Some ideas

[K123321 0]

English is not my strong side, so there are probably some mistakes.

I sent dasilva some ideas and he asked me to post it. So what do you guys think?

Here is my PM, with small corrections:

I dont play building games to "win", I play to build, expand, and to improve my city, however every game needs some kind

of goal. For me that goal is skyscrapers. Seeing skyscrapers appear in my city feels like I actually accomplished

something. I dont think, that I am far off when I say, that lots of other players think the same(The skyscraper download

section is quite popular). The main reason I stopped playing City Life was that there was almost nothing, at some point, 

that prevented skyscrapers from appearing. Once half of my region was full of skyscrapers, I lost interest in playing and

started a new region , however, the new region became boring, for the same reason. After few retries I stopped playing.

So I think, that the game needs something to prevent lots of skyscrapers from appearing.

    One thing, that I think is needed to limit skyscraper growth, is land value. Why waste money on a expensive skyscraper,

when you can just buy more land and make a big, but not so tall building. So skyscrapers should appear in areas

with high land value and and land value should depend mostly on density of buildings.

    In real life, "the hight of buildings in downtown" depends on number inhabitants and the size of industry. When

city has lots of inhabitants, then lots of services are required, insurance for example. And when a city has a good industry, bigger offices are required to manage production. One more thing that should attract large companies is low taxes.

   

A big company has parts of its industry spread out all over the world, so a good connection with neighbors can replace some industry.

BIG seaports(and maybe freight train stations) should be able to provide that(a lot of cargo travels by sea).

    Seaports should not be just some ploppable buildings that you place somewhere near a shoreline, they should take entire shoreline under themselves.(seeing those tall stacks of containers, cranes, huge ships and trucks really gives a unique feel and look to the city)

     If the industry grows randomly on zones, like in Sim City, then if the zones are near water AND there is a wharf, plopped by the player, nearby ( so that a player can choose where to build a port), then the zones will develop into seaport buildings.

One thing that was missing Sim City was warehouses, in real life you can see them everywhere. The number of warehouses should be proportional to the number of industry and/or seaports.

One thing, that I didnt like in CL and SC was that the airports and seaports didnt generate traffic.

Buildings like airports and train stations should have built in transport. For example: an airport has a built-in monorail station.

Mass transit should not be ignored. Building bus stops,train stations and subway  to reduce traffic, makes the game lot more fun. In City Life mass transit was useless, but in Cities Unlimited a player should not be able to build a big city whitout a good mass transit system.

Placing bus stops was a pain in CL and SC, because they made holes in the layout of the city. Cities Unlimited should come with a feature to place subway and bus stops on road, but also off-road, if needed.

 

The bus stops in CL and SC(?) have one or more workers, however that is too unrealistic, i would suggest a bus parking

station(or a bus park, whatever you call it), where the buses are held during the night and where drivers come to work. The parking station should have a radius, that  activates bus stops around it . The more bus parking stations you have, the more bus stops you can support.

There should also be parking stations for trains.

In CL and SC the schools just made people happy or allowed more advanced industry. If you want to add something new

and interesting, then there should be a different higher schools, which generate different types of workers. For example,

a economy school should generate office workers, a tech school generates high tech industry workers, art school

generates designers and university generates all kinds of educated workforce.

Dont forget the landfill. Its ugly and takes room, but  it makes a city look more realistic.

Based on the screenshots i saw, the graphics are too "cartoonish", worn buildings give the city more realistic look.

A important issue is performance, make sure that the game runs smoothly, when city grows very big. Sim City had a big

problem with the performance when a city became too big, that made game unplayable even on a computer,

that was a lot more powerful, than required by the recommended system requirements.

Because mods are important part of the game and people will download hundreds of them, then there must be a way to

customize the in-game menus, and the game should be able to load the mods from sub-folders.

summary:

♦Limit the number of skyscrapers(number dependent on industry/ports,and other connections/inhabitants/land value)

♦Seaports should replace some part of the industry.

♦Seaports should not consist of only one building.

♦warehouses

♦airports and seaports should generate traffic.

♦Buildings like airports and train stations should have built in transport.

♦mass transit

♦on-road bus and subway stops

♦bus parking station, that activates bus stops in its radius

♦schools that generate different types of workers

♦landfill

♦worn buildings

♦customizable menus and mods folder