Pathing is absolutely awful in Planet Zoo

[City Builder]

I'll be honest, placing paths is absolutely awful in Plant Zoo.

I'm a grid player, I like to lay out things in grids but Planet Zoo wants to force me to have willy nilly paths that don't follow a grid and I can't find any way to make it follow a true grid. Sure there is that grid selection but it doesn't help when it builds in one foot increments or won't allow me to connect paths from blueprints to the existing paths in my zoo.

Then there is the whole of trying to make paths turn at 90° angles that doesn't work no matter what modifier key you press. It's like Cities Skylines where you have to build your first path too long so that you can cross over it with a second path to get a perfect angle.

I'd gladly pay for some DLC that has better pathing.

 

[Dinocanid]

I agree the path system is terrible, but I think locking a better path building system behind DLC would be a bad move, since that's a base game feature. It would be like if they made the ability to rotate objects DLC; doesn't make much sense and feels money-grubbing.

I tried using the grid system too, and it just doesn't work for me. As much as I love nicely symmetrical building, using the grids was so frustrating that I would rather have my zoo built crooked than try to fight with it. If there was an option to have a single unified grid across the entire map it would be amazing.

I especially don't like how the paths tend to snap even if what it's snapping to isn't that close. Both elevated paths and paths on the ground have this problem (elevated especially, I just avoid using them now). Lets say you have a straight path, and you want another path to branch off close to the end. Wellll you can't, it will automatically snap to the end of the straight path unless you put the branch further down towards the middle. I heard using ctrl (or alt?) stops the snapping but it doesn't, and I tried both sides of the keyboard. (Original thread I made here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/lower-radius-of-path-snapping.537736/#post-8302749)

 

[ElectricMonk]

The pathing system isn't great, but most of what you want to do is fairly easy (unless i'm missing something).

@ City Builder

1: Set an initial grid by laying out two sections of path (in whatever direction you'd like the grid to go) then, using Select grid, build off that (If you set some path and then want to use the grid, you should be able to select a section of path that you built off the grid, again using Select grid.

2: I assume by "1-foot' increments, you mean 4 m increments, since that's the smallest size path possible (except for ride paths). You can make a larger grid by using larger path widths (up to 10m) for the initial path (but not if you set the grid off a building) but i'd not recommend that, since it gives considerably less control.

3: If you want your buildings to be lined up with the grid, you'll (probably) have to use the fine-control option thing (can't remember what its called) and be careful - Note: a lot of buildings on the workshop (e.g., almost any dome) will consist of multiple buildings on different grids... Blueprint don't include paths.. - I may have misunderstood something here?

4: Have you tried setting the angle snap to 90o (or 45o)? - it works fine for me when i want right angles...

@ Dinocanid

1: What issues are you having with building on the grid? - A workaround for a universal grid would be to place one gridded building piece (or building) and always select that to build off when starting a new building and then separating the original piece from the new building (to keep things clean)

2: Using control should work, just as long as its not to close to the end of the path.

Overall:

Have a look for pathing tutorials on YouTube - there are lots - Also check out THIS series where PaulsLey is making a fully gridded zoo (he's also got a PATHING TUTORIAL).

 

[Dinocanid]

1. I've done that, and although I've also watched tutorials I shouldn't have to pull up YouTube every single time I build a zoo because of the flawed path system. Because each object has its own grid (which doesn't even reach very far without placing dummy objects which again, you shouldn't have to do), it feels you basically have to cheat the system to get them to work in harmony and always align.
2. Using control does not work unless it's the situation I mentioned above (the branch is near the middle). Slightly up from the middle and it no longer works. The only way to bypass it is to make the path longer than you actually want it and then delete the extra parts (which, again, you shouldn't have to do)

It all just feels very unintuitive. Aligning things neatly should be able to be done quickly and simply without gimmicks and dummy placements. The game (and all cobra engine builders tbh) feels like it was built without alignment in mind, with it being tacked on later as a quick QOL thing.

 

[godlegos]

There are way too many 'features' that turn this game into an arbitrary micromanagement mess instead of what it should be: an extremely detailed builder game with many features. It should innately have a 'world grid' — optional, of course, as with Cities: Skylines — that the user can decide to either ignore or utilize. I've never met a building game that didn't feature a world grid. It also should have a way to turn snapping or auto-pathing off ENTIRELY, aka a 'freehand' mode. You should not have to hold a shortcut key. This, again, is almost a fundamental right in a building game.

It's not rocket science. The lack of these options, plus the addition of some weird micro-grid that you have to keep moving around to find any use of on a large scale... It honestly turns this game into a headache. I know that Frontier is going for an 'Our games aren't like any other games' mentality, but when you spit in the face of genre convention UI building, your game is immediately isolating your playerbase. Every single person coming into playing this game has probably played other games that had an over-arching grid system, that had the ability to make paved areas of any size (with either a "fill" option or "paint" option). Every single person has the ability to make a right-angle corner without needing to look up a shortcut key that 9/10 times does not work the way it should work. Rollercoaster Tycoon has this. Zoo Tycoon has this. Again, Cities: Skylines. Sim City. Heck, you can go all the way back to Pharaoh — a 1999 builder game — that STILL let you map out pathways without 'snapping' or 'auto-paving', featured a world grid, and allowed you to make large 'paved' areas for foot traffic to find what they needed.

Literally all of these builder games have this option. Frontier is alienating its players by making this so much harder than it needs to be.

 

[PeppyPepp]

Yes, the pathing is an absolute abomination (sorry Frontier). We really shouldn't need to have tutorials on laying down paths. I've managed to "learn it", but still it should not have been so complicated.

 

[ElectricMonk]

1. ....(which doesn't even reach very far without placing dummy objects which again, you shouldn't have to do)...
2. ...Using control does not work unless it's the situation I mentioned above (the branch is near the middle)....

1. The grids stretch across the whole map... am i missing something?
2. I don't know what you mean by 'near the middle' - near the middle of what?... as long as your not really, really close to a section of path Control works fine? I don't mean to come across in a bad way - i'm just not sure

Every single person has the ability to make a right-angle corner without needing to look up a shortcut key that 9/10 times does not work the way it should work.

Again, I'm not sure what you mean,... setting angle snap to 90o works every time?

 

[Dinocanid]

1. There's no universal grid, just smaller ones based on the objects. You can't put an item just anywhere when building on the grid of a particular object, it has to be within the object's radius (stretched whenever an object is placed near the edge of the initial grid. It's possible to try and do this across the entire map, but if you wanna use the grid and the "parent" object is a couple yards away, it won't use the grid. You gotta plop stuff everywhere to make enough space. Otherwise, you could put an empty kiosk in the middle of the map and use that same grid all the way from the entrance (or anywhere else, never having to touch it ever again)
2. Talking about paths

 

[LN]

Place 1 building/wall/facility, whatever. And you can use that as a universal grid.

The only problem you'll have is you can't use blueprints in this case.

 

[godlegos]

Again, I'm not sure what you mean,... setting angle snap to 90o works every time?

There's also a shortcut key that you're meant to hold down if you want to snap at a 90 degree angle. I don't remember which one it is, but 9/10 times it doesn't work. Why include it as a feature if the auto-pathing is going to bypass it? I agree that entering it manually is a thing, but this is exactly what I mean. Frontier seems to have gone out of its way to make it convoluted. Multiple ways to get the same result, none of it intuitive. Just as PeppyPep said, you shouldn't have to watch tutorials on YouTube to figure out a path making system. It's a fundamental piece to this sort of game, it should be second nature.

There's a distinct difference between 'having to stop every ten seconds and fiddle with it, frustratedly delete things dozens of times, and end up with an approximation of what you wanted' and 'having the option to create something fancy, but also having a baseline functionality that does what any person who had ever played a city builder or tycoon game could reasonably expect a paving option to do'

 

[Nioell]

Couldn't agree more. The pathing is frustrating to work with at its best and downright impossible at worst. And no, sadly it's not just a case of "you have to learn to use it" in many cases. I already played PC since its alpha stage and definitely know all the tricks and workarounds and whatnot to get as close as possible to whatever I wanna build, but like many others already said we shouldn't have to resort to these kind of things to build the zoo we want. Most of the time I still end up deleting stuff over and over only to then do something completely different from what I initially wanted or create fake paths with building pieces because the paths simply wouldn't let me connect or place them the way I needed them to.

IMO the two worst things right now are the way path collision works (I actually made a post about that months ago) and how paths connect. If they fixed that and we were able to actually place and connect paths everywhere, whithout loosing huge chunks of it when deleting only a small section I'm pretty sure it would already solve a whole lot of the problems most people are having with the system.

 

[Kolikokoli]

I would love to place the path like in Cities: Skylines with Move it mode: you click where your path starts, then where it ends and then you can click on that segment and move it as you want (even curves). You can start on different path (so they will be connected) or near to it without snapping. Or if you want perfect curve, you click where path starts, then where is "rotating point" and then where path ends. Perfect curve. If you want different road/path, you just select the one you want and click on it and it will change the whole segment. I am tired of blob blob blob blob blob blob x times only to discover I don't quite like it and have to blob it all over again.

 

[VioletGrey]

I agree. It is WAY more complicated than it needs to be.