Zones

[mysticmorgana]

Is there a guide on how zones work and how to set them up and use them properly? I'm fairly new to the game.. I've completed Sunnyside, but that's it. I'd love some pointers on hiring staff and how to get them to take care of the fish and tanks properly.

[Power of Seven]

I can give you advice.

* When you hire staff, you can wave your pointer over each skill (like Feeding, Fixing, etc.) and take a look at the actual ability score. Like a RPG, it's possible for workers to actually get negative modifiers to skills meaning that they work slower.
If you're wondering what the most important skill to worry about is, it's absolutely Feeding. You absolutely want good characters in Feeding if you're expecting to make it long-term.

* Outside of the skills, there's the little chart that shows their actual stats that contribute to their skills. At first I thought these were pointless, but they are very useful. The most important statistic is Fitness. If you wave your pointer over the bar graph, it'll show you their exact movement speed. The slowest characters run at about 60% normal speed (normal speed - how fast the visitors move in your aquarium).

Slow speed characters are a risk because in this game your staff has to run a lot to get any work done. Sometimes the game makes you choose between a high-skill but slower character versus a low-skill but very fast character. Both can be good depending on what you're trying to do.

* Zoning works differently from how you expect. First of all, workers can absolutely wander outside of their zoned work areas. However, they will NOT do any job outside of their assigned areas, and they will run back to their zone as soon as a task in that area shows up.

Zoning is designed to make sure low-skilled characters do not take high-skill jobs, or vice versa. If you don't have zoning then whoever is closest to a task will immediately volunteer and try doing it, even if there's a higher skilled person with nothing to do standing across the room.

[McCracken]

As far as I can tell, Zones are only good for breaking your employees. I've been really enjoying this game, but the employees are causing me to fail Level 4 every time.

At the start of the game you have two employees, both skilled in Feeding and Fixing. I set up separate zones in each of the starting 'backstage' areas so that the employees can focus on just their assigned tanks and not run back and forth across the aquarium. However, the employees will immediately forget how to perform one of their two desginated tasks. Even if I prioritize the task that they're not doing (e.g. Fixing over Feeding), they'll just feed and sit there, watching the fish die.

I've tried other variations on this, including not using zones at all. In the end, there will always be a tank that just gets ignored for a particular task - whether it's all the employees refusing to fix a filter or feed the animals inside of it. I always place food and a repair station directly adjacent to the tanks and accessible, but that doesn't seem to matter. I've even gone 'full evil' and simply locked my employees in a room with no exit, but they still will not perform the task.

I'd be more than happy to share a few save files with the Dev to see if he can't figure out what's going on, but as it stands the Zone system is causing more harm than good. It's really frustrating because otherwise this is a really enjoyable title.

[Power of Seven]

Originally posted by awgroobes:

I've tried other variations on this, including not using zones at all. In the end, there will always be a tank that just gets ignored for a particular task - whether it's all the employees refusing to fix a filter or feed the animals inside of it. I always place food and a repair station directly adjacent to the tanks and accessible, but that doesn't seem to matter. I've even gone 'full evil' and simply locked my employees in a room with no exit, but they still will not perform the task.

So if you look at your Staff task menu, it says "Idle" on the employee even though there's a broken machine? If that's the case, then you definitely have a bugged game.

What I've seen is that employees will get distracted and do jobs of any kind that's in their zone. Or if they aren't zoned, they will run from one end to the aquarium to the other to do stuff, even if there's an important job standing right next to them.

Otherwise post a screen shot or video of what they are doing, because I've made it to level 7 and didn't run into problems until I started level 6 (the research facility).

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By the way, I can absolutely confirm that there are bizarre mechanics in the game. As of level 6, the Horse-Eye Jacks are the worst fish that I've seen so far. You should get them only if you're some kind of super-completionist, because they are a great way to waste your time.

You have to feed them every single day and require 36 food (herring) each and for some reason they feel like they take twice the time to feed versus other fish, and that's with skilled employees (3 points in feeding or higher). Moray eels eat the same kind of food and take forever to feed, but they require 37 food and only need to be fed once every two days.