What do you want to do in Planet Zoo

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

It recently came up in both the what are you gonna do and the seasonal dlc discussion threads that people would like to talk about their plans for zoos or what they want to do in general, but dont know where to put it, soooo how about this as a little planning chamber on the forums?

But first of a little rule, or lets rather say guideline. Pls no wishlist spamming please
While mentioning animals that arnt in the game yet as something youd like to build for is perfectly reasonable and hella fine, we dont need yet one more thread where people copy paste their lists into.
Instead id much rather like to hear what everyone actually wants to use in the future, be it new, old or not even an animal.

For an example, here are some of the planned layouts for my zoo and as you can see, they changed quite a bit over time!

As you can see alot of things changed since the end of jannuary when i made the first pick and so did many of my desires.
With the oceania pack, what was meant to be a designated playground at some point turned into a small australia area, multiple habitats but most notably the wetlands ungulates, in the bottom, lions and elephants got quite a boost in their size, with the lions especally taking over all the space that at some point was meant for hyenas when the striped hyena was still new and fresh.

My current goals besides finishing up the detailing are:

• Adding more coldclimate ungulates from asia to the red area, be it the ingame bactrian camel or hopefully a takin or saiga depending on what we get in the packs
• Building a spectacle bear habitat in the pink area
• Finishing up my gorilla habitat, finally finishing the houeses roofing and maybe even takling the interior
• An elephant house including scarbeus beetles and some small african animals like porcupines in the orange area
• A large stable for the antelopes and ostritches of my african savannah
• Building a king penguin house and a seal or sealion habitat somewhere in the hills between red and pink
• Building a petting zoo betweein the two green areas next to my entrance, with a kunekune pig habitat with access to the water as a little bonus for the oceania area

So my current needed species list is something like:

• Spectacle bear
• Kunekune pig
• petting zoo mix (kinda desperate as i allready used lamas in SA area so if we get a scenery pack props all of them are automatically included)
• Asian ungulates, special shoutout to the takin and saiga
• small african critters, special shoutout to a monkey

 

[Orkan]

Here's a rough layout of the Eastborro Zoo. The map was taken before I built the Reindeer barn and Sunbear/Binturong/Camel area

 

[Marvinb]

This is the rough Masterplan for my Cairo Zoo. Obviously this is alot, and since im very much an On/Off Player i dont expect to finish this all anytime soon (If every really )
And i also fully expect thing to changed as i develope this Zoo and new DLCs will come out.
Also plan to have some sort of big structure in the middle which you can see in the distance from around the zoo, im think like a big tower or something like that.
So this is the rough plan i have:

Path to Persia:
Gonna have middle eastern animals like Fallow and/or Red Deer, Striped Hyeana, Red Fox and Badger and Caracal

Domestics Farms:
The Dromedarys and "Goats" and Porcupines are aleady in place. Unless we get something fitting there are gonna be alot of implied habitats and stand ins here, since i imagine this as having alot of historical ancient egyptian farming and agriculture displays and exhibits for traditional egyptian breeds of domestics.

South American Areal:
Build my Casa Amazona here recently and plan to add Maned Wolf + Anteater here aswell. Also gonna either build implied exhibits or leaves space for when we hopefully get more Monkeys and Coatis in the future

Prairie:
Rather small NA section which will probably only have Bison, Raccon, Skunk and Prairie Dog.

Life on the Nile:
Build with view on the actual nile featuring Hippos, "Nile Crocodile", Flamingo, Nile Lechwe

Island Adventure:
Pretty much plan to rebuild my original Island Adventure here (My first entry in the Building contest for anyone interessted)

Oceania:
Kangaroo + Emu are gonna move in here, and i have a Australia House planned to feature pretty much all the small oceanian critters

Asia:
Since Island Adventure is gonna have alot of indonesian animals im probably only add Bengal Tiger, Sunbear, Orang and a large aviary for Peafowl and Crane here

Tropical Africa:
Gorilla and Chimp are the main stars here but will probably also add Red river hog here and hopefully a smaller african monkey. I think a big Primate House would be awesome to link the african Apes and the Orang together.

African Savannah:
Pretty much your standard african animals Elephant, Rhino, Giraffe + Zebra + Antelopes, Lions. Probably also have some sort of conservation area for all the endangered desert antelopes here. Im thinking giant enclosure that appears to fade into the dunes of the desert behind it.

Aquatic Area.
African Penguins and Sea Lion probably. I have a really cool idea for this being themed around those container ship graveyards on the coasts of africa.
Also would love to have some sort of walkthrough Sea and Coastal Bird aviary here.

Canyon Area:
Somehting im not quite sure of yet. I imagine this as a canyon displaying baboons, "Barbary Macaques", Hyrax and Aoudad or "Nubian Ibex".

 

[DarthQuell]

Nice idea.

I don't have much. I wanna improve the interiors of my zoo barns in Moonshine Ranch, but I am terrible at interiors.
Another plan is to make a zoo with a SA section, using the peccaries in it. But that's still all in my head

 

[FlameWizard492]

I really like this idea, but I don’t have any new plans. I’m in the middle of wrapping up my Oceania zoo right now. I just gotta add some bins, benches, lampposts, filler foliage, and other decorations. When the next pack comes along, I’ll come back to this thread.

 

[jcp011c]

I really like having long range plans I can't start yet. I mean that too even though it sounds somewhat sarcastic. Once official support ends - be that in 1, 7, 13, or 25 months - I'm going to be doing a true franchise branding. A group of zoos across the globe that have some commonalities in themes and design. Not everything has to be the same and most of it won't be but something to tie it altogether. The thing is I want to know exactly what I'm working with when I do this. which is why I must wait until official support ends.

That will keep the game fresh for me as well I think. Doing the franchise and sandbox zoos I do now, with continued support and then another set without continued support.

 

[Swjosdotschka]

Next up would be building a Dhole habitat in Unity, but I'm still lacking ideas.

After that I'd build the last section in Unity, Unity Oasis, containing of a lot of african animals. 20 species, if I remember correctly. That will take a while, especially if other hobbies should take over again and I really need to make more christmas cards this months, so less time for Planet Zoo.
After that I will start the first branch zoo of Unity, which would be Unity of Americas, with North, Central and South American animals. Super excited!

When I'll than be old and have grand children (which will be a fun challenge without any children prior), I'll do the second branch Zoo of Unity, Unity Eurasia. I expect PZ2 to release somewhere in between, so that I never have to concentrate on a full on african zoo to finally use every species we have in Planet Zoo 1.

 

[Milurian]

Im currently working on the same plan since I started the game the ultimate all animal zoo.
this project was recently restarted when the oceania pack came out and I wanted to move maps since the oceania maps is only slightly bigger than the minimum space for all current animals.

my serious attempts in order and why they restarted

- A more african themed zoo built between conservation and twilight had every african and every exhibit animal at the time. This zoo was massive taking up a quarter of the african grasslands map due to one of my challenges for that zoo being include one of each viable plant type in each habitat I also included separate habitats for enrichment groups. This was the first serious zoo I had built in the game everything before was like a 4 habitat one type of animal zoo and never went anywhere. As such I discovered the unfortunate plague that is lag and by the end of the zoo it was almost unplayable. Lag and general unhappiness with the zoo caused me to restart after only doing africa.

- my second zoo on my journey to greatness was a much smaller mainly european zoo that died pretty quickly because twilight broke the theme for this zoo. Like the previous zoo I wanted to make an all animals zoo with the animals split by continents for this zoo I started with a Mediterranean section which attached directly to europe africa and asia I then also included an atlantic area with the grey seal and the endemic european animals. This zoo had my favourite flamingo habitat I have ever built but it was doomed to fail when the red fox made the style of continental sections connecting directly to each other impossible because of its massive distribution I had just stated to develop the afirca section at this point. One major improvement this zoo had was the introduction of size restriction this was the first time ever I built habitats without a breeding pair of animals and the goal was to make all the habitats at most 10% greater than their space requirements. This was to save on all lag causing entities such as paths, scenery, water and animals.

- my third zoo simply labelled mini zoo was by far my most successful attempt including every animal up to the aquatic pack this time sorted by packs not continents in order to future proof the project this project ran from just after twilight till around arid though most major work had stopped at tropical when I got super burnt out with the project. This project was really well done having my favourite build of all time and some of my favourite individual habitats for each animal and was actually pretty lag free considering the amount of different species in the zoo. This zoo was built with the idea that every animal could not have more than 10% extra traversable water and terrain in order to limit exhibit size what ultimately ended up destroying this zoo was how loose this was in practice combined with other restriction I placed on the zoo. When making habitats I would provide at least one of every available enrichment item and make sure it was accessible also side note the accessibility of enrichment items are dumb sometimes it only reads as accessible when its upside and halfway in the ground. But this combined with all deep water animals needing underwater viewing and all walkthrough animals being walkthrough mad the exhibits unnecessarily big and therefore cluttered as I tried restrict space this is the reason I ended it at aqautic a pack full of deep diving animals.

- my current attempt will hopefully be my last and successful attempt at building an all animal zoo prior to the oceania pack I was in the planning stages and worked out that all current animals required a zoo of around 82000m2 and built a fence of around 100000m2 on a temperate europe map and was building the exhibit hall at the time oceania released. The oceania map is slightly bigger than 100000m2 and since it was an island map the small zoo didnt seem extremely weird so I mad the transition.
Now the methods I am using to build this zoo like previous zoo its has minimum social groups and within 10% traversable area as a requirement a new one is that the overall habitat footprint must not exceed 50% over the traversable area. I also changed how I chose the animal order since going by packs means I will never use the new pack animals on time and get burnt out quickly and going by continent or biome raises issues on the edges. The method I ended up on was cheapest animal to keep to most expensive which side note the kiwi is the cheapest habitat animal to keep at $70 a year keep in mind that walkthrough exhibits are $100 a year and small exhibits are $50. Currently the zoo has the pangolin, quokka, prairie dogs, skunk and half of the small exhibit boxes done as well the armadillo and kiwi having the layout planned just not furnished and the second floor of my exhibit hall having the remaining exhibits just no roof or walls. At this point due to life being busy I haven't had that much time to work on the zoo and I am also waiting to see if the new pack will be a big game changer otherwise the next addition after finishing the planned habitats are going to be a large walkthrough butterfly house and enclosures for the cloth and 2 bats.

Also I do have 2 other major projects planned a complete recreation of the zoo tycoon games which require more new animals and a zoo with the minimum number of habitats which I am in the process of testing compatibilities of literally every ingame animal to test for foliage, temperature and terrain needs plus fighting.

 

[Fini]

Building an abandoned zoo.
It's funny... because I first build something that's half destroyed and then rebuild it more beautifully.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

It recently came up in both the what are you gonna do and the seasonal dlc discussion threads that people would like to talk about their plans for zoos or what they want to do in general, but dont know where to put it, soooo how about this as a little planning chamber on the forums?

But first of a little rule, or lets rather say guideline. Pls no wishlist spamming please
While mentioning animals that arnt in the game yet as something youd like to build for is perfectly reasonable and hella fine, we dont need yet one more thread where people copy paste their lists into.
Instead id much rather like to hear what everyone actually wants to use in the future, be it new, old or not even an animal.

For an example, here are some of the planned layouts for my zoo and as you can see, they changed quite a bit over time!
View attachment 375526
View attachment 375528
As you can see alot of things changed since the end of jannuary when i made the first pick and so did many of my desires.
With the oceania pack, what was meant to be a designated playground at some point turned into a small australia area, multiple habitats but most notably the wetlands ungulates, in the bottom, lions and elephants got quite a boost in their size, with the lions especally taking over all the space that at some point was meant for hyenas when the striped hyena was still new and fresh.

My current goals besides finishing up the detailing are:

• Adding more coldclimate ungulates from asia to the red area, be it the ingame bactrian camel or hopefully a takin or saiga depending on what we get in the packs
• Building a spectacle bear habitat in the pink area
• Finishing up my gorilla habitat, finally finishing the houeses roofing and maybe even takling the interior
• An elephant house including scarbeus beetles and some small african animals like porcupines in the orange area
• A large stable for the antelopes and ostritches of my african savannah
• Building a king penguin house and a seal or sealion habitat somewhere in the hills between red and pink
• Building a petting zoo betweein the two green areas next to my entrance, with a kunekune pig habitat with access to the water as a little bonus for the oceania area

So my current needed species list is something like:

• Spectacle bear
• Kunekune pig
• petting zoo mix (kinda desperate as i allready used lamas in SA area so if we get a scenery pack props all of them are automatically included)
• Asian ungulates, special shoutout to the takin and saiga
• small african critters, special shoutout to a monkey

Well well what do we have here?
Special shoutout to the takin and saiga?
Fortune telling aside, im very pleased to say that the new pack will do exactly what it should be and motivated me to plan out my asian area as i now got some animals i wanted to add.

First on the list and the ones i allready worked on are the dholes in yellow.
The first half of their habitat is allready over a year old and i can finally announce that they got their shelter.
The habitat will about double in size, going along a viewing platform from where there is another nice viewing point for the dholes, bisons on the other side and the other new habitat that is for sure in dark green, a small forested habitat for wild boar in the hill side.
I allways clammored for them so they should be among the first to actually be used, its also nice to build just a nice "lowkey" habitat for them when everything else is most likly be much more creativly exhausting.

If you take the path to the left, there will be a large idiot proof saiga habitat with lots of space for them to retreat, aswell a backstage pen for them to relax and go whe they are in stressfull situations, for example pregnancy. Next to them in blue will be a snow leopard habitat creeping up the hill, with multiple view points from both sides, build like a valley between two hills and propaply atleast implied to be netted.

Lastly the bright pink will be a spec bear habitat (pain) but dunnu how my motivation for that is rn.
By process of elimination the red area will most likly be takin, but maybe they will also be somewhere else in this area but they will definetly be included

 

[Fallax]

I'm going to alter my native butterfly garden, there is a large patch in it that I have felt could have something added to it, a pond for swans sounds perfect. I may alter my deer paddock to add wisent, not sure yet.

 

[RightWhale]

I have a couple plans: mostly when I get back home for break and I’m done with finals. Also I have a gaming laptop so I can’t make huge zoos, but that’s ok I do what I can.

1. I need to finish my renaissance themed zoo in Ireland, right now most of the buildings are grey blocks. I’m not much of a builder so I wanted to challenge myself. I’m waiting for the Eurasia pack, because I am 100% using the swan, wisent, takin, and tortoise in my zoo. The zoo was split between Europe and some Asian animals, so this was literally the perfect pack for me.
2. I wanted to build an Oceania zoo in Australia, using the Australia and Oceania packs for my building pieces. This area has the most birds in the game for a region, so I’m excited to build a diverse zoo. I will begin this after I finish the Ireland zoo so that may be awhile.
3. When I finish the Australia Zoo, I want to build a Christmas/ Winter zoo (I love Christmas) and fill it with polar animals. My planned highlight is a king penguin exhibit connected to the indoor penguin house with the other two species of penguin.

So far that’s it, and it’s reliant on me making it through finals and putting in the work over break.

 

[Swjosdotschka]

Seems like my india section is not finished with the Dhole. And I realised I should not only put the Sloth Bear in there but really do a Bengal Tiger habitat, which I'm now trying to come up with an idea for.

 

[NZFanatic]

All I want is enough motivation to actually play the game again. I've been bouncing around a bunch of different games of late and not touching PZ. Frankly the latest DLC hasn't given me one iota of motivation to play - I hoped the Oceania Pack would do more for me but the temperate map being on a gods damned island (and a hella ugly one at that) annoyed me so much that I simply don't want to play it.

 

[Moonfox]

I want to put the new gift shop items in my empty gift shop! It's been sitting there, a decorated shell but completely empty and useless, for so long! My poor gift shop staff are very bored and unfulfilled (as you can see), but once the new update is out they're going to be delighted. I can't wait to see it

The rest of the zoo is slowly being planned out. I want to build it in continental sections (very original, I know). At the moment, I've only started on Vietnam. I'll probably need a NASA computer and to quit my full-time job to actually build the zoo as I imagine it, but I'll see how close I can get to this plan (the numbers are number of habitats per section, and almost all of them are mixed species except for the carnivores):

And I want to add aviaries into my plans! I want some flying birds in every section, and some pheasants, ducks and pelicans for walkthrough exhibits. I'm so excited to have swans! They'll be in my European woodlands, with fallow deer.

 

[NZFanatic]

(the numbers are number of habitats per section

Trying to work out how you get five for Antarctica. We only have one Antarctic animal, do we not? Or have I forgotten something?

 

[Milurian]

Trying to work out how you get five for Antarctica. We only have one Antarctic animal, do we not? Or have I forgotten something?

I wish we had more than one
Given the other numbers of some areas as well im suspecting mods.

 

[Marvinb]

Well i said i dont want to start something new, but none of the new animals fit into my current zoo .
So im gonna start something i never really did before, a german wilpark/native and semi native animals only zoo.
My local zoo really only keeps european animals aswell as domestics and a handfull of invasive species, so this is what inspired me to do this
I imagine this being located in the black forest in a little mountainous, foresty area. All my other projects were high budget zoos, so i wanna keep this very lowkey and simple.
Roster wise im planning basicly all the temperate european animals plus a few stand ins like beaver, bear, otter and so on

 

[Milurian]

Well i said i dont want to start something new, but none of the new animals fit into my current zoo .

My current zoo plan is based on building for the animals form cheapest to most expensive so basically until the pack releases I wont know which animals ill be using except the tortoise because all exhibit animals have the same running costs.

 

[Marvinb]

My current zoo plan is based on building for the animals form cheapest to most expensive so basically until the pack releases I wont know which animals ill be using except the tortoise because all exhibit animals have the same running costs.

Neat, id guess swan and boar are the cheapest