How do you hide facilities in PZ?
- Thread starter fh971
- Start date
Long staff paths is the only thing that works. What's between a facility and a visitor doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they can see the facility or not. Visitors are even annoyed at the facilities if the facilities are directly below the ground under a visitor path.
But you can also hide them vertically. If there are 12m space between the path and the bottom of the facility it's fine.
But you can also hide them vertically. If there are 12m space between the path and the bottom of the facility it's fine.
Just put them a distance away .. those with large areas I place on the opposite side of a habitat or between two habitats with just the staff path to it... far enough away from visitors...
Staff Buildings can be considerably closer.
Here are some screenshots for my challenge zoo.
Staff Buildings can be reasonably close to visitor paths so the poor staff members don't have to walk long distances to get where they need to go. My motto... place staff buildings where they need to be and work the visitor pathing into that flow .. except at the beginning where that main pathway has priority .. so staff buildings are built as close to their area as possible without upsetting the visitors.
Wind power stations have a small noise radius so can be placed closer to visitors than regular power stations, but will need more regular repairs. Solar power facilities can be in your face but need even more regular repairs so best to have a mechanic on those alone.
And regular power stations are the worst of the worst and for conservation purposes best to get rid of as soon as you can and replace with renewable resources. Notice this time I place it amongst the staff areas outside of the radius of the visitors visible influence.
Staff Buildings can be considerably closer.
Here are some screenshots for my challenge zoo.
Staff Buildings can be reasonably close to visitor paths so the poor staff members don't have to walk long distances to get where they need to go. My motto... place staff buildings where they need to be and work the visitor pathing into that flow .. except at the beginning where that main pathway has priority .. so staff buildings are built as close to their area as possible without upsetting the visitors.
Wind power stations have a small noise radius so can be placed closer to visitors than regular power stations, but will need more regular repairs. Solar power facilities can be in your face but need even more regular repairs so best to have a mechanic on those alone.
And regular power stations are the worst of the worst and for conservation purposes best to get rid of as soon as you can and replace with renewable resources. Notice this time I place it amongst the staff areas outside of the radius of the visitors visible influence.
Yep I have done this as well. The smaller influence area is offset by the layering pathing system. But it seems there might be a limit as I stacked them up 3 floors( 4 floors ) and they had problems finding/getting to the buildings on that 3rd floor ( 4th floor ). So I had to redesign the whole area again.
This one is from the last career mode scenario..
And this one is from one of my franchise zoos
This one is from the last career mode scenario..
And this one is from one of my franchise zoos
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I love the stacked Staff Buildings! That's such a neat idea!
It looks like you're already using the Heatmaps (H) as well, which is super helpful. Not all buildings have the same negative radius around them, so you can play around a bit with which buildings fit well - the solar panel for example is seen as super positive and can be placed anywhere.
Have fun playing around with placement!
It looks like you're already using the Heatmaps (H) as well, which is super helpful. Not all buildings have the same negative radius around them, so you can play around a bit with which buildings fit well - the solar panel for example is seen as super positive and can be placed anywhere.
Have fun playing around with placement!
Also its worth pointing out that its a sphere of influence, so you can play with that in a number of ways
This is one of my starter "Utilitarian" look staff clusters, materials available at the start of a Franchise, concrete, metal and coloured plaster, but I guess you could cover it in boulders and plants to hide it further (ironic the guests dont notice it!). The moat denotes the influence boundary (see heatmap) so I can just build up the zoo around it, the pathing is external most of the time so is fairly easy to lay, two steps and a ramp path piece for each level (needs enough clearance space under each path).
Just a note in the screenshot, the stairs are as compact as possible ie the flat landing bit turns back on itself straightaway and goes straight into another stair piece this actually causes navigation problems on a setup with another path level above it as in my setup. Instead of navigating around the landing to that level it serves, they try and take a short cut and jump up from the stair piece just before the landing. This would just be an ugly graphic glitch but then if there is a path piece directly above the stairs that they jump up from they then get stuck inside the path that they hit with their heads as they jump up. I've seen this with guest AI in the same compact stair system with facilities on each level. To get around it I had to extend the flat landing further out each time by one path unit this extended landing section appears to force the AI to use it for navigation. So it looks a bit more ugly than the pic as the stair structure sticks out more. The second example works OK as there is never any path directly above the first piece of stairs that hits the landing bit. I put in a bug report about it and also a feature request for more robust and compact level climbing tools like spiral staircase, ladders and elevators. These would make building multi level buildings so much easier plus would look better.
Anyway the complex has enough staff buildings to last until a medium sized zoo and its designed to sit central for easy access to all corners of the zoo:
So the influence is a sphere (as are the reach for the generators and water cleaners) so you can actually lift the whole complex higher above the ground, obviously this can mean it takes longer to reach so need to be careful but it completely clears the ground influence impact (see heatmap). The larger buildings have a larger sphere influence so ideally you would have this above the other small buildings but I had these lower down for role-play/immersion/Keeper access reasons. This one has a lot of pathing inside the structure so its a bit more tricky to lay but a combination of grid pathing and freeform pathing for the stairs and to connect the utilities works:
This is one of my starter "Utilitarian" look staff clusters, materials available at the start of a Franchise, concrete, metal and coloured plaster, but I guess you could cover it in boulders and plants to hide it further (ironic the guests dont notice it!). The moat denotes the influence boundary (see heatmap) so I can just build up the zoo around it, the pathing is external most of the time so is fairly easy to lay, two steps and a ramp path piece for each level (needs enough clearance space under each path).
Just a note in the screenshot, the stairs are as compact as possible ie the flat landing bit turns back on itself straightaway and goes straight into another stair piece this actually causes navigation problems on a setup with another path level above it as in my setup. Instead of navigating around the landing to that level it serves, they try and take a short cut and jump up from the stair piece just before the landing. This would just be an ugly graphic glitch but then if there is a path piece directly above the stairs that they jump up from they then get stuck inside the path that they hit with their heads as they jump up. I've seen this with guest AI in the same compact stair system with facilities on each level. To get around it I had to extend the flat landing further out each time by one path unit this extended landing section appears to force the AI to use it for navigation. So it looks a bit more ugly than the pic as the stair structure sticks out more. The second example works OK as there is never any path directly above the first piece of stairs that hits the landing bit. I put in a bug report about it and also a feature request for more robust and compact level climbing tools like spiral staircase, ladders and elevators. These would make building multi level buildings so much easier plus would look better.
Anyway the complex has enough staff buildings to last until a medium sized zoo and its designed to sit central for easy access to all corners of the zoo:
So the influence is a sphere (as are the reach for the generators and water cleaners) so you can actually lift the whole complex higher above the ground, obviously this can mean it takes longer to reach so need to be careful but it completely clears the ground influence impact (see heatmap). The larger buildings have a larger sphere influence so ideally you would have this above the other small buildings but I had these lower down for role-play/immersion/Keeper access reasons. This one has a lot of pathing inside the structure so its a bit more tricky to lay but a combination of grid pathing and freeform pathing for the stairs and to connect the utilities works:
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These should be on the workshop if they are not already! Nice work!
It would be nice if you do hide the facility in a building, wall, trees, etc, it should shrink the circle a little bit.
Oh and put music speakers there to cover up the facility noise.
Oh and put music speakers there to cover up the facility noise.
I like the idea of stacking staff facilities. My only concern would be that it adds to their walking distances and they get behind on duties, causing sick animals to pass, or hungry animals to starve. Non of you ran into these issues? I am really curious since I've had lots of close calls (and also some too late) with my facilities being already nearby on the ground floor, but the vets or keepers just arrived too late.
This is one of the reasons I don't use it if I don't have a space issue. The last Career Campaign has small area to build on so it is a necessity to stack the staff buildings. It may also be necessary once an area in your zoo is full but needs more staff buildings... et voila stacking. As long as there is a way to get pathing down the problem is hopefully resolved.
You can also go down, not just up. Tunneling can also be effective to get the effects of stacking without the skylines getting affected. I don't like to go tall on some biome maps because breaking the Skyline hurts the aesthetics. Deserts and Tundra, for example, just look better without tall buildings (just mho).
That being said, that's a lovely building in the Desert biome in your screenshots @londonx.
Yep, but my tunnelling skills are lousy and seem to take up more room than going up rofl.
Fortunately no issues so far.
Be sloppy and then just use the flatten and pull terrain tools to fill it all back in over your hack job. That's how I started until I got better at it. If you "flatten to" surface or foundation over a tunnel opening it will fill in as much as is allowable while still providing entrance to the tunnels.
I use this technique all the time when constructing habitats too. I make hills and dig out caves, then pull and flatten around the cave to make it look nice while also allowing the critters to run up and hang out above their caves on the hill. Hard Shelter made this way, once trees and rocks are added, look way nicer than the all rock monstrosities that people upload to the workshop.
Good to know, I'll give it a try as I really like how it looks!