How do Roaming Educators Work?

[Atiggerx33]

Alright, so I mainly am asking about the newer roaming talks feature.

My goal is to have educators assigned to specific areas. For example, I have a South American area called "Outlying Isles" which contains the Galapagos giant tortoise and the two iguana species. I'd like to assign an educator to give a scheduled talk on the tortoises and then for the remainder of the time give roaming talks on those 3 species. So if I assign all my educators to talk points I know they'll be the one to do that scheduled talk; but will assigning them to habitats/exhibits keep them confined to that general area for their roaming talks?

Kinda same issue with guards... how do you keep them spaced out instead of clumping? Assign them different staff rooms and hope for the best? Or does assigning them to habitats encourage them to kinda wander in that general vicinity?

 

[XT]

Im not sure about the educators but the rumored best practice for security guards is to not assign them work zones - they tend to clump up if they can't freely walk. Educators, I suspect, don't have a specific 'subject' they talk about - at least, not when you look at their animations or listen to their planco speech, it's all the same. If you restrict them to a particular area, they'll have the same small area of effect around guest education they would in any area. I don't think it connects to a specific animal or topic. While things like conservation boards, educator talk sites, etc all have spesific information, when it gets to guests, it's all the same generic education boost.

 

[Spiderhawk]

I personally have never seen a roaming talk work. I have watched my educators, in particular after scheduled talk they prepare a roaming immediately after (sometimes about animal or education board) but it always fails. I have seen them in random spots prepare something like a education board talk and nobody stops to listen, this has lead me to believe they simply don’t work.
I was an educator and whichever area of this aquarium I was assigned, I would approach guests reading an info board, be in an area with animals and therefore talk to guests about the animals we had and answer questions.
I wish you can make a route for educators and security instead of going to a habitat entrance or to a vending machine or talk point so they know where to patrol and where designated talks should be held.

 

[Cocolori]

I personally have never seen a roaming talk work. I have watched my educators, in particular after scheduled talk they prepare a roaming immediately after (sometimes about animal or education board) but it always fails. I have seen them in random spots prepare something like a education board talk and nobody stops to listen, this has lead me to believe they simply don’t work.
I was an educator and whichever area of this aquarium I was assigned, I would approach guests reading an info board, be in an area with animals and therefore talk to guests about the animals we had and answer questions.
I wish you can make a route for educators and security instead of going to a habitat entrance or to a vending machine or talk point so they know where to patrol and where designated talks should be held.

I've definitely seen them work in my zoos with a whole crowd of folks and lots of guest thoughts afterwards saying stuff like 'I really enjoyed that education talk' (can't remember the exact wording). Perhaps other could look in their zoos in case some are bugged and others not

 

[Atiggerx33]

I wish you can make a route for educators and security instead of going to a habitat entrance or to a vending machine or talk point so they know where to patrol and where designated talks should be held.

I was thinking ideally it could be done similarly to an ancient game called Theme Park World (renamed Sim Theme Park for some reason in the US). It was an early example of a theme park builder (so more akin to PlanCo). In that game you had a lot of roaming staff, and you couldn't assign them to specific buildings/rides, but you could paint their zones. The whole park was on a grid (PZ could use a 4mx4m grid) and you'd paint their employee zone on the ground. The staff was confined to path squares in the painted zone (if you painted some grass it didn't let staff walk on grass).

For staff like vendors, zookeepers, mechanics, and vets assigning them to buildings/habitats is the obvious way to work them, they don't do anything outside of those buildings/habitats other than move around idly, so you don't really care where they wander in between.

For staff like educators, and security, and caretakers something more similar to what Theme Park World used with the painted ground would be ideal IMO.

 

[Atiggerx33]

I've definitely seen them work in my zoos with a whole crowd of folks and lots of guest thoughts afterwards saying stuff like 'I really enjoyed that education talk' (can't remember the exact wording). Perhaps other could look in their zoos in case some are bugged and others not

Maybe they have untrained educators and that's the difference? I imagine if you play in sandbox with "staff fully educated" enabled, or already had an established zoo with well trained educators, you might not notice things that people who started a new zoo with low level educators might.

It makes logical sense to me that a roaming talk with an untrained/poorly trained educator could fail. When doing the scheduled talks IRL they would be scripted, you can't really fail at reading a script (it may not be as entertaining but it's still just as educational). The roaming talks IRL would be unscripted, requiring the educator to actually know stuff about the animals instead of just memorizing their lines; thus with an untrained/poorly trained educator they may actually fail.

Not sure if this is what's actually going on or some people are experiencing a bug, but if Frontier went for realism I can 100% understand why untrained/poorly trained educators giving roaming talks may frequently fail.