Franchise Mode Economy Broken

[LoneBro]

It may be due to the fact that I have only recently started playing the game, but I am finding Franchise mode nearly impossible to play thanks to the scarce number of animals for sale or the ungodly prices people are asking. With so little money to start with, and even fewer conservation credits, I have only managed to find two species that I have been able to put in my zoo. The animals of other species either have their prices jacked up so high I'd have to take out a second mortgage or they are borderline sterile with abysmal stats (and usually all of the same gender anyway.) I suppose I could have a few enclosures with all female animals that are all disease-ridden and likely won't last longer than a few months, but I would like not to have to spend dozens of hours mass producing warthogs just to get enough credits to have a semi-functional zoo. As a new player I really hope that the devs address this issue as an entire game mode - and a pretty cool one at that - is virtually unplayable for anyone that didn't start day one.

[Varick]

I have to disagree with you on the "virtually unplayable for anyone that didn't start day one". I started franchise rather recently and have not had any problem with it. Granted that many of the animals on the market are high price and/or have horrible stats but Frontier does add stock and from those you can breed up good animals. But then I like the breeding part of the game.
And, no, I am not putting inbreed poor stats animals on the market. And I do not have any warthogs or peahens lol.

Frankly, and this is just my thought, any one who is not into breeding is going to have a problem with franchise.
You might want to skip the warthogs and start with red lemurs - higher donations, better cc release to the wild, they breed like crazy and are rather cheap on the market.

Good luck to you - franchise can be fun :)

[canis39]

It's definitely not "virtually unplayable for anyone that didn't start day one." You just have to start small.

I just started getting serious about Franchise Mode within the past 2 weeks. I decided to focus on cash first, then Conservation Credits. I started with African Wild Dogs and Timber Wolves, bought animals for cash, put down food, drink, bathroom, and a couple of frog exhibits... and the money started rolling in. That first franchise zoo now has over $1 million.

Exhibits can be an amazing source of cash. Start with one female and one male... and they will breed like crazy. I usually keep 3 of each gender and send the rest to the trade center, where I "quick trade" them for cash.

Don't be afraid to take a loan, if you need it.

Check out PaulsLey on YouTube for some great videos.

I hope you stick with it -- it's a great game once you get past that initial feeling of being overwhelmed.

[Kajsa_Kavat]

Set up a cash only filter at the start and you'll see lots of available animals.

As mentioned African dogs are a great starter for both cash and cc. You can even kickstart a zoo with only exhibit animals.

Also Frontier puts some animals on the market every few minutes, so be sure to keep refreshing.

[austin2_tswsm]

Just a separate point here.

Animals with really poor reproduction and immunity stats might be hard to mate, however if you do get them to mate, they will invariably produce offspring with much better in both.

A quirk of the genes feature of the animals.

I started playing Planet Zoo two weeks ago, and started Franchise about 4/5 days ago.

I watched the PaulsLey video on immoral ways of generating conservation credits, and just took that on board.

I have to say thought, that Wild dogs and Wolves you only need two pairs of each in the beginning, and they can be trash animals.Two pairs helps you because you can easily breed the offspring without fear of inbreeding.
I only had dogs at the start.

And they are monogomous so only the alpha pair will mate regardless of numbers.

Start with one pair in separate habitats and as above get the basics in.

Research each animal max and then start maxing out the workshop and diseases.

I worked up to about 200k and 3 timber wolf habitats and 3 dog habitats.

Any animals you breed can be traded or released. I got to about 1000 CC and then switched to siberian tigers, and I bought Lucestic ones and just released, I quickly got up to around 2000 CC then i switched more of the timber wolf habitats into Siberian Tigers. Just be careful as they mate for life and won't take another mate until the mate dies. Even if they're traded out.

Finally i moved out the dogs, keeping a few pairs for my first "real" Franchise zoo, and moved on to West African Lions as they can have multiple females per male and can have a number of cubs every 3 years.

Im now at the point in year 56 in game where i have some really good timber wolves and dogs ready for my next zoo alongside nearly full otherwise for Siberian Tigers and Lions.

I probably have about 10000 CC in animals in the bank or more if I traded rather than released.

It takes time Franchise, but then I found the breeding system really interesting.

I almost don't want to do Sandbox as it seems pointless being able to build whatever I want, I will probably do a really nice one there but I want to suceed here first.

Just stick it out, start really small and build slowly. Make your first franchise all about generating a decent profit and CC.

[meka3715]

I think what everyone mentioned is great tips for starting out. The key is to start small and build slowly. & once you have 1 successful zoo, you can slowly grow your franchise. As far as CC is concerned, yes the market is highly inflated at times. & though I don't agree with the ethics at selling bad animals at 10000 CC, I do like that the developers give us the flexibility to set our own prices, so that we can add our own markups as we see fit. African Wild Dogs and Red Lemur (as mentioned) breed quick and you can sell them for decent amount of CC.

I usually start with Red Lemur & Ring Tail as you can put them in the same habitat together, and guests can walkthrough, which guests seem to like walkthrough habitats. Initially, I try to stay away from the animals that take the longest to age up (turtles, gharials) & animals that are expensive to feed (lions). You can slowly add these in, once you get a profitable zoo.

Also for CC, make sure to log in everyday for 100 CC points and to say hi to 5 avatars daily for 20 CC each....that's 200 CC max daily....and even if you don't play the game, login daily each day and you can easily bank 1400 CC for free by just doing the logins. Depending on what type of animal you want to go with, you should be able to get a fairly decent animal by just doing the daily logins.

It can definitely feel overwhelming when you first start. It definitely was for me. Hope you stick with it. It's a great game once things get rolling and your zoo is profitable.

[Narcslayer]

Look up PaulsLey on Youtube and watch his tutorial videos. Start very small and don't over-build stuff in the beginning. Once you get some money up SLOWLY build your zoo up. My Franchise zoo just hit 300 years old this week. It's worth over 45 million dollars and I have over 300k in CC's. I used PaulsLey starting franchise zoo video to start mine out and it worked like a charm. I cannot stress enough the importance of donations.

The way I got all the CC's is by farming cheetahs. I start a zoo, build 5 habitats, 4 for cheetahs, 1 for Gharials. Breed 4 pairs of cheetahs and the Gharials at triple speed and release everything to the wild except the best cubs. I use simple numbers 1-2-3-4 to label the cubs and the habitats they were born in so I can keep them straight, and prevent inbreeding. When the original cheetah parents have 3-4 litters of 4-5 cubs each they will get too old, release them to the wild and take your four best cheetah babies and mate them with new cheetahs off the market. Repeat this process a few times, changing the habitat and cub numbers (i.e. 5-6-7-8) each time, and in 3-4 hours you will be filthy rich in CC's and able to buy anything off the market you fancy. Even better, your cheetah operation will earn a boatload of cash, so when you get a couple million in the bank, you can delete everything off the map and have a brand new map with millions of dollars, and a trained staff to start with. Start your cheetah farm on a new map and repeat it all over again. Cheetahs breed like rabbits, and they mature quickly. They don't need anything but shelter/water/toys. Don't need trees or plants, just the right soil/grass ratio. Very cheap to get started up.

PS. The Gharials are there to draw customers....they really like those things for some reason, and you need more than one species in your zoo to make cash.

PSS. Check my screenshots for proof and examples of my breeding zoo layouts. Don't need anything fancy.

[Osmodeus]

you have to start small. i focus one type at a time. it could take several in game years till i am able to expand. breeding helps alot with getting more points. and there a few of us that sell our animals at a reasonable price. i sometimes even buy animals and keep them in the trade centre till i have enough of that animal to make a habitat.

[AnActualBalloon]

A great animal is the G turtle as they seem to pull in the guests really fast and they love them. Smallish enclosure and a walk in. They last a long time and once you have a breeding pair they have 3-5 babies. Yes they take a while to grow up but once they do they go for quite a bit of CC. If your having any issues getting some animals myself included im sure people can help you pop up some animals for you. :) I have a few animals im happy to give away even more so to someone starting out.

[CloudBird]

This may not be the most immersive or fun method but you can actually grind for conservation credits pretty easily. After watching a youtube tutorial I got to the point pretty quickly where I could get 50,000 credits in about 3 hours. All you have to do is open a new park, spend as little as possible and make up to 3 super simple cheetah enclosures. Cheetahs are really good for breeding because at 100 percent fertility a female will put out 5 cubs, and they mature at age 2.
Go onto the animal market and get any 2 cheetahs that you can, even if their genetics are complete garbage. Fast forward time, allowing them to mate and have cubs in the enclosure. The first litter of cubs should have slightly better genetics but may still be pretty bad. But when the cubs mature, release all of them to the wild but keep whichever one has the best genetics. This should get you roughly 1000 conservation credits. Using those credits, purchase a young cheetah from the market with better genetics. Trust me, you want to pay attention to good genetics because you'll get way more CC's if you release a cheetah with good genetics. So take the new cheetah and breed it with the cheetah you kept, rinse and repeat. As the cubs gradually start to have better and better genetics, you'll get more and more creds per release. A cheetah with all green genetics should get you anywhere between 500-650 credits for release.

So I have 3 super simple cheetah enclosures, and in each enclosure is an individual pair of cheetahs with all green stats. Every time they have a litter of cubs and the cubs grow up, releasing all of them yields an average of 8,000 to 10,000 conservation credits.

I know it sounds like a lot but if you just fast forward the game to keep things moving quicky, I promise you can do this in a few hours. And when you have your hands on a decent wealth of credits and some good breeding cheetahs you'll be able to do it even faster.

I have amassed a hundred thousand or so conservation credits by doing this, which means that I can pretty much buy whatever animal I want from the market at any time. Other players can be greedy bastards with the credits that they ask for, but it doesn't matter when you have a really good way of replenishing your credits.

Hope this helps someone, good luck!

[canis39]

Yeah, I would recommend cheetahs as well. I have four cheetah enclosures in my current franchise zoo; two are visible to the public and two are private.

Once you send your animals to the trade center, paying attention to breeding becomes a lot easier. You can use the "compare mates" function to see what traits your offspring are likely to have. So basically I am waiting for the youngsters to become adults and immediately moving them to the trade center.

You don't even have to "spend as little as possible" on the zoo -- I am running my current zoo pretty normally (benches and guest facilities and lighting, etc) and I'm making plenty of cash as well as the conservation credits from breeding.

(I highly recommend getting some insect exhibits, they are profit machines because they breed like crazy, and you can consistently sell the excess animals for cash. My rule is to get rid of all but 3 males and 3 females in each exhibit).

[djehmli]

One thing of note, if you are playing franchise and you log in to the Animal Trade looking for a specific animal, but never find it, check back again during off peak gaming times in your time zone. I'll check before I head to work each morning. Get my quick 100 c for logging and most of the time I can at least grab a Frontier version of a critter, if not some decent priced stuff before the crowd grabs them (or the lag starts)

[shiggies713]

at least you started with warthogs. I got some turtles and then realized 23 years in game to reach maturity is a loooong time lmao. I had pretty good success with Timber wolves, I think my 3rd generation had 3 gold breeds, they mate and age pretty quick.

[ClimaxUke]

Originally posted by LoneBro:

It may be due to the fact that I have only recently started playing the game, but I am finding Franchise mode nearly impossible to play thanks to the scarce number of animals for sale or the ungodly prices people are asking. With so little money to start with, and even fewer conservation credits, I have only managed to find two species that I have been able to put in my zoo. The animals of other species either have their prices jacked up so high I'd have to take out a second mortgage or they are borderline sterile with abysmal stats (and usually all of the same gender anyway.) I suppose I could have a few enclosures with all female animals that are all disease-ridden and likely won't last longer than a few months, but I would like not to have to spend dozens of hours mass producing warthogs just to get enough credits to have a semi-functional zoo. As a new player I really hope that the devs address this issue as an entire game mode - and a pretty cool one at that - is virtually unplayable for anyone that didn't start day one.

I agree 100% with you, this mode has become unplayable!

It's complicated to have some 1000 conservation credits!

It is necessary to have a male and a female systematically and there it is 2 times more complicated to have our first couple of a species! In reality it does not happen like that besides!

[XrystalBelle]

I have been playing this game since beta ... when 1.2 was released I started afresh and sold off all my animals at regular CC prices or cash when CC wasn't an option and close all my zoos and started over with cash bought animals and any babies I didn't *release into the wild* ( by this I meant closed down the zoo without removing them and thus didn't have them to reuse ).

I started a new zoo up when the South American DLC came out and that is close to 1mil cash despite going down as low as -400k at one point due to the freezing bug that made it unplayable. I now have an almost constantly breeding zoo of 20+ species and 4k guests donating money and I trade out at the default CC rates from warthogs to lions. I sell all but 3 x 100 stat animals, and those are usually males with a few females if I have too many to use in the next set of breeding cycles.

Economy is only as good as people buying.. if no-one buys the overpriced animals ( or if they feel it is too overpriced ) then they will stop being priced as such. Remember that the trading window is no more than 1 hour, so it's simply the case of adjusting to CC or Cash and ordering by value so that the cheapest ones are near the top. Narrow to species and it will help even more.

I release if the immunity or fertility stats are 50% or less or the longevity and size are 25% or less. Otherwise I trade at the default price ( apart from the one I just tested to show the price can be adjusted if you felt the default price was too low). Obviously based on the high number of players at any one time, there are obviously a percentage that are *in it* for the money like maybe some unscrupulous zoos that may have been out there in the real world at one time or another.

I have already put in a suggestion and an example on the official forums on how they can adjust the trading system to both fix the failure of not being able to trade with friends ( partner zoos ) rather than just putting it out there for anyone to buy and to potentially expand the storage limitation there appears to be at the system level. So you never know, they may see something that they can implement to cut back on the number of complaints they see or hear of.

[XrystalBelle]

Also, due to the time frame for the sales .. it might be that you have been playing when no-one selling at reasonable prices for the animals you want are selling. If I play for a few hours I will have sold on the market almost 100 animals ( although I haven't counted myself ) at regular prices. Some never sell, so I put them back or have to release due to storage space. Others go quickly giving me space for the next set of animals to be sold/stored. I have almost permanently got 40+ in storage and only sell 10 animals or so at a time.