Wondering what's a "reasonable" number of drink/food/other shops? I'm most active in sandbox mode as it's more fun for me. And I know, of course, we have a finite amount of space but in sandbox is there any reason to put a limit to the number of shops one opens? Excepting, of course, the more shops one has the less land available for other stuff. I do try to base things loosely around real world parks, not one specifically just real parks in general. Thus, back to my question - what's reasonable? Thanks in advance for suggestions.
- plur
This is a bit complicated...
Peep physical needs (food, drink energy, and toilet) run at different rates. Energy can be supplied by benches so if you have lots of those, you should not own any energy-providing shops. For the other physical needs, you should average about 2 drinks to 1 food and 1 toilet across the park. In areas where you expect more teens than other demographics, you might want 2 drink, 2 food, 1 toilet. In areas where you expect more families, maybe 2 drinks, 1 food, 2 toilet.
By "area" above, I mean a certain region of the park that's sort of its own little world, place containing say 1-2 coasters or track rides and 1-4 flat rides. So, if such an area has a demographically even mix of rides, it only needs 2 drinks, 1-2 food, and 1-2 restrooms.
First aid is only needed near the exits of rides with nausea above about 5.0.
Every area should have 1 ATM.
Even if you set things up this way, you will still get notifications that "many guests are thirsty". This is something of a bug. The thirsty peeps are in queue for rides. About the only way to fix this is to shorten the queues. It really does you no good to have peeps wait more than about 15 minutes between having opportunities to spend more money.
As for gift shops, you really don't need many. Most peeps want balloons, a good number want hats, and nearly zero want mementos. So a park should have 0-1 memento shops, 1-2 hat shops, and 2-3 balloon shops tops.
There's also the question of which particular shops you should have out of the many choices available for food and drink. Peeps have strong preferences for water and slush, burgers and hotdogs, and pretty much hate all the rest. So IMHO it's best to make the 2 drink shops per area 1 each of water and slush, and the 1-2 food shops burgers and dogs, and not use any of the others except in park areas well off the beaten track where there's no other choice close at hand.
