Planet Zoo

Planet Zoo

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Koi Plaza
   
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23 Oct, 2021 @ 10:12am
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Koi Plaza

Description
Plaza with fish tank suitable for mod fish. Also contains 2 food shops, 2 drink shops, 2 gift shops, 1 info station, 1 toilet block, and facilities (fish info board, seating, bins, conservation boards, vista points etc.) Entrance to the fish habitat is in the Japanese tea house on the bamboo hill. Place glass around the fish tank, and an underwater tunnel connects this staff building to the tank. Building is fully lit.

This habitat would work really well in a tropical or desert zoo. Plantings suggest warm weather, but don't look too tropical, so this might even be alright in a temperate zoo. This would work well as a zoo entrance or as something placed near a zoo entrance, though I will note that I have had some traffic issues on the stairs with the koi tank, so you might want to make sure that staircase doesn't direct guests to anything particularly noteworthy or you might get traffic jams.

Placing the habitat: there is a plaster piece labeled "plaster just above ground" that shows you where the ground level for this habitat ought to be. The plaster should be just barely above the surface of the ground.

Tips for pathing: The upper deck and stairs are all on the grid of the hovering plaster piece labeled "deck path grid". Ground-level paths are all on the grid labeled "restroom path grid." I recommend pathing the upper deck and stairs before starting on the ground or on filling the fish tank.
For the stairs around the fish tank, place 1 set of regular-length stairs, then go into the settings and switch the "slope length" setting to 2m and place the bottom segment of the stairs. This will get you to the "underwater viewing" section for the tank. Path this section, but leave the short ramps until after you've pathed the ground.
For the large cascading stairs, the top level of steps are regular 4m length steps. This will get you down to the landing in the middle. To create the lower level of steps you will have to go into the "slope length" settings and set it to 3m. This will get you to ground level.
Leave the large ramp down to the toilet block until after the ground is pathed.
Pathing the ground area is fairly easy. Use the "restroom path grid" as the grid for this. Note that there are a few places where the path may need to go underneath a gardens for the best look, but I've placed barriers in those places so guests can't walk through the walls.
Once you have the ground level pathed you should be able to connect both of your main staircases to the ground-level plaza fairly automatically.
I'm not sure how precisely you'll be able to path the long slope. I originally built this slope by setting "path length" to 2m then using the automatic slope. The place where the path turns should be flat, and then you should be able to automatically connect that to the ground using a 2m length path. Good luck with this!

Tips for Habitat Barriers: The first thing to do is to place the glass walls of the fish tank. This will be fiddly, but it definitely should work. Overall, the glass wall on the top is the most crucial part to get right. The glass should all rest on top of the entrance to the underwater tunnel. I suggest using a short barrier length (ex: 2m) to build the barrier here. It may also make it easier to path the sides of the tank if you use a short barrier. A long barrier along the front should work fine. Start with high walls and lower them once the tank is filled. I have had problems with the right wall of the tank giving me a "disrupts water placement" error when I try to lower that wall. If this happens to you, just empty the tank, lower the right wall so it's just below the plaster barrier, then try re-filling the tank and it should work.
After you have the tank filled, place the habitat gate. The gate to the habitat is in the Japanese tea house building to the left of the tank. Connect that gate to an invisible boundary which surrounds both the tea house and the fish tank, as well as the tunnel between the two. To connect the habitat gate to a path, I suggest following the discolored path in the terrain with a "natural" path (though that's your choice!). I advise against using "flatten terrain" or anything, since this could mess with the Koi tank.

A few disclaimers: This habitat is sort of buggy. Guests seem to think they can see the fish through the ground sometimes. I've set up view points on the tank, and this has made it somewhat better, but guest behavior is still strange. I've also had issues with the fish's "social" meter while they pass through the tunnel. About half the time, when a fish recalculates "space" while inside the tunnel, it will think it has no water to swim in, even though it is swimming and will continue to swim through the tunnel just fine. Usually this resolves as soon as they leave the underwater tunnel, but sometimes it doesn't. If you want to have this habitat in your zoo with real mod fish in it, I suggest doing it in a sandbox zoo where you can turn of "space" requirements or else simply not stocking it with live fish and pretending. I haven't had any issues with fish phasing through walls or anything, just with their calculation of how much space they have.