Mechanics not doing their jobs

[ONE MAN ARMY]

I've heard other people complain about mechanics not repairing things. My mechanics repair things but only when I click on the item and call mechanic. Its really time consuming to physically have to do it when the should automatically do it. I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to work but on planet coaster mechanics repaired things with out being told to. I also noticed that changing the maintenance schedule from yearly to monthly doesn't seem to make a difference on how often things break down. I bought this game to build a zoo not to play mechanic simulator. So will mechanics repair things on their own or is this dumb game designed so they won't repair a broken down item with out you clicking call mechanic?

[Kajsa_Kavat]

Originally posted by ONE MAN ARMY:

So will mechanics repair things on their own?

Yes, you're doing something wrong.

[Beowind]

I have the same problem: in bigger zoos I have to click all five minutes a lot of power plants to repair. The enclosures are repaired well the most time, but this wind + sun power plants I have to click-repair by myself

[XrystalBelle]

Mechanics have a priority system in place and even though you may have told them to ignore facilities so that they can concetrate on vandalism they will rush off and fix an urgent case. Whether it is just that one time when they are first hired I don't know.

Vandalism repairs ( benches, bins, viewers ) seem to be at the bottom of their list. If they never seem to repair them it may be that they have too much work on higher priority stuff to get time to do the lower priority repairs. Consider hiring additional staff, to help distribute the workload.

Priority seems to be ..
Habitat
Power
Water
Station
Vandalism

I have seen my mechanics do all of these but it could be that I have an abundance of staff to give them the opportunity, or a good distribution of them around the zoo.

Size of the zoo seems to affect alot of things. I had my zoo managing quite well with a good profit, clean and working .. and then after a certain expansion level/time and things went to pot. So I guess I ran out of money/staff etc.

[ONE MAN ARMY]

My mechanics don't seem to do anything on their own and I have a tone of them. The most I can afford and they are in special work zones. The don't seem to fix habitats, or power and water without me sending them there.

[XrystalBelle]

Do you have them all researching or just use a few of them for research purposes ? I have noticed that can cause delays. I haven't tried turning off research on the ones I want to concentrate on repairs yet but I suspect that will help big times as turning off research will help you see who not to put on research.

[XrystalBelle]

But I do notice that the solar panels seem to break down almost constantly ( once the zoo has expanded enough to require more than a handful of them), so maybe once you start the shift to solar panels you may have increase the mechanic situation so that there is a better ratio of repairable items to mechanics allocated to repair them.

[MrHappy]

Following many problems before patch 1.1.4 my staff are now doing well and earning their money. It seems strange to me that the same game on different computers would react in this way. You'd expect graphics glitches or crashing but for fundamental game routines to work or not work or for features in the gameplay to work differently seems impossible.

Have you been into your staff list and checked out how they're feeling? I have noticed that they will miss stuff out if there isn't enough time to do it due to low numbers of colleagues.

[ONE MAN ARMY]

Yeah I've heard alot of weird things people have problems with but not everyone has the same problem. No I'm not researching I researched everything In the beginning. Lol meet little trick put 1 exhibit by the main path at the start of your zoo and put a decent animal in and just farm without expanding, by the time you research everything you'll have atleast half a million to build your zoo and no need to waste time researching so in theory your mechanics could do their job?

[Tonkan]

I have the same problem with mech, my solar plants in my big zoo are always broken. Usually when I got nortification of a broken plant I click a mechanic and manually drop it just beside the power plant to get it fixed sooner.

One thing I havent tried yes is to have a few mech assigned only to power plants. Could work.

[ONE MAN ARMY]

I reworked my zones to see of that helps. I was running 1 mechanic/2 habitats. Near by power and water were added to the zones and alot of my exhibits use null barriers so nothing to fix (I use alot of building pieces and stone saves on broken barrier issues when mechanics don't do their job) my mechanics are ticked to focus on barriers and facilities only and that didn't seem to help. I didn't know if there's another hidden management tool. Alot of those in this game and management feels clunky but that's by design I think. Just frustrating.

[XrystalBelle]

I usually have 1 mechanic per habitat and its immediate surrounding area. I also have a mechanic in a plaza shopping area if I have one I used to have a route set up that just had say power facilities and that helped for a while .. until the zoo was too big to make the walking between power facilities not worth the specialization.

After looking at one of the tundra campaigns I realised the benefit from small areas, or two bigger areas with an overlap. But yes, once I expand a certain level I am wondering if the power/repair/trash needs increase at a different rate to the expansion to explain the sudden workload pressures the mechanics and cleaners get put under. One of those hidden management things :)

[ONE MAN ARMY]

Hiring more mechanics is so expensive sometimes lol right now I cut my areas in half so 1 mechanic per habitat, unless the habitat is a null barrier then I have them as kind of a floater and cover a couple areas. I'll see how that works. Its just that before when my zoo was small like 1 or 2 habitats I still had to manually send my mechanics to fix things. I guess there's another thing do you get the notification the 2nd the power goes down or does it give the mechanic I min to try an make it there? Maybe I'm routing them as soon as it goes offline and I don't need to. Then again if they were doing the monthly maintenance schedule it wouldn't be breaking down. Another thing I'm wondering is with the null barrier does it still need maintenance? Can the keeper gate break down? I have the inspection set long for null exhibits but I'm wondering if I can set to never and have less for them to do.

[XrystalBelle]

Originally posted by ONE MAN ARMY:

Hiring more mechanics is so expensive sometimes lol right now I cut my areas in half so 1 mechanic per habitat, unless the habitat is a null barrier then I have them as kind of a floater and cover a couple areas. I'll see how that works. Its just that before when my zoo was small like 1 or 2 habitats I still had to manually send my mechanics to fix things. I guess there's another thing do you get the notification the 2nd the power goes down or does it give the mechanic I min to try an make it there? Maybe I'm routing them as soon as it goes offline and I don't need to. Then again if they were doing the monthly maintenance schedule it wouldn't be breaking down. Another thing I'm wondering is with the null barrier does it still need maintenance? Can the keeper gate break down? I have the inspection set long for null exhibits but I'm wondering if I can set to never and have less for them to do.

You get an alert when it is going to break down and then again when it has, so in theory they may have time to get there on their own, or to get there when you tell them to but before they totally break down.

I usually go over there on the first alert and see if the mechanic is already enroute. Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. I then double check the timing and make sure that it is no more than the last time the mechanic visited it.

Sometimes I can see that they never have, which should be a sign that they are too busy and didn't get to that one yet.

Which of course I didn't think of at the time rofl. So thanks for your question as it makes me think in a different way rofl.

As with the null barrier .. I have noticed that habitats that I have used a small number of regular habitat walls for seem to rarely go under 90% damage. Now whether that is because only 10% of the habitat walls are damagable or whether the mechanic is just underworked in that area and keeps on top of it I don't know. But the ones with full habitat walls and bigger animals seem to get down to 20% or lower before I realise that they haven't been repaired yet ( the tell tale broken glass when I zoom in ).

[ONE MAN ARMY]

Yea sounds about right. Lol I've put in class walls for viewing with null Barrier and works well, never seen 1 break down yet. I do however put a section of 1 way glass behind the glass wall in some cases if the animal is prone to stress n if the mechanic doesn't fix it well at least the animal doesn't get out lol kind of cheating but it works. Now to figure out power n water stations.

[XrystalBelle]

I just noticed as well on a single habitat zoo with 2 mechanics. When I set them both to research, the single power station I have further out seems to not get repaired, despite turning it down to 6 month visits. Once I call the mechanic however he comes running out of the research buildings. When I turned off research for one of them ( to help me remember who can research and who can't ) he patrolled the area as expected. Result: Have at least one mechanic per route to handle the repairs at all times ( resting aside ) and consider having a research only mechanic who will come out and repair only when you ask.