Honestly, it's not the animals, it's their AI. I'll build them plenty of places for them to hide from guests but they don't bother actually using those spaces until I've already gotten 10 notices that their welfare is low and protestors are about to show up... why? Why can't they divert themselves to the nearest hiding place when the bar has dropped to 50%, why do they just wait until they're at a critically low level? Like they just decide to sleep out in the open and then complain that guests are looking at them; is there no way to make their AI say "only sleep in hidden areas if possible" or something?
I Hate Shy Animals
- Thread starter Atiggerx33
- Start date
I agree that it would be good sometimes if they would hide earlier.
Did you already try the Signs that tell the Guests to be quiet?
Did you already try the Signs that tell the Guests to be quiet?
Does that really work well? I honestly thought they were just cosmetic!
The Signs work very good. But it does only slow down that the Animals get stressed. Also look at the Security Heatmap while placing them. It shows you the Influence Radius
HeatherG
Volunteer Moderator
Are you using barriers with windows? If you make the barriers solid OR if there are windows make them 1 way so only guests can see through and animals can not. That usually fixes it, at least for me it does.
The issue is most of my habitats are very guest-centric. And since fences can't be placed close to paths I'm stuck using the glass build pieces instead of the fence. I'd honestly prefer to use the fence, but the game is just too ridiculously picky about letting the fence get anywhere remotely near the path. I wish fences had a significantly smaller hitbox, or that there was a build piece with the one way glass.
The habitats I'm having the most issue with are the NA grassland animals (bison and pronghorn. Since the pronghorn is now taiga I can probably update their enclosure to have a few trees. But with the bison, well they don't have much for foliage. IIRC there are literally only 4 different NA grassland plants and none of them are trees.
They got weeping willows now since the aquatic pack
I agree to a degree. The above tips help a ton! But I feel the same way about the temperature. I always put heaters or coolers inside the shelter if possible. Also add water. It works a bit, but still some animals go outside to walk or drink and immediately I get notifications that the temperature is wrong and their welfare is low. So an ai change for both would be neat.
I don't mind shy animals! I kind of like having to work around their needs, since I feel like it forces a certain amount of thinking outside the box and I enjoy games where things aren't too easy/I don't always get my way, you know? But I definitely agree with @SimoneV re: temperature. That's the one that bothers me, because it makes sense that animals would seek a more ideal temperature when the weather becomes too hot or too cold. I've noticed that they tend to head for shelter when it's snowing, but that's really the only time I've noticed them prioritise their comfort in unideal temperatures.
I like to play a little more realistic so I avoid (when I can) putting heaters/coolers all over a habitat, except in shelters or pools that could be artificially maintained at a certain temperature. I would so love to see a tiger go hang out in a pool all day when it's hot, or the elephants stay inside when it's chilly outside, so I'm hoping that element of the AI might be fine-tuned somewhere down the line.
I like to play a little more realistic so I avoid (when I can) putting heaters/coolers all over a habitat, except in shelters or pools that could be artificially maintained at a certain temperature. I would so love to see a tiger go hang out in a pool all day when it's hot, or the elephants stay inside when it's chilly outside, so I'm hoping that element of the AI might be fine-tuned somewhere down the line.
I agree that the AI could be better with this. Of course it is important to build a habitat that suits an animal and provide hiding spots. But the animals should actively search for them before they freak out completely. I mean, they also eat before they starve, so I don't see why this need is so extreme.
I completely agree that it is lame they don't run and hide faster on their own, but it is really a non-issue if you set up your habitat with their shyness in mind. A combination of one-way glass, visibility barriers and the Do Not Disturb signs is all it takes to stop it from happening regularly.
Some general tips I've learned:
I have a Pangolin habitat in the zoo I'm currently doing, for example, where I have one-way glass only into their shelter. The rest of the habitat I just use vegetation and scenery (construction pieces) spread throughout the whole habitat so that line of sight is regularly interrupted, but never broken. It's a walkthrough habitat with pathways literally along the entire perimeter...Visitors can literally see the entire habitat.. And yet the pangolins almost never get stressed, and when they do it goes away very quickly without intervention.
Some general tips I've learned:
- For the Do Not Disturb signs, you can bury them underground completely and they still function in their designated radius (available to view in the "Security" heat maps).
- Visibility barriers include any object that blocks line of sight, including vegetation and tall scenery objects. It is more helpful to use those to "interrupt" but not completely "block" visibility as the animals move around within their traverseable area. Stress is caused by a combination of noise and how many total visitors have their "eyes on" that one animal, so regularly interrupting that eye-sight keeps animals less stressed yet visitors are still happy because they have seen the animal.
- If the aesthetics of your habitat design preclude a full on one-way glass barrier, consider if there are portions of it where it would still work and look good. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
I have a Pangolin habitat in the zoo I'm currently doing, for example, where I have one-way glass only into their shelter. The rest of the habitat I just use vegetation and scenery (construction pieces) spread throughout the whole habitat so that line of sight is regularly interrupted, but never broken. It's a walkthrough habitat with pathways literally along the entire perimeter...Visitors can literally see the entire habitat.. And yet the pangolins almost never get stressed, and when they do it goes away very quickly without intervention.
For animals that have low vegetation tolerance, use scenery construction pieces instead.
The large logs, for example, can be placed vertically into the ground and spaced around 3m apart in a "row" or aesthetically pleasing design of your choice, between the visitors and the animals. This is enough to regularly break line of sight to keep the animals lower on stress while also still allowing visitors to see them between the logs.
That's just one example, look through construction pieces ideas of your own. There's a ton of good options there.
Edit: Forgot to mention, construction pieces can also be used as barriers to get your "fence" right on top of the path. You can use the "Fence" construction objects, for example, and then combine it with a null barrier. Animals cannot traverse through solid construction objects. So short walls, fences, etc. all can be used combined with null barriers as a habitat barrier. This even works for animals that normally require very tall, climb proof barriers. I use the 1m walls and fence objects combined with null barriers pretty much always for those types of animals.
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Monkey lover 1997
Banned
I love them but i often get really angry with them. But It’s so lifelike so i got used to that
It's only lifelike to an extent. Zoo animals have the remarkable ability to just "get used" to crowds of people. I usually point to the springboks in this case - I've seen springboks and other small antelope in dozens of zoos all over the world and not once have I ever seen them get particularly spooked or even react to noisy guests stopping to look at them. If they got pulled out of the wild and dumped in a zoo, then sure, the experience would likely be pretty bad, but that isn't how real zoos work; animals are traded between zoos to keep bloodlines mixed and fulfil bureaucratic obligations around captive breeding programmes.
So the animals don't come from "no guests" to "guests", they come from "guests" to "other guests". The most stressful part of the whole transition would be getting used to the new enclosure, but people milling around would probably be a comfort more than anything.
Animals do need to get away from time to time, of course, I'm not denying that, but it's pretty excessive in the game, and rather than being "challenging" as I'm sure it's supposed to be it's just really annoying.
I've noticed a similar thing with temperatures. They get too cold or too hot, and multiple welfare notices pop up before they go to the shelter where the heater or cooler is. Sometimes the animal is just hanging out in the "blue" patch in its enclosure, even though there's an unoccupied warm area a few yards away.
I think the issue might be related to the distorted passage of long vs short time in the game. Days pass very quickly overall, but the animals still eat and access enrichment items in something closer to "real time," or we would never get to see them eating or playing as anything but a blur. So from the viewpoint of the game's timer, the minute or so of our time it takes for the animal to visit its food or toys is really hours of its being exposed to the noise or inclement weather.
Still, the protesters do seem to show up pretty quickly. You'd think it might take more than a few hours for them to organize and get out there to protest a cold lemur or a stressed Formosan bear.
I think the issue might be related to the distorted passage of long vs short time in the game. Days pass very quickly overall, but the animals still eat and access enrichment items in something closer to "real time," or we would never get to see them eating or playing as anything but a blur. So from the viewpoint of the game's timer, the minute or so of our time it takes for the animal to visit its food or toys is really hours of its being exposed to the noise or inclement weather.
Still, the protesters do seem to show up pretty quickly. You'd think it might take more than a few hours for them to organize and get out there to protest a cold lemur or a stressed Formosan bear.
It seems like they don't even try to get away from the Heat anymore even though they did in the Past. My Himalayan Brown Bears are often just laying there when it is way too hot even though their Cave is cold and I've solved the Accessibility Problems. At least sometimes one of them goes into the Water which is also cooled down a bit.
It's worst with the Grey Seals even though Frontier claimed they've fixed it. I've even added a few cold Areas because they don't want to swim when it is hot. They prefer it to lay in hot Areas instead and a big Part of their Enclosure is Concrete. Wouldn't that make it even worse for them to not move to the cooled Areas? At least the 2 Penguins that live in there with them seem to be smart enough (didn't put them in there myself. One of them somehow got in there when the Penguins escaped and she seemed to really like it in there, so she is allowed to stay. The other Penguin is her Son which hatched short after that)
I'm sorry, but this is super cute...
My animals seem to search for the last tiny bit of an enclosure that is not cooled down. Honestly, the heater-cooler thing is a petpeeve for me. It's not realistic!!At least not here in germany, don't know how they handle the situation with Polar Bears in warmer climate.
I'd rather give them a shelter they actually use then put coolers everywhere. If we could turn off seperate welfare options in sandbox, I'd turn this off.
I usually do some type of rockwork and just scatter it around the habitat and then decorate it with foliage. I have something similar going on with my pangolin habitat. From the guest's view is "now you see them, now you don't, now you see them, now you don't". The animals always have a quick hiding spot and the guests can still see them enough that they are happy with the view.