Just a few questions

[tiduskeegan 0]

Hey everyone reading this. I just had a few questions that have been bugging me and any help would be great:

1)  Are industrial zones essential for a good city? I haven't placed any yet and I have yet to notice any consequences.

2)  Why do my airports' capacities fill up so fast? They're massive to build and annoying to have multiples of. Is there a mod or a special airport I can download? I can't seem to find one and I don't really want to make my own.

3)  What improves desirability more in a 1x1 square? A small park/plaza/flower garden/park green or as many trees placed as possible? And are parks better in general for larger spaces as well or trees? Also, do parks improve the environment at all?

4)  I'm having a problem with pollution due to cars and I'm not sure what to do. I use solar power, export all of my trash to a neighboring city, I treat all of my water... I'm not sure what else to do about the cars. I have an extensive mass subway network, but that's about it for mass transportation. Do I have to place a monorail or train network? I also have all the environmental ordinances in place.

5)  Do the download-able landmarks with jobs affect your city much negatively? I notice some have an exorbitant amount of jobs and yet my sims still complain about employment. Is that number of employed that appears when I query the landmark accurate?

Thanks for any help!

[DOXXP29 5]

Welcome to Simtropolis, Tiduskeegan!

I'll try to shed a little light for you.

1) It depends on what you want in your city. Essential? No. They can be helpful to get a city up and running quickly. If you want a lot of rich simps, I-HT will provide soem decent jobs for them. (I try to avoid too many rich simps, but that's just me.) But you can have a city with all commercial and no industrial and it can work just fine and be profitable. I have a few of them and they're making quite a bit of money.

2) You don't NEED an airport. Yeah the advisors will whine for one and yeah, they can be helpful, but in many cases, they're just not worth it. They breed crime (due to a game bug) and they take up a LOT of space. Often, the return just isn't worth it. There probably is some kind of large capacity airport out there, but I don't know of one offhand.

3) Yeah, parks do improve the quality of life. For 1 x 1 squares, I use PEG's seasonal forests. They provide a "park effect" and look pretty nice. As far as what gives the most bang for your buck, there's a chart out there somewhere that will break it down, but they're all pretty much the same.

4) Mass transit. The best way is to force the simps to get out of their cars. Monorail and subway work very well. Use parks and trees to help with the pollution.

5) Depends on the Landmark. They USUALLY don't have a negative effect. If you're looking for jobs, though, I think you're better off to use growables. Use the landmarks for their own purposes like demand cap relief or making your city more desirable.

Hope this helps some. Good luck! Keep us posted.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, here's my nickel's worth:

1. If you have no industrial in the city, including no I-Ag, you have no place for uneducated R$ to work except Cs$.  This may slow your population growth.  If you want to avoid pollution problems with I-Ag, I-D, and I-M in your residential/commercial city, place them in an adjacent city connected however you like.
2. Airports are strictly optional.  However, the standard ones will grow if overloaded.  They will start to gray-out, then an advisor will offer to upgrade.
3. Parks are residential cap breakers as well as pollution absorbers.  You can experiment with the parks or trees argument by getting a non-green area in your desirability display, then plopping in trees or parks to see what the effect is.  If you don't like what you see, you don't have to save it.  Do a save before you start this exercise.
4. The only thing I have seen that is really effective against road air pollution is an air scrubbing plant such as those found on the STEX.  Planting trees helps but doesn't completely solve the problem.
5. If you use the transportatioin query, you get a better number than the standard query.  In either case the results are rather statistical.  I don't use these types of landmarks because I believe they skew the game.

[tiduskeegan 0]

Thanks for both of your viewpoints! It's helped clarify a lot. I got rid of my airports and didn't notice a different in commercial demand at all, so that saved a lot of space and I took both your other advice into account. Thanks again!