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So I've just started, and after two failed trial runs I'm onto a good third try using the industrial-coffee-filter method in the OP. I've got the industry zone set up great with it and trucks stay well the gently caress away. The trouble is I'm finding it really hard to now translate how on earth the rest of my city ought to connect to it, seeing as how it is the sole way into my city from the highway. Here's my town, with arrows to indicate one way streets. Notice the traffic congestion nightmare where the prefab goon zone meets the rest of my city.  What can I do to fix the mess? Or rather, how should I have built things differently to avoid this problem? If I were to make another highway connection into my city elsewhere, would trucks start pouring in through my city from it? Other general critiques of anything in the picture are also welcome. Much of this game also makes me feel like a total idiot because I really don't understand transport management systems at all. Even though I think I understand the concepts, whenever people start describing stuff in terms of 'frontage roads' etc. my eyes glaze and roll into the back of my head as my mind vacates itself. What I could really use is a much longer beginner's guide than any I can find, which keeps going past the first 10 minutes and tells me exactly what to build so I can just keep copying and copying systems until I start to understand them. As it is, things tend to go swell until I'm left to explore my own imagination and then everything goes to poo poo. I am having fun though.
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Apr 6, 2015 16:17
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| # ? May 25, 2024 17:49 |
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Police are so hilariously over-effective in this game that I'm not sure they need any upgrades. Hopefully it turns out that it's just a bug they haven't fixed yet. Health and fire helicopters would be useful though. It could also be neat if hospital helicopters could scoop up "terminally ill" patients ad medevac them to the hospital where they die for convenient collection by hearses. And of course fire helicopters would scoop up water from lakes and rivers and dump actual water on top of a building.
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Apr 6, 2015 16:19
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Now I have an urge to go play Simcopter. That game was amazing despite it's bad graphics and overall jankiness.  I also want a mod that has a traffic helicopter fly around and constantly say "SIMCOPTER ONE REPORTING HEAVY TRAFFIC"
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Apr 6, 2015 16:27
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My secret is to always leave room for growth. I try not to raze neighborhoods in the interest of commerce or transport but sometimes it's a necessity. It's important to note that cars and trucks will usually take the best path for them so if you create a ring highway to connect everyone the trucks shouldn't be passing through residential areas if they can get off first at the industrial sector. Usually by the time my city needs this I've laid out my area so that one neat highway around the city with a terminus at the residential area allows for traffic to flow smoothly outside of the grid.
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Apr 6, 2015 16:30
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Oh wow, I can't wait for this to be released and make my own traffic/disaster reports.
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Apr 6, 2015 16:57
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Fish Fry Andy posted:
Do you have industrial? What happens if you have all offices instead of industrial? I'm afraid if I do that my commercial will have no goods and my city will die
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Apr 6, 2015 17:13
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Captain Mediocre posted:What can I do to fix the mess? Or rather, how should I have built things differently to avoid this problem? Also, try something like this: look at your map and consider the routes your garbage trucks will take (I assume that's the dump just to the right of the business district label).There's no way a garbage truck can go south of the freeway exit without looping north and then going through the central red road. That's a problem. It's not really a problem with only a few thousand people, but you're also ignoring the "tree" idea -- your traffic goes from highway to 2-lane to six-lane, instead of highway, 6, 2. That'll be a problem later. The one-way roads in the industrial section aren't helping you much. In that size of a block there's not enough traffic to warrant it, imo. Plus I don't think 2-lane to 2-lane road intersections create a traffic light. One more thing, consider where people actually go. There's not going to be a lot of traffic going from, say, Poplar Park to Moore Park (assuming those are both residential-mostly/only), but there will be a lot of traffic going from Moore Park to your industrial section. And lastly, like Blimpkin mentioned, the best thing I've done to help me make better functioning cities is try as best as possible to shrug off the idea that Every Square Has To Be Productive. Tough to do, especially if you played a lot of SC4. Oh, frontage roads, or marginal roads, are just roads that run parallel to a highway with (usually) limited highway access -- i.e. not every block or two. They serve to shunt traffic congestion off the highway ramps (which there would be more of if the frontage roads weren't there).
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Apr 6, 2015 17:36
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:In planning their route, cars consider only travel time. Larger streets have a higher speed limit, so they'll pick a 6-lane over a 2-lane if the distance is roughly equal. That's one of the reasons everyone is taking that six-lane in the middle of your town -- give them some options, keeping in mind that travel time is the key, total distance can be longer if the speed is higher. One thing that'll help is if you make all the outside roads a six-lane loop. Won't help so much immediately, but in the medium term you'll notice a difference. (Personally I find the size of the Moore Park square is roughly the maximum size I put between six-lane roads, usually). quote:Also, try something like this: look at your map and consider the routes your garbage trucks will take (I assume that's the dump just to the right of the business district label).There's no way a garbage truck can go south of the freeway exit without looping north and then going through the central red road. That's a problem. quote:It's not really a problem with only a few thousand people, but you're also ignoring the "tree" idea -- your traffic goes from highway to 2-lane to six-lane, instead of highway, 6, 2. That'll be a problem later. Finally, as a Brit I am convinced that nearly all of the traffic management problems I encounter could be solved with actual roundabouts. And not these weird charlatan "roundabouts" which are just american-style intersections looped in a circle. 
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Apr 6, 2015 18:13
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Captain Mediocre posted:Do you mean a one-way 6-lane circle, or a 3-lane/3-lane bidirectional road? quote:Is there any good metric to judge how regularly to attach connections to these without clogging the thing up with intersections? And if you make roundabouts, make them out of highway pieces -- then they won't produce traffic lights like 6-lane roads will.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:21
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Magnitogorsk. posted:Do you have industrial? What happens if you have all offices instead of industrial? I'm afraid if I do that my commercial will have no goods and my city will die Commercial can import goods from out of town, so it's entirely possible and actually pretty good to just zone office instead of industrial.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:25
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Captain Mediocre posted:Finally, as a Brit I am convinced that nearly all of the traffic management problems I encounter could be solved with actual roundabouts. And not these weird charlatan "roundabouts" which are just american-style intersections looped in a circle. They're good for low to medium traffic, but I've noticed as you start to get really heavy through traffic they become kind of a clusterfuck.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:38
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Fish Fry Andy posted:Commercial can import goods from out of town, so it's entirely possible and actually pretty good to just zone office instead of industrial. So it seems like after a certain point offices are just strictly better than industrial, unless I'm missing something. My first city is approaching 40k people who are mostly educated, and my industry doesn't have enough dumb grunts to work there so half of it just cycles through abandonment/rebuilding continuously. I've been slowly phasing out industry in favor of offices and it seems like I'm just lowering traffic/polution with no downside. I guess offices take up way more space than industrial, but that just further helps with traffic and it's not like there's a shortage of space in this game. I suppose industrial makes more money? But I have over $5 million and haven't even thought about money at all since the relative early game
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Apr 6, 2015 18:44
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if you're not pillaging all the natural resources from the earth on your map, what are you even doing!
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Apr 6, 2015 18:47
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I think industrial ends up making you more money but yeah it's fairly easy to make money as is. Industrial has better job density too though and at level 3 it still needs some educated workers. And certain types of industry don't produce pollution, either. Plus I like making trains run around.
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Apr 6, 2015 18:56
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I miss the giant gently caress-off huge factory complexes and chemical plants the modding community at SimTropolis used to make for SimCity 4. If I have one major gripe about this game it's that tiling only goes 4 tiles deep. When you extrapolate that size and compare it to real world measures, that means the max width/spread (64m) is about 1 or 2 tile smaller than an average New York City block width (72-80m). Not that NYC should be the standard- I mean to imply I should be able to go even bigger than that.
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Apr 6, 2015 19:28
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Poizen Jam posted:I miss the giant gently caress-off huge factory complexes and chemical plants the modding community at SimTropolis used to make for SimCity 4. If I have one major gripe about this game it's that tiling only goes 4 tiles deep. When you extrapolate that size and compare it to real world measures, that means the max width/spread (64m) is about 1 or 2 tile smaller than an average New York City block width (72-80m). Not that NYC should be the standard- I mean to imply I should be able to go even bigger than that. Yes. I was especially dissapointed when I found out that agriculture/forestry was still made up of 4x4 tile buildings and fields.
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Apr 6, 2015 19:46
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Is there a difference in effect among small parks ($8/wk), small plazas ($32/wk), large plazas ($160/wk), etc.? If not, why wouldn't you go with the cheap park every time?
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Apr 6, 2015 19:50
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Decrepus posted:Yes. I was especially dissapointed when I found out that agriculture/forestry was still made up of 4x4 tile buildings and fields. Farms at least are smart enough to merge fields together, the main downside is you can't have any tile further than four blocks from a road. They really ought to have allowed 10 tiles or so, and put in logic to turn the unused space into "something". Like for a farm, it turns into crops. For a commercial zone it becomes parking. Residential gets epic lawns, and so on.
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Apr 6, 2015 19:52
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sincx posted:Is there a difference in effect among small parks ($8/wk), small plazas ($32/wk), large plazas ($160/wk), etc.? If not, why wouldn't you go with the cheap park every time? The cost of the park (placement cost, not maintenance) controls how much of an effect it has on improving surrounding land value. A 1x1 park that costs 100k to build will have a massive difference compared to a 5x5 park that costs 1000. The area of influence is also worth considering too.
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Apr 6, 2015 19:54
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Decrepus posted:Yes. I was especially dissapointed when I found out that agriculture/forestry was still made up of 4x4 tile buildings and fields. Fair dues to Cities XL, they had it right with big polygon drawn fields. That said, fields around here are minuscule, but I think yank sized megafield zones look and function better. Also, while speaking kindly of Cities XL, they had a nice supply chain type thing for offices. Offices needed to have hotels for businessmen rather than make them the self sufficient job creating things like in skylines. With all that said, I'm super forgiving for anything C:S doesn't have in it because its a gorgeous game I'm totally obsessed with, their team sound like ace people and anything they don't have, well we can just loving mod it, they left it wide open. Reminder to lurkers: Get this game.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:00
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xzzy posted:Farms at least are smart enough to merge fields together, the main downside is you can't have any tile further than four blocks from a road. They really ought to have allowed 10 tiles or so, and put in logic to turn the unused space into "something". Like for a farm, it turns into crops. For a commercial zone it becomes parking. Residential gets epic lawns, and so on.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:08
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I have fully embraced one-way streets and spaghetti on-ramps. As a result my city looks like poo poo overall but I kinda like how organic the highway looks: That mess in the middle gets the most traffic since it feeds into the two industrial areas but it actually flows quite well. Nevermind that it takes days of driving for anyone to get anywhere.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:18
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The "industrial coffee-filter" is bad for large cities and shouldn't be used as more than a stopgap at <40k population. The theory of syphoning off heavy goods traffic is sound, but in practice you still have massive congestion on the entrance and exit, which has the knock-on effect of making it difficult for services to reach various sites. Instead treat industrial districts like any other: have a main freeway through the middle, then frontage off to either side at regular intervals. Only traffic that needs to go to the industry will do so. You can play with different configurations of one-way roads and paving to try and stop trucks from pulling over on the main thoroughfares but it doesn't seem to be that worthwhile before you get to 120k+ populations. Make sure your industrial tiles are laid out in the same direction as the frontage, even if you're really close to a map boundary - if you have a North/South route, sticking industry in the North and residential in the South will cause huge congestion in the North instead of letting everything flow through neatly. The asset editor is really easy to use. Make yourself a frontage template, being generous with any changes in height so it'll work on slight inclines, and use it extensively. I've got one that costs $57k a pop, but it works very well.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:40
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Yeah, I'm definitely not saying the coffee-filter thing is a good idea. Like you said, it just relocates all congestion to the entrance and exit (moreso the exit in my experience) while making it impossible to get good service coverage.
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Apr 6, 2015 20:56
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Uh oh..... My next project is to unfuck this road network, think i'm going to go for a prebuilt interchange from the workshop.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:02
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Does that Swindon Magic Interchange work well?
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Apr 6, 2015 21:52
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Anyone else noticing that actual park land seems to have poor land value? Like, it increases the value for buildings in the radius, but the actual park square itself is relatively low. Which doesn't make much sense, really. I get occasional complaining cims with low land value, and whenever I check they're almost always bordering a park and the low value is bleeding over to their property. Seems like it might be a minor bug.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:53
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BobTheJanitor posted:Anyone else noticing that actual park land seems to have poor land value? Like, it increases the value for buildings in the radius, but the actual park square itself is relatively low. Which doesn't make much sense, really. I get occasional complaining cims with low land value, and whenever I check they're almost always bordering a park and the low value is bleeding over to their property. Seems like it might be a minor bug. Placing two parks within the influence circle of each other seems to help, the land value boost from one helps the other. Which is probably pretty normal, I think most people spam the poo poo out of parks to try and unlock the highest upgrade levels. But it is probably a bug.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:54
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The fact that zones only go a short distance from roads is really throwing me off as someone who played Simcity 2-4. I'm used to my giant square grids with parks in the center but what I get in this game is narrow blocks at best.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:37
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Huge plots that have "filler" all around them that tiles nicely with other filler would be ideal and awesome. Also parks should be foot path accessible dammit.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:47
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Raskolnikov posted:Huge plots that have "filler" all around them that tiles nicely with other filler would be ideal and awesome. Also parks should be foot path accessible dammit. Yeah, kinda annoying that every single thing needs a road. I guess it's more or less like that in the real world too because things need to be accessible by fire trucks and poo poo, but I with there were some service vehicle-only roads so I could make some sweet-rear end pedestrian zones.
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Apr 6, 2015 22:59
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uXs posted:I with there were some service vehicle-only roads so I could make some sweet-rear end pedestrian zones. There is a mod for this.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:02
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I know there is a mod for that... But I am at work and lazy, but I am almost positive there is one. I should install it.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:02
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Traffic++/Zoneable pedestrian paths does this, it's in the OP (also one of the best non-graphic mods imho, right up there with No Pillars)
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Apr 6, 2015 23:11
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Moridin920 posted:Does that Swindon Magic Interchange work well? I was actually just looking up info on that while trying to explain it to my dad, and found this video of two Finn tourists trying it out. Compared to what I'm used to it seems ok (I'm in Augusta, Maine, where people think the goal is to get on and off roundabouts as quickly as possible.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bOTTTETzX4 Edit: oh you were talking about the one in-game, I thought you meant the real one.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:11
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Domattee posted:Traffic++/Zoneable pedestrian paths does this, it's in the OP (also one of the best non-graphic mods imho, right up there with No Pillars) The sperg in me can't bear to use it because the merge with regular roads looks so terrible.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:14
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I'm annoyed that there's some conflict with my mods and I can't get the City Vitals mod to wor and I have no idea what's making it not work. Same with the extended building info..unless they're conflicting with each other. Hrm.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:23
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Captain Mediocre posted:Finally, as a Brit I am convinced that nearly all of the traffic management problems I encounter could be solved with actual roundabouts. And not these weird charlatan "roundabouts" which are just american-style intersections looped in a circle. As a Kansan I agree. There are lots of hosed up things about this place, but roundabouts are everywhere and I get very het up when such as a Missouri driver treats it like a 4-Way or yields inside the circle ggrrrrrrrr michaelscottnonononooooo.avi
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Apr 6, 2015 23:32
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I drive through 3 roundabouts in my 10 minute drive to work every day, and every day at least one person in one of the round abouts stops in the circle and tries to wave somebody in. They're not as bad as the people who enter without even touching the brakes despite traffic being quite clearly already there.
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Apr 7, 2015 00:00
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| # ? May 25, 2024 17:49 |
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Domattee posted:Traffic++/Zoneable pedestrian paths does this, it's in the OP (also one of the best non-graphic mods imho, right up there with No Pillars) Has Traffic++ fixed the dissapearing traffic arrows yet?
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Apr 7, 2015 00:02
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