Abandonment/Commute time reduction?

[nellinator232 0]

Alright, makes sense. Just out of curiosity, first of all, is there any update for the SC4Tool which can allow us to modify capacities and whatnot? I doubt it, but one can hope. Second, how do I keep high wealth office buildings to stay in demand? I have almost 900,000 high wealth commercial office jobs, so the demand will not go up in the region... Well, ever again, I fear.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think you can modify a lot with SC4Tool. You can sure Transit enable a building.

If not, there is always ilive's reader. Has a learning curve, but there are tutorials.

Is there any way you can check to see how many unfilled R$ and R$$ jobs these buildings have. Most $$$ buildings have very few R$$$ jobs.

[nellinator232 0]

So far, I haven't been able to do much with SC4Tool other than view capacities of buildings. And no, I don't think I can see how many R$$ or R$ jobs haven't been filled. Will filling these jobs keep the high wealth offices in demand? Also, could I get a link to the thing you mentioned? I'd be interested in editing the properties of the buildings and whatnot.

EDIT: I found this set of mods that someone mentioned in the 'top 10 mods' thread. I'm going to try it, and I'll post back to comment on how well it works. If it doesn't work, I'll ask for more help. Otherwise, things will be better. Here's a link to it, if you're curious as to what it is~

Potential Lifesaver?

EDIT (Again): Turned out to be a TOTAL lifesaver. I can still work with what I want, but without all the issues. Thanks for the help, all!

  Edited June 8, 2011 by nellinator232  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I tried to find the Reader on the STEX, but was defeated by that god awful search algorithm. The program is by ilive, and I hope you have better luck than I. Now that you've fixed your problem, good luck.

[nellinator232 0]

A word of warning, though. If you use the mods I mentioned as a lifesaver, do NOT use the desirability override thing, because it actually ends up tanking all desirability, so yeah. I found that out the hard way and had to start my city over, but it's going well. Thanks again for all the tips and whatnot! ^-^

[bahamd81 156]

In my cities, many buildings, especially my high-wealth skyscrapers, get abandoned for commute time. In my city called Cross, which has over a million people, at least 20% of its buildings are abandoned for commute time. They go dark and instead of a doorbell query it sounds like opening a door or knocking. I do have the NAM, it doesn't help me at all. I place lots of dense commercial and industry zones near them, but they still are abandoned. Is there a cheat for stopping that problem?

--Bahamd81, a "Freshman"

[jacksunny 741]

Did you try the mod suggested by Nellinator232 above?

[Exla357 41]

No neighbor connections yet; this is my first city in the region. I'd prefer not to zone industrial in these cities, due to the way I want it to look and feel. So, yeah. I figure I'm pretty much screwed, so I'll shut up and stop bothering all of you good people.

You know, there are several other things you could do:

1) Get some ploppable commercial buildings. These show up in your landmarks menu and provide jobs wherever you need them.

2) Get a commercial doubler (or is it quadrupler?), available on the STEX

3) Make sure you don't have redundant connections. Even WITH the NAM, sims will sometimes take the road that is closest to their house to their job, even if it is longer. Upgrade everything to oneway roads.

4) Use demand increasing lots, like the Plopmatic 9000. They boost everything to 100% demand, and it can be controlled by taxes!

If this doesn't work, and you really have tried everything else, I would back up the city somewhere and reinstall the game...

Sorry I didn't provide links, I don't have much time.

-Alex

EDIT: oops, didn't see the second page...

  Edited June 8, 2011 by Exla357  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You need an abandonment policy. If I get an R multiple dwelling abandoning on commute, I replace it with a C lot of the same density. It doesn't matter if your R and C areas a slightly mixed and I find it beneficial.

The other thing that you might want to do is to check your network pathing. You need the extra cheats .dll and you can use it. I put the game in pause, then issue the command showpaths. You get arrow-head lines that show, in the appropriate colors, where the pathfinder thinks the routes are. This is turned off by hidepaths.

[z1 566]

3) Make sure you don't have redundant connections. Even WITH the NAM, sims will sometimes take the road that is closest to their house to their job, even if it is longer.

This should never happen, assuming that by "longer" you're referring to time, and assuming that you have a current version of the NAM. The Sims should always take the fastest route during the morning commute. Always. If they don't, the traffic simulator needs fixing. Can you please illustrate a case where the Sims don't take the fastest route in the morning commute?

  Edited June 9, 2011 by z1  

[nellinator232 0]

Got another question. How do you stimulate growth of buildings like the van Proiijen Trading building or the huge, high capacity residential buildings? I have tons of stage 8 buildings everywhere in my city, but not these specific ones. Heck, I even have the space zoned out. So... Tips?

[jacksunny 741]

here. You will need an account at the SC4D LEX to download it.

[diamonddog_74 32]

Maybe from your approach to city-building, you're finding out what cities in the real world already have: You can't have a monolithic economy based on only one type of economic sector. Cities in the real world that are most successful have diverse economies with a mix of industry and commercial services, and wealth levels.

The way I build my cities is to have diverse economies, and I never have these abandonment issues. Like I said in my previous posting, I also use CAM, which spreads out the growth to more development levels, and it makes the transition from mostly industry-based to mostly commercial-based economy a lot smoother.

Best of luck.

[nellinator232 0]

Okay, so, I know I already asked this, but I'd still like to know... Especially since one of the Euro skyscrapers, Hurt Enterprise HQ or whatever, always shows up, but the other Euro one and the two Houston ones never do... Same with the 'best' of the residential buildings in all but the NY set. I only had 2 "Twin Peak Towers" buildings pop up on their own. Tips, tricks to be able to get these to grow on their own? "These" being:

van Prooijen Trading

...The other Houston one

Ong Condos

Twin Peak Towers

Walkup Tower

and the like.

[ShadeSigma 16]

For me I think it's the way a player zones. Like the Moose said earlier you will still need R$. People say they want a big city but you need sims in every class in there. Like R$ sims have no problem living a bit near DI, so I put them near there. Meanwhile, let's say you have a huge city with big offices, I run my transit through that. I think balance is a very important key in this game.

[Trillian2003 33]

I was going to say that NAM works great!

[ShadeSigma 16]

And sometimes it isn't how long it takes to get to work it could be that it's not enough jobs. Check your commute chart. If it's like 1.5 or something then commute time is the least of the problem. You have to zone more jobs. Residents of all types spawn just anywhere. Like in the beginning of your game, if you don't put the clamps on R$$ and R$$$ then you're gonna be in trouble for the long run. If you have an area of mixed zones I don't think it works that well. Because if you run mass transit through there, most R$$ use there cars and R$$$ don't at all. BUT R$$$ will take the subways if you put a parking lot next to them.

Stimulation can be triggered by taxes. I raise the tax on R$$ and R$$$ in the beginning. I grow nothing but R$ and CS$. I still keep D-I at 9.0 so you can make money. Don't forget R$$ and R$$$ aren't the only classes that can live in dense buildings. Then in the next city the demand for R$$ will spark up because it will be cheaper to live there. Raise the tax for R$ and R$$$ and focus on CS$$. Then do the same thing for a city with all R$$$.

When you're zoning, zone residential on the outskirts of the city, zone commercial here and there but save the middle of your city for more commercial. Build industry away from residents so water pollution can't reach them. Then sandwich them in a neighbor city with Manufacturing followed by CS$$, build R$$ on the outskirts of the town and sandwich them with High Tech and CS$$$. Run mass transit through your R$$ and R$ and this will insure that you're transit is getting used. Put your transit in the middle of the R$$$ city so R$ and R$$ can work there. You keep up with this format and what highway will you need? Highways barely get used anyway and creates pollution. Too much pollution and skyscrapers won't come. Industry uses them more than anybody. I only needed a highway once my R$$$ city blew up and I zoned dense CO$$$ for a downtown and got hells of skyscrapers. You will battle unemployment problems but that will not be because of pure commute time, it will be because there isn't enough jobs when you start painting denser zones. By when I did this my commute was very small.

I hope this can help some. It worked out for me because for the death of me I wanted to completely eliminate commute problems because most of them is unreal. When I did this isoZone format it worked well for me.

[z1 566]

Because if you run mass transit through there, most R$$ use there cars and R$$$ don't at all. BUT R$$$ will take the subways if you put a parking lot next to them.

To the contrary, R$$$ are the biggest car users of all the wealth types. (Unless you meant that R$$$ don't use mass transit at all, but that's also incorrect.) In the NAM (which is presumably being used by the OP), using the default settings, 70% of R$$ will prefer car usage, while 80% of R$$$ will prefer car usage. This is just a preference, though; they'll all use mass transit if its travel time advantage over cars is great enough.

[ShadeSigma 16]

I never new that actually. The only transit I trust they use effectively is the subway. Subways are expensive to build though so one needs to be able to back that up.

I think I meant R$$$ won't use it at all. R$$ would use it more than R$$$ I think. But these are some good ways to keep the commute time in check.