Title speaks for itself. Sometimes there is a crowding issue if babies are born, removing an adult and placing it in storage makes it go away (usually) but if we accidentally removed Mom, the babies should have their stress increased, to stick with reality. Also if there is an animal in the storage for too long, we should get an animal alert.. I mean what does storage mean, they are boxed up, and sedated? They are in a temporary pen that is not really suitable but works TEMPORARILY? Its unrealistic to have a "Storage" where we can just store live animals for however long we want..
Stress increase for babies if Mom is removed from the habitat - Stress for animals in storage for too long
- Thread starter The European
- Start date
Animals already get stressed if boxed for too long, penalizing players for having animals in storage would completely upend franchise mode (because that's how the market was programmed, every single animal is in storage). Discouraging putting animals in storage means discouraging breeding programs, moving animals between zoos, and participating in the market (since nobody wants protesters swarming their zoo because they're trying to trade an animal to another player)
I haven't played franchise yet, but if its not applicable in that mode, then don't apply it to that mode, add this feature to Challenge and Sandbox... and I am sure there is a distinction between having an animal up for trade / adoption or just have one sit in your storage (in the game code) so it doesn't sound impossible. Or have it as a setting, turn it off if you don't want it in your game.
But in all honesty this game has a really good focus on conservation and having animals kept well, it feels like cheating, and feels very much against the game's own message, to have a magical place where you don't have to care for your animals, you just place them down to breed whenever you need some new babies to sell..
But in all honesty this game has a really good focus on conservation and having animals kept well, it feels like cheating, and feels very much against the game's own message, to have a magical place where you don't have to care for your animals, you just place them down to breed whenever you need some new babies to sell..
To be fair, you could technically already do this just by never using the storage yourself and only boxing your animals instead, although I can't see this being implemented as an entire feature (even if optional). I'm not a dev of course, but this is all based on both what they've currently done and the direction they seem to be taking
I see it as an acceptable break from reality, because for all we know the animal could be floating in a magic void and doesn't actually exist at all until you decide to plop it in your zoo. Realistically the concept of zoos in and of themselves aren't very humane, but this is a zoo game, and it operates as zoos do (for the most part). Frontier picking and choosing where to push conservation and where to not is what a lot of people have issues with already. IE: polar bears needing a ton of space while other animals with large wild territories do not. The "releasing animals" part of the conservation message is also pretty fantastical, because the animals you release would most likely not survive in the wild well, if at all, because they were raised captive and presumably dropped in the woods with no sort of rehabilitation.
Adding this to the game would contribute to the contradictory message of "Make a zoo! But also you should not have animals in your zoo!", that pretty much falls flat
I see it as an acceptable break from reality, because for all we know the animal could be floating in a magic void and doesn't actually exist at all until you decide to plop it in your zoo. Realistically the concept of zoos in and of themselves aren't very humane, but this is a zoo game, and it operates as zoos do (for the most part). Frontier picking and choosing where to push conservation and where to not is what a lot of people have issues with already. IE: polar bears needing a ton of space while other animals with large wild territories do not. The "releasing animals" part of the conservation message is also pretty fantastical, because the animals you release would most likely not survive in the wild well, if at all, because they were raised captive and presumably dropped in the woods with no sort of rehabilitation.
Adding this to the game would contribute to the contradictory message of "Make a zoo! But also you should not have animals in your zoo!", that pretty much falls flat
If you leave an animal in quarantine for too long you get protesters. And you get pop ups if they're boxed. For the trading center, they're not technically in your zoo anymore, so I guess they're basically being sent to a broker to take care of them?
I would assume they're not being just released but sent to a pre-release center? Or a managed free range park?
I can see your points.. and partially agree. The release to the wild should be "Send to rehabilitation to the wild" because that is actually a thing, and I sort of imagine that's what happens already, but yes true, that should be adjusted towards reality too. For example only young animals should be releasable like 1 year after they matured.. or something like that..
The acceptable break from reality does make some sense too... I would like to think that eventually there won't be any Zoos with animals caged up, just virtual reality ones, that you can walk around in with VR googles, and the animals don't exist until you put them in your Zoo also makes sense this way, but then why do we need to breed, why don't the animals have perfect genes? To me it ruins the "Reality" from the concept of Virtual Reality and Life Simulation which I believe is what this game aims to do (not there yet, maybe it doesn't even aim to be perfect, but its a start for technology to advance that way).
And I agree on the Polar Bear space requirement being weird, it could either be reduced or have arctic wolves live with them.. they live in the same areas in the wild, and only attack each other if they are starving.. which hopefully won't happen in the zoo.
The acceptable break from reality does make some sense too... I would like to think that eventually there won't be any Zoos with animals caged up, just virtual reality ones, that you can walk around in with VR googles, and the animals don't exist until you put them in your Zoo also makes sense this way, but then why do we need to breed, why don't the animals have perfect genes? To me it ruins the "Reality" from the concept of Virtual Reality and Life Simulation which I believe is what this game aims to do (not there yet, maybe it doesn't even aim to be perfect, but its a start for technology to advance that way).
And I agree on the Polar Bear space requirement being weird, it could either be reduced or have arctic wolves live with them.. they live in the same areas in the wild, and only attack each other if they are starving.. which hopefully won't happen in the zoo.
Like I said.. add it as a setting, or add it to other game plays not franchise.
I wouldn't understand storage as anything corresponding to reality. If a zoo plans to sell an animal to another zoo there is no good reason why that animal would be removed from its habitat before transportation procedures or quarantine periods have to be initiated. Yet in the game we have to take that animal into storage, although we don't even know yet if there actually will be a sale.
And if a zoo wants to buy animals they can network with other zoos and make timely arrangements that guarantee that there isn't a lonely bison bull for a couple of years before anything resembling a herd takes shape. Yet in the game we can't do that. We are flying completely blind regarding the animal market. If what we want isn't there now we don't know if we can get it tomorrow, next week or next month, especially in franchise. For some species that's not a big problem, but for other species seeing a single female that is neither infertile nor due to age soon-to-be infertile is a small sensation in itself, so collecting enough of them to satisfy minimum herd sizes might take a while, a while that might well exceed the lifetime of the animals bought first.
An unrealistic storage where animals are kept in a magical stasis is pretty much the one thing that keeps the unrealistic limitations of the game from ruining everybody's fun.
I am also not a big fan of juvenile animals being stressed if the mother is removed. For one there are many species where realistically juveniles are pretty independent from their parents to begin with or where other animals in the herd take care of orphaned juveniles, so implementing this stress in a way that makes sense is probably pretty little bang for quite a bit of buck. And the prospect of clicking through and counting dozens of crocodile of flamingo juveniles to find out which female I can release for the smallest hit to morale doesn't exactly excite me either.
If these things could be implemented without drawing much labour from other projects I'd be fine with them as optional toggles, but as a mainly franchise mode player I can't see me use anything like that and still enjoy the game.
And if a zoo wants to buy animals they can network with other zoos and make timely arrangements that guarantee that there isn't a lonely bison bull for a couple of years before anything resembling a herd takes shape. Yet in the game we can't do that. We are flying completely blind regarding the animal market. If what we want isn't there now we don't know if we can get it tomorrow, next week or next month, especially in franchise. For some species that's not a big problem, but for other species seeing a single female that is neither infertile nor due to age soon-to-be infertile is a small sensation in itself, so collecting enough of them to satisfy minimum herd sizes might take a while, a while that might well exceed the lifetime of the animals bought first.
An unrealistic storage where animals are kept in a magical stasis is pretty much the one thing that keeps the unrealistic limitations of the game from ruining everybody's fun.
I am also not a big fan of juvenile animals being stressed if the mother is removed. For one there are many species where realistically juveniles are pretty independent from their parents to begin with or where other animals in the herd take care of orphaned juveniles, so implementing this stress in a way that makes sense is probably pretty little bang for quite a bit of buck. And the prospect of clicking through and counting dozens of crocodile of flamingo juveniles to find out which female I can release for the smallest hit to morale doesn't exactly excite me either.
If these things could be implemented without drawing much labour from other projects I'd be fine with them as optional toggles, but as a mainly franchise mode player I can't see me use anything like that and still enjoy the game.
I think the stress for babies thing could be applied for some species and in the absence of adults, not necessarily that baby's mom. So things like crocodiles or turtles wouldn't care if they are left for themselves, and something like a baby flamingo would be satisfied with at least one adult in the same habitat wether or not that adult is its parent.
The mother/baby part of this idea would be neat, maybe. But only if four things were changed.
1. Does not apply to mothers or babies in storage at all
2. Other game modes (especially sandbox) have an option to turn off this feature in settings
3. They fix the interbirth issue first, as the only way around this right now is to separate the mother and baby early: link
4. Does not apply to animals that do not provide parental care (reptiles + exhibit animals)
1. Does not apply to mothers or babies in storage at all
2. Other game modes (especially sandbox) have an option to turn off this feature in settings
3. They fix the interbirth issue first, as the only way around this right now is to separate the mother and baby early: link
4. Does not apply to animals that do not provide parental care (reptiles + exhibit animals)
One problem with that is that they would also have to change the fighting. As it is now, for many species the animals starts fighting the second the young animal grows up, so if you want to avoid fighting and injuring, you have to move the babys before they grow up. If they changed it so that the baby and/or mother gets stressed because of that, it would make this an almost impossible task.
Yes, good point. They need to fix that bug first as well.
Isn't there a difference between common and serious animal fights? As in animals often fight for dominance but that's fine if there's space for everyone, and fighting only gets undesirable if there's not enough space or say, too many males? I remember getting an alert for that particular case when a pair of jaguars had an offspring that grew into an adult, but it does't pop up every time two antelopes fight, since jaguars have low tolerance for other adults and require a lot more space per individual than antelopes.
I think it would be fine to leave this behavior at it is, since I believe in real life one of the signs that show zoo staff that a juvenile is getting mature and needs to be relocated is skirmishes starting to happen. So we'd just have to leave the baby with the mother and when it grew up and started fighting too seriously, a pop-up appears warning you about serious fighting due to overcrowding and you know its time to ship it away.
I think it would be fine to leave this behavior at it is, since I believe in real life one of the signs that show zoo staff that a juvenile is getting mature and needs to be relocated is skirmishes starting to happen. So we'd just have to leave the baby with the mother and when it grew up and started fighting too seriously, a pop-up appears warning you about serious fighting due to overcrowding and you know its time to ship it away.
Used to be you would have a few minutes of reprieve after a baby grew up before it started fighting with parents/other adults. Now they insta-fight the second they grow up. It's not meant to be like this. The last patch broke it. That's what Arrakai is talking about.
Are you sure it was broken in the last patch? I remember animals insta-fighting upon growing up since I first got the game in December
Same, it has always been instant fighting of you weren't there ready for maturation (and you get an advanced notice of maturation so there shouldn't be an issue of you're paying attention).
Nowadays they even start fighting, before you get the message that they grew up.