Idiot keepers wandering instead of feeding the animals

[Sonja]

So I have a huge Savannah habitat set up with all kinds of animals - problem is, they're now all starving. Cause most of my keepers will instead of just entering the habitat, just wander between the habitat gate and the Keeper Hut. Also, when I had just hired new ones, they seemed to wander across the park towards a habitat which isn't even close to their workzone?? In their thoughts they say "I can't get to my work zone", but it should be fine??

The Savannah Habitat is the only one in their workzone, including two large Keeper Huts and a large Staff Room with the rec room perk. The habitat gate isn't blocked in anyway, I even tried moving it to another location, and tried deleting the workzone and creating a new one. The feeding points are also right across the habitat gate so not miles away.

[Kajsa_Kavat]

Please read this:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/703080/discussions/0/1637549649105382403/

How many and what animals are in the habitat?

[Sonja]

Originally posted by Hlaine:

Please read this:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/703080/discussions/0/1637549649105382403/

How many and what animals are in the habitat?

I pretty much used to have all Savannah animals, right now there are 9 species left from elephants to giraffes to zebras and ostriches. They all have multiple of the right feeding stations mostly close to the habitat gate but some scattered around the habitat as well. Some of my keepers are set on only feeding the animals as the scenario is in a bit of a crisis right now, with them all starving. I also did notice just now that one or two of the feeding stations were filled, so at least some of the keepers are efficient. Yet most don't even seem to enter the habitat, aimlessly moving between the habitat gate and the Keeper huts, while complaining that they can't reach the work zone.

[DementedGnome]

Why can't they reach the work zone? Is the habitat in the work zone?

[Banisha]

Read the CHECKLIST here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1906953798

[Sonja]

Originally posted by DementedGnome:

Why can't they reach the work zone? Is the habitat in the work zone?

Yes it is, and the path is connected to it. They mostly seem to be working now tho, it seems like there would've been one keeper trying to feed everything at the same time denying the others from doing their job? I'm really not sure and hoping that it will keep working perfectly.

[Sonja]

Nevermind, it isn't fixed at all - the problem is that one keeper will be selected to feed all animals, but will be cleaning before doing that, effectively letting the animals starve. They just keep cleaning even though I deselected the 'Clean Habitat' option hoping they'd go and feed the animals, and can't cancel the 'Call Keeper' option on the feeding stations in the hope to call a new Keeper

Edit: Firing and rehiring seemed to cancel their auctions, yet there's a fine to that.

[DementedGnome]

how many keepers do you have? If their workload is red, you might need more.

[Sonja]

Originally posted by DementedGnome:

how many keepers do you have? If their workload is red, you might need more.

There are 14 on that single Habitat and their workload is fine. The Staff Room and Keeper Hut are right outside the Habitat Gate and only for them to use

[MrHappy]

The only time I have ever had a keeper confusion problem is with a savannah habitat. Inline some unlucky people my game runs perfectly. Except for that. Hand with 2 species are fine. 3, fine. All savannah animals. Forget it.

Must say since the new patch my game is even smoother. I definitely think the issue will be too many species in one hab. Even though you’d think it should be ok.

[Krall]

No wonder they aren’t working well for you, you keep calling them idiots!

14 keepers for one habitat is asking for AI trouble. Do they even have enough staff rooms and keeper huts near by? If not they’re going all over the map looking for them.

Do you have it setup as a work zone?
Are there enough feeders?
Too many feeder enrichment items?
Can the keepers easily get to the feeder items?
Is your staff trained up?

[Sonja]

Originally posted by MrHappy:

The only time I have ever had a keeper confusion problem is with a savannah habitat. Inline some unlucky people my game runs perfectly. Except for that. Hand with 2 species are fine. 3, fine. All savannah animals. Forget it.

Must say since the new patch my game is even smoother. I definitely think the issue will be too many species in one hab. Even though you’d think it should be ok.

Yeah, you might be right. I never had any problems with them before moving them to a new habitat tho, and the first was right across the entrance with no staff path leading to the staff facilities. It did seem to work better at some point tho, after most of my animals died out, and even after I replaced them. Not sure what changed to make it easier for them tho..
It also seems to work a bit smoother without the animals that require a special feeding station, like the ostriches and giraffes. Maybe I'll be moving those in an different enclosure if it happens again..

[Sonja]

Originally posted by Krall:

No wonder they aren’t working well for you, you keep calling them idiots!

14 keepers for one habitat is asking for AI trouble. Do they even have enough staff rooms and keeper huts near by? If not they’re going all over the map looking for them.

Do you have it setup as a work zone?
Are there enough feeders?
Too many feeder enrichment items?
Can the keepers easily get to the feeder items?
Is your staff trained up?

Hiring 14 keepers was perhaps a little panicky for me. Excuse me for being a bit stressed / annoyed with this game and it's many issues tho, but I guess the game is still a new release.
Anyway, they have a staff area right across the Habitat Gate with two large Keeper Huts and two Staff Rooms (a large and a small one), each with the Rec Room perk. Most of the Food Stations are right on the other side of the Habitat Gate, some are a little further but never too far or blocked by water or any of the hills I've build. I'd admit that I have quite a bit Feeding Enrichment items laying around the same space I have the normal Feeding Stations, but should that be an issue? Food is food, right?
When I first created this enclosure, I had 4 Keepers who were trained up to 3 - 4, I believe? After I freaked out and started hiring more / firing them and rehiring them, I stopped training them. I've since started training the ones again that seem to be actually working.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Sonja:

Nevermind, it isn't fixed at all - the problem is that one keeper will be selected to feed all animals, but will be cleaning before doing that, effectively letting the animals starve. They just keep cleaning even though I deselected the 'Clean Habitat' option hoping they'd go and feed the animals, and can't cancel the 'Call Keeper' option on the feeding stations in the hope to call a new Keeper

Edit: Firing and rehiring seemed to cancel their auctions, yet there's a fine to that.

Since it's so big, you may want to try assigning some staff in the zone to only cleaning and others to only feeding. You can do this by clicking each staffer and navigating to one of the tabs on their info panel, if I remember correctly. It might help with the issue of keepers going in to do one job and getting preoccupied with another.

[Krall]

Originally posted by Sonja:

Originally posted by Krall:

No wonder they aren’t working well for you, you keep calling them idiots!

14 keepers for one habitat is asking for AI trouble. Do they even have enough staff rooms and keeper huts near by? If not they’re going all over the map looking for them.

Do you have it setup as a work zone?
Are there enough feeders?
Too many feeder enrichment items?
Can the keepers easily get to the feeder items?
Is your staff trained up?

Hiring 14 keepers was perhaps a little panicky for me. Excuse me for being a bit stressed / annoyed with this game and it's many issues tho, but I guess the game is still a new release.
Anyway, they have a staff area right across the Habitat Gate with two large Keeper Huts and two Staff Rooms (a large and a small one), each with the Rec Room perk. Most of the Food Stations are right on the other side of the Habitat Gate, some are a little further but never too far or blocked by water or any of the hills I've build. I'd admit that I have quite a bit Feeding Enrichment items laying around the same space I have the normal Feeding Stations, but should that be an issue? Food is food, right?
When I first created this enclosure, I had 4 Keepers who were trained up to 3 - 4, I believe? After I freaked out and started hiring more / firing them and rehiring them, I stopped training them. I've since started training the ones again that seem to be actually working.

Trust me I know it can be frustrating. I had 8 well bred Japanese Macaque die instantaneously before I could react in franchise mode. If that wasn't bad enough after I got them going again it happened a 2nd time. The reason? I had altered some terrain which made the trays unreachable to the keeper and the enrichment toys were knocked out of 'bounds' by the monkeys which also made it impossible for the keepers to reach. Sadly while the game will get you errors for everything you don't want to hear about it doesn't give any for foodstuffs out of reach.

As far as I know you can only have 1 keeper do 1 function in a habitat. So 14 probably isn't working in your favor. Also, those buildings only hold so many keepers so the rest will be looking for something else to do.

The enrichment items for whatever reason get filled first. The trays are last and only if the animals are hungry. The enrichment items don't hold a lot of food and as I've said they can get lodged someplace a keeper can't reach.

This is really an excellent post about feeding and keepers:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/keepers-still-not-feeding-animals.532662/
Specifically the ones by Jaggid Edje

I'm not sure how big your habitat is, but I have mixed African animals with something like 45 animals in it and 2 keepers with their buildings inside of it. 1 cleans and 1 feeds. The only issue I run into is all the babies they have keep generating the not enough space problem.

[The Former]

@Krall, you may know this and have just not realized what was happening quick enough, but if such a thing happens again, pop all the macaques in quarantine. They get a free meal in there, which gives you time to sort out any feeder or pathing issues.