Just Started and Feeling Discouraged

[Shantello]

Hi, everyone!

As a huge Zoo Tycoon fan, I was majorly excited about Planet Zoo. However, I've only had it for two days and I'm feeling a bit low. It's an absolutely gorgeous and well-thought out game, but the glitches made me give up on the tutorial levels (like undetectable waste constantly getting trapped in structures out of keepers' reach), and the tools and controls don't feel as intuitive as ZT2 did (the path and fence system feels very clunky and awkward to me). I never played PlanCo or any other sim besides ZT1/2, so this level of micromanagement is a bit new and overwhelming for me. I'm trying to get used to it.

I started my first zoo in Franchise Mode and I'm struggling a lot. I've spent time watching videos or reading guides on how to get started from when the beta dropped, so I walked into the game knowing you have to start small and be patient. I did (or at least I thought I did?) by getting two aardvarks in along with the necessary staff and facilities. I have an info booth, food, and drink stand, along with plenty of donation boxes. I've also had staff researching facilities and animal needs. However, my income started making a dive fast, so I took out a loan and adopted 2 African wild dogs to hopefully boost attendance. It helped for a bit, but my numbers once more started to dip in the negatives, even with a couple marketing campaigns. I took out another loan, and now have 0 idea of what to do.

I'm feeling majorly discouraged and am tempted to just cut my losses and close down my zoo and franchise. I don't know what I can do to recoup my CCs (since I only have 90 left) or have better luck in the next run. Can the community please give me some advice?

Thank you in advance.

 

[ASalton1]

Hey there, other than a few bugs the game is quite fun so please don’t give up just yet. It took me 3 tries in beta to achieve a successful franchise so I’ll give to some tips I’ve learned.
1.) Check your entrance price. Every time you add an animal you can raise the price a dollar or two depending on the appeal of the animals. Higher appeal = higher admission fee. You can check the guest thought under the zoo management tab to see how they feel about the price.
2.) Exhibit animals are your friend. Buy a pair cash, adjust the temp and humidity, and they will breed easily and you can trade them for cash. Find a pair will the highest appeal rating you can find after you buy the exhibit. Place donation boxes around them as well.
3.) Check your staff. If any of them are wandering, fire them. If you get any alert something is about to break or animal or hungry hire one more of what you need. Staff wages add up quickly.
4.) Keep animals happy. Happy animals bring in more guests.

Good luck

 

[Souldrake]

Starting in franchise was your biggest mistake, in my opinion. Challenge or career mode would have been better.

But I digress... franchise... aardvarks, in my opinion weren't a good choice. They're shy and get stressed easily. Peafowl, Ostriches, Turtles, etc are a bit easier to manage since they won't stress and get the rollercoaster of welfare.

Exhibit animals are good, too. Buy a couple pairs, adjust the temperature and humidity, put some donation bins around and make sure your keeper hut and a staff room are nearby and 2 keepers can maintain a habitat and 3 exhibits or so quite easily. You should get plenty of money just from the guests at that point. Release your exhibit animals' babies into the wild to farm CC for the ridiculously overpriced animals on franchise market.

Animal appeal helps draw people to the zoo, too. Try to get the exhibit animals with higher appeal and even some of the endangered/threatened ones and you should do fine. Research your animals. Research in the workshop, build up your points. Buy new animals and expand.

 

[Shantello]

Hey there, other than a few bugs the game is quite fun so please don’t give up just yet. It took me 3 tries in beta to achieve a successful franchise so I’ll give to some tips I’ve learned.
1.) Check your entrance price. Every time you add an animal you can raise the price a dollar or two depending on the appeal of the animals. Higher appeal = higher admission fee. You can check the guest thought under the zoo management tab to see how they feel about the price.
2.) Exhibit animals are your friend. Buy a pair cash, adjust the temp and humidity, and they will breed easily and you can trade them for cash. Find a pair will the highest appeal rating you can find after you buy the exhibit. Place donation boxes around them as well.
3.) Check your staff. If any of them are wandering, fire them. If you get any alert something is about to break or animal or hungry hire one more of what you need. Staff wages add up quickly.
4.) Keep animals happy. Happy animals bring in more guests.

Good luck

Thank you for taking the time to help!

I'll try to look into ticket prices and I'll look for dawdling staff. I kept hearing that if you "start small," and give it some time, you'd be okay, but I guess not. My animals are happy, and I'm researching enrichment for them nonstop, but something isn't working. Maybe I'll find a fix. I'm just so worried about not recouping enough CCs to start again.

 

[Shantello]

Starting in franchise was your biggest mistake, in my opinion. Challenge or career mode would have been better.

But I digress... franchise... aardvarks, in my opinion weren't a good choice. They're shy and get stressed easily. Peafowl, Ostriches, Turtles, etc are a bit easier to manage since they won't stress and get the rollercoaster of welfare.

Exhibit animals are good, too. Buy a couple pairs, adjust the temperature and humidity, put some donation bins around and make sure your keeper hut and a staff room are nearby and 2 keepers can maintain a habitat and 3 exhibits or so quite easily. You should get plenty of money just from the guests at that point. Release your exhibit animals' babies into the wild to farm CC for the ridiculously overpriced animals on franchise market.

Animal appeal helps draw people to the zoo, too. Try to get the exhibit animals with higher appeal and even some of the endangered/threatened ones and you should do fine. Research your animals. Research in the workshop, build up your points. Buy new animals and expand.

I appreciate the feedback. My aardvarks are surprisingly happy. They had a couple "off" moments, but they're okay. I'll invest in a couple exhibits. Hopefully I can recoup enough to bail on this project until I feel ready to give it another shot. I enjoyed career mode but the glitches were very frustrating for me; I'll try again in there for more practice, I suppose.

I'd scrap this now, but I'd only get 48 CC back at this point.

 

[Xaphian]

you can make a TON of money from donations. I mean a ton. Make sure you have education speakers and signs, and place donation stations around them. educated guests seem to spend more

 

[Souldrake]

I appreciate the feedback. My aardvarks are surprisingly happy. They had a couple "off" moments, but they're okay. I'll invest in a couple exhibits. Hopefully I can recoup enough to bail on this project until I feel ready to give it another shot. I enjoyed career mode but the glitches were very frustrating for me; I'll try again in there for more practice, I suppose.

I'd scrap this now, but I'd only get 48 CC back at this point.

I feel your pain. I decided to start a franchise zoo last night just to see how bad it was. 500cc for a single aarvark, 300+ for a turtle.

As for career mode, some maps are better than others. I recommend getting the bronze star then moving on for the ones that are buggy/just frustrating. There are a couple of fun maps in there though.

 

[xesta]

shantello, the money issue is likely a bug or gameplay issue! quite a few people are reporting that they're struggling to make money all of a sudden

from the sound of it you're starting off fine, like everyone else does, but the game is working against you

 

[Snaffles1301]

I agree with everything the others have posted. Do you have any vendors? Until you get to 300-400 guests I wouldn’t bother with food and drink shops.

Also as far as animals are concerned I started off with warthogs and wild dogs and did pretty well with that. They breed often when happy and produce generally more than 1 baby at a time as well as mature fast- which means you can then Sell them for cc or money. In beta I tried starting with peafowls and it did ok but not as well as the warthogs or wild dogs.

Do you have donation boxes all over? Especially by animals? If no, you should.

 

[Monsarona]

About staff: They actually start at a wage that is higher than they will actually accept. If you go into your staff management you can lower their wages a bit while still keeping them in the green. It can be a life saver at the beginning.

Also, don't build guest facilities until you have like 3+ habitats. If the guests don't stay in the park long enough to get thirsty/hungry then they won't use them and your Chief Beef will just cost you more money to run than it makes you. The only exception to this is the Info Booth, as most guests will stop there first on their way in the park. Make sure to increase the prices in the Info booth to make the most of it. I like to almost double the adoption packages. (25, 50, 100).

It can be rough at first, but don't give up!

 

[Wolfen75]

Don't let your fun spoiled from franchise.
While i spent 125 hours in it now (yes, i feel a slight burn out^^) the game alot more to offer.
It is stressful because every glitch or bugs hurts somehow, as well as imbalances.

For an example i could go rampage about atm:

I just build up a second, small zoo to test stuff and many things are really borked.
I made good profit, then the guest count raised from 500 slowly 1000, then to 1500 and then the game is broken atm.
The happiness goes down because the guests demands food and drinks.

But as soon as you set up shops, they only shop.
They don't look after animals anymore, therefore they don't pass by donation boxes anymore and that is
where you can't win anymore.
I am down from 30k profit a year without shops to 20k minus a year with shops now (i didn't changed a single other setting in my zoo).

Those things are really frustrating, but the game is new and balance needs time (i sincerly hope they fix this with the shops, its disgusting to see those thousands of two legged pigs littering the zoo with trash and do nothing but eat and drink anymore).

But as i said, the game has so much more to offer.

 

[Guitarmike47]

If you do have shops already, you can raise extra cash by jacking up the price on the items you have for sale there. Also, the items in the information booth are very expensive to begin with, so see if that helps. I, too, have found exhibits to be a good way to make money. Breed a couple of spiders and you will quickly have 10-20 more that you can sell for about $500 each.

 

[Cile]

I have had a few money issues this run where as in beta I had none, so idk if it is a bug, but from my experience in franchise since launch ive run with the same zoo, at one point i went to around -50k i thought it was the end, but I soon figured out that my enclosures were way too big, so I started cutting enclosures, which was not enough, eventually i decided to delete everything in that zoo and store all my animals in my trade centre and start as if i was starting from a fresh franchise but using the same zoo because thats where all my research was and I did not feel like researching again, as I had everything unlocked,
*so I started by keeping only 1 keeper who had max skill, and 2 mechanics, as I wanted to set one to repair vandalism primarily
Do not delete plants because that takes away cash, anything else is fine. Editing terrain also takes cash but using the terrain paint does not, so if you need to plan out areas, using the terrain paint to do that while waiting for cash flow is a good option.
Now one of the most important and hardest things to keep track of is guest happiness, if your guests are not happy, everything goes wrong, so basically vandalism increases exponentially, people will demand refunds amass and will not donate to animals so your not getting money from tickets or donations which are your 2 main funding sources, so above all else after your animals, do everything to make guests happy, and their mood fluctuates like a toddler also, if you have 10 benches and 7 of them break and don't get repaired in time, then people get upset, and they break more stuff and then other people get upset that those ones are breaking stuff so they leave and demand refunds.
One of the second most important things to keep guests happy is education, your education rating is super important, infact it is one of the main drivers for guest happiness, if you do not have enough education then people will get upset and it is all down hill.
So to fight this, you need to get education boards and you only need to place them in high traffic zones, once your animal has max research however, having like 5 screens wont help anymore, you best to just cut down only to 1 screen and 1 speaker, set the speaker as loud as you can without cutting into range of other speakers, you should have 1 speaker and 1 screen attached to every animal. ALWAYS do research even if it is maxed out just do overtime on it at a constant, you need to always have it going, because the higher your research the more education your guests will have.
You only need 1 keeper for every 3 or so enclosures assuming the keeper has little travel time between them and the enclosures are within the animals encouraged size range.
If your mechanic is busy researching you will need a second one, mechanics do a lot of the important stuff in your zoo, they repair all fences, they repair vandalized benches and screens and you need them to learn new blueprints and what not, so if you dont do research early game then one should work fine, but higher 2 if one is dedicated to research and their wages are higher by default for some reason so lower them down a notch to stay in the green but just on the edge.
1 caretaker at the start of the game, and then for every 500 or so guests higher a second one. They are needed to do all matter of cleaning up after people, so basically they are the keepers for visitors, they clean up trash and vomit and all that fun stuff. If your zoo gets filthy then people refund and thats bad.
Everytime you place down a shop a shopkeeper is automatically hired, so be careful when doing so.
As soon as you place a keeper gate on an enclosure it starts costing you money, try to avoid adding gates to empty enclosures.
You only need 1 vet if your animals are well looked after.
Research power sources first because wind power and solar power don't cost anything to use, and solar power has no negative impact radius so you can place them next to guests and they don't mind, very useful.
Don't get a water filtering system till you have stable income, this costs a small fee but it adds up if your running low, and requires a lot of upkeep, so mechanics will always be checking up on it.

And my last advice, if push comes to shove in franchise, and you feel all hope is lost, just save enough cc to open a new franchise and then place your animals in your trade center and move to a new one, u can pull your animals out of the trade center in your new franchise and keep using them with a fresh start.
Don't do marketing at all until you can afford it, it is expensive.

I think cheetahs are the best animals to start with, they are often cheap and they breed very quickly, at tier 3 their food cost is under 200 a feed.

 

[Blig]

Sometimes it helps to go mess around in Sandbox or Challenge mode to get more familiar with the game and the pace of things. There's a learning curve but you'll get there!

 

[Neerolyte]

My biggest tip is to not build vendors early on until you have some steady income. Build exhibits and not habitats in the beginning (spiders, and scorpions reproduce very quickly and can generate a lot of offsprings to sell).
I also charge a small fee for ATM, it's actually pretty useful later on

 

[Muffinsaurs]

Start small with animals that breed fast. I started with peafowls, flamingo then red panda. Peafowls breed like crazy!! Make sure your facilities is near the habitat but not near customer footpath, it would affect their mood and they will demand refunds. The losses from refunds could be higher than the cost of all your staff’s salary. I never start marketing till very late in game too. Oh and NEVER take loans!!! At least I didn’t. But I noticed that players who take loans always end up in debt!

 

[Muffinsaurs]

My biggest tip is to not build vendors early on until you have some steady income. Build exhibits and not habitats in the beginning (spiders, and scorpions reproduce very quickly and can generate a lot of offsprings to sell).
I also charge a small fee for ATM, it's actually pretty useful later on

me too! I charge $0.20 for toilet and ATM usage.