Franchise Community Challenge Discussion

[Xrystal]

I'll probably skip the tortoises as they are generally shy and don't want people close to them.

And I think I have a few of these amongst my freebie animals - Yep tons of Nile and Saltwater Crocs all gold rated so definitely ones worth leaving till last.

These are the ones I'll probably do ..

	Pack	Area	Biome	Family	Land Coverage	Water Coverage
American Alligator	North America	Florida	Aq, Temp	1m 5f 99j +	2,281	2,935
Spectacled Caiman	Wetlands	Mexico	Aq, Grass, Trop	1m 5f 99j +	1,221	983
Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman	Aquatic	Brazil	Aq, Temp, Trop, Grass	1m 1f 70j	830	655
Nile Monitor	Base	Africa	Aq, Grass, Trop	1m 2f 40j	850	493
Gharial	Base	India	Aq, Temp, Trop	1m 6f 99j +	1,098	1,965
Asian Water Monitor	Tropical	China	Aq, Grass, Trop	1m 1f 16j	550	300
Komodo Dragon	Deluxe	Indonesia	Grass, Trop	1m 1f 24j	1,640	-
Saltwater Crocodile	Base	N Aus.	Aq, Trop	1m 1f 28j	960	1,785

That American Alligator really wants his space. I've picked areas to design around and maybe do some themed areas. But will see.

 

[Jamiefrog]

Cool, I already have a herp-zoo that is only missing a few species. I haven't really played in that one in forever so will be nice to get back to it and expand with the missing species. If I remember correctly I haven't really played in that zoo since a challenge when we were releasing 4* tortoises. So out of guest view I had a bazillion little pens with [non-breeding] tortoises that were slowly earning stars haha. I'll need to consider if I should clean that up or leave them there to keep gaining stars for eventual future challenges.

 

[tigertimb]

I'll probably skip the tortoises as they are generally shy and don't want people close to them.

And I think I have a few of these amongst my freebie animals - Yep tons of Nile and Saltwater Crocs all gold rated so definitely ones worth leaving till last.

These are the ones I'll probably do ..

	Pack	Area	Biome	Family	Land Coverage	Water Coverage
American Alligator	North America	Florida	Aq, Temp	1m 5f 99j +	2,281	2,935
Spectacled Caiman	Wetlands	Mexico	Aq, Grass, Trop	1m 5f 99j +	1,221	983
Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman	Aquatic	Brazil	Aq, Temp, Trop, Grass	1m 1f 70j	830	655
Nile Monitor	Base	Africa	Aq, Grass, Trop	1m 2f 40j	850	493
Gharial	Base	India	Aq, Temp, Trop	1m 6f 99j +	1,098	1,965
Asian Water Monitor	Tropical	China	Aq, Grass, Trop	1m 1f 16j	550	300
Komodo Dragon	Deluxe	Indonesia	Grass, Trop	1m 1f 24j	1,640	-
Saltwater Crocodile	Base	N Aus.	Aq, Trop	1m 1f 28j	960	1,785

That American Alligator really wants his space. I've picked areas to design around and maybe do some themed areas. But will see.

That looks very similar to my amphibian challenge zoo and was already thinking exactly the same thing - swap the hippos and platypus for komodo dragons and nile monitors which just leaves me missing the asian water monitors.
(and the amphibian challenge was based on * rating, freeing up the habitats that were just letting the animals slowly gain *s)

Hmmm: checking out the details, that looks like a considerable drop in appeal rating, so might need to add instead of swap?

 

[foxyowlselenity]

I've managed to get my zoo set up. It's one I used previously for some challenge a while back and has about 250 of the tortoises already. I've set up 20 breeding areas for the nile monitors, tortoises, and caiman. I'm not a fan of the star challenges, so this breeding one should be easy enough. Anyone know when the best time of day is to get some Asian Water Monitors on the marketplace? I don't have any at all.

 

[tigertimb]

Anyone know when the best time of day is to get some Asian Water Monitors on the marketplace? I don't have any at all.

Not perfect stats, but there have been quite a few really good ones showing up, for sensible prices

 

[foxyowlselenity]

Not perfect stats, but there have been quite a few really good ones showing up, for sensible prices

Thanks!! I managed to snag a silver breeding pair this morning, thankfully. Wish the marketplace animals were up for more than just an hour.

 

[tigertimb]

Not relevant for this challenge, but having taken over my amphibious * rating zoo, I decided to do a quick experiment:

• created a simple zoo and tested how quickly the spectacled caiman gained stars
• so total time of 87 years, some in habitat and some in trade centre, and a couple still hadn't gained 5* even 37 years beyond their lifespan!
• crocs, gharial and other caimen fairly similar, but not quite as bad

I had been thinking that I'd let some mature during the birthing challenge, but now deciding that low appeal and long lifespan isn't worth the effort for * rating challenges, particularly if some won't even hit 3*s without leaving them to cook in the trade centre
So I'll be selling all except for a few breeding stock as soon as they mature and save the trade centre space for better options

 

[tigertimb]

Thanks!! I managed to snag a silver breeding pair this morning, thankfully. Wish the marketplace animals were up for more than just an hour.

I'm not sure that would help; the ones with good stats and sensible prices go within minutes, so you'd only be left with the ones no one wanted anyway
Personally, I don't want those 10,000cc animals to hang around forever

 

[foxyowlselenity]

I'm not sure that would help; the ones with good stats and sensible prices go within minutes, so you'd only be left with the ones no one wanted anyway
Personally, I don't want those 10,000cc animals to hang around forever

LOL yeah true the 10k ones are like... ok I could get it but.... why would I? I feel like a 200 animal limit is hurting me quite a bit, too. Especially considering how many dang animals there are now!

 

[tigertimb]

LOL yeah true the 10k ones are like... ok I could get it but.... why would I? I feel like a 200 animal limit is hurting me quite a bit, too. Especially considering how many dang animals there are now!

It does seem a bit odd that the number of animals has multiplied hugely without the storage centre changing at all!
On the flip side, I'm never dealing with too many animals in any single zoo, so I only really run out when I'm cryogenically freezing them as they weirdly gain appeal!

For the challenges; I create a quick sibling zoo for each one when I'm finished:
- one butterfly enclosure for a tiny bit of cash
- and then just lots of large quarantines
- a few caretakers and then empty out the trade centre entirely, ready for the next challenge.
- when I'm ready to pick that zoo up again, then I carry on where I left off by taking all the animals back out of quarantine into the trade centre again

 

[Xrystal]

Thanks!! I managed to snag a silver breeding pair this morning, thankfully. Wish the marketplace animals were up for more than just an hour.

Yeah, it's one of the suggestions I put in. Just give us a bit longer rofl, so we don't have to log in every hour to put the ones not bought back up again rofl.

 

[Xrystal]

LOL yeah true the 10k ones are like... ok I could get it but.... why would I? I feel like a 200 animal limit is hurting me quite a bit, too. Especially considering how many dang animals there are now!

Back in the old days shaking walking stick in the air, I was struggling with 50 storage spots .. when the 200 space came along, I thought great, plenty of space .. a year later ( or likely sooner ), I was needing even more space .. So, I suspect that even if it increased to 500 spots we would be complaining soon enough that there just wasn't enough space rofl.

What I end up doing periodically is do a full clean out.

1. Trade out all animals I really don't need to keep, which should leave me with my absolute necessary animals and pregnant females and any babies.
2. Go through all the zoos I don't want any more for one reason or another and put all animals into storage. Obviously I have to do this one zoo at a time to wait for the storage to clear out by repeating step 1 until the storage count is back down.
3. Once I am left with just the zoos I want and the animals I wanted or couldn't get rid of, slowly build up zoos to use the animals in storage.
4. Try to trade out all but the absolutely necessary ones
5. Try to keep the storage down to 100 to make way for mass baby grow ups that need to go out for trade rofl.

Basically as long as each zoo has a breeding group for each animal there I trade out all and can start afresh when I next play that zoo. The best thing about this is that you are unlikely to hit a related animal when you next want to get a set of mates for your animals.

 

[tigertimb]

Back in the old days shaking walking stick in the air, I was struggling with 50 storage spots .. when the 200 space came along, I thought great, plenty of space .. a year later ( or likely sooner ), I was needing even more space .. So, I suspect that even if it increased to 500 spots we would be complaining soon enough that there just wasn't enough space rofl.

What I end up doing periodically is do a full clean out.

1. Trade out all animals I really don't need to keep, which should leave me with my absolute necessary animals and pregnant females and any babies.
2. Go through all the zoos I don't want any more for one reason or another and put all animals into storage. Obviously I have to do this one zoo at a time to wait for the storage to clear out by repeating step 1 until the storage count is back down.
3. Once I am left with just the zoos I want and the animals I wanted or couldn't get rid of, slowly build up zoos to use the animals in storage.
4. Try to trade out all but the absolutely necessary ones
5. Try to keep the storage down to 100 to make way for mass baby grow ups that need to go out for trade rofl.

Basically as long as each zoo has a breeding group for each animal there I trade out all and can start afresh when I next play that zoo. The best thing about this is that you are unlikely to hit a related animal when you next want to get a set of mates for your animals.

It feels like it would be good to have more than one trading centre
We have that already behind the scenes, but the 200 is shared between the global trading centre and those that are considered belonging to the current zoo
(and that was very confusing when starting franchise mode - even now animals get missed when they're in the trade centre but don't show up in the list of animals)

If we just had a smaller trading centre of say 100 for each zoo that would certainly solve everything for me, and then another 100 to trade between zoos

 

[Xrystal]

I don't think I had that consideration with my suggestion. It would definitely help. If you didn't find my big franchise suggestion post (rofl ) it's here for later reading (rofl) https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...rent-or-future-versions-of-planet-zoo.628481/

 

[hards]

It does seem a bit odd that the number of animals has multiplied hugely without the storage centre changing at all!
On the flip side, I'm never dealing with too many animals in any single zoo, so I only really run out when I'm cryogenically freezing them as they weirdly gain appeal!

For the challenges; I create a quick sibling zoo for each one when I'm finished:
- one butterfly enclosure for a tiny bit of cash
- and then just lots of large quarantines
- a few caretakers and then empty out the trade centre entirely, ready for the next challenge.
- when I'm ready to pick that zoo up again, then I carry on where I left off by taking all the animals back out of quarantine into the trade centre again

This is such a good suggestion. I keep a "storage zoo" that I dump all of the my animals in currently, but the operating costs are pretty high and I have to sell animals to keep it going and I find it to be a bit of a disorganized mess.

My focus will be on the Tortoises and the Nile Monitor for this challenge. I have built my zoo and will be dumping some breeders into the market the next couple of days. A zoo with the Spurred Tortoise, Galapagos, Aldabra, Nile Monitor as the only 4 animals seems to be profitable and sustainable. This should be a really low maintenance zoo.

There is quite a gap between interbirth period and age of sexual maturity for all of these species so I will probably run 2 habitats of each and move the babies after they are born to keep the breeding cycles as fast as possible. Has anyone found an easier solution for fixing this?

Below is kind of my go to in picking what animals to use for challenges. Shout out to Villanelle's spreadsheet, I have used this for the basis of my scoring. I found the scores used within their sheet to be a little biased to cheaper, lower appeal animals so I have made some adjustments and find (at least based on my play style) this to be a basic viability ranking. Considerations include food costs, staffing costs, size of habitat, size of group and appeal of the animal.

 

[Xrystal]

And again I haven't even started rofl .. but with a week of under 30c temps .. I might be able to spend more than 30 minutes before midnight each day during the challenge. Thankfully it is only breeding so not a you need to spend every waking moment with a zoo open rofl.

 

[tigertimb]

There is quite a gap between interbirth period and age of sexual maturity for all of these species so I will probably run 2 habitats of each and move the babies after they are born to keep the breeding cycles as fast as possible. Has anyone found an easier solution for fixing this?

That table looks really useful - and after my earlier experiment it's satisfying to see the Spectacled Caiman at the bottom

Your solution to speed up the birthing is probably what I'd do for animals that mate for life
But for promiscuous ones, instead of moving the babies, you can move the females as soon as they conceive and then move new ones in - works particularly well if you only have one good male. So would then usually have a separate habitat(s) for the expectant mums and the babies, and leave them in there until they've gone through the interbirth period, where they get put back into the trade centre, ready as potential mates again.

BUT; I often make the mistake of speeding up the number of births per year of game time, only to find I've slowed down the number per hour of game time.
There's a balance to be found, that I often get wrong

 

[Xrystal]

And I've started rofl .. South American Zone done with Cuiver's Dwarf Caiman

 

[tigertimb]

Looks good and like the way you've used the "guest gate" to get round not being allowed more than one staff gate; and so let the staff traverse the habitat and even put the staff hut inside too

 

[Xrystal]

Looks good and like the way you've used the "guest gate" to get round not being allowed more than one staff gate; and so let the staff traverse the habitat and even put the staff hut inside too

That's actually the water cleaning building. But yeah I use the guest gates for the staff to move around easier.