Industry Demand Cap

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

I have three cities in a region (oriented like this crude picture). One large tile mates up to two medium ones to the side. The * city is the dirty city, + the higher wealth residential and = the high tech (IHT) city. The problem was that the residential city was showing a high demand for IHT, but when going into the = city, there was no demand there - not positive or negative, just nothing. That felt a lot like a demand cap to me. After some tinkering I determined that the seaport in the = city was causing the problem. Three hundred something freight ships were going through the seaport. Bulldozing it, or simply cutting the road access, caused the IHT demand to shoot up to what it's supposed to be.

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Some background. Industry demand caps are supposedly controlled by freight trips. Every freight trip that makes it out of the city provides demand cap relief. I Previously I had a road connection between * and = which was causing some strange traffic in the region. Turns out it was the eternal commuter issue, so I severed the connection. The freight trips had no choice but to go out the only neighbor connection left (to +). No big deal, everything's fine. To shorten the distance they have to travel, I figured I would build a seaport in =. A lot of the industry opted to use it. I left the city to work on the others. While in +, I had some IHT demand, so I figured I would return to = to let the IHT develop. That's when I discovered there was no demand.

After much experimentation, I'm ready to conclude that freight trips that go through seaports do not provide demand cap relief. This fact makes the seaport not only useless, but now harmful. Has anyone heard of this and/or is there a fix?

[Livin in Sim 83]

Hi, alpha,

What an interesting experiment.  Yes, I understood that seaports were supposed to provide industrial demand cap relief.  Were all seaports used the same?  You probably know different ones can conflict with each other.  That is about the extent of my seaport knowledge--two sentences.    However, if you don't get anymore answers, I would either ask this question at SC4 Devotion, or PM RippleJet.  He's a member here as well as there.  At SC4D, they designed a whole functional seaport pack, so they have a lot of experience with them.  Perhaps there's another factor they can identify.

Enjoy the game.

--Liv

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

I haven't downloaded any other seaports. The only mod I'm using is the NAM. Thanks for your help, I'll try your suggestions.

[RippleJet 36]

All functional seaports do provide industrial CAP relief, based on their usage (per freight tonne exported). The CAP relief is exactly the same regardless if the freight is exported through a neighbour connection or through a seaport.

Note also that freight traffic only goes one-way... to the border connection or to the seaport, at which point the freight simply vanishes into thin air. Nothing crosses the border and comes into the neighbouring city, and nothing leaves the seaport in ships (those ships you see are just eye-candy). Thus you will have to build a seaport in every city that doesn't have a border connection for trucks or freight trains. Any seaport in a neighbouring city will not be seen at all.

Also, my experience is that whenever you bulldoze a border connection or a seaport, it will take up to more than a year before the pathfinder re-routes the freight to another border crossing or to another seaport. It may very well be that your IHT city has registered that the neighbour connection is gone, but hasn't yet found your seaport (if you built one in your IHT city).

In addition to freight trips, there are however also other means of providing CAP relief for IHT:

100,000 - Unversity

150,000 - Advanced Research Center

150,000 - Marina

150,000 - The functional Spaceport by Maxis as included in AC Functional Airports.

You might also want to try the Census Repository Facility in order to verify where your CAPs are at any particular moment.

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

Thanks for responding.

My understanding of the industry demand cap is exactly as you outlined. The problem actually occurs when the industry does find the seaport. I just tried this example:

My IHT city has over 2000 IHT demand on the RCI graph. I build a seaport in the middle of everything. The minute the route query tool registers the incoming freight to the seaport, the IHT demand vanishes. If I restore the neighbor connection, some of the industry goes back to using that since it's closer. The demand increases a little since there's less freight going to the seaport.

In my case, the more freight that goes towards the seaport, the less freight that gets counted as demand cap relief. This leads me to believe that freight going through seaports does not count towards demand cap relief.

I agree that it shouldn't matter where the freight goes to vanish. In my case, the freight must make it to the city limits via rail or road to count. Very strange.

I've uploaded the region and plugins folder. The IHT city is "Picatinny."

Simply bulldoze or cut off the seaport to see the behavior I'm talking about. You can also connect the rail to Newark to see that some of the freight diverts that way. This should increase demand slightly, but not as much if the seaport simply goes away.
http://www.2shared.com/file/4841495/d869bfe6/SeaportBug

Thanks for any help that you can offer.

[RippleJet 36]

I've downloaded your region, but I haven't found any time to look at it...

Maybe you could download the Census Repository Facility and post its query for Picatinny here:

- with the road connections in place

- with the seaport in place and operational

I would also want to see the query of the seaport.

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

Thanks for continuing to take a look.

Here's the seaport connected with a good amount of freight trips going through it. The presence of the seaport shifted the flow of freight out of the city from roads to sea (which normally shouldn't matter):

Click images for larger view.

Here's the census query which does indeed show a 100% cap reached with zero demand.

I removed the road segment leaving the seaport intact. After a month or so, the traffic simulator updates and reroutes all of the freight traffic out of the city using the roads. As expected the freight trips of the seaport drops to nothing and posts the no road connection zot.

Finally, another view of the census output shows the cap only stands at 63%, and my missing demand has returned.

I changed nothing else about this, or any other city in the region. Let me know what you make of this. I haven't heard about too many I-HT-only cities out there, so perhaps this problem has gone unnoticed for quite some time.

[Jezus53 18]

All I want to know is where you got the census add on. That thing looks awesome!

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

Look in RippleJet's first post of this thread.

[T_Killer 0]

I have a question:

I too have a city which has 2 seaports (PEG seaports) which are pretty intensively used (not 100% but about 80%). My HT cap has just reached 100 and so I want to do something about it, but I have several freight rail stations in my industrial areas which are connected to a neighbour, but they are hardly being used (11 freight trains). Also i have some road connections to the neighbour, but they aren't being used at all. How come that when my seaports are being maxed out, no one will use the train or road for the freight trips. I have to say that the city to which my rail and road connections are, aren't built yet, they still are empty lands. But this shouldn't be a problem right? Since RippleJet just said that when freight reaches the edge off the map, it vanishes into thin air.

Anyone who can help me?

thanks in advance!

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

You're correct in that neighbor cities do not have to exist for the freight to successfully leave the city. Your seaports are not running at full capacity yet, so they are not suffering from any increased transfer speeds. Your freight trains / roads are probably not being used because the industry thinks it's quicker to send the freight out through the seaport.

I haven't heard anything from RippleJet yet, but it seems clear to me that any freight that goes through the seaport doesn't provide demand cap relief. It's as if the freight cannot reach the border to be counted when it goes through a seaport. The more freight that goes through the seaport, the worse the situation gets until the demand dries up completely and you're stuck.

I suggest you either bulldoze the seaports or cut off their road connections. You don't have to save the game like this, but see what happens. My guess is that your freight rails and roads will take up the slack that the seaports were handling. The difference this time will be that the freight leaving through these means will count for demand cap relief. You should see your I-HT demand come soaring back.

[RippleJet 36]

I've finally managed to make some extensive testing myself.

The city in which I've tested this is the same I've always used for testing seaports.

All industries (ID, IM and IHT) are close to capped at 100% when starting.

Building any seaport (Maxis, Maxis growable, custom growable) only leads to one result;

the same that alphaBeta has found - seaports do not relieve industrial CAPs.

And it's the same for all types of industry...

Replacing the seaport with either a railroad border crossing or road border crossing leads to functional CAP relief for every truck crossing the border.

The Demand Simulator includes a couple of properties setting these CAP relieves:

     Demand: Industrial Cap Relief for Trips = 20

     Demand: Industrial Cap Relief for Seaports = 20

As they are both set to the same value, they should both provide the same CAP relief.

However, increasing the value for the latter property didn't seem to have any effect.

Thus, it does indeed seem like seaports are useless for providing industrial CAP relief.

Looking ahead, I think what we will do next is to add a fixed industrial (IR, ID, IM and IHT) CAP relief to every seaport included in BSC Functional Seaports, in the same way as a fixed IHT CAP relief of 150,000 was added to the functional spaceport in AC Functional Airports.

With the growable seaports, this CAP relief can also be set to increase with each growth stage, and thus the advantage of increasing seaport capacity would still be there for the CAPs.

_alphaBeta_, thank you very much for bringing up this issue.

I will have to credit you in the next upgrade of the functional seaports!

[Livin in Sim 83]

Originally posted by: RippleJet

Thus, it does indeed seem like seaports are useless for providing industrial CAP relief.

_alphaBeta_, thank you very much for bringing up this issue.

I will have to credit you in the next upgrade of the functional seaports! quote>

Who knew?  WTG, Maxis.  [/sarcasm]  Thanks, RippleJet, and Kudos to _alphaBeta_ for noticing this after 6 years.

[Argon Vex 1]

So, in short, I shouldn't build seaports? But what about my island cities, which have no connection to the mainland? They're screwed?

[Strategist01 0]

Argon Vex

You can use ferry terminals, and if you have the NAM the sims will flock from one city to the other, or to wherever there is work. I have built some of the new york region this way, and I actually have overcrowding at ferry terminals, from people wanting to get there. Don't worry. Just place them fairly close to res, make sure they have a parking lot next to them with road connection, and you should be fine! Hope that helps!

[Argon Vex 1]

Hmm... I just tried it in one of my cities - demolishing the seaport made no change in demand at all. Maybe because I'm using non-Maxis seaports? I use the upgradeable ones. Are they actually functional?

Strategist - thanks for the tip, I already do that and I have the same problem. One ferry station is being used by 12756 people(!). But more specifically, I was talking about my island industry.

[k808j 0]

Does this bug affect I-D. I have one city connected to three neighbors. It has nothing but I-HTand  no I-D will build. I have a BSC functional seaport, university and just removed my spaceport. I have CAM and NAM installed,

[His Divine Hand 244]

This bug affects demand caps. Potentially, if your cities mostly rely on goods leaving the map to relieve your industrial demand caps, then yes, this seaport bug can affect you. Read Ripple Jet's post carefully, as he explains what else relieves demand caps, and how to check them in game.

[Jezus53 18]

Argon Vex, the Seaport will most likely only show a change in demand once the cap is reached or is nearly reached. YOu probably don't have enough industry for it to make a difference at this point.

[Argon Vex 1]

I already upgraded it twice, if that's what you mean. And even with this seaport, I-HT demand is still through the roof. This in a city with 100.000 population, 25.000 commercial jobs and 20.000 I-HT jobs.

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

Chances are most cities will be fine since they'll have structures that also relieve industrial demand. I was building an IHT-only city. Read that to mean no residential, so the gifts that provide industry relief are not available. My city relied entirely on goods to relieve caps, so that flushed out the bug.

[loerelau 5]

Sorry for digging up this old thread. Just started to play simcity again and I had a problem. The port bug was killing my dirty industrial city. Removing two seaports did the trick (after I found this thread.)

Just wanted to say 'thank you'.

Anybody knows if there is a fix for this bug?

[His Divine Hand 244]

Wow, I had forgotten about this issue. Funny what gets lost to time; someone should perhaps try and make an archive of these bugs for the omnibus sometime.

Now, as for the question, theoretically the BSC functional seaports located at SC4 Devotion should have been updated to include a single base cap relief to fix this bug; if RippleJet got around to it. Those would be the only ones I would be fairly certain of, though if you know how to use iLive Reader I suspect that you could do the same "fix" to any seaport you use that hasn't been fixed by it's creator already.

[loerelau 5]

Thank you for your reply. I will try the other ports; what is an industrial area without a port... They look a lot better as well.

Cheers,

Loerelau

[BloodCat 1]

This thread is pretty old, but anyway: is there any plugin fix for stock Maxis seaports? I'm playing SC4 Deluxe with a couple of fixes but no gameplay mods.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

How do you mean fix?  I use the CDK3 seaports from Pegasus.  This eliminated the Maxis seaport for me.  These can be used stand-alone or there are several auxiliary lots you can also add.  These ports are enabled for both road and rail.

[BloodCat 1]

How do you mean fix? 

 

I'm looking for a fix to make stock Maxis seaports count towards the industrial demand cap through leaving freight.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Luck with that.  Freight is just traffic noise that goes to the bit bucket at either the seaport or the border.

[gviper 922]

A Nonny Moose; looking at that seaport it looks pretty cool. I went over, visited and registered at Simpeg's site. I have a question though. With the rail do trains simply appear and disappear along the line from industry to seaport or do you actually see them move along the line from industry to seaport?

[Metalpuritan 160]

The PEG CDK Seaports do actually handle freight like a freight station, however the train tracks that move through the CDK lots do not actually show train traffic.  There are trucks and other props in the way, but yes trains will travel to and from the CDK lots.