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Parchment Background Image for RCT3 FAQ: Volitionist's RCT3 Animal Care Guide, Page 1 on FlightToAtlantis.net Please turn to Page 2

 Author: Volitionist

This article was originally written by RCT3 community member Volitionist at a time information was displayed on the internet quite differently from the way it is formatted today. Although we've added illustrations and have presented this information in FTA.net’s formatting, the text from Volitionist's article has been copied and pasted here verbatim.






It is exactly the sort of article we might ourselves have chosen to write for FTA.net had we thought of it before Volitionist did. Volitionist’s thorough analysis is of value to our community because it is factual, comprehensive, and organized in a meaningful way. It's a great article to have at hand should one want to consider adding animals to their park without scrolling through game menus to get the information they need. This article will take the mystery out of enclosure start-up, animal maintenance, animal how-and-why, safari access, and scenario requirements. For your reference throughout, our animal illustrations each show an adult male, an adult female, a baby male, and a baby female. We have also illustrated the various animal houses.






This information is a general starting point based on Volitionist’s own observations during his gameplay with Wild! We encourage you to read all Volitionist’s data and, in due course, to try most if not all of the species that come in Wild!






Throughout his article Volitionist makes reference to Wild!’s animal "trainer." We are sure he means animal keeper.






The Basics



How To Make Enclosures And Get Animals







If you're already familiar with RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 as far as game play and how things work, the "zoo" aspect will snuggle in very nicely as a feature of the game without great difficulty. Everything concerning animals is found under the "rides" icon (which is morally vexing, at least for me, but let us not dally). The actual animals can be purchased in the second to last icon, and the enclosures, viewing galleries, animal houses, and enrichment items are under the last icon. The greatest feature of all of this is its relative simplicity.







In order to setup an enclosure, simply pick an animal; the purchase window will tell you what fence is needed. When you discover this, place the fence first. Let's use horses as an example. After you have laid the wooden fence (8x8 squares or greater is a good starting size), place the correct type of house. In this case, it is the small herbivore house, though if you're not sure, you can mouse over each house's icon and figure it out. After the fence and house are down, you can feel free to purchase animals. I would recommend starting with two to six as a general rule to make sure you know what you're doing before you go crazy. After that, place viewing galleries as you like. These come in three sizes and can be placed all along the fence to any enclosure. They automatically conform to the type of fence you are assigning it to, so don't worry about that. The price and frequency of inspection for any given enclosure is automatically made uniform for every viewing gallery. Prices range from a dollar to perhaps five or six if you have a very popular enclosure, but generally two to three dollars seems fair.







In some scenarios, the animals in the purchase window are "rescued": this simply means they will arrive at your park in poor health and need attention to make sure they are well fed and cared for. There is nothing particularly special about them, and they will behave and breed like any non-rescued animal. In any case, babies always cost more than adults, but bring the "cute" factor to the enclosure and can rake in serious cash in both gallery tickets and adoption fees. Essentially, adoption fees are small amounts of cash that come in from patrons who wish to help care for a given animal. The number of adopters for a given animal only matters if you are trying to decide which animal to get rid of and are looking to maximize your profit. Animals in poor health will lose adopters if you're not careful.







Features And Problems







Animal enclosures, with a few notable exceptions, are far simpler to deal with than many other aspects of your park. They are relatively self-sustaining if you set them up properly, with enough room, housing, and trainer care for your animals. However, animals do breed and interact, which means you must pay attention to the health and safety of every animal (and guest) in your park. Below are many issues you may expect to experience in playing:







"Johnny P Is Stuck In An Enclosure!"








One problem I come across often is someone getting stuck in enclosures for no particular reason. My frustration with these apparently very dumb park goers has led me to leave them in carnivore enclosures for extended periods of time; alas, they do not get mauled. They simply act frightened until you pick them up and put them back on the road. I am not sure if it's a game glitch or something I'm doing wrong, but the only problem it causes has to do with user sanity.







"A Fence Is Broken!"








Shame on you!  This means a certain enclosure isn't inspected often enough and now you've wrecked it for everyone. But do not despair. While it is now possible for the animals of a given enclosure to escape, they may or may not. If they do before you get the fence fixed (by calling a mechanic to any of the galleries of that enclosure), you can click on the flashing dart icon on the upper right of the blue menu bar at the top of the screen. This will take you into a helicopter hunt mode in which you have to tranquillize your animals in order to get them back home. Find an animal in the large view and then right click to zoom in. The shooting is a little wacky, but not very difficult and I do not suspect it will cause you much trouble. I have never had an animal escape, so I can't tell you if peeps will get hurt, but I'd rather not know.







"They're Going To Take Connie The Chimp Away!"








When the Man threatens to confiscate your animals due to poor health, you know you've taken a wrong turn. Usually, one type of animal is adversely affected by one specific thing and it's relatively easy to fix. However, if an animal is starving but just keeps playing with other animals instead of eating, there's not much you can do besides make sure the house is stocked with food and hope the animal smartens up. Getting an animal taken away is not a big deal in the long run, but you lose the value of the animal and it doesn't look good for your park. Repeated offences get you seriously bad publicity and probably go hand in hand with the Most Neglected Animals fine.







Low Health








This score is the overall well being of your animal. It is affected by all of the other information in the chart screen for that animal and can influence the money made indirectly and directly by that animal. Also, if you plan to release animals into the wild for good publicity or for a scenario goal, you must have the animal's health to 95%, so it's good to keep them happy. If you are experiencing problems with this score, look for problems in the other areas of the chart, as I will now list.







Low Habitat








This is usually easy to fix. The enclosure is not big enough for the species you've put in, and adding a few more rows of fence will usually fix that right up, no problem. If the enclosure is already entrenched in a full park, consider swapping animals from one enclosure to the other to make everyone happy or getting rid of that species altogether if you can't care for it properly.







Hunger and Thirst








If your animal houses are stocked and not overrun with too many animals, there is not much you can do about these scores other than wait for the animal to snap out of its daze and go eat/drink. If you constantly get messages that animals are very hungry or can't feed because their houses are full, you can increase the frequency of feeding and/or add another house to the enclosure.







Social








This is easily the most complicated and frustrating aspect of animal welfare, and will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis later in this guide. Essentially, you must "guess and check" to see what makes your animal happy. Apes love dozens of friends, and pandas get mad when there are three of them, so knowing each animal's needs and being vigilant will help here. Scroll down for each animal's ideal enclosure numbers and gender ratios.







Cleanliness








There’s probably crap everywhere. If you set your texture detail low in your game settings, you may have to zoom in a bit to see it, but it's there. Some animals poop a whole lot more than others, and if such is the case, hire more animal trainers, preferably assigning one or more of them to poo-only duties (the same way you assign mechanics to fix-only duties).







Insufficient Breeding








Check the general consensus of the animals: are they happy? Healthy?  Socially all set? If the animals are annoyed, they won't want to copulate, just like humans. Use the above fixes to try and solve this and pay attention to gender ratios when doing so. Some animals will get very upset if there are too many males, and you will get no babies. It also helps to make sure you have at least one male and one non-pregnant female.







Too Much Breeding








This is particularly a problem with apes, ostriches, and horses (as well as some others). They just keep ... doing it. If you're looking to maintain a population rather than expand it, there isn't much you can do other than getting rid of all of one gender or selling the new offspring once they are born. I tend to keep track of what animals are pregnant, and before they give birth I sell them and buy a non-pregnant replacement. Sure, she will likely get pregnant, but there are no new kids, and that's what counts.