What do you want to do in Planet Zoo

Starting to struggle a bit with the geography of my map, but if things work out I think I'm planning something pretty amazing. Currently working on the orangutan habitat (red) which will have a viewing area on the lower ground and several viewing points for climbing platforms, plus an elevated path connecting the lower part and the path going by the otters and prairie dogs (purple). I originally wanted to include the orangutans and other Asian primates in the primate house (blue), but couldn't find a way to connect it properly (it's already a mess there).

Qpcxlbh.jpeg


The current idea is that this habitat will be on the edge of the walkable zoo, with the safari (pink) going around it all. This part should eventually have most of the Asian ungulates as well as views of the large carnivores. I'm still not sure how I'll exactly connect it all and which animals will be safari-exclusive.

Below progress on the orangutan habitat:
AwPWthA.png
 
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.


So, believe it or not, I actually finished Unity a while ago (though new animals might be added with the last DLC, if suitable) AND finished a second zoo. That makes two fully finished zoos in 5 years almost, yy.
In all seriousness, I think not having DLCs throwing me curveballs anymore really helps me with finishing projects. So I started my third "this will be finished" project three days ago. Trying to reveeal the idea in a role play on a discord server, but due to lack of interaction from the other players, that doesn't go too well so far. Super frustrating and sad, as there is a fun storyline behind it.

Anyway, I plan to have used every animal in PZ at least once in a finished zoo, where I can hop in and look at it. I might have used most animals if I count unfinished projects, but not finished ones.
 
Need some advice from you guys:
1727115181671.png


This is the Oceania area of my zoo. Specifically the theme is Tasmania and New Zealand, the large enclosure in the bottom left is for Little Blue Penguins and the building to the left is a nocturnal house which doubles as a keeper area, Inside there is Kiwis and I'm planning on also having indoor areas for Tasmanian Devils. The issue is, I don't really know how to plan out the remainder of this section, the paths are a rough template but I want to include the following:
  1. Outdoor enclosure for Tasmanian Devils
  2. Habitat for Wombats
  3. Walkthrough Habitat for Wallabies
Does anyone have any idea, using this space between the asphalt paths, how I could lay such an area out? I'm fine with also having some areas for nothing with vegetation. I've been stumped for a bit and don't want to commit to any idea yet.
 
Need some advice from you guys:
View attachment 402311

This is the Oceania area of my zoo. Specifically the theme is Tasmania and New Zealand, the large enclosure in the bottom left is for Little Blue Penguins and the building to the left is a nocturnal house which doubles as a keeper area, Inside there is Kiwis and I'm planning on also having indoor areas for Tasmanian Devils. The issue is, I don't really know how to plan out the remainder of this section, the paths are a rough template but I want to include the following:
  1. Outdoor enclosure for Tasmanian Devils
  2. Habitat for Wombats
  3. Walkthrough Habitat for Wallabies
Does anyone have any idea, using this space between the asphalt paths, how I could lay such an area out? I'm fine with also having some areas for nothing with vegetation. I've been stumped for a bit and don't want to commit to any idea yet.
Okay here is what i would do:

NZ-tas area.png

orange= Habitat border
red=indoor holding/stable buildings
purple= guest viewing opportunity
blue= guest pathing

Im more of a fan where there is a more or less clear route to take through a themed area, since you dont have the risk of missing stuff or having to go back for stuff.
So i layed it out in a way where there is a clear path for the guests to follow, they start out at the bottom greeted by the penguins which they can either follow along or go through the wallaby WE (but you still get a view from the penguin route). Regardless of which way you take you come up on the nocturnal house and get the first views on the wombat. After the nocturnal house you follow the rest of the path upwards you approach a second viewing opportunity for the wombat (or a second enclosure for seperating a pair), aswell as the devils before getting a little peek into the wombat indoor holding where they most likely would be at daytime and exiting the area. I also had the idea of switching the devil and wombat and putting the devils more center stage, in which case you could have them access the outdoor part via a little tunnel under the path.
I also squeezed in a little aviary for kea as i thought those would fit this area perfectly, you could either use it as an implied one and imagine that its newly build and the birds havent move in yet (which i think is a cool way to "add" animals to your zoo that arent in game), use the mod, or just leave it as a nature area.

Hope i could provide some help/inspiration :)
 
Last edited:
I am Building a consevation center currently. It is 85% finished. Only the monkey Area and the Tapir Area is not finished yet. Original the Zoo had Vulnerable, Endangered and critically endangered species. But I decided to rule the vulnerable animals out. So now, there is one spot left, where earlier the snow leopards lived. So, wich Animal do you guys think would fit there?
5A2CDB66-C810-4BFA-BAB2-7C16007D1D8C.jpeg
 
I am Building a consevation center currently. It is 85% finished. Only the monkey Area and the Tapir Area is not finished yet. Original the Zoo had Vulnerable, Endangered and critically endangered species. But I decided to rule the vulnerable animals out. So now, there is one spot left, where earlier the snow leopards lived. So, wich Animal do you guys think would fit there? View attachment 403179
Depending on the size, orangutans or pangolins
 
I am Building a consevation center currently. It is 85% finished. Only the monkey Area and the Tapir Area is not finished yet. Original the Zoo had Vulnerable, Endangered and critically endangered species. But I decided to rule the vulnerable animals out. So now, there is one spot left, where earlier the snow leopards lived. So, wich Animal do you guys think would fit there? View attachment 403179
Yeah id say one of the apes, gharial could also be cool
 
What I would like to do but is unfortunately not possible due to size constraints, is build a full recreation of the North Carolina Zoo. 😂
Honestly all things considered you could get kind of close! Off the top of my head these can’t be recreated or substituted in any way without mods:
  1. Puffins near the polar bears
  2. The desert dome
  3. The river side center
Otherwise, it would be pretty darn close.
 
I had an idea of how to get me back into playing a lot more, my computer can’t handle making full zoos. So I’m gonna start making areas instead! I don’t have to worry about making an entrance, or a parking lot, or bogging my Pc down with 10+ habitats.

Instead I open sandbox and make one themed area after another. Like I make a new Sandbox Zoo, call it “Sierra Madre” then I make some habitats for Collard Peccary’s, Jaguars, and then add some of the exhibit animals.

This way I feel less pressured and I get right to the fun part, which is the animals and habitat design!
 
I made a crude masterplan for my coastal zoo, mostly because i wanted to make sure i can fit everything i want in here onto the area i have given myself, in addition to preventing me from forgetting something haha.

View attachment 399629
1: Entrance
2: Wadden education center
with aquariums for local sea animals like cat sharks, crabs etc plus education about the whole ecosystem, how the tides works etc
3: Walkthrough aviary for birds living in the wadden sea like oystercatcher, pied advocet, eider and arctic tern
4: Seal rescue facility
5: Flamingo + whistling ducks
6: Lar gibbon
7: Asian small clawed otter
8: Capybara + capuchin
9: Aquarium and Tropical hall
(needs a catchier name tho) with indoors for gibbon, otter and capuchin, caimans, water monitor, armadillo, marmosets and sloth. Aswell as aquariums for both fresh and sea water.
10: Aviaries for hornbill, kookaburra and kea
11: Puffin
12: Arctic fox
13: Polar bear
14: Raccoon + either skunk or beaver,
havent deceided yet. Beaver would fit better with the whole focus on aquatic animals the zoo, but would probably also need a way larger enclosure than a mix with skunks. And now that i think about it i probably will just move them away from that area entirely and place them in the 21-24 area somewhere. Having most of the heavy hitters like polar bears, seals and penguin there probably means there should be some room for the guests to breathe
15: Aviary for bald eagle
16: African penguin + pelican +cormorant
17: Sea lion
18: Harbor seal
19: Restaurant under the lighthouse,
potentially with access to the "dock" area that surrounds the zoo, can totally imagine guest taking a boat tour to the sand banks that lie in the wadden sea to see wild harbor seals and a bookable extra.
20: Meerkat + porcupine
21: Ring tailed lemur + aldabra tortoise
22: Walkthrough south america aviaray
for macaws, toucan, black necked swans, spoonbill and ibis
23: Bactrian camel
24: Wallaby + emu
25: Serval


Random closing thoughts i guess:
  • Totaly not set in stone and some things will probably change a little. Especially on the left side of the zoo it feels like i can probably squeze in another habitat or two, mabye another hoofstock like fallow deer or a small petting enclosure for alpaca and sheep/goat. But by the time i get there we probably have the next dlc, which hopefully has some fitting animals, coati or maras would fit in here perfectly imo.
  • Also really had to keep myself to go completly nuts on the birds sicne there are so many amazing mods for them, originally i wanted to also have an walkthrough aviary for asian birds like cranes, mandarins, bar heade goose and pheasants, but similar to the seal situation a 4th walktrough enclosure for waterbirds might be one to many haha.
  • I kinda wanna also include the grey seal because they are also local animals here albeit much rarer than harbor seal, but idk if 3 pinipeds might be one to many and habor seal and sea lion is a more interesting combo and harbor and grey i think.
  • Depending on how im feeling when all of this is done (or how my computer is doing, all that water definetly takes its toll lol) i still like the idea of an expansion area to the left that in lore would be a recent ish addition to the zoo to be a able to keep larger animals aswell and would probably accessable by a bridge over the road. If this would happen i definetly would want some kind of great ape, a big cat, a savannah enclosure and either rhinos or asian elephants, with another couple small enclosure sprinkled around them.
Well atleast i dont have to replan anything mayor as none of the new animals make sense in here. Probably gonna swap the aldabra for spurred and squeeze in the baboon somewhere in the back just because it was a long awaited animal for me
 
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
Guess who technically got everything he wanted in the last 3 packs besides my prefered breed of pig?
Lucky me
 
WnYtD4COnITkwd3LoFEQqvv18OyouCPQ4lerCFa2eyIJPVibMBaC7g4px6lbq4CNSweYxFeGKCkx8zEkd14-jwdJNNYIZJpuSQZUzafXTHqD74mXsmKKJl2S7PL-mhSX5fGAuoZwah9zmxPvWoi9UoU

That's the plan for now, and will likely stay like this unless frontier releases a new african primate or bird, which let's be honest isn't happening.
Well, it looks like I bite my own tongue after all.


Well, i gotta say, since i posted this i made some changes on my plans regarding the Dier zoo, and now that the dlc is here i decided to change even more things

So to let everything organized for myself i decided to post here everything that i changed and my overall plans for the zoo, beginning with the pre-announcements plans:

-Instead of making the RRH and water Buffalo (stand in for red buffalos) habitats a back-to-back complex, the RRH now resides right by the side of the outpost, so guests inside of the outpost can see the hogs. While the buffalo habitat has been increased in order to accomodate the buffalos and to also being able to have nyalas, something that despite being present on the original paper I wasn't so sure if they would make the cut. The barn of the habitat also changed place, so instead of being in the visitor patch and right next to the reptile house, it will now be on the other side, far from the guests.

-speaking on the outpost, my original plan for it was making it a part without animals, only with fossils and other educational props, but i decided to change it and include the monarchs (implied to be wild animals) on the entrance garden and the snail + goliath beetle on the adjacent restaurant, not to mention the hogs.

-The rest of the tropicalia zone plans were also changed to make the overall design of the area more compatible with the "modern zoo" view, but nothing particularly worthy to mention.

-The great plains zone will also change plans when i come to that point. The overall design and layout will change in order to make the whole are seen more natural, for example, in the old plan, the rhino, wildebeest and zebras would be in a habitat, with a patch and a educational center separating than for the rest of the zoo, in the new plan, it will looks like they share a very big space with the giraffes + cape buffalos, cheetahs and to a certain stand, the lechwes and hippos, despite the existence of barriers between then. Some other minor changes include the ostriches living with the warthogs now and the addition of sable antelopes to the zoo, after i got a 100% male from a challenge, living in the same habitat as the springboks.

-The desert outpost will also change plans, as the overall layout will become a proper loop starting in the market and the desert house and finishing in the place, alongside the additions of some of the zookeeper pack animals.



Now to the dlc/update animal related changes, and going by each animals, we got:

African leopard: i originally didn't have any plan with this guy, despite it being a core specie in the Dier zoo lore, however i decided to change plans and giving them a habitat right above the buffalo/nyala one, giving again the illusion they are in the same habitat, while making the leopard standing in the center of the area, giving the idea of it relevance to the tropical forest.

Sifaka: while the Madagascar area is complete, it has been some time that i've been wanting to remake the ringtail lemur habitat, and now that the sifaka is coming, I decided to remake the habitat to also include this guy.

Spurred tortoise: those guys will make a new room in the desert house, right next to the sand cat, also ngl, but their inclusion will make the house far more diverse, as all the habitats prior to this point would have a carnivore.

Baboon: if you look at the original map, you would realize that the area between the caracal and endangered ungulates house was empty, and so, i decided to include the baboon habitat right there, despite still not having any concrete idea for the habitat.

Dik-dik: i don't have many ideas for this guy, i will probably either throw them in a random already planned habitat or make a small, aviary-like habitat for them, not sure yet.
 
Last edited:
So, I may, or may not, have a little problem. In February I started a Zoo that is placed in the alps of France. So the last days, I got back to the zoo and did some refreshments and I thought: „Let’s turn it into an Geo-Zoo with an African area, an Asian area, an South America area, an Europe area, a North America area and a little Australia area“ At the time I planed this, we know that the Pallas cat, Markhor and Baboon will come to planet zoo soon. So I finished the africa area, but let one space left, in the case, we get another African animal. Frontier gave us 3 more African animals. 🥲 So, I think I will turn the left space into a dikdik habitat and the sifaka and the tortoise aren’t allowed to go to the zoo, sorry. But this whole zoo was originally planed for highlands animals. Since I already have in mind, what animals should come to the Africa, Australia, South America, northamerica and Europe area, I don’t know, which animals I should build into the Asia area (besides snow leopard, Malayan Tapir (I know, not an Highlands species, but whatever), Pallas cat and Markhor)

I can’t upload a picture of my plan, I am sorry.
 
Here are some plans for the upcoming animals for my Biopark project.

The pallas cats already got an enclosure finished (as you could see the WIP in the other thread).
The markhors will maybe be added to the takins.

For the sifakas I've already left some space in my Madagascar area when I built it hoping for sifakas one day and what can I say? The plan worked out haha.
DfMy18O.png


I also speculated for the baboons and planned to mix them with buffalos (which enclosure still has to be built) but the thing is the buffalos are part of the Okvango subsection of the African area - both, geographically and biome wise not quite the area the hamadryas baboon fit to - and my inner monk wants to be accurate about this, sooo I'm also thinking about giving them their own enclosure in the Serengeti/East Africa area which would fit better. But the Serengeti section is mostly done, I especially don't want to change the pathways. Although I do have some empty areas left (as you can see below - marked in red and yellow), I'm not sure about adding them there. It's also nice to just have some empty spaces in between AND last but not least I've decided to cut down the African and Asian area a bit a while ago to finally finish the zoo after more than three years, so adding another large habitat wouldn't help... So, yeah, difficult decisions have to be made:ROFLMAO:
6myiYqC.png


While the kirk's dikdik also belongs to the Serengeti section, it's inclusion should be much easier because it's smaller. I'll either mix them with the aardvarks (yellow) or build them there own little enclosure next to the giraffe house (red area in the bottom) or next to the hoofstock stable (other marked area in red).
luZofaR.png


No plans for the African spurred tortoise and the spectacled bear in this zoo but I'll add them for sure in another zoo.
 
Back
Top Bottom