu]

I built slowly on my 12th attempt which has been my most successful zoo. I now have 1 milliom dollars and going strong. Don't rush it. Don't build loads of shops in the beginning, pay attention to finances and cut back on stuff. Set staff wages to the very last amount before they have an unhappy face. For example, Zoo keeper has $2,000 wage and will accept the lowest at $1,060 (I think).

Have high rating animals but start off with one's that aren't too expensive to keep like Elephants and Bears. Also, get at least one exhibit. The recommended animal for cash is spiders. They breed like mad. Forget about inbreeding when it comes to them it will just be a big headache for you. The highest I've got for them so far is around....$6,000 I think. But that depends on how good of a medal they have. Gold will get you ALOT of money.

 

[KaoRu]

Thanks!

Minimal staff may be my problem. I have tons of staff...but that's because my area is demanding I have tons of staff. There is litter everywhere yet I have 100 trash cans out and like 15 caretakers...and there is still litter. Could be the bug.

I have 3-4 donation buckets for ever exhibit. No security cameras. I do have water filtration, but that's because I have a giant giraffe enclosure that needs it. I also only stay at grade 1 food only.

I don't have super high rating animals because of the horror stories I hear from lions and such that end up eating zoos alive from meat costs.

I'll try cutting staff first. Thanks!

Nile Monitors have high popularity for some reason so get some of them. Also Tortoise and Peafowl. I got rid of my Tortoise eventually though after hitting a steady income. They were too slow and I was constantly getting welfare notifications for them even though their enclosure was small. Seems like you do have to many staff. I have around 6 caretakers atm but my Zoo isn't huge. Try setting them a work zone.

 

[Indiglow]

Sorry, but you can't have 22 Gharials from 1 pair in just 20 minutes. (maybe in FFW speed)

2-9 offspring per mating event. (so at least 3 mating events)
Gestation/incubation + interbirth period = 27 months
27*3 = 81 Months = 6,75 years
1 year = 20 minutes (approx).. So that would take 2 hours and approx. 15 minutes if they mated directly after giving birth.

(or did I make an error ? In that case sorry, it's been a long rough day - already stopped playing PZ for today because I couldn't focus enough... Already put 2 cheetas in the lion exhibit )

How much were your refunds per year in the last couple of years ? Or estimate?

My last few years refunds went down because of the patch. With 1500 guests I was getting $1800 in refunds. The main problem with the zoo now is the inability to produce money because of feeding, staff wages, and loans - None of which I can actively do anything about. I tried cutting and firing staff but then my zoo immediately tanked because it NEEDED those staff members.

 

[Dr4gon]

You can't do it with cutting back on staff alone. You'll have to step back on animals as well. Try to find out which animals are the most expensive to keep, and bring them back to storage or sell them. You can't fire staff and maintain the same animal park. That is madness.

I have been there too, but I got out of the problems. My lions were the biggest culprits, not my highly trained staff. Especially vendors are very hard to train, but you may have to replace them with cheaper ones, or all shops that are not profitable.

I rather have a habitat of warthogs and survive than golden ribbon pandas and have to close my zoo.

 

[Moosegun]

The big issue here is you have not highlighted WHY your guests are not happy, which probably means you dont know, spend some time running with the happiness heatmap and see the area which are causing you problems. Firstly work on the lowest guest happiness rating (probably thirst or education), click on guests and get specific feedback.