Nothing in a zoo happens without staff. Keepers clean, feed, and tend the animals, and the people doing that work have needs and limits of their own that have to be managed alongside the animals they look after.
Staff Members
Each member of staff carries a skill grade, a currently assigned task, and two needs. Selecting one opens a panel showing those values and a set of recent thoughts, which give a plain-language read on how the person feels about the job.
Attribute | What It Covers |
|---|---|
Skill grade | How capable the staff member is at the work assigned to them |
Assigned task | The job the staff member is currently carrying out |
Happiness | Morale, which Frontier ties to the facilities and support provided |
Energy | How much working capacity the staff member has left |
Thoughts | Recent plain-language comments on the job and the surroundings |
Frontier describes the management goal as supporting zookeepers and other park staff with dedicated facilities and editable working areas, and managing staff morale and training to get the best out of them.
Assigning Work
Keeper duties are assigned rather than assumed. A keeper can be set to clean habitats, feed habitats, and tend exhibits in any combination, so a small zoo can run generalists while a large one runs specialists. Individual animals can also be handled directly: the animal information panel described under Animals and Welfare carries buttons to assign a keeper, request a vet, or order a clean without going through a menu.
Working Areas and Facilities
Staff are supported by dedicated buildings and by working areas that can be edited to suit the shape of a zoo. Staff rooms can carry perks that improve the people using them. The sequel also adds open staff buildings that drop their surrounding walls so guests can see the keeper areas inside, which is covered alongside the other building options under Building and Construction.
Aquarium Work
Aquariums created a genuinely new job. Keepers put on diving suits, enter through an airlock, and clean the tank windows from inside the water. Feeding needed a new answer too, because there is no dry ground to leave food on: keepers generate free-floating feeders so fully aquatic animals are still fed even when no feeding station has been placed. Both are covered in more depth under Aquariums.
Reserves Run Lean
Wildlife Reserves are deliberately not staffed like zoos. Frontier describes a reserve as a network of entirely natural homes that runs with a minimal staff presence, with the work there centred on research equipment rather than daily animal care. See Wildlife Reserves and Research.