Curse of the Monorail

[Slothman]

So my zoo has a few issues, but I feel most of them currently stem from this.

My zoo is starting to take up a respectable amount of space (at least that's what my tax bill tells me). People, being lazy as hell, didn't feel like walking down to see the lions, hyena's and other cool stuff I've got down there.

So I've build a lovely monorail (and suspended gondola) that have a few stations that will feed people down into the deeper areas. However, it's not working. The queue's at the front area, are huge, people are actually losing happiness and leaving (and getting refunds) because of it. I've got as many cars running as it'll take, and it's fairly high speed. The main trouble, is that although that line is massive, there's no line at the other ends, so the carts just backlog at the other stations waiting for someone to get in, only, there's nobody there hence me putting this thing together in the first place. Eventually an empty cart will move on down the line, but the people have been waiting so long to get off, that they're miserable as sin and so just turn around and go straight home, hello refunds.

I'm trying to save money up to refurb the whole entry way, take away basically all the habitats and exhibits that are closeby and move them in, to give even more incentive for people to get a move on. Will include some images a bit later when I can, but from what I've given so far, any ideas?

(also hating this negative impact from staff facilities. I personally like seeing them when I go to a zoo, so I wish they'd nerf it).

[Septumplastik]

You can set min and max waiting times and more when you select the ride and then the individual stations. There is a setting to not clog the station for example. Takes some trying out to find a good setup

[BcBlizzard]

The toggle at the bottom of the screen where you choose wait times etc tells the cars to not block cars that arrive behind it. On the stations where you have no lineups try using that toggle and 'Any' load and disregard the two wait times settings.

I've also noticed sometimes where there is a long line of waiting customers sometimes the monorail glitches and several empty cars depart before finally the next group gets on...this adds to the congestion. I assume this is a bug and not the settings.

[Slothman]

Had no idea that was even there. Oops. I've switched it on to all stations, and suddenly a HUGE spike in refunds lol. Hoping that's a temporary thing until this starts to balance back out again.

[Slothman]

Also regarding the negative staff facility impact, to highlight how annoying it is... I even buried one underground. Literally buried it, you could not see it or even reach it from the surface. Still had the debuff on the people walking over it.

How are you guys keeping a good balance on power and water supply but keeping things out of sight?

[Septumplastik]

I try to have guests on one side and facilities on the other side of a habitat, or at least move them away from the guest paths. Basically staff has their own network most of the time with small clusters of facilties.

[mossaddiction]

Its not keeping them out of sight it the area click on your radar at the left bottom of the screen then click on negative impact on guests it will show up in red.

[Moving Target]

Originally posted by Slothman:

Had no idea that was even there. Oops. I've switched it on to all stations, and suddenly a HUGE spike in refunds lol. Hoping that's a temporary thing until this starts to balance back out again.

I tried experimenting in Sandbox and placed a habitat on an island with the only guest access being by boat, I had a lot of trouble with the settings. If you set a station to 'do not block' then the car at the front will leave without passengers (regardless of queue size) if there is another one about to dock so having too many cars could possibly be as bad as having too few, then again not having 'do not block' on a poorly used station will cause massive backlogs. Seems to me getting an effective transport system will take a lot of monitoring and tweaking to get it just right for the needs in your particular zoo.

[Zeesha]

Originally posted by Slothman:

Also regarding the negative staff facility impact, to highlight how annoying it is... I even buried one underground. Literally buried it, you could not see it or even reach it from the surface. Still had the debuff on the people walking over it.

How are you guys keeping a good balance on power and water supply but keeping things out of sight?

Water supply is super easy. All the tank has to do is *barely* touch the edge of any water supply and whamo. It cleans the WHOLE thing. I don't use animal habitat bins or stations at all in any of my habitats. It's all natural terrain done because I just need a lil edge to touch that blue line.

Can run 3 large habitats on one fixture with a max footpath separating down the middle for guests.

Power is fairly easy as well. I use mostly windmills, but if I have a squeeze then it's solar. Cause guests don't complain about solar power at all.

Can put one right next to their pretty classic bench. That's the only plus to solar. If you have flat roof vendors and room for a staff foot path up. Heck stick it on top of the vendors. You can make some pretty walls around solar but don't cover them or they stop working.

[Slothman]

Managed to shift all the staff stuff out the way. I knew it wasn't line of sight and was that red ring of doom, just annoys me that the red ring can pass through solid objects/not be obscured.

I'm still tanking money. Might need to let a few staff go, and crank up the ticket price for those rides.

[Blackpot]

I finally managed to connect everything but now nobody wanna use it and i slowly bankrupt