Wildlife Reintroduction is horribly designed

[Strohkeks]

I have spent multiple ingame weeks trying to bring back extinct species and it makes me want to stop playing the game. I release a hundred animals and they are dead within days. The largest decrease in wild animals I have seen in my own game from one day to the next was around 1300. To even get 100 animals to release I have to do multiple bad morality choices (which is the exact opposite of what animal conservation morally is supposed to be), so that the animals reproduce quicker.
In the end I do anything but actually build my zoo while waiting for the animals to have a big enough population to release, just for the animals in the wild to hit 0 again. If I understand correctly (from a guide on this topic) the amount of new animals in the wild per animal released is: (TotalReintroducedToWild + 2) and if the wild population ever hits 0 you have to restart. To nullify a decline of 1300 animals a day you would have to release around 200 to 300 animals of a species and then around 5 to 6 animals daily.
This is an absolutely ludicrous amount of animals of one species to breed and maintain. And having to do it for almost half (?) of the species in the game makes it infinitely worse.

[Awkeye]

Hey, thanks for sharing your feedback, I can absolutely see why that might be frustrating for you. I've passed your thoughts on.

If you have any ideas of what kind of solution in terms of changing the numbers or the system you think would work for you I'd be happy to pass that on as well.

[Strohkeks]

Thanks for the reply. Its nice to know that even discussions without any tracktion get looked at.

The best ideas I was able to come up with are these: Lower the maximum decrease of animals in the wild, especially for extinct ones, by at least half (so from 1300 to 600) if not more and to have that number get smaller the closer it gets to 0 animals in the wild.

The total number could be determined like this: Animals released at once = 20, with (TotalReintroducedToWild + 2) that makes 207 animals in the wild. Amount poached should be a percentage of that number, possibly 20%; for 207 animals that would be a decline of 41.4 animals for that day.
This number could be influenced by giving each species a different "birth percentage"; for example 5%, so for 207 animals it would be an increase of 10.35 animals; so in total a decrease of 31 animals for that specific day.

Both of those two percentages could also be increased or decreased depending on decisions made by the player, for example donating to specific organisations (like WWF where in real life they do stuff like training anti-poaching patrols, campaign against the illegal wildlife trade and help local communities to not need to resort to poaching to sustain themselfes), or to give the player the decision to fund poachers to be able to sell stuff like ivory or pelts in their park or maybe offer an "exclusive experience" to guests, where they sell tickets to go on hunting tours or smth similar.

This way the mechanic of wildlife reintrodution could be used by both morally good and bad players, where you could either bring back extinct in the wild animals or eradicate the populations of animals in the wild for your own gain.

[Shenai]

The best way I've found to reintroduce species successfully (I've done almost all of my own), is to do it late game, when you don't have to worry too much about your zoo.

The upside is that you can let the animals breed naturally until you have big populations while you do other things until it's time to reintroduce.

Then you start with a big initial population (at least 100+), especially for the bigger and slower reproducing animals (I've yet to do elephants, but my giraffes are at least concern now, for example) and then as you said, keep releasing enough animals to counteract the rate of decline each day. You should still have a sizable breeding stock in your zoo (e.g. I've released zebras when I had ~230, kept 100 in the zoo). Every few days the number of animals you need to counteract the rate of decline goes down, because of the formula you cited.

What has helped me massively is to sort of do it one species at a time, at least for the ones that need a lot of space and have long pregnancies, until they are back to a yellow or green status. I've also used the cloning facilities to supplement the breeding at times, but this works best for the animals with short pregnancies/fast cloning times.

The biggest asset is to have a lot of nurseries. There is a research node that shortens pregnancies, so even at neutral 2 days nursing times it'll only take you 4 days to have a new animal to release, even if the natural pregnancy would be longer than that. If you have four rooms pers nursery and cloning facility, that also helps.

This also saves on space, as animals in the nurseries don't count against their enclosure's space availability. (for my zoo as an example at 14 nurseries x 4 rooms that's 112 giraffes in the nurseries and max. average 28 babies a day (less in reality because a pregnancy isn't guaranteed)) (plus another ~100 in enclosures)

What I've found is that each species has a unique rate of decline, these seem to be different between players. 1000+ is not unusual, unfortunately, but eventually releasing 2-3 animals a day lets you counter it. Some rates of decline never change, some become gradually less, some even flip to positive rates of increase. But for me at least, the most common pattern was a constant unchanging rate of decline.

You can also check the shelter if they have the species you need, it doesn't help much but it's cheap. And you should release immature babies (and elderly) first as they won't contribute to the breeding. I've also found it more successful to keep more female animals of a species than male, and of course, never release a pregnant female. (I've had ratios of 3:7, 2:5, etc.)

The worst I've encountered in my own game is orangutans with a rate of daily decline of almost 8000... so I won't attempt that again before having something around 500 animals in my zoo... that one... is nuts.

Overall I agree that this is not a particularly fun mechanic, especially as there aren't any tasks or rewards tied to it and it's not at all obvious what's going on or what needs to be done. And not being able to know the rate of decline of a species ahead of time also hurts, e.g. I released 100+ orangutans only for all of them to be dead in the wild the next day. Doesn't exactly feel like a morally good action.

[Awkeye]

Thanks both for your really detailed feedback, it's very much appreciated. I'll get it all over to the team.