Franchise Community Challenge Discussion

[Xrystal]

Grr .. just what you don't want to happen .. just added the Markhors to my MN zoo and forgot to save the game when I had finished that part .. few minutes later ... game freezes while adding some other stuff .. aargh .. unless the auto save kicked in before the crash

Whew .. the last autosave was a few moments before adding the vending machines, the last thing I added.

Well, thats the A, JKL and MN Zoo's checked for stray animals to release. Up to 165 released now and 150 in storage. Next will be R and S to clear out some of that wanted storage rofl.

 

[tigertimb]

Zoo looks very nice - is it my imagination or do the trees form characters of some kind?

The game has been crashing on me recently too; seemingly particularly when I leave it paused for a while and get on with life.
I'd put it down to my old laptop struggling despite keeping all the buildings bare-boned - but at least the autosave has been working for me too

(and there is definitely a memory leak in the program somewhere; performance gradually declines to the point where I only move the camera when paused; but restart the game from scratch and it's working nicely again and sometimes with a boost to my money too!)


I hit 180 last night and maxed out the rewards - capybara, peccary, boars and warthogs helping most
(little penguins not so good - you buy two from Frontier, they produce one offspring and then become infertile; 2nd generation works a little better, but I think you'd need to get to 4th generation with constant attention for them to work for a challenge like this, despite the 100s you're allowed)

 

[Xrystal]

Zoo looks very nice - is it my imagination or do the trees form characters of some kind?

The game has been crashing on me recently too; seemingly particularly when I leave it paused for a while and get on with life.
I'd put it down to my old laptop struggling despite keeping all the buildings bare-boned - but at least the autosave has been working for me too

(and there is definitely a memory leak in the program somewhere; performance gradually declines to the point where I only move the camera when paused; but restart the game from scratch and it's working nicely again and sometimes with a boost to my money too!)


I hit 180 last night and maxed out the rewards - capybara, peccary, boars and warthogs helping most
(little penguins not so good - you buy two from Frontier, they produce one offspring and then become infertile; 2nd generation works a little better, but I think you'd need to get to 4th generation with constant attention for them to work for a challenge like this, despite the 100s you're allowed)

Yeah, crashing definitely seems to be related to pausing, I think every time it has crashed, the common theme is it is in pause mode, either in the game menu, or paused while building or micromanaging.

Rofl, never noticed the tree formation. They're just randomly placed to fill space up or the habitats.

 

[hards]

Anyone else's personal contribution go to zero after the last challenge?

 

[Xrystal]

Sometimes it goes to zero when it's finished .. but I didn't notice if mine did when I was last in game. And .. I think 1am UK time is when it ticks over for the start and end of the challenge.

Just took a quick look and it is the way I usually see it. Not fully reset. Notice the 89 rewards claimed and the 100% completed. Clearly it keeps some record of your achievement for when they do they final stage in a few hours. That process may be in conjunction to a down time window or need a person to press a button etc.

 

[Jamiefrog]

Anyone else's personal contribution go to zero after the last challenge?

As Xrystal said; this often happens immediately after the challenge is finished. At the latest we should get the rewards and everything after the weekly franchise server maintenance that happens in a few hours, and after that your results will show again until the next challenge.

And speaking of the next challenge:
Next one is another release challenge! (getting 3 in a row is pretty unusual I think?)
We'll be releasing 3 star Snow Leopards. Usually these are the more tricky ones; release a specific species. I'll be focusing this week on expanding snow leopards to more of my zoos and breed as many as I can manage to sell off so people hopefully have lots of stock when the challenge starts and get a chance for new blood to their own lines. Hopefully there will be plenty of them on the market this week so we can all breed some good stock.

 

[Xrystal]

Sometimes it goes to zero when it's finished .. but I didn't notice if mine did when I was last in game. And .. I think 1am UK time is when it ticks over for the start and end of the challenge.

Just took a quick look and it is the way I usually see it. Not fully reset. Notice the 89 rewards claimed and the 100% completed. Clearly it keeps some record of your achievement for when they do they final stage in a few hours. That process may be in conjunction to a down time window or need a person to press a button etc.

View attachment 405259

When I jumped in today - It showed the number of animals released and moved me down to 2nd spot. But, the claim window didn't show the 2 animals the normal challenges give you at the end. I can't remember if this is normal for the anniversary challenge. But I won't complain about it as I got quite a few during the challenge itself.

 

[Jamiefrog]

When I jumped in today - It showed the number of animals released and moved me down to 2nd spot. But, the claim window didn't show the 2 animals the normal challenges give you at the end. I can't remember if this is normal for the anniversary challenge. But I won't complain about it as I got quite a few during the challenge itself.

Yes I also noticed that I didn't seem to get any animals and felt the very same - could not remember if that happened last year too and either way I got a bunch of animals during the challenge itself so I don't mind so much.

 

[Xrystal]

As Xrystal said; this often happens immediately after the challenge is finished. At the latest we should get the rewards and everything after the weekly franchise server maintenance that happens in a few hours, and after that your results will show again until the next challenge.

And speaking of the next challenge:
Next one is another release challenge! (getting 3 in a row is pretty unusual I think?)
We'll be releasing 3 star Snow Leopards. Usually these are the more tricky ones; release a specific species. I'll be focusing this week on expanding snow leopards to more of my zoos and breed as many as I can manage to sell off so people hopefully have lots of stock when the challenge starts and get a chance for new blood to their own lines. Hopefully there will be plenty of them on the market this week so we can all breed some good stock.

Well I have a youngish fresh breeding pair in my S Zoo, which I need to work on to add any missing animals. I think one of the new animals begins with S anyway ( unless I am getting confused with the Sifaka rofl ).

But, I might start my World Zoo with China but unlikely to do the mass breeding I did with the much easier and probably cheaper foxes and tigers rofl. But 2 zoos with breeding pairs will be a good run at least. They're not in the Critically Endangered List which is another zoo I am planning on making. Ugh, just checked the China animals and there are 21 habitat, 0 exhibit for China. Will have to break that down to be more managable.

 

[Xrystal]

Ah that's good, my S Zoo has already been updated with the Spectacled Bear, so the zoo should be fine until just before the challenge starts. So I can concentrate on which of the 21 animals are going to be a China Zoo animal rofl and start working on that.

 

[tigertimb]

Yes I also noticed that I didn't seem to get any animals and felt the very same - could not remember if that happened last year too and either way I got a bunch of animals during the challenge itself so I don't mind so much.

Same for me - got the congratulations box for the challenge, but when I clicked on "Claim your reward" the box just closed.

That "what did I get" spark of excitement was disappointed
but as you've both said; can't really complain given how many we got during the challenge (including a pair of snow leopards , just starting to research them now!)

 

[Xrystal]

Nice, looks like I have plenty of Snow Leopard award animals to start a good breeding supply up rofl.

 

[tigertimb]

They swam across to start with; not sure whether mine are getting smarter, lazier or just copying the keeper:

 

[hards]

Nice, looks like I have plenty of Snow Leopard award animals to start a good breeding supply up rofl.

View attachment 405304

Is it possible to arrange some sort of exchange for one of these? I have a breeding pair - but that is it. If I can get one more, this should be enough to avoid inbreeding over multiple generations by Planet Zoo definition.

What is the "Best" way to set up multiple habitats for the same animal in the same zoo? Is there value in spacing out the enclosures? With lower appeal/lower cost animals I have often just put them out of view of guests - but with a Snow Leopard, it seems like a waste of a high appeal animal that costs $.

 

[Xrystal]

Is it possible to arrange some sort of exchange for one of these? I have a breeding pair - but that is it. If I can get one more, this should be enough to avoid inbreeding over multiple generations by Planet Zoo definition.

What is the "Best" way to set up multiple habitats for the same animal in the same zoo? Is there value in spacing out the enclosures? With lower appeal/lower cost animals I have often just put them out of view of guests - but with a Snow Leopard, it seems like a waste of a high appeal animal that costs $.

I try to avoid multiple habitats for the same species, purely because the micro managing I do is awkward if you have more than one habitat per species. But when I do, I try to spread out high appeal habitats and same species habitats so that the guests have less opportunity to get upset if they see the same animal twice and encourages a better distribution of guests around the zoo. The alternative is to have one of the habitats viewable by guests and the excess habitats for the same species as breeding pens ( bare minimum to keep them happy ) in the same area as the main one so that the same staff are handling them all. But that's just me.

As to arranging trading out of some of my animals, I am not sure how the franchise trading is split up over the world. I know PC and console are separated but I don't know if there is a server(s) per region situation to consider as well. I'm on PC and in UK, if that's the same as you it should be easy enough to sort out. But still no guarantee as someone else could grab them. I think I put a suggestion in for franchise partners system so that people could choose who to trade animals with. But, may not have been feasible or considered at the time.

 

[tigertimb]

You could maybe try something like:

• you buy my snow leopard for 10,000
• I'll buy your ever so crappy peafowl for 9,800

That way; you can sell at a reasonable price to a designated buyer, and anyway else who jumps in pays the full 10,000

?

 

[Jamiefrog]

Is it possible to arrange some sort of exchange for one of these? I have a breeding pair - but that is it. If I can get one more, this should be enough to avoid inbreeding over multiple generations by Planet Zoo definition.

What is the "Best" way to set up multiple habitats for the same animal in the same zoo? Is there value in spacing out the enclosures? With lower appeal/lower cost animals I have often just put them out of view of guests - but with a Snow Leopard, it seems like a waste of a high appeal animal that costs $.

Snow leopards is actually a species I see pretty regularly on the market, so hopefully it shouldn't be terribly difficult to get some new blood. I only have snow leopards in my Cattery-zoo at the moment but I'm planning to expand them into more of my zoos where I was planning to add them anyway and just haven't gotten to it yet. Then I'll be up and breeding properly and will drop all my extras on the market - both during any playtime this week but also during the challenge week. I really hope everyone else does the same so we can get some good trading going, and that people make sure to breed them before release to create more and share some extras so we have good bloodlines flowing through the market during this time period.

I often have double habitats in the same zoo since there are so many species I do the "swap offspring"-thing with to get as many babies as possible from a breeding pair. I do different versions in different zoos. Most of the time I have one habitat visible to guests and the other backstage. Sometimes I place the 2 habitats immediately beside each other (especially smaller habitats) so they almost look like one habitat. Sometimes I place them in very different areas, very far from each other (in a bigger zoo especially) so guests that don't manage to visit the whole zoo get a better chance at seeing the animals. Sometimes I place one habitat as a regular viewing habitat and then the second habitat with that same species is placed in a safari ride or something where guests will only see the animals if they go on the ride. So some guests will see the animal in habitat 1 by "regular" viewing and other guests watch them by going on a ride.
But I have to admit I've never truly paid attention to if one way is better than another. xD

You could maybe try something like:

• you buy my snow leopard for 10,000
• I'll buy your ever so crappy peafowl for 9,800

That way; you can sell at a reasonable price to a designated buyer, and anyway else who jumps in pays the full 10,000

?

This could definitely work. I've been thinking about this myself from time to time but I've only done specific "trades" with a particular player a couple of times and hadn't thought to try this back then.

 

[hards]

There was actually a fair amount of reasonably priced options in the market when I checked. I was just hoping to avoid support the franchise gaugers if I could help it at all haha.

Thanks for the feedback on the multiple habitats. I have my one in a fairly high traffic area right now. So I am thinking just back stage will probably be the way I go.

 

[Xrystal]

There was actually a fair amount of reasonably priced options in the market when I checked. I was just hoping to avoid support the franchise gaugers if I could help it at all haha.

Thanks for the feedback on the multiple habitats. I have my one in a fairly high traffic area right now. So I am thinking just back stage will probably be the way I go.

Yeah, the price gouging is the reason I avoid using my reward animals. They are in a separate storage area so are not taking up space, and are on call if I need a breeding pair and none on the market. I've accidentally bought some at 5k when I've misread as 500 oops rofl. So, sometimes I filter and sort the market.

 

[Jamiefrog]

I have to admit I am no help in keeping prices down on the market that way. I don't pay attention to price so much when buying animals because I have an insane amount of CC that only keeps growing and growing. But I've never once, in all the time I've been playing, increased the price on animals I'm selling though. I usually sell at the price the game suggests, but I often also lower it if I remember.