Yeah, up to 101 now, so I'm happy with that, considering we don't know if any of this will arrive at a success or not. And with over 4k in game at the moment, hopefully at least 100 are doing their franchise challenge thing on PC and got their 1% .. just in case they look back and correct things after the fact.Managed to get to 350. Surprisingly I don't have any issues with money
Franchise Community Challenge Discussion
- Thread starter Jamiefrog
- Start date
I released 45 animals and then stopped because I just don't think this challenge will be fixed before it ends 
But hopefully the next one will work normally 
But hopefully the next one will work normally darn .. the support query on the % not changing has gone to expired .. gonna have to post a new one
New Support Query : https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/66833
New Support Query : https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/66833
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Yeah, I've done that with some of the ones in the past. Hopefully having more details on what we are seeing may help them narrow down the cause. It seems to coincide with the console release so I am wondering if the addition of the console challenge, removed it from the PC player base .. hopefully unintentionallyI released 45 animals and then stopped because I just don't think this challenge will be fixed before it ends
I'm making money again too.
Except for exhibits and various foxes, I've stopped all animals breeding that aren't part of the challenge, so the message flood is halved
Ousted a pair of foxes and put in a monorail that is proving popular ever if it's losing 3K a year
(it nicely went down the middle of my 10m wide paths, so doesn't disturb the animals too much)
This was meant to help spread the guests around, but the vast majority of guests get on at the entrance and do a full loop ignoring the other 2 stations
With the exit on the other side of the station I wonder if I could delete the red bits of path and force the guests around the whole zoo
Oh - and am progressing with the challenge somewhere along the way - up to 41 now and made it to the bottom step
Except for exhibits and various foxes, I've stopped all animals breeding that aren't part of the challenge, so the message flood is halved
Ousted a pair of foxes and put in a monorail that is proving popular ever if it's losing 3K a year
(it nicely went down the middle of my 10m wide paths, so doesn't disturb the animals too much)
This was meant to help spread the guests around, but the vast majority of guests get on at the entrance and do a full loop ignoring the other 2 stations
With the exit on the other side of the station I wonder if I could delete the red bits of path and force the guests around the whole zoo
Oh - and am progressing with the challenge somewhere along the way - up to 41 now and made it to the bottom step
Hope I'm not getting off topic too much, but that got me thinking.
For me a lot of this challenge has been maintaining a viable profitable zoo whilst adding all the Indian bits for the challenge
And the big issue has been guests sticking near the entrance
So I'm wondering if this would work:
- Zoo entrance has little more than the entry to one monorail station and the exit from another.
- And those stations have entrances and exits on opposite sides, essentially creating little one way sections
- Once guests enter the first monorail, the only way to exit the zoo is to traverse the whole thing and then exit via the 2nd monorail
Entirely unethical for a real zoo
But has anyone tried it and might it work?
Maybe an experiment for the next challenge . . .
For me a lot of this challenge has been maintaining a viable profitable zoo whilst adding all the Indian bits for the challenge
And the big issue has been guests sticking near the entrance
So I'm wondering if this would work:
- Zoo entrance has little more than the entry to one monorail station and the exit from another.
- And those stations have entrances and exits on opposite sides, essentially creating little one way sections
- Once guests enter the first monorail, the only way to exit the zoo is to traverse the whole thing and then exit via the 2nd monorail
Entirely unethical for a real zoo
But has anyone tried it and might it work?
Maybe an experiment for the next challenge . . .
The question is, are the clumps at the entrance new people or old people that haven't moved far.
The problem with your idea tiger is that if it isn't a closed loop you can only have one vehicle that goes back and forth. NEVER MIND, just realised you did do loops .. but I will leave this here any way rofl.
And once they start queueing they don't leave the queue until they have got on the vehicle.
The below or something similar could work, but, be aware that they will turn around if there are no animals or amenities within a certain range of the entrance ( or access to them like transport ) so depending on how far out you want those three initial stations to be, you might need something to shuffle them towards them, like exhibits, amenities etc. For example: I didn't put it on there but, you could put a walkthrough exhibit as part of the path that goes from entrance to the north station. I've used that tactic as a trick to move them further forward before they see anything else good rofl. And of course a walkthrough exhibit is a good money maker. It's a pity we don't have more options for them as I can't use them in all my alphabet zoos rofl.
All stations need access to the entrance via path as staff don't use stations to move from A to B and will need to get around. And guests need path options to get around and view animals if the transport queue is full.
And, check the peoples views on transport prices. They will tell you if you need to up the prices by the way they respond to them. So up it until they stop praising how cheap it is.
Depending on how expansive you make each transport route, you can add more stations, more pathing, more amenities, more animals etc for each station access area. Just make sure that the staff have a path access to everywhere they need to get to and the entrance. Guests just need alternatives if they can't join the queue even if it's a path to the next station or habitat/exhibit viewing point.
And with access paths in the three directions east, west, north you can create similar networks to slowly move them round the zoo.
Now, you could start with one way routes with the one vehicle going back and forth until you have money to expand the area further, but then you will need to stop the transport ( kicking people off the queue - maybe make them unhappy and leave? Never tried this so don't know ) and adjust the transport route.
Or you could make each transport route smaller and more of them with just 2 stations to shuffle the guests around the zoo.
Of course I haven't tried this out myself as I almost always have a chunk of stuff right near the entrance to get them spending so I can expand. But, you can always expand out later and remodel as you expand. Which I do plan to do for my bigger alphabet zoos ( that have all their animals ) at some point.
I also found out recently that terrain painting doesn't seem to cost money, so you can always plan the areas out, and slowly build out as you grow. I've been trying that on one of my xth zoo rebuilds I've been doing recently.
The problem with your idea tiger is that if it isn't a closed loop you can only have one vehicle that goes back and forth. NEVER MIND, just realised you did do loops .. but I will leave this here any way rofl.
And once they start queueing they don't leave the queue until they have got on the vehicle.
The below or something similar could work, but, be aware that they will turn around if there are no animals or amenities within a certain range of the entrance ( or access to them like transport ) so depending on how far out you want those three initial stations to be, you might need something to shuffle them towards them, like exhibits, amenities etc. For example: I didn't put it on there but, you could put a walkthrough exhibit as part of the path that goes from entrance to the north station. I've used that tactic as a trick to move them further forward before they see anything else good rofl. And of course a walkthrough exhibit is a good money maker. It's a pity we don't have more options for them as I can't use them in all my alphabet zoos rofl.
All stations need access to the entrance via path as staff don't use stations to move from A to B and will need to get around. And guests need path options to get around and view animals if the transport queue is full.
And, check the peoples views on transport prices. They will tell you if you need to up the prices by the way they respond to them. So up it until they stop praising how cheap it is.
Depending on how expansive you make each transport route, you can add more stations, more pathing, more amenities, more animals etc for each station access area. Just make sure that the staff have a path access to everywhere they need to get to and the entrance. Guests just need alternatives if they can't join the queue even if it's a path to the next station or habitat/exhibit viewing point.
And with access paths in the three directions east, west, north you can create similar networks to slowly move them round the zoo.
Now, you could start with one way routes with the one vehicle going back and forth until you have money to expand the area further, but then you will need to stop the transport ( kicking people off the queue - maybe make them unhappy and leave? Never tried this so don't know ) and adjust the transport route.
Or you could make each transport route smaller and more of them with just 2 stations to shuffle the guests around the zoo.
Of course I haven't tried this out myself as I almost always have a chunk of stuff right near the entrance to get them spending so I can expand. But, you can always expand out later and remodel as you expand. Which I do plan to do for my bigger alphabet zoos ( that have all their animals ) at some point.
I also found out recently that terrain painting doesn't seem to cost money, so you can always plan the areas out, and slowly build out as you grow. I've been trying that on one of my xth zoo rebuilds I've been doing recently.
Thanks - lots of things to consider - and fundamentally to plan rather than just grow, constantly slapping an extra enclosure wherever is convenient.
The career path doesn't involve much planning - mostly try and work with existing zoos, and the few you build from scratch have limited species available and don't need to be huge.
It was only really with the Twighlight zoo, that I had to begin thinking about how you draw guests through a zoo
But my franchise definitely needs to be more than a single large zoo - I'll be doing a custom build targeted at the next challenge
The career path doesn't involve much planning - mostly try and work with existing zoos, and the few you build from scratch have limited species available and don't need to be huge.
It was only really with the Twighlight zoo, that I had to begin thinking about how you draw guests through a zoo
But my franchise definitely needs to be more than a single large zoo - I'll be doing a custom build targeted at the next challenge
I'm making money again too.
Except for exhibits and various foxes, I've stopped all animals breeding that aren't part of the challenge, so the message flood is halved
Ousted a pair of foxes and put in a monorail that is proving popular ever if it's losing 3K a year
(it nicely went down the middle of my 10m wide paths, so doesn't disturb the animals too much)
This was meant to help spread the guests around, but the vast majority of guests get on at the entrance and do a full loop ignoring the other 2 stations
View attachment 403890
With the exit on the other side of the station I wonder if I could delete the red bits of path and force the guests around the whole zoo
Oh - and am progressing with the challenge somewhere along the way - up to 41 now and made it to the bottom step
Nice! To me it looks like your guests are reasonably distributed in different areas of the zoo
I mean it's never really perfectly even, some areas will remain a bit more crowded. I wouldn't worry too much. About the monorail, it looks like it's quite popular so maybe up the price for the ticket? You can also add more cars and up the speed. Usually those rides should create some profit if the tickets aren't too cheap.
And you mentioned message flood. Did you know that you can turn off the notifications about breeding and deaths of animals, and you can choose per species. In case of butterflies and other insects I always turn that off entirely.
Slowing down animal aging is also helpful in big zoos as you don't have to worry about replacing your animals so often. It usually also means fewer notifications
Sorry - the picture is misleading; all the stuff in the foreground is the original zoo and guests are visiting that.Nice! To me it looks like your guests are reasonably distributed in different areas of the zoo
About the monorail, it looks like it's quite popular so maybe up the price for the ticket? You can also add more cars and up the speed. Usually those rides should create some profit if the tickets aren't too cheap.
And you mentioned message flood. Did you know that you can turn off the notifications about breeding and deaths of animals, and you can choose per species. In case of butterflies and other insects I always turn that off entirely.
Slowing down animal aging is also helpful in big zoos as you don't have to worry about replacing your animals so often. It usually also means fewer notifications
But at the back is where I added all the habitats for the Indian challenge, and they're getting very little footfall.
As you suggest; I've got a lot of the birth notifications turned off; but I still get flooded with the "about to" and "expecting offspring" messages that I haven't been able to turn off.
(even if you turn off the birth messages for a species, you still get the "expecting offspring" messages for that species
(unless I've missed something)So if animals can't stop pestering me with news of their kids, then no more babies for you
Sorry - the picture is misleading; all the stuff in the foreground is the original zoo and guests are visiting that.
But at the back is where I added all the habitats for the Indian challenge, and they're getting very little footfall.
As you suggest; I've got a lot of the birth notifications turned off; but I still get flooded with the "about to" and "expecting offspring" messages that I haven't been able to turn off.
(even if you turn off the birth messages for a species, you still get the "expecting offspring" messages for that species
So if animals can't stop pestering me with news of their kids, then no more babies for you
I turn off the exhibit's birth announcements as they are annoyingly too often, but I have been surprised by an exhibit losing all animals so I keep track of deaths so I can check if I see too many close together. But, I don't seem to get bothered by the habitat births - it's my key to go back there and make sure they don't breed before I can send them to storage when they grow up. I do periodically micro manage the habitat animals between any building I might be doing. Because of the number of animals I have, I pause when I am building, but, have to play to get back the money I spent. And, if the zoo is fully built and I am just progressing the animals for trading/empty storage reasons, I cycle through the habitat animals and then the storage before saving and quitting or jumping to the next zoo.
But, yep, not seen a way to turn off those intermediate messages rofl. Unless turning off all message for a species will turn them off as well.
I think I've worked out why exhibits can lose all their animals:
There are some whose "Interbirth period" is marked as "Only one mating event per lifetime"
And the automatic handling with exhibits has no setting for discarding infertile animals first, so with something like Titans even at 100%/100%, they regularly give birth to "100%/0%" and the automatic system will keep the 100%/100% mums by preference, even though they're now infertile. If you're unlucky enough, you can end up with all infertile animals
This includes beetles and butterflies, and maybe others?
So with Titans, I leave it a bit over-capacity allowing for 6 females and 3 males; which vastly reduces the chances of them all being infertile
With butterflies; I keep track of the births and instantly send those mentioned to the trading house, so they don't clog up the capacity of good ones
There are some whose "Interbirth period" is marked as "Only one mating event per lifetime"
And the automatic handling with exhibits has no setting for discarding infertile animals first, so with something like Titans even at 100%/100%, they regularly give birth to "100%/0%" and the automatic system will keep the 100%/100% mums by preference, even though they're now infertile. If you're unlucky enough, you can end up with all infertile animals
This includes beetles and butterflies, and maybe others?
So with Titans, I leave it a bit over-capacity allowing for 6 females and 3 males; which vastly reduces the chances of them all being infertile
With butterflies; I keep track of the births and instantly send those mentioned to the trading house, so they don't clog up the capacity of good ones
Yeah, the titan beetles were getting me yesterday. I had to restock them with females as there were only males left.
I think it's all down to bad luck. If the babies born included a nice balance of male and female then there would be no problems as the older no longer breedable adults would be sold off leaving the new breedable youngsters in their place. However, if a generation of males were born, they would die out as no females available to breed. Similarly, a generation of females, would have the opposite issue of no-one to help them make babies ( unless they are a species that don't need others to breed ) .
I don't seem to have the issue with butterflies but then I usually give them a much higher limit so losing 10 out of 50 is less of an issue.
I think it's all down to bad luck. If the babies born included a nice balance of male and female then there would be no problems as the older no longer breedable adults would be sold off leaving the new breedable youngsters in their place. However, if a generation of males were born, they would die out as no females available to breed. Similarly, a generation of females, would have the opposite issue of no-one to help them make babies ( unless they are a species that don't need others to breed ) .
I don't seem to have the issue with butterflies but then I usually give them a much higher limit so losing 10 out of 50 is less of an issue.
I'm down to my last 17 tigers which I will trade out all but a breeding pair in case I need them for my B zoo.
I've been selling a chunk of my animals in this zoo to help up the money while I was waiting for it to start making its own money again. It's still hit and missing with alternate losses and profits year by year, due to the animal food costs which fluctuate year to year. But currently sitting at 140k with a loss/profit cycle of about 12k each year.
Here is my zoo at the moment and you can see I have started to add some of my T-Z animals so I can slowly turning this into a profitable zoo again and move the animals in my old closed zoos over to this one over time.
The bengal tiger areas will probably be reused by the chimpanzee and gorillas and the lion. All climby species but may need some changes to suit their individual needs. All but one is easily expandable so size needs will likely be a factor of who goes where rofl.
The Peafowl Park will likely be used by the Tamworth Pig with little changes needed there and the Gharial River, might be useable with some changes for the gazelle. Leaving just a few animals to sort out.
I've been selling a chunk of my animals in this zoo to help up the money while I was waiting for it to start making its own money again. It's still hit and missing with alternate losses and profits year by year, due to the animal food costs which fluctuate year to year. But currently sitting at 140k with a loss/profit cycle of about 12k each year.
Here is my zoo at the moment and you can see I have started to add some of my T-Z animals so I can slowly turning this into a profitable zoo again and move the animals in my old closed zoos over to this one over time.
The bengal tiger areas will probably be reused by the chimpanzee and gorillas and the lion. All climby species but may need some changes to suit their individual needs. All but one is easily expandable so size needs will likely be a factor of who goes where rofl.
The Peafowl Park will likely be used by the Tamworth Pig with little changes needed there and the Gharial River, might be useable with some changes for the gazelle. Leaving just a few animals to sort out.
And although it is a comparatively small zoo, the guests are nicely distributed throughout the zoo. I never put food and drink near the entrances, I wait until I expand enough out or until they start complaining. Info as a main go to for them to spend money even if they don't go further into the zoo before going home. And then a merch store or two for when they leave after travelling through the zoo. The food and drink areas are scattered around as vending machines where space is sparse and as inidividual stalls in slightly bigger areas and the occasional sit down and eat areas when larger space is available. They will always be guest grabbers if closer than animal access points.
Excellent. The support issue I posted is up for voting .. and darn it it says I can only vote for 6 items and I can't remember which ones they are rofl. Aha My Issues page also shows items you voted on .. time to take off some votes that aren't relevant to me any more rofl. Wow .. 4 of the 6 votes are still valid .. well fingers crossed on those ancient issues.
As a reminder ( or save you from scrolling up ) here's the link again if you can add a vote - https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/66833
As a reminder ( or save you from scrolling up ) here's the link again if you can add a vote - https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/66833
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