One feature that I would absolutely love to have that wouldn't take much effort (and would fit in very nicely with Planet Zoo's balance of what it offers players to work with while staying within its style and workflow) is 2D surface decals with the terrain and path textures, in various organic shapes like the surface moss decals that came with the awesome 1.8 update. This would provide players with a perfect way to more organically blend paths and terrain, the sharp border currently still being a visual annoyance that stands out like a sore thumb. Sure, there are already many ways you can try to mask the border, but this would add so many more possibilities, while still giving players the same amount of creative freedom and constraints as before. It's not like when Frontier makes the big decision to give the player direct access to more of the under-the-hood game mechanics like with Vista Points, controlling water appearance, importing your own images, etc. This feels like it would just naturally fit in with the amount of control the player generally already has.
One potential problem that I do see, however, is that it could allow players to "cheat" and cover an entire habitat with these decals so they can give the terrain whatever appearance they want, with the terrain required by the animals being completely hidden, and the game wouldn't know the difference. It technically wouldn't matter to the game in terms of difficulty and winning/losing scenarios, but what's the point of requiring the player to give the habitat certain terrain types, if they can just effectively override the appearance to be whatever terrain they want without the game knowing the difference? Just a consideration. Maybe the fact that they're 2D decals that can't conform to the shape of the terrain will make it obvious enough that they're just decals and it won't look particularly good. And the game already allows players to similarly override other game constraints, for better or worse.
One potential problem that I do see, however, is that it could allow players to "cheat" and cover an entire habitat with these decals so they can give the terrain whatever appearance they want, with the terrain required by the animals being completely hidden, and the game wouldn't know the difference. It technically wouldn't matter to the game in terms of difficulty and winning/losing scenarios, but what's the point of requiring the player to give the habitat certain terrain types, if they can just effectively override the appearance to be whatever terrain they want without the game knowing the difference? Just a consideration. Maybe the fact that they're 2D decals that can't conform to the shape of the terrain will make it obvious enough that they're just decals and it won't look particularly good. And the game already allows players to similarly override other game constraints, for better or worse.
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