Automated Exhibit Trading but not Habitats

[Dominian]

With this patch they finally added automated animal trading for the exhibits, which have population explosions like nothing else, but why wasn't this added for habitats aswell?

I really like the idea of franchise mode, but I become overwhelmed super quickly by having to manage the pregnancies. I know that I can disable fertility for animals individually, but then I feel that I am missing out on gaining conservation credits.

Why can't the game just let me set a target population for habitats? Instead I'm sitting there with a spreadsheet of optimal population sizes and have to keep track of all the pregnancies.

I'm still just going to play sandbox, because when I get to the point of having about ten enclosures with mixed habitations my head explodes from the trading aspect alone.

When I saw that feature being added this patch I was really excited to have this quality of life addition and then I realized that it is limited to exhibits and my excitenment was crushed.

Am I alone in this? How do you guys deal with franchise mode? Just make everything infertile?

[Snipsky]

I was wondering this too. Im bored of always manually release / sell a animal because they are fighting. specially on my jaguar habitat.

[Jaggid Edje]

I suspect this is just phase one of this feature and they are still working on it for habitats as well. It's one of the most requested features for the game since the game first released.

Now that they have the hardest part of the coding for it done, and implemented for exhibits, there's really no good reason for them not to extend it to habitats. Probably just needs more work to be release-ready.

[s_linkletter]

So where is this feature? It has been almost 4 months since this thread was posted. I just remembered why I left my peafowl stranded in that dinky little slice of land in tropical South America. Sadly, I closed that zoo and I'm not willing to spend the initial effort to make another one there, so I guess I have to deal with this situation. Too bad I can't feed the cull chicks to some predator. I have to let them grow up and then release them to the wild. The wild population around my zoos is looking pretty bad these days. LOL

[Just Kevin]

But isn't part of building and running a zoo, managing it? if it was all automated, what would be the point?

[Diemex]

Has anyone tried making a zoo of only exhibits ? Would people even bother to come ?

[moorwiesen]

People come with only exhibits. But they will never get really happy and you will not have many visitors. So if you don't mind a "not so good" zoo you can do it. But your income is only selling offspring and maybe one or two burgers being sold ;)

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Diemex:

Has anyone tried making a zoo of only exhibits ? Would people even bother to come ?

Yes, I was curious so I made a zoo where I had every single exhibit species, and no habitat animals. Not only did a lot of people come, it was VERY profitable once it was complete. Like, huge money coming in. And @moorwiesen is mistaken, the visitors were all very, very happy and satisfied.
I did it in franchise mode, so all exhibit offspring were being sold for cash. But shops, food, drink, donations, and entrance ticket were also all a substantial amount of income as well.

The point of it was to satisfy my curiousity, but also as a profit generator to serve as my "Franchise research zoo". Which basically serves the purpose of doing all research for any new DLC released for my franchise. The zoo, therefore, now has some habitats (from the last DLC released). As new DLC's come out, I'll repurpose those habitats for the new animals requiring research.
The base zoo, without habitats, being hugely profitable was nice, because I can keep a bunch of 5-star trained vets and mechanics around without having to care about what they cost when there is no research to do.

[moorwiesen]

Interesting, as I could not get over a 3 star zoo with only exhibits and people complained that it was small and not much to see.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by moorwiesen:

Interesting, as I could not get over a 3 star zoo with only exhibits and people complained that it was small and not much to see.

How long ago did you try it? And did you place every single available exhibit animal?

Back when there were far fewer exhibit animals it would have been a much smaller zoo than it is now, assuming one owns all of the DLC (I do). I did it before butterflies were added, but after the fruit bats were in. The fruit bats were the most popular exhibit animal, by far.
Research also plays a very big role in visitor happiness with an exhibit (just like habitats) so if you tried it, but threw in the towel before getting all of the research on them all completed, that would also be a factor.

[moorwiesen]

Thats true, the bats were not a thing back then. Maybe I can give it another try with bats and butterflies. They are a people pleaser. But I do like my little fox island for starter zoos.

[s_linkletter]

Originally posted by Just Kevin:

But isn't part of building and running a zoo, managing it? if it was all automated, what would be the point?

I'd just like to have some automated help with the few species that have frequent machine-gun like firing of large quantities of babies who grow up quickly.

Yesterday I focused down on my peafowl and actually got one perfect specimen so far. But that was with check-the-newborn-chicks-set-contraceptives-where-needed-go-do-one-other-thing-now-release-to-the-wild-the-adults-who-are-on-contraceptives-do-one-other-thing-rinse-and-repeat. The large number of offspring and the short generations make selection very effective, but I'm not trying to run a peafowl breeding consortium. I'm trying to design and run a zoo. Peafowl are required for the theme. I think I'll just wait until I get a perfect pair, and then close out the population like I did with the warthogs. I have half-a-dozen perfect warthogs in storage and an empty pen in the zoo that requires them.

Even an option to just send newly matured adults to the trade depot would help. I could sort them out there, although heaven knows how I'll make room. It would help people breeding cats and bears, too, so their breeding stock doesn't start fights every time the cubs grow up. The alternative is to isolate the un-weaned cubs which seems cruel to me, but I did it sometimes during the Siberian Tiger challenge a couple of years ago. I got my avatar sweater, too. It features a Siberian Tiger with a unicorn horn and butterfly wings. Sweet.

[moorwiesen]

Originally posted by s_linkletter:

Originally posted by Just Kevin:

But isn't part of building and running a zoo, managing it? if it was all automated, what would be the point?

I'd just like to have some automated help with the few species that have frequent machine-gun like firing of large quantities of babies who grow up quickly.

Yesterday I focused down on my peafowl and actually got one perfect specimen so far. But that was with check-the-newborn-chicks-set-contraceptives-where-needed-go-do-one-other-thing-now-release-to-the-wild-the-adults-who-are-on-contraceptives-do-one-other-thing-rinse-and-repeat. The large number of offspring and the short generations make selection very effective, but I'm not trying to run a peafowl breeding consortium. I'm trying to design and run a zoo. Peafowl are required for the theme. I think I'll just wait until I get a perfect pair, and then close out the population like I did with the warthogs. I have half-a-dozen perfect warthogs in storage and an empty pen in the zoo that requires them.

Even an option to just send newly matured adults to the trade depot would help. I could sort them out there, although heaven knows how I'll make room. It would help people breeding cats and bears, too, so their breeding stock doesn't start fights every time the cubs grow up. The alternative is to isolate the un-weaned cubs which seems cruel to me, but I did it sometimes during the Siberian Tiger challenge a couple of years ago. I got my avatar sweater, too. It features a Siberian Tiger with a unicorn horn and butterfly wings. Sweet.

I totally agree on the "set newly adults into trade center" part. Most of my cats get into fighting the second I get the alert for the offspring to be adult. And yes, in a small zoo the alert comes in time so you have around 1 or 2 month before they are adult. But in a big zoo or a lot of butterflies, the alert comes so delayed, some are already half a year over adulthood and of course injured. It is very exhausting and I usually put all offspring into different habitats, just to prevent them from fighting their parents. So yes, if not a automated sell and trade option, at least give me the "store away" part.

[s_linkletter]

Originally posted by moorwiesen:

I totally agree on the "set newly adults into trade center" part. Most of my cats get into fighting the second I get the alert for the offspring to be adult. And yes, in a small zoo the alert comes in time so you have around 1 or 2 month before they are adult. But in a big zoo or a lot of butterflies, the alert comes so delayed, some are already half a year over adulthood and of course injured. It is very exhausting and I usually put all offspring into different habitats, just to prevent them from fighting their parents. So yes, if not a automated sell and trade option, at least give me the "store away" part.

I had a weird thing happening to me a few days ago. I was building a zoo that had a dozen or so cages of different types of bears breeding. The lag was so bad that I would go to the cage where there was supposed to be fighting, and there was no fight visible because the matured offspring was not visible. I had to box the parent and then the offspring appeared on my screen, racing towards the box. That was in addition to other offspring that looked immature but were young adult in their name, but I get that fairly often. It was the invisibility that was new. It only happened that one day, and there were frequent disconnects that day as well.

[Just Kevin]

What would be handy is being able to sell the offspring before they become adults. Real zoos often do. Or they give or exchange them with other zoos.

[Just Kevin]

Selling or releasing the animals is one way you make money and green points in the game.