Alternative Entrance Problem in Franchise Mode

[☾ mino ☽]

I started a zoo in franchise mode and set my own entrance because I didn't like the position of the first entrance. I disabled the guest spawners at the first entrance so that the guests only come through the other entrance. Now the problem: My zoo keepers keep respawning at the first entrance and can no longer enter the zoo. What could be the reason? How can I delete or move the first input? I hope someone can help me.

[Jaggid Edje]

You need to make sure the original entrance still has some kind of connection to your zoo path network, unfortunately, because staff may still respawn there when they get 'despawned' due to being stuck and or other pathing errors.
You can minimize this by finding where staff is getting despawned and 'correcting' whatever issue is causing it, but there's no real way to stop it from happening entirely.

[Varick]

All as Jaggid Edje said. Just have a path that only the staff can use leading to the original entrance. It needs to be a path only staff can use since, as you may know, the guests can still use a disabled spawner to leave a zoo.

[☾ mino ☽]

Thank you for your answers. Too bad there is no other solution as the actual zoo is very far from the first entrance.

[grampers62]

Actually, stuck guests can get respawned at that old entrance as well. Staff path from it might not work in all situations.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by grampers62:

Actually, stuck guests can get respawned at that old entrance as well. Staff path from it might not work in all situations.

I'm not sure what the game code logic is that decides what entrance to respawn stuck visitors at, but it always deprioritizes old, defunct zoo entrances in my game after the new entrance(s) have been up and running for a while. I have never had visitors spawn at the original, out-of-the way zoo entrance once I have it shut down and a bit of time has passed.

I suspect it either is whatever entrance is "closest" or it won't respawn them at entrances where you have closed the spawners. Regardless, imo it's safe to not worry about giving visitors path access to it.

If you want to hedge your bets, you can just lay a normal path but then use one of the kerb barriers to block it so that if visitors do respawn there, they can get out, but no new visitors will go that way because they won't go passed those barriers if there's nothing there to attract them.

[grampers62]

It seems that entrances are read from the northwest corner left to right in one meter increments one row at a time. So if the old entrance is on the north side it will normally choose that one. But like everything in PZ it sometimes just does what seems like random things.

[Varick]

Originally posted by grampers62:

Actually, stuck guests can get respawned at that old entrance as well. Staff path from it might not work in all situations.

While guests can get respawned at the the old entrance, that is not a problem because they can leave via a disabled guest spawner. A staff use only path would allow the staff to return to their jobs but prevent non despawning (is that a word? LOL) from leaving via the old entrance. At least, I think that is the way it would work.

[grampers62]

In my Beaver Holler zoo I studied that a bit. With a staff path to the old entrance as far as could be placed both staff and guests could be respawned at the old entrance. The staff would continue on normally but the guests would go into the lost animation and *seemed* not to respawn at a different entrance or leave the zoo. I really wanted to hide that old entrance entirely but just couldn't get it to work out.

[Varick]

Originally posted by grampers62:

In my Beaver Holler zoo I studied that a bit. With a staff path to the old entrance as far as could be placed both staff and guests could be respawned at the old entrance. The staff would continue on normally but the guests would go into the lost animation and *seemed* not to respawn at a different entrance or leave the zoo. I really wanted to hide that old entrance entirely but just couldn't get it to work out.

Ah, this is good information to know.

[grampers62]

I could be only partially correct on that as I only watched four guest groups.