Green Sea Turtles: The Pilot Test for Fully Aquatic Animals

[Mjmannella]

Since launch, there has been a grand demand for more properly aquatic animals like coral reef fish, sharks, and more. But because of how habitat animals function in Planet Zoo, there lie two major problems:

1. Animals being introduced to the habitat via a land-based gate
2. Animals eating and keepers reaching the food station for refills

Because of these two major hurdles, most "primarily aquatic" animals are incompatible with the current habitat animal system.

Enter Chelonia mydas

Green turtles, found in over 170 facilities, are the perfect candidate for testing the waters (pun intended) on what it'd take for a sequel to have a more fleshed out system for aquatic animals. Let's see how these beautiful reptiles fare with our 2 major issues!

Entering the Habitat

Unlike most typical aquarium animals, all species of sea turtle can move about freely on land! Their strong flippers help haul themselves around to find the perfect nesting spot on colonial beaches. This means there are no issues with these animals getting into their water areas. But that brings us to another major problem...

Feeding

This problem is a double-whammy for sea turtles because most turtles can't even eat on land due their inability to produce saliva. Only terrestrial turtles like tortoises and box turtles are able to accomplish this task. However, there is a remedy for this:
Feeding Meshes!

The appearance would somewhat resemble the fish feeder seen in Jurassic World Evolution, consisting of a meshed area suspended by a metal frame. It would only be placeable in a body of shallow water (a detection system that already exists as of Update 1.9 with bathing animals). The water would be shallow enough for keepers to wade through and place the food contents for their sea turtles. What would sea turtles eat? Glad you asked! Planet Zoo already has a ton of food listings so I'd go with these three:

• Root Vegetables (Tier 1)
• Aquatic Plants (Tier 2)
• Molluscs and Blue Green Algae (Tier 3)

Aside from that, sea turtles would be able to use a ton of pre-existing enrichment items (underwater feeders, platform floats, submarine buoy, rubber ducks, water jets), so no new ones are required. Though it's also fully possible for sea turtles to play with things like sprinklers rubber ducks, waterfall frames, and pools too.

Overall, green sea turtles would be a great introduction for working with aquarium features in a sequel game and getting a head-start on the issues that would come. What are your thoughts of sea turtles being added in Planet Zoo? Might there be other good candidate for mainly aquatic habitat animals? Any problems not covered in this thread? I encourage you to write your thoughts below!

 

[abigenius]

Well frontier did a great job with the Archelon in JWE2, so they have pretty good rigs, textures and even sounds?

 

[Marvinb]

Id love sea turtles but getting them as regular habitat animals would imo be pretty unsatisfactory for multiple reason.
Them being able to move on land despite being fully aquatic and therefore being normal habitat animals just kinda feels like cheating to me, in the same way as making some fish that sometimes move on land like snakeheads or lungfish would.
Aside from that including the huge slob of land somewhere when you want to build an aquarium for them also is less then ideal.

If sea turtles were to herald the fully aquatic animals id rather have them come along side others and a fully aquatic system instead of a half baked version before that.
And if they would stay the only fully aquatic animal i think i would just rather not have them. Without other aquarium animals they would just be completely lost in this game imo

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

The best way to introduce fully aquatics to the game would be to just be able to select a body of water as their "habitat".
Bodies of water allready are selectable and the only "issue" of them not being able to wobble to the water is easily fixed if the keepers just throw the box into the water.

Make it a scenery pack akin to the aquatic pack to feature aquaria focused scenery and plants, give it the for sure very popular line up of manatee, dolphin, koi amd green sea turtle to get the 4 "main" marine rigs into the game and add any aquatic critter as the exhibit, imo either the red bellied piranja, a sea horse or a jellyfish would work the best as an exciting and iconic yet understandably single species in the aquaria and voila a banger starter pack that introduced most of the functunality and rigs to make easy use of in the future with 5 animals that do not feel weird to be "alone" in their respective areas.

And if it hits you have easily breathed new life into the game and can easily make some pack idears either more viable ir just create new ones, for example the beluga for an a polar pack, arapaima and a ray for an amazon pack or the now newly possible yet highly likly popular reef pack.

Aquatica are imo the easiest way for frontier to give this game some future proofing and making sure that supporting it would be profitable for longer, but do i think it will happen?
Eh?
No?
Would be cool though