How do you manage animals in sandbox mode

Kolikokoli · Feb 28, 2020

Hi,
looking for new tips

. I play sandbox, I love when I can just build and use my creativity without limitations (especially money).
This is currently my setting of the game:

no electricity/water need
disabled fights

I used to play with death by old age turned off, but then everyone was old - and the moment I turned it on again... they all died at once

.

What I am looking for:

no inbreeds
stay forever young
still have babies
being able to sell babies

What is my intention:

I want babies, but I don't want to micromanage every animal (pills...)
I don't want them to die out, because many animals can be only in a pair - so they have a baby, when it grows up, they are unhappy, because there are too many adults

What do you think is the best way for player like me? To just buy bunch of animals. Turn aging completely off and play without any babies? Or to turn aging on time to time to get babies (but they will have to stay babies forever or I would have to play with aging on till they grow up). Wouldn't everybody just get old and die the moment I turn aging on again?
Or play with super slow aging... but again, pretty sad we cannot sell babies. I want to keep only those with all green genes

.

How do you play sandbox and what would you recommend?

paul78 · Feb 28, 2020

Well everyone will have their own preferences and even building style. I usually play with all animal welfare off including aging and births. Not because I don’t like them it’s just some animals multiply really fast. I will usually close the zoo till I’m done building or if I’m going for the best frame rate but I became accustomed to doing that in zt2 as well. Then I use the water clean and power on option. Don’t get me wrong I love the guests and baby animals as well but find it easier to do things without the management. I keep the fights on as this is such a cool feature. Usually in my exhibit I will have one male and a group of females. Sometimes I disable fighting because a lot of animal males coexist like lions and even gorillas sometimes. Are local zoo had two Siberian tigers both males but were brothers and always got along pretty well.

Kolikokoli · Feb 28, 2020

paul78 said:
Well everyone will have their own preferences and even building style. I usually play with all animal welfare off including aging and births. Not because I don’t like them it’s just some animals multiply really fast. I will usually close the zoo till I’m done building or if I’m going for the best frame rate but I became accustomed to doing that in zt2 as well. Then I use the water clean and power on option. Don’t get me wrong I love the guests and baby animals as well but find it easier to do things without the management. I keep the fights on as this is such a cool feature. Usually in my exhibit I will have one male and a group of females. Sometimes I disable fighting because a lot of animal males coexist like lions and even gorillas sometimes. Are local zoo had two Siberian tigers both males but were brothers and always got along pretty well.

Wow, I have never though about closing the zoo, that sounds interesting. I think, I will still keep my guests in, and I can say, that they are pretty happy, so no need to change those settings.
I do agree about some animals multiply too fast. And then babies take forever to grow up. I hate to wait 20+ years for my turtles to grow up

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paul78 · Feb 28, 2020

You could always speed up the time. I had a franchise zoo last night with grizzlies,wolves,peafowl, aardvark,and elephants. And the peafowl were multiplying like crazy lol. But they made me a lot of cc in small increments at a time.

craftymutt · Feb 28, 2020

I am basically trying to get the same game balance as you, though I am fine leaving animal deaths off so wouldn't come to the issue where all my old animals die when I turn it off (I just sell off my older animals as I breed newer ones). I never play with animal welfare disabled either as I like to work on making habitats that meet all their needs, and I hear that the things can still bug out and act like welfare is low anyway.

I have two different ways to play that I find mostly work out for me, but they're still not my ideal: either I manage everyone carefully with pills to limit breeding (and inbreeding) which you want to avoid, or I put ageing and births on and off when I feel like it, so turning it on for a while if I feel like managing who is allowed to breed and any babies growing up and irritating their parents, but off again when I don't want to worry about all that and want to just add new animals and buildings in my zoo for a while.

I think a huge improvement for me would be if I could individually set species age/birth on and off, so for example I can always have it disabled for exhibits and quick-breeding small group size animals that will either breed themselves to oblivion or die out without constant supervision, but turn it on for tortoises, elephants, orangutans, whoever I want to age and/or see babies of now and then. There's an additional benefit that even if I do want babies from a lot of different animals, I can limit how many are breeding at once instead of all (and getting overwhelmed) or nothing, or using the pill and worrying about species with an age limit for sterility getting too old while I'm working on breeding animals with longer lifespans.

PeppyPepp · Mar 5, 2020

Pretty much leave the settings as they are except I put 2x slower aging. Oh, and everything powered/bodies of water always clean.

NZFanatic · Mar 5, 2020

I don't bother slowing down the aging, IMO there was never anything wrong with that feature as far as sandbox is concerned.

I disable death but not birth, and I leave fighting on, but I always turn off welfare because I much prefer to build realistic zoos without the nonsense of having to plant tropical foliage in a temperate climate or by giving small animals ridiculously large habitats (I once saw a Nile monitor enclosure half the size of my living room, yet the game wants me to build one as large as my whole property).

I also always have the power/water turned on because, again, there isn't a facility in the world that requires multiple independent power stations all over it (and water treatment becomes a pain to hide from the guests).

Bobble2017 · Mar 20, 2020

I have set ageing to x3 , Power and water are on , I can't be bothered with having power plants all over my zoo that break every 2 minutes , Fighting and welfare is turned off so i can have more than 2 animals in an enclosure without having to constantly sell some to stop the shenanigans .
I like to build the habitats then see how the animals get on in it and watch them for a while .