What did you do in Planet Zoo today?
- Thread starter Indoraptor27
- Start date
I went back to my second big franchise zoo - Whispering Sands, a desert based zoo. I haven't played it in months because it, along with my largest zoo, have sooooo much upkeep every time. I'm so busy I can't really enjoy it. At least WS has stayed financially profitable. Added in habitats for the Southern Rhino, Fennec Fox, Salt Water Crocodile, Babirusa and Clouded Leopard, which I'll add in one or two each of the next plays and built and brought my meerkats into their habitat. Also managed quite a bit of shuffling and releasing to wild, adjusting animals around from the zoo to trade center for DNA lineage purposes, replaced a couple of older animals with new stock and sold off most of my peafowl (getting closer to none soon on this zoo)
I love the zoo and the layout, but does anyone feel overwhelmed when they play a large zoo? Like it's fun but it's so much to manage? I'm up to having 40 habitats and more on my other big franchise zoo, it seems somewhere around 30 habitat the zoo just because too big to truly enjoy because you're managing so much. Maybe I should just move this one over to franchise only like I did my financial monstrosity. But then again, so long as it's still running a good profit.....
I love the zoo and the layout, but does anyone feel overwhelmed when they play a large zoo? Like it's fun but it's so much to manage? I'm up to having 40 habitats and more on my other big franchise zoo, it seems somewhere around 30 habitat the zoo just because too big to truly enjoy because you're managing so much. Maybe I should just move this one over to franchise only like I did my financial monstrosity. But then again, so long as it's still running a good profit.....
There's definitely a change in the accumulated management challenge once you cross over a certain threshold of size. Makes sense when you consider that we as the player/franchise owner are the one type of staff that we can't hire more of when things get busy! In real life, we'd probably hire department heads or have another type of structure to funnel out some of those things. (I can't imagine an owner of a large zoo franchise sorting through beetle births, for example!).
I've found that if I have a large zoo where I want to relax and watch for a bit, the best thing for me has been to use contraceptives on more and more animals, even if I might otherwise prefer to let them keep having babies. I'll also do a welfare/management pass through my animal menu prior to going into watch mode, looking for places where I can predict upcoming maturations/fights/overcrowding and preemptively moving animals to my trade center. (I usually try to label my habitats and exhibits to include the adult population limits and the maturation ages and sterility ages as part of the habitat name, so that I can see that information directly in the animal menu itself and don't need to toggle back and forth to the zoopedia, making this process easier. For example, my hyena habitat is labeled "Hyenas 2M-2F 3yo-12yo".). It won't stop all notifications, but does seem to cut down on them --- at least for a while.
Honestly, everytime you talk about franchise I want to try it again (same when I watch soimeone playing franchise
) but never stick to one for long. The building on a budget thing and starting with "plain" habitatas and then redoing them over and over again really stresses me. But on the other hand it's the challenge and the trading I somewhat find fascinating. Especially since the player market doesn't seem too crazy anymore.
Ha we can do a swap because with the range of new settings I was considering doing a foray into sandbox. I haven't before because I'm not really a builder and I like having to re-arrange all the time to deal with new challenges but the new flexibility makes it more tempting as I can keep the challenges I want. Plus I'd like to do a rescue centre style zoo based only on animals that have terrible stats to start with and that is easier in franchise with the entirely artificial market. In the meantime I am slowly working my way through the timed scenarios. I actually really enjoyed the new one with the rescue centre and the animals that kept arriving. Only took my second attempt to get gold but that was on easy.Honestly, everytime you talk about franchise I want to try it again (same when I watch soimeone playing franchise
I can promise you, sandbox ist FULL of crappy stat animals and most are rescued, custom seizures or pets, so it should be pretty easy for you to play a rescue
I get totally stressed when there is a countdown running, so I never touched the timed scenarios
But I agree, it's a nice story telling.Agreed. I think one of the revelations/revolutions that we'll see over time is all of us slowly branching out into the other game modes and discovering just how much there is to do, and how many different ways there are to play. The devs rightly get a lot of credit for the beauty of the game (and deservedly so!), but I think we're only beginning to really appreciate all of the style/playability options they've given us too.
I imagine some dev in charge of game play mechanics, who will get news back from these forums a few years from now, that we've all finally discovered and started using the feature they put in at the start.
I imagine some dev in charge of game play mechanics, who will get news back from these forums a few years from now, that we've all finally discovered and started using the feature they put in at the start.
I agree! Sometimes I imagine myself playing PZ in 3-5 years, probably with no new DLCs around and just then finding the time to branch out more, because I already build all of my project zoos.
Lets just hope they keep the franchise sever on long enough.Yep. That was one of the reasons that I decided to focus on franchise first. I figured all the other modes would be around, but didn't know how to predict what would happen with franchise. Both in terms of many of the perks like how long community challenges would go on, but also how many players (and thus trading partners) there might be at a later date. I figured that the offline modes would be more likely to remain possible even if there is an internet apocalpyse!
Have done some changes to the first part of the African Area.
Before it was two separate enclosures - one for Gemsboks and one for Warthogs
Now I turned the two enclosures into one to be better suited for a mixed species habitat. It now holds Gemsboks, Springboks and Ostriches. Leaving the Warthogs without a home for now.
It could still need a bit more of detailing and I still need to make some custom signs. The elephant enclosure in the back is also still partly WIP.
Before: (Edit: Just noticed the big wooden elephant enrichment pretending to be an UFO)
After:
Before it was two separate enclosures - one for Gemsboks and one for Warthogs
Now I turned the two enclosures into one to be better suited for a mixed species habitat. It now holds Gemsboks, Springboks and Ostriches. Leaving the Warthogs without a home for now.
It could still need a bit more of detailing and I still need to make some custom signs. The elephant enclosure in the back is also still partly WIP.
Before: (Edit: Just noticed the big wooden elephant enrichment pretending to be an UFO)
After:
I don't think I'm ever going to build a zoo to completion until after support ends at this rate. I have a sneaking suspicion that the key to my "no major crashes" success is the fact that I continuously start over whenever a major new update and DLC lands.I agree! Sometimes I imagine myself playing PZ in 3-5 years, probably with no new DLCs around and just then finding the time to branch out more, because I already build all of my project zoos.
Nah, Unity is what now, 10 month? 11 month? Over 30 habitat species if I remember correctly. No major crashes.I don't think I'm ever going to build a zoo to completion until after support ends at this rate. I have a sneaking suspicion that the key to my "no major crashes" success is the fact that I continuously start over whenever a major new update and DLC lands.
For me the key to my first long-term zoo was not building myself in a corner. Not "finish the african section first" etc. But really, now I also burned out with the zoo.
And as much as I love working on Golding now, it is exactly the "finish the africa section first " situation and I'm kinda afraid where it leads to in the long run...
Experimented with the mesh some more for snow leopards. I think it worked better here than my previous clouded leopard attempt. Left habitat is for the male, right for the female/cubs. Still need to finish the exterior decorating and putting a roof on the backstage but after completing the habitats and getting the animals in, and then making the adjustments for traversible terrain, I'm a little burned out. I kind of wish I'd taken out some of the crossbeams to open it up a little more, but because of the way I built it it would end up really messy with the mesh all overlapping so I'm just going to leave it. In saying that, I might change up the middle section a little bit.
Interesting that you used glass in the lower part to save visitors for being dumb. Is this common in zoos you know? Because germany always works with guest barriers. Way more potential for danger, but usually german guests seem to be better behaved than guests in some other countries. (We can't sue anyone for our own mistakes usually
).I can see why a glass barrier would make sense.
I continued the renovation of my franchise zoo with the Old Elephant House of the Cologne Zoo. The historical building was built as a giraffe house in 1863 and turned into an pachyderm house in 1874. Today, the building is inhabited by a black rhino, some red hogs and soon two Coquerel's sifakas.
My version of this building in Planet Zoo is considerably bigger than the real building to make the doors usable for the elephants. I mainly wanted to improve three parts of my old house
:
My version of this building in Planet Zoo is considerably bigger than the real building to make the doors usable for the elephants. I mainly wanted to improve three parts of my old house
- Separate the bath from the zoos lake and add an extra bull habitat to make it more realistic
- Improve the facade of the building with the north african building pieces since this building is supposed to be in a moorish architecture style
- make room for the white rhinos
I've seen it in a few places, but the one that comes to mind most often is the squirrel monkey exhibit at Wellington Zoo (which is also the reason I want the triangle pieces to make that sort of rounded roof). They have a glass front with a mesh top. I also have a vague memory of a snow leopard habitat at San Diego Zoo being similar in design, but I was thirteen at the time so it was a long time ago.Interesting that you used glass in the lower part to save visitors for being dumb. Is this common in zoos you know? Because germany always works with guest barriers. Way more potential for danger, but usually german guests seem to be better behaved than guests in some other countries. (We can't sue anyone for our own mistakes usually
I can see why a glass barrier would make sense.
After not only surviving, but thriving in 3 exams today i finally got back to playing planet zoo after a bit.
Today i build a little lama enclosure, that i think came out quite nicely, even though it ruined most of my planing for what to put where.
On paper 8 animals might seem like an okay amount, but im running out of of southamerican animals, even though the sector is quite small.
The sector has expanded again and the project still keeps going. Right now the plans are to put bairds tapir to the right of the lamas to be seen from the viewing platform on the hill and to brainstorm what could fit onto the big green spot in the middle. On the left is the end of my taiga section with grey seal and the first entrance to the tropical tunnel, aswell as a huge unterwaterviewing and on the bottom right is the old cheetah habitat that was now combined with an older one for nyalas and will probably expend a bit more for a mixed african savanah. Right now there are implied tegus, dwarf caimans, some exhibits and the indoorviewing for the capuchin monkey and the anteaters in the tunnel, while theres are also an implied fakeexhibit a still work in progress forrest path and the jaguars on the top. If you guys haveany idear what to put into that big empty spot please tell me as i have really no idear as i originally wanted to put lamas in there. Right now my gut is telling me maybe kangaroos, but i will see about that.
Overall this is by far my favourite part of my zoo, as it finally feels like i have come a huge step and figured things out, with the finished areas all looking really good without being the unfinished mess that my asia section is.
Today i build a little lama enclosure, that i think came out quite nicely, even though it ruined most of my planing for what to put where.
On paper 8 animals might seem like an okay amount, but im running out of of southamerican animals, even though the sector is quite small.
The sector has expanded again and the project still keeps going. Right now the plans are to put bairds tapir to the right of the lamas to be seen from the viewing platform on the hill and to brainstorm what could fit onto the big green spot in the middle. On the left is the end of my taiga section with grey seal and the first entrance to the tropical tunnel, aswell as a huge unterwaterviewing and on the bottom right is the old cheetah habitat that was now combined with an older one for nyalas and will probably expend a bit more for a mixed african savanah. Right now there are implied tegus, dwarf caimans, some exhibits and the indoorviewing for the capuchin monkey and the anteaters in the tunnel, while theres are also an implied fakeexhibit a still work in progress forrest path and the jaguars on the top. If you guys haveany idear what to put into that big empty spot please tell me as i have really no idear as i originally wanted to put lamas in there. Right now my gut is telling me maybe kangaroos, but i will see about that.
Overall this is by far my favourite part of my zoo, as it finally feels like i have come a huge step and figured things out, with the finished areas all looking really good without being the unfinished mess that my asia section is.
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I run them through gimp first and let it export them. Cuts down the size from 4 MB to about 500kb. Takes a little bit of time to do it for each one individually, but when im playing planetzoo, im not having any time pressure anyways
I just make a screenshot (F12), open the folder where my Steam screenshots are saved, and just drag the pictures into the post as I make it. Edit: Just want to add that for some reason my screenshots have never exceeded the size limit.