Which Traffic Controller is best in NAM?

[gtx 2]

-Cori Edit: The question in this post is completely outdated due to a much newer version of NAM being available. Skip down to the question by @Eusebio Ptolomeu and the replies by @jeffryfisher and @rsc204 for the most up to date information.

Original post follows. (Skip it tho.)

There is a big list of traffic controllers I can choose in NAM, but to me it's quite unclear which one the best is. The NAM readme file is not really clear about this as well. I have quite a big city (the region has 800.000 inhabitants now) and it is hard to get the suburbians to work in the downtown. Which traffic controller would be the best one between:

- Standard

- 2x Capacity

- 5x Capacity

- Better Pathfinding

- Better Pathfinding 2x Capacity

- Better Pathfinding 5x Capacity

- Perfect Pathfinding

- Perfect Pathfinding 2x Capacity

- Perfect Pathfinding 5x Capacity

And which setting would be optimal for the Colossus Addon Mod?

  Edited July 14, 2018 by CorinaMarie  
Added disclaimer about old info.

[Haljackey 17,241]

Well a large list is included because there is really no "best" simulator/controller for everyone. We all play differently, and thus the one we want may be different than others.

So I take it you have a suburban city with a downtown core. That means sims are not living right next door to their place of work, so you want a simulator to reflect this. I would recommend Simulator A or Z on medium.

-For your controller, standard would be the best choice, if not you can try 2x capacity or one of the others. Its always best to play around to see what one works the best. I have a dense region with millions of people and jobs, and yet the standard controller works the best for me.

Anyways I hope you found this useful Antica.

Best,

-Haljackey

[gtx 2]

Thanks for your reply, it helps me a lot! I still have one question though: what is the difference between simulator and controller? In NAM it lists simulators under 'traffic controller files', but I can only choose one of them. So I cannot choose Standard and the Simulator Z Medium both, for example.

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

I know this thread is 9 years old, but I'm really interested to know where do we choose these options about perfect pathfiding? I've read a lot about it in the sc4 wiki article, and I would like to test it. Does it already comes with NAM by default? So far, in the installation guide, the only options I have involves which piece of tracks to download, and the general capacity of the network

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I think that the current version of NAM only has perfect pathfinding options now, so you would choose from high, medium and low. Be aware that if you choose high, then you'll rarely get congestion, but your commercial areas will think there's not enough traffic to stay in business. The goal is balance between congestion and healthy commerce.

[rsc204 21,804]

Jeffry has pretty much nailed it here, the so called "Perfect Pathfinding" is simply a set of values that gives the best possible chances of sims finding jobs. The original simulator is widely considered to be broken, because Maxis tweaked it to make it less CPU-demanding, so players with older hardware would meet the minimum requirements for the game. The downside to this however, it makes it much harder for sims to find jobs, because the simulator doesn't look hard enough to limit CPU usage. However, when you factor in that this was 2003, it's highly unlikely today your CPU won't be able to take the extra strain. It took some experimentation to find the best values for the simulator, but it's been so completely tested since Z's breakthrough that it's one of those things that likely won't ever need tweaking again. Put another way, there is only one set of values for all the options in recent NAM versions, what you can choose to alter is the capacity of networks.

Again a lot of this choice comes down to your particular play style. For example, if you end up with a region with millions of sims, you might find the default capacities a little low and leading to problems. For most people, the default values allow for enough of a balance to work with most play styles just fine. You can always choose a higher or lower one at a later time if you decide you want a change. Bear in mind though, such changes won't affect anything when you begin to make a new region. So rather than try to work it out in advance, I'd advise playing the game and seeing how things go later. If you find the capacities aren't working for you, at that point it will be much clearer in what direction to go.

The TSCT (Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool) is an optional NAM component (Java Required), that allows for further customisations for that that want to tinker. Using it, you can set the base network capacities as found in the NAM install options. But you can also tweak other values that affect your sims travel preferences. This comes with a manual that explains the options available. Bear in mind here, some changes you can make will alter the way the game works fundamentally. You really need to understand the consequences and different play styles needed when altering them, before just changing things. As mentioned, the default settings are really fine for most people, but the option to tinker is there if that's your thing.