Essential Mods

[Dodike 0]

What mods would you recommend? I want to focus on railroads and mass transit. I would like more options but I don't want to change the game a lot.

[Mithrik 562]

Well, basically, the NAM is a most have in this case.

Click here fro PC.

Click here for Mac.

That's my reccomendation, but other members may tell you about other mods.

[TekindusT 3,809]

If you want to take the maximum from your railroads, the Single Track Rail (STR) mod [Windows link] [Mac link] and the HSRP (High Speed Rail Project) [Windows link] [Mac link] may a must for you. Aesthetically speaking, the Railway Upgrade Mod [link] by rivit is also recommendable. If I remember well, all of them are NAM-dependant.

Anyways, take your time to explore the STEX and the LEX for railroad content, there are a bunch of stations, bridges, catenary mods, automata skins, traffic generators, etc. There's a bunch of excellent stuff out there to improve your railroad networks!

  Edited April 28, 2011 by TekindusT  

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

NAM for all ones basic needs first.

Rail ways "SFBT" "haljackey" "warrior" those are a few names to get you some great freigh/passenger stations, as well as textures, and rail mods.

There are many other fantastic creators out there, but I would be here all day to name them all lols! These three are a good step in the right direction of what you want, and if you explore more I'm sure you wont be disapointed!

[hittwice99 618]

As well as the NAM, STR and Railway Upgrade Mod, as suggested above, I would like to add the following:

Transportation mods

The RHW and NWM - Add a range of new transportation network tools and options to the game.

Persistent Automata Mod - Makes the game's traffic visible for longer, reducing the 'fade out' effect.

It is also worth looking at the other content by the NAM Team, z1, and cogeo.

Other recommended mods

SimFox Day 'n Nite Mod - Changes the day and night colour schemes to give a more realistic feel to the game.

PEG WATER MOD Brigantine - Replaces the default water texture with a more 'photo realistic' one.

SimPeg Agricultural Mod (SPAM) - Revolutionises the game's farming system.

Additional God Mode Terrain tools - Adds four new terrain tools to further define your city's landscape.

God Terraforming in Mayor Mode - Adds the 'God mode' terrain tools to the 'Mayor mode' terrain menu.

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Particularly with the mods made by The NAM Team, new versions of existing mods (as well as new ones) are released generally every year. It is worth checking the Modding - Transit Networks forum to see the latest news and developments regarding these. There are also many other useful and interesting mods out there, but of course it is totally your preference on which ones to install, as it depends on your style of play.

[Vern 29]

I realize that you are asking just about modds but I wanted to add these utilities for recommendation, specially when you are about to go down the modds,bats, and lots tunnel.

Startup Manager - To help you manage the loading of your plugins. Awesome for customizing different regions and or cities. Thank you JeanLuc and Andreas!

The DIC - To help you manage and organize your downloads - and there will be PLENTY! This is an amazing piece of a tool. I can't thank DocRorlach, Dave and team enough for it.

SC4 DAT Packer by Wounagaine. Use this along with the DIC to help efficiently load your plugins into the game. This can be used separately from the DIC but the DIC does and excellent job of incorporating this tool. When you use this with The DIC you won't have to manually pull folder from their respective location. The DIC will do that for you. You will need to register at the LEX to get this.

The DAMN Menu by Daeley and the SSP Tool to help manage it. The DAMN is great for reducing the amount of items you have in your in-game menu. The SSP Tool helps with creation and management of the DAMN. The link above will take you Simpeg who have a really nice article on how to use it.

There are others out there but these SC4 utilities definitely makes my experience with SC4 a lot smoother and lets me concentrate on building my cities. Thanks to all the authors for these tools!! And thank you to all you modders for keeping this game alive!!

Anyone seen the Moose??? LOL...

  Edited April 29, 2011 by Vern  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A Latin aphorism for you: "Festina Lente" (Make haste slowly).

Do not rush into anything. First, get the NAM, and take the time to play with it in your sandbox so that you have a feel for it. GLR tracks come with the NAM, but stations and trams have to be downloaded. When playing with puzzle pieces, you can easily crash the game due to a bug in the .exe we can't fix. Save often.

After that, look around and see where you want to go from there. The number of rail options seems to be very large these days. You will want some higher capacity stations. I recommend Simgoober for openers. Be prepared to haul in a large set of dependencies.

One thing worth noting, perhaps, is that tracks that run though industrial pods get freight loaded on them by the plants they pass. You will need a grab-the-rest freight station for those plants not on the rail line.

Be careful that your passenger lines present a better route to work than taking the roads. One way to do this is to not have any roads that reach your industrial pods except in a round-about way.