I'd love if the animals could actually feed from the plants in their enclosure. Of course animals would only feed from plants native to their enviroment. An animal from the tundra regions of europe would not feed from plants native to the tropical regions of africa. Seems logical to me. There should also be some different food types to fit the animals. Off the top of my head i'd say: leaves, grass, fruit, vegetable, roots, bamboo (for pandas), eucalyptus (for koalas), insects (from the cecropia tree), wood (primarily for beavers but that might need some special mechanisms to really work and look good).
A few examples:
The Sausage tree provides 1kg of leaves and 2kg of fruit per day for african animals from tropical or grassland biomes
The lady fern provides 0,2 gk of leaves per day to asiatic, european and northamerican animals from temperate or taiga biomes
The strangler fig roots provide between 0,2 and 1kg (depending on the size) of roots to animals from African, asiatic south american and oceanic animals from tropical regions
Most of the mechanisms neccesary for that are already part of the game. For example, checking the number of plants in the enclosure and wether the plants are proper for the animal is already in the game. Checking wether there is enough food for the animal in the enclosure is already in the mechanics.
And if you don't want plants to just give a fixed amount of fod each day you can just add the amount of food in the enclosure together, have the animals substract from that number each day and then add a new job, the gardener. The job of the gardener is to refill the food amount in the enclosure derived from plants. So whenever the gardener does his job the amount of food from the plants is reset to it's highest amount.
It may also be useful to link this system to the regular feeding tablet so that every enclosure still needs a feeding tablet but you can put it a little out of sight. That would enable us to put feeding spots in good visibility but not having to place some ugly feeding tablet down for it. And while we are at the subject, it would be nice to introduce a generel purpose feeding tablet that can just accomate every type of feed and an invisible feeding tablet.
A few examples:
The Sausage tree provides 1kg of leaves and 2kg of fruit per day for african animals from tropical or grassland biomes
The lady fern provides 0,2 gk of leaves per day to asiatic, european and northamerican animals from temperate or taiga biomes
The strangler fig roots provide between 0,2 and 1kg (depending on the size) of roots to animals from African, asiatic south american and oceanic animals from tropical regions
Most of the mechanisms neccesary for that are already part of the game. For example, checking the number of plants in the enclosure and wether the plants are proper for the animal is already in the game. Checking wether there is enough food for the animal in the enclosure is already in the mechanics.
And if you don't want plants to just give a fixed amount of fod each day you can just add the amount of food in the enclosure together, have the animals substract from that number each day and then add a new job, the gardener. The job of the gardener is to refill the food amount in the enclosure derived from plants. So whenever the gardener does his job the amount of food from the plants is reset to it's highest amount.
It may also be useful to link this system to the regular feeding tablet so that every enclosure still needs a feeding tablet but you can put it a little out of sight. That would enable us to put feeding spots in good visibility but not having to place some ugly feeding tablet down for it. And while we are at the subject, it would be nice to introduce a generel purpose feeding tablet that can just accomate every type of feed and an invisible feeding tablet.
