Troubles with Garbage? Then read this post!

[MayorAce 0]

Actually this post is kinda to help remind new batters how to fix some issues with garbage, or unrealistic garbage use!

The other day I downloaded a bunch of lots, most the gas stations and stores shops.... Like K-mart, Wal-Mart, ect...

Well its funny how after they were plopped or grown in my city that the garbage levels sky rocketted....

It's only these shops and stores that do this to me, not sure if there are other buildings I downloaded that did the same thing, but I opened up iLive Reader and opened these Lots/Desc files... and guess what the Garbage levels were?

some were reasonable like 10 or 20.....  but others were like 200!!!  or even 400!!!

I know this might be cheating the authors original design, but I changed them to 0 imediatly!!  It is rediculous how much garbage these push out!

So be sure to set your garbage use to a reasonable number...  I believe the numbers are in tons, so if you have a house, it would be less then 1 ton a month and might as well be 0 per each.

Commercial would be most likely 2 tons per month each, like gas stations or stores...
Big Commercial buildings might be over 10 tons... but not much higher then that.

Industrial, depending on the type, coulc be anywhere from 1 ton to 40 tons.

But seriously, some Batters need to start paying attention to the garbage issue, as it kills our cities once we go plopping your lots into them.

To fix these issues open up iLive reader, this is if you missed plugin managers dilogs.  And change the following to 0 or a resonable number!

Pollution at Center

ok, there are 4 values here, 1st is the air pollution this building generates, 2nd is water pollution it generates, 3rd is the ammount of garbage this generates, 4th is the ammount of radiation this generates.

Example: Pollution at Center = 0x00000001, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x00000000
This would be 1,2,1,0
Which would seem realistic numbering....

But goto your lot and look at these numbers... I saw some that said 0x000000FF, I mean come on!! Thats 255 tons of garbage a month per this building!!!!!

It is best to pay attention to these values, as it will be a difference from a perfect city, to a failing one becuase of too much garbage!!

Another interesting fact, make these values negative, and it will reduce the effect, the higher the negative number, the better the result, but thats if you like cheating?

Pollution Radii

This is the same thing as above, but the radius of the effect, again first one is Air Pollution, second water pollution, 3rd garbage radius, and Radiation radius....  You know what?  I always keep these values 0,0,0,0 becuase thats clean, and it give undesireable effects to local buildings when they have pollution...

Well I hope I been of help, and please, when making new bats consider the above options, and change them before distribution of your Lots/Bats...

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, well... where to begin?

First of all, I'd like to tell you that I noticed the same and that I second your basic motivation.

However, I've gone a few steps further. I have analyzed the SC4 default buildings, elaborated a rough scheme for sensible values, and manually tweaked all my downloads (well over 600 items) to stats that match those of ingame buildings pretty exactly (or, in case of buildings that have a larger capacity than any default building of that category, are a logical extension of the progression to be seen in default buildings).

At that time, I dind't have a very neat tool at my disposal which has been released in the meantime: Andreas Roth's SC4 building database! It lists all SC4 buildings completely with all game-relevant stats, so it's much easier now to search for a similar default building and adjust the stats of any BAT according to this reference.

However, I began making an Excel list where I entered every building I ever modded. This way, I had my very own little database, which nowadays has grown to pretty nice dimensions... With every building I entered, I had more reference and orientation. So nowadays I'm able to create a really fine and smooth progression in the buildings' stats.

I could easily publish all my modded desc files, but the problem is that I don't know if the authors of the respective buildings would be ok with that step, and I cannot possibly ask all authors because they're just too many.

Anyway, I suggest that you stick to Andreas Roth's database.


On a side note, garbage is only the most noticeable problem, but it's not the only one. In general, ALL stats for the BATs of most authors (exceptions include cerulean, gascooker, SimGoober, the latest NDEX buildings (thanks to Equinox) and a few other BATters) are skewed.

Beside their disproportionate pollution values, most BATs...

- consume far too much electricity and far too little water
- generate far too high tax incomes, so that they are effectively cheats.

For educational buildings, the situation is worse, since many of them are (unintended) cheats as well, initially boosting the EQ value to ridiculous levels.



EDIT

Wanna hear my personal record: Bixel's Sham Wan Towers at 2,035 tons of garbage / month. That's two thousand and thirty-five tons, i.e. the capacity of 4 WTE plants from one single BAT.

Another extreme case is Bobbo662 with his beautiful retro stores. They tend to generate more than 500 tons of garbage each.

Please, all BATters, please note that this is NOT intended as an offense or even as negative criticism. For my part, I respect and even admire your skills, and I can understand very well that after all that hard and tedious BATting work, the last thing you can be bothered with is digging into hex values and exact stats. However, I do suggest you go and look for someone to package the releases for you, kinda like Equinox does that for NDEX. Or at least you could stick to Andreas' Database, as I mentioned.

In the end, it doesn't matter much if a skyscraper generates the standard 7 tons of garbage or 11 - but when it generates 107, things start getting really ugly.

[Andreas Roth 626]

T Wrecks summed it up pretty well - unfortunately, the Plugin Manager supplies some pretty bad default values, when it comes to garbage and the like. This was one of the reasons why I created the Building Database, which is now integrated in SC4Tool. If you want to know more, refer to my thread in the Lot Editor and Plugin Manager Forum. You can find the download links also in my sig, just click on useful links.

[MayorAce 0]

I seen your post before Andreas Roth however, I disagree with downloading an extra program that someone made, when it can be done in plugin manager.... Which is another note to my above post...  To avoid having to go about doing it in iLive, I think batters should change those values immediatly after making the lot in plugin manager... Plus, they are easier to read and change in plugin manager as well...

[cogeo 960]

Well, the problem does not concern just garbage but BUILDING STATS IN GENERAL.

Garbage, pollution, electricity and water consumption, number of jobs (1000 jobs for 2x2 buildings!),  electricity (output & price of power plants), desirability effects for parks, number of passengers & maintenance for mass-transit stations ALMOST ALL STATS!

 

Even NAM's ped-mall tiles have a landmark effect of 150 over 7 tiles each (by comparison a large plaza has an effect of 80 over 15 tiles) and... garbage produced -10 per tile, yes minus, (ie 20 pedmall tiles are like a 4x6 landfill), and all these for free!

 

So, there are no standards and you can see inconsistencies even between BATs/lots of the same creator! I do not BAT but I have posted some few lots, and I have always tried to maintain some consistency with the ingame ones.

 

Many good BATters (which I would not like to name right now) rely just on what the Plugin Manager has produced: some stats are zero, some other ones have default values, and usually you cannot rename the lot! That is, very nice BATs, but unacceptable quality of modding/building stats work (if any).

 

I have downloaded many buildings, of which I use only few, mostly because of the above reason. They behave really badly, they are inconsistent to the rest of the game, and can mar the gameplay experience. I think I will start rating BATs and Lots taking also the above into consideration!!

 

What should be done? Major teams (BSC, NDEX etc) should write-down some NORMS for building stats and publish them in some sticky thread (only moderators should be able to post there). Or, why not, publish this guide on the OmniBus.

 

I would also greatly appreciate if some BATters and teams release updates for their BATs/Lots, fixing the stats as described above.

 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Date: 8/25/2005 3:02:38 PM
Author: MayorAce
[...] I disagree with downloading an extra program that someone made, when it can be done in plugin manager.... Which is another note to my above post... To avoid having to go about doing it in iLive, I think batters should change those values immediatly after making the lot in plugin manager... Plus, they are easier to read and change in plugin manager as well...

quote>

Very true, BUT: You see, reasonable stats don't just materialize out of thin air. You gotta know good stats before you can enter them.

I don't know if you realize that the SC4Tool's primary objective was not to change anything - such features may be added as per explicit request from ST users, among others.

The tool's primary objective was to provide exactly what you need before you can use the PM to enter decent stats: a source for getting the stats!

And while it's true that no place is easier to adjust the stats (and right during the creation process!) as the PM, it is also true that a reference database is an easier way to find resonable stats than digging through the SC4 DAT files with iLive's reader.

@ cogeo: That's a point I missed: The job/residents number, which is often absolutely disproportionate.

Another point is tilesets: How many steel-and-glass buildings are there which will happily grow in Chicago 1890 style?

Growth stage is yet another issue: It's a bit odd when in a 30,000 sims village, residential towers housing 1,000-2,000 sims come popping up at stage 4 or 5.

And yes, LM / park effects are often so exaggerated that the corresponding lots are actually cheaty, even if the BATter didn't intend that.

[Andreas Roth 626]

@MayorAce: Actually, SC4Tool can't change any of the values you are able to set with the Plugin Manager. I am well aware of the benefits and weak points of the existing tools, and SC4Tool is created in a way to fit in seamlessly: The Plugin Manager is there for setting the stats for all kinds of buildings - but the default values are screwed up. What you need is a reference, where you can look up values comparable to the in-game Maxis building ones. Of course you can do that with the navigator built-in in the Reader, but the process is slow and not very user-friendly. With the building database embedded in SC4Tool, you can flip through comparable buildings very fast and look up all necessary stats.

Another great feature is the upcoming transit enabling editor. As for now, the only way to do this is poking around in the LotConfig properties, changing mysterious hex values, and then re-edit the lot in the Lot Editor to re-apply the textures. SC4Tool can do this with a few clicks and drag&drop's. The same goes for comprehensive readme files. You don't have to look up all important stats manually, but only need to open your lot in the analyser, add your screenshots and description, and you get a full-blown HTML readme file generated from a fully customizable template.

It's not that I want to brag with my abilities (since nearly all credit goes to simrolle for programming the tool ), but SC4Tool was created especially to fill all those gaps and annoyances we have nowadays, leading to BATs that will make you game unbalanced. There are so many great artists out there, and many of them aren't even aware of these issues. Of course, you can't blame them for that, since it requires a lot of experience in the modding sector to get a good overview about the internal relations, but I hope to make this a bit easier with SC4Tool.

[tungston 19]

Try this one!

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Offshore%20Oil%20Platform.jpg align=baseline>

 

NOTE:  As far as I know this is not one posted in STEX, it is on the exchange on simcity.ea.com.

        Title:  Megolith Deep Sea Oil Rig

        Lot name:  oil_platform_tube

        Created by:  andrewman123

 

I hope andrewman123 views this thread.

 

If this file is in your plug-in folder.......shift>delete

[chapmanclam 3]

I know off shore drilling rigs make air pollution, and maybe some water pollution, but surely theres no biohazard material being released into the atmosphere!?  Garbage, thats an unlikely one, people just don't chuck garbage and also, theres no way to transport garbage away in simcity 4?

Theres an idea, get the nam and build a bridge, at the end, change it to ground level.

 

It just seems so outrageous, except for the air pollution.  Im sure the normal Oil Power Plant's nothing like that.

[roko1 0]

I had been wondering about my garbage level since I started downloading BATS from here...

We should maybe compile a list in this topic of those which are badly out of whack so everyone knows which ones they need to re-edit.

[Tropod 144]

Date: 8/25/2005 4:01:59 PM Author: cogeo

Even NAM's ped-mall tiles have a landmark effect of 150 over 7 tiles each (by comparison a large plaza has an effect of 80 over 15 tiles) and... garbage produced -10 per tile, yes minus, (ie 20 pedmall tiles are like a 4x6 landfill), and all these for free!

quote>

 

I'd be more than happy to change the Park/Landmark values. Just PM me with some suggested values .

 

[J_McSim 0]

Date: 8/26/2005 1:24:03 AM Author: roko1 I had been wondering about my garbage level since I started downloading BATS from here... We should maybe compile a list in this topic of those which are badly out of whack so everyone knows which ones they need to re-edit.

 

Such a list would grow very large, very quickly... assuming enough people with the know-how and time could be mustered to do it.

 

If you can handle waiting a couple of months, I have a program in the works, tentatively titled

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Date: 8/26/2005 2:49:04 AM
Author: Tropod

I'd be more than happy to change the Park/Landmark values. Just PM me with some suggested values .

quote>
This is no PM and not from cogeo, but I think copying ths values of a small paved square would be ideal.

@ J_McSim: Sounds interesting. However, you will find out that there are jumps and incoherencies in the Maxis parent cohorts. Maybe you should contact the creators of the SC4Tool, because they already have all the data you are looking for. Instead of making a code capable of reading out building cohorts, it might be easier to make a code that reads out their source data file(s) - it's worth a shot, I guess. There's nothing to lose.

@ Everyone who's interested:

I think that as soon as I'm back from work, I will post my Excel list here. So far, I think it's the biggest reference there is, because I included not only the values I finally adjusted (which are in line with the default buildings), but also the values of each modded BAT before I tweaked the stats. This way, you can see (a) which BATs have the worst stats, and (b) what reasonable stats for a BAT of that size and category can look like.

I'm saying can, because it's impossible to achieve pinpoint precision concerning the stats. The Maxis building cohorts are a bumpy scale not every BAT even fits into, so there's always a point where you proceed according to the best of your knowledge and belief. Fortunately, absolute precision is not really required, as long as the adjusted stats are roughly in the order of the default stats.

[rp2005 165]

Date: 8/26/2005 2:49:04 AM Author: Tropod

Date: 8/25/2005 4:01:59 PM Author: cogeo

Even NAM's ped-mall tiles have a landmark effect of 150 over 7 tiles each (by comparison a large plaza has an effect of 80 over 15 tiles) and... garbage produced -10 per tile, yes minus, (ie 20 pedmall tiles are like a 4x6 landfill), and all these for free!

I'd be more than happy to change the Park/Landmark values. Just PM me with some suggested values .

 

Ideally, they'd be neutral.  Personally I think any park effect would be better coming from plaza's plopped amongst the pedestrian tiles.

 

[MayorAce 0]

Even SimCity's defualt buildings are unrealistic... but half the time I see its for balance...  I wish there was a Mod that changed the SimCity defualt values on each building to a more realistic value, becuase frankly, 7 to 12 people living in one house is incorrect, 1 ton garbabge a month from 1 house is unrealistic, and polution?  I do not remember houses giving polution, unless the person lives there is a smoker!  Plus the reporting of the population is inconsistant I noticed recently.  Also, I dunno what city has big housing projects that are big as they are in SimCity.... I never seen them in Dallas, Texas, and never seen them in other major cities, I mostly see major Commercial buildings and small apartments.

There are supposed to be Commercials and small apartments, not big ones like they are found in SimCity cities, then you have the light residentials on the outskirts, and farther out you have the small commercial shops, stores, and gas stations along avenues and major highways and roads... then the farther out, there is more farm land or Industrials and special recreational areas and parks, bigger then the ones found in town. 

I guess its hard though to make a game be realistic... but thats what someone should make, a MOD that improves values, not stick with the standard.  As for those other Lots and props, well they should be re-edited to be more realistic, or not downloaded at all.

Now, if your a cheater, and do not like realistic, then keep the values like they are, and make them unrealstic... but for people who want it realistic, well...  I suggest the above mentioned, becuase SimCity defualts are far from realistic themself.

Edit: I forgot to explain why the population is unrealistic. Well in a 2 bedroom house you will have no more then 4 people, 2 people on average unless they have children, then maybe 3.  So base the housing and population off that scale. In 1 Bedroom apartment room, or a house you would have no more then 1 or 2 people in that house normally. So the following scale would be more realistic, and since Simcity defualts to not fill those houses up fully all the time, it would be more realistic.

Bedrooms in house  People max staying in house    Garbage use
1                            2                                            .1 tons
2                            4                                            .2 tons
3                            6                                            .3 tons
4                            8                                            .4 tons

Thats for houses. Now for apartment duplexes and other houses, do some research online to find out the max occupants to get a more accurate population.  Same for Large appartment buildings.  The Garbage would not be too high, but possibly no more then 10 tons a month.

I did not mention commercials either, a gas stations employees would be like 1 to 5, so max would be 5 employees and the max garbage use would be 2 tons a month. A large commercial building depending on how many Offices, and type of buisness.  I would say 1 employee per office room in the building, and add a few for cleaning crews, and employees that do not require an office. Garbage use would be no more then 1 ton per say 10 employees.

[Josh24_81 0]

I have an interesting Side note on using negative numbers. I made what I called a Pollution pump. I made it so it would pull in pollution and convert it to energy(cost like 15k a month to use though lol) A couple would completely remove all pollution that a relatively large industrial zone would create. But once you destroyed it all the pollution would go right back into the atmosphere and if you had it for awhile the enitre map would be polluted.

[cogeo 960]

I think the ideal desirability values for pedmall tiles should be 25 (landmark effect) and 10 (park effect), over a radius of no more than 4 or 5 tiles (there are no deeper lots). This is half the value of a small plaza (50) and slightly less than an open paved tile (30), ie two ped-mall tiles would be like a small plaza. Strictly speaking, the ideal settings should be neutral, as rp2005 has suggesgted, (the player could build plazas to increase desirability), but the lots around pedmall tiles are negatively affected by the not-so-perfect commute and the lack of traffic in front of them (customers), so there is needed something to counterbalance these negative effects.

As for the pollution, I think the values of -150/-100/-10 (air/water/garbage) are extreme, and I would rather like the values 0/0/1, just like the ingame small plazas and open paved tiles; I don't understand how the pedmall tiles reduce air and water pollution, they are not parks. Btw, a 1x1 small park green has the values -2/1/0. And of course, they should produce some little garbage, instaed of acting like incinerators.

 

I would not suggest these values without first considering why they were set at such exterme levels, for example are the above suggested settings enough to counterbalance the commute handicap? And do they really act like incinerators, or they just eliminate the garbage thrown or them? Or maybe (due to traffic limitations) the garbage (their own as well as of the lots they serve) CANNOT be collected and would otherwise only accumulate? I think the guys who suggested these settings should be asked first.

[MayorAce 0]

cogeo , umm...  parks would produce garbage, becuase city services have to pick up garbage there as well, but not enough to make 1 ton.  I am not sure SimCity will allow decimals, if it could, then the value would be small, like .5 tons per month.

Edit:  OMG!! I just realised something, 2200 pounds is a ton, and my family is a family of 4 and we hardly ever go over 150 pounds a month of garbage!!!  So basically the garbage use is way out of real life scale!!! 

[ardecila 125]

Who ever said that the SC4 garbage units were tons?

I believe the garbage units are just an arbitrary unit that is mapped to the landfill system, i.e. x number of units = 1 tile of landfill.

[ramvid01 0]

population is completely off, because you cant have mix use properties. As for projects being too big, i guess youve never seen the ones in NYC. Whatever the case, this is only a game, and as long as everything is in harmony with eah other, then it should be fine.

[MayorAce 0]

ardecila, it is in tons... lol  Becuase you know how I know?  Plopped a 2x2 landfill, made some ploppables with 1 ton of garbage use, and when you ID the garbage, it says 1 ton per month.

[TheCrybKeeper 301]

Well I can't make sense of code, but I do know one thing; Tons are not relevant, only the numbers are and what number, they are measured against. Is 1(ton or kilo) relative to the capacity used in the landfill? That is the curse of simulations, as they follow logic, but real cities do not follow logic. or I should say a common logic or denominator.