Supported
About This File
Single Player mod only.
With the new modeling tools and an renewed interest in this game I'm looking to enhance my own experience (and others) with SimCity through this mod. As a person that has always had an interest in game mods and who is currently in school to develop video games I thought I would finally create a mod to share with the public. After several hours of looking through the code of SimCity I started to make changes and see what I can do to effect balance and numbers. What started as an attempt to fix the broken traffic in SimCity has bloomed into something completely different. At this time I can't say for sure what this mod's final release will change into. Yet, I can share the progress along the way. The only limits being what my imagination and tools will allow. All changes I make in this mod will try to keep balance and capability in mind. Yet, after spend far to many hours looking at the code I've had to implement an unorthodox method to make the changes I want. So please TAKE SPECIAL NOTE TO INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS. This method will make this mod incompatible with updates it is not designed with, as well as not compatible with mods that target the same package file. Yet, at the time of this post, any mod posted on this site should work with mine. So without further a due here is what my mod will do....
Current changes
*0.4*
Bus Stops and Street Car Stops - Now can hold 2x the passages waiting for public transportation.
Bus and Shuttles - Now have 150% of default capacity. 120 max passengers on Bus and 60 on Shuttles.
Landfill - set to hold 100k garbage per dumb zone, Incinerators now burn at 150% of default rate, Incinerator max set to 6.
Oil Well, Ore Mine, Coal Mine (Not Adv Coal Mine) - Max module for resource extractors set to 150% of default.
All Casinos - Now 200% of default module cap. Let me know if this is to much and if 150% would be better. (I haven't played around with gambling cities much to know which was a better number).
*0.35*
*Trade Port and Depot - Increased module max to 9 and 6 respectively.
*Storage - All buildings that store goods have had capacity doubled.
*Water and Sewage Plants - have had module max set to 8 and 9 respectively. Will not affect already built ones.
*Maintenance costs - All buildings that are not in specialty tab have been set to 90% of default maintenance cost. This should make it easier to build cities around population. Buildings placed before installing mod will show the decrease in cost when selected but will not reflect in budget. Sorry but you have to replace them or start a new city to get this change. Cities already built will still get decreased maintenance cost on new buildings.
*University - Dorm module limit increased to 5. Will not affect already built Universities.
*Shuttle bus depot - has plots that allow 14 modules but game limits it to 8 (maybe for balance?). Well I've bumped it to 14, now you can get the most out of your depot
*Recycle center - Previous buff was a little to extreme, now processes materials at 150% of default rate.
*Landfill - Slightly increasing garage capacity per lot
*Car/Sim Speed - Readjusted all speeds. They now have 110% of default max speed and accelerator at 300%. This should help the flow of traffic without everyone being speed demons.
Dropped from original plans.
*I will no longer be tweaking energy and water needs of buildings. To much work for little pay off. Instead I've increased the amount of modules you can place in water and sewage plants. I will consider increasing module limits on power plants if community feels it is needed.
Considering
*I may increase taxes generated by buildings by 5-10% if my maintenance cost drop still has not made enough of a difference towards population based cities. Let me know what you think. May even only do this on higher density buildings since my small and medium density cities always seem to generate more money then the high density ones.
High Hopes
*Traffic is broken - Everyone knows it including the developers. I wish I had a way to fix the AI traffic. As a student in game development I already know of 4 ways I could fix the bad traffic AI (which comes down to broken left turns). Yet, I have not seen where I can fix this. I'm hoping to fix this one way or another but no promises.
*Re"balance" resource extraction rate - My hope is to make resources last longer in the ground. There is no realistic reason that a player can place a mine down with no modules and the game tell them they have 2-3 years left of resources on that plot. I'm no expert in the field of natural resources but this seems unrealistic, at the least it is not fun. My hope is to change this. Ideally I would like to slow extraction rate while maintaining gain (so you get the same amount of resources but it leaves the ground slower). Yet, it may come in the form of extracting slower while buildings need less and they sell for more per unit. Either way I'm going to take a hard look at this.
*Anything else - I'm open to suggestions. Anything that will polish this game while keeping it balance I'm open ears for. Just please keep in mind I'm limited on what my tools will allow. This game is programmed in C++ and JavaScript which is not an issue for my understanding. The only issue is what EA/Maxis has locked for us to mod.
Install Instructions
Like I said above this mod is very different from what other mods are doing. To accomplish what I've done I've had to implement a work around to unlock changes that the launcher tries to lock out....
Long Install Story
Most mods will have you copy package file to SimCityData. This will not work for my mod and will only give you bugs. Instead this file has to go into SimCityUserData/EcoGame. When you launch the game the launcher will validate you have X files with X name in this folder. My file will replace SimCity-Scripts_287520926.package (Update 10) and SimCityDLCRomanCasino-Scripts_276985846.package. These files overwrite older versions and are the changes that EA makes with each patch. Sadly this is a must since these files overwrite anything in SimcityData and can cause problems (so I can't just put my changes in this folder). If a user adds any extra files to the EcoGame folder, the launcher will delete them. Yet, it will not validate the contents of the files. This is how I'm able to change things I don't think I'm "suppose to". This means This mod is NOT meant for online play as it effects "balance". So please use at your own risk (regardless that you gave EA money and they want to support mods blah blah). When I have more time to look into this issue I will see if there is a way to skip the launcher validation but I'm guessing the pirates have already fixed this.
Short Install Story
Copy files into SimCityUserData/EcoGame. Overwrite existing file.
Keep In Mind
This mod overwrites core game package. You may want to backup the package it overwrites yet you don't have to (see uninstall).
Uninstall
Delete SimCity-Scripts_287520926.package & SimCityDLCRomanCasino-Scripts_276985846.package, then run launcher. Launcher will see you are "out of date" and download this package for you. This is a 2MB file so shouldn't take to long. Otherwise keep a backup of original file and replace my file with it.
PS
I hope you enjoy this mod and are as interested as I am to see where I can take this. Please leave any feed back and suggestions in the comments.
What's New 0.4
Released
- 0.4
- *Previously commented issues have been resolved, excluding issue with freight.
- See current changes in description for more
-
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