Work zones

[Nat1984]

Do you create work zones for vendors and shops?
I have been doing, grouping shops in a certain area and assigning a bunch of vendors to it, but due to having work zones for each habitat, the list is getting ridiculously long and annoying to locate the correct work zone when assigning them.

Can you simply assign a vendor to a particular shop, rather than creating a work zone?

 

[Lea_G]

I think you can, because when you place a shop, the vendor that is coming with it is assigned to that one (I belive).
I always make workzones for the shop areas though - like if I have a food and a drink shop, I put them in a workzone with a staff room and assign 3 vendors to it. Naming the workzones helps to keep organized

 

[Nioell]

Yeah, I know what you mean, there really should be a folder system to keep the workzones more organized, the endless list scrolling is terribly annoying. Though like Lea_G I always create workzones for the shops, if you don't your vendors tend to run through half your zoo to find a staff room more often than not, which leads to empty shops all over and unhappy guest, so workzones it is.

 

[craftymutt]

If you would assign workers to stores individually, you need two workers per store, where I usually have more like 3 workers to 2 store, so I wouldn't want to do that myself.

Not that I have a great alternative; I make my work zones a bit larger including a mixture of 4-6 enclosures and 15-30 customer facilities that are close together around a central staff room (or two, three, whatever), since it's not like the keepers and vendors will get mixed up who's doing what, and it allows me to have fewer zones to manage. I think this works out well for cleaners too, since they only clean near what's in their workzone, and separating things out too much can result in paths between workzones getting neglected. The downside is I end up with a very long list (30-60) of staff and facilities in each work zone, and when it is long enough that you can't see all of the list in one screen keeping track gets really hard.
I cannot overstate how much easier it would make managing larger workzones if workzone lists could sort staff in order based on their job, rather than their first names (which while nice to have, are completely irrelevant to the work zone, I want to know if I have five cleaners, not five Freds), and if it would list "facilities" based on anything at all, like put staff buildings first, then stores, because right now it is completely random. I have at times taken to naming people/buildings based on their category, but renaming hundreds of staff and buildings just so I can count things gets unwieldy, and can't even be done in batches when you are making stores, since they are auto-hired one at a time.

I am quite happy with how larger zones work functionally when I have finished setting it up, but it is SO HARD to make sure I have the right number of vendors per store and mechanics per habitat, toilet, ATM etc, staff rooms per staff and keeper huts per habitat, since the vendors and mechanics are randomly scattered through a list of dozens of people, and the stores, ATMs, toilets, staff rooms, and keeper huts are all randomly listed together in the workzone list of dozens of facilities! I am looking at one list of facilities now, and have no idea how it decided what order to put these, it's not even sorted by what order I added the items to the list, or what order they were built in, I really have no clue. As it is, it's nearly impossible to make any changes to a zone and be confident I have everything in balance.

 

[felinora99]

I cannot overstate how much easier it would make managing larger workzones if workzone lists could sort staff in order based on their job, rather than their first names (which while nice to have, are completely irrelevant to the work zone, I want to know if I have five cleaners, not five Freds),

For this issue, I rename my workers according to their work zone So I don't have 5 Freds and 2 Thomas Keepers, but 7 "Africa east".


For the OP issue, to find my workzone quicker, I usually start with similar names for similar Zone. So if I have an African zone and an Asia one in my Zoo, I'll have a "Africa east", "Africa west" "Asia west" etc workzones for all my workers except vendors, and then I'll have "Shops entrance", "Shops Asia South" etc for my vendors.

 

[Nat1984]

Thanks everyone.
I currently split my workzones into habitats and shops groups. So for instance I would name my lion work zone ‘WZ Lions’ and it would consist of the habitat, a staff room and a keeper hut.
I group my shops by area so I would name them ‘SHOPS Africa’ and this would include all the shops in that area and a staff room. I just find the work zone list is getting ridiculously long to scroll through and I hate that there is just no order to it. My zoo is pretty big now too.
I don’t even workzone vets or mechanics and only work zone a few caretakers (north, west, east, south and central) then I have the rest free roaming. I just feel that the work zone thing needs a bit of a re-think.

 

[Lea_G]

I have three types of workzones: habitats, shop areas, and general maintenance. So there is one zone for each habitat named after the animal (habitat + keeper's hut + staff room), the one for each shop area with the vendors, the shops and the staff room. They are named after location, e.g. "Shops South America". Maintenance contains all habitats, facilities, power stations and so on and has mechanics, caretakers and security guards assigned. So they are relatively large but make sure that everything is nice and tidy. The only staff that I never assign are the vets.

 

[NZFanatic]

I usually divide my zoo into "North" and "South" and create a workzone for each for my vets, mechanics, security officers, and caretakers. This includes literally everything in that half of the zoo, every staff building, habitat, and facility. Then I create individual workzones for each habitat with a staff room and keeper hut attached. For eating areas I make that an independent workzone as well, with a staff room associated with each eating area (this is where my vendors are assigned).

Of course, I play sandbox, so my vets, mechanics, and security guards don't have nearly as much work to do (since I turn off vandalism, barrier dilapidation, and injury/illness). I don't see the point in localising caretakers since as long as there are enough staff rooms scattered around they always have enough to do.

 

[NL_Mutso]

For Franchise - I usually have 2 workzones per section.

Like Africa section (herbivores): 1 workzone for shops and 1 workzone for everything else . (1 or 2 Security is sometimes added to both - depending on layout)
Works fine for me - sometimes they share a staff room but also depends on layout, location shops and which size staff room I've added.
So a Workzone "African zone" and a Workzone "African shops".

I'd also have a Africa (carnivores) section, South America section or go with a reptiles section.

Sometimes I create an extra workzone within those if I have some issues with cleaning the habitat. Having +150 flamingoes needs some adjusting - same goes with animals, which tend to mess their habitat very quickly. I just name the workzone the same as the habitat.