Natural Resources

[egod6969 8]

So I have read some of the discussions on the Environment but one thing I am concerned with is natural resource management. One wish I have always had with SC is that I think it would be really cool to have privately run hospitals and power plants. Here in Florida there are very few municipal power plants in most places here in South Florida FPL is the local power company also while we have hospital taxing districts that pay the local hospitals for indigent care we have no county or city owned hospitals. Therefore I have always hoped in the next version it would be possible to have privately owned hospitals or power plants.

Now back to my natural resource concerns..

While I think it would be great to be able to zone a section of land Industrial-Natural and have coal mines or oil wells spring up, it is not something I as mayor want to have to plop. Also while the price of coal should affect the cost of power provided by the local coal plant or oil should affect the price of gas in my city and therefore high prices would have a negative economic impact, the mayor of a city has very little control over these. At least here in the US local governments really have very little control (aside from zoning) over the companies who extract oil, coal, etc. it is the state governments and feds who have the most control and influence.

I also don't want to have to worry about gathering or trading food and resources, this is SimCity not Civilization or Settlers. Local governments don't engage in resource trading.

I am keeping an open mind about this and like what I see otherwise, hopefully I am simply misunderstanding how the whole natural resource thing will work. Or there will be a way to avoid dealing with it if it work the way it sounds to me like it will.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I hate to inform you but SimNation is a confederation. Power is delegated solely to the all powerful and the Sim who is ruler of the free world only has to worry about connecting all the major cities to the SimNation economy.

In Cities XL, they said that the Planets were recently discovered and the players get the special privilege of a 10x10km square of land to do whatever they want---by the 'grace' of OmniCorp, the only global power and the party that allows the planets to be settled in order to take in profits from last resort trading. Because you and Don Madolf (good name) are the only authority in your region, you must supply all the necessities and luxuries for your citizens (some bankruptcy notes say that OmniCorp dissolved their subsidy or Don Madolf shut them down).

[Jahnri 21]

Well you don't have to worry about trading food and resources. The simulation handles that for you. If your factory can't get a resource locally, it gets it by importing.

Simple really.

All they did was bring to mind every city has to deal with importing resources. Its what drives a cities existence. Most major cities are in a tug of war to find cheap resources to keep the city affordable at the private level. In many cases the city government uses county funds to open up land projects to collect resources on country land and or state land. Such as how logging is run on the west coast of the states in many cases. This has a cascading impact. Once the cities in the country open up the logging, this creates jobs and more taxes. Which in the end gives more to the cities, then the cost of spending the tax money to open the lands. Mind you some counties run this differently and just sell the rights to land and rely on the individuals to put it in.

We don't really know how Simcity will handle resource gathering. For all we know there is a zoning tool which allows you to mark areas as open to resource gathering.

That or the city mayor can plop down a resource gathering facality , which more or less symbolizes the land has been opened.

I think in the end Maxis is trying to show people how cities are becoming more aware of resources on a community level. In the past it was all about exploiting all the resources you could and managing the fall out with preservation, reservation and repair efforts. While now, its a much more locally controlled effort to plan out resource use long term so the fallout never happens.

I for one am glad to have the option to manage a cities eco-systems. I plan to rotate crop lands and logging sites. I plan to have fishing cycles as well.

Since resources deplete and regenerate when there a living system and they game shows this, it gives us a great view as to how cities function as living creatures.

Rather then economic simulations.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Firstly I'll just note that the position of 'Mayor' in SC is obviously different to that IRL, so maybe the term SCMayor would be more appropriate wtvr.

Because of this the way resources are handled isn't necessarily going to be the most realistic way, but more the best way for gameplay and to meet the game's and user's expectations. If we all asked for resources to be handled in a strategy game way then they would respond to that, and likewise if we all asked for realistic mayoral authority which would make an extremely boring game called RealLifeMayor that nobody would buy.

Personally I would like to see resources handled partly by the Mayor and partly by 'independent' parties. I'd like mines, water companies etc to be privately owned (or government run wtvr, so long as they aren't a subsidiary of Mayor's Dictatorship Inc.) in that they should be smart organisations and not require me to tell them exactly what to do but to guide and approve their activities. Like I ca issue ordinances which will have impacts on these sectors, or tell them if a suitable site can be built on or not, but as to laying pipes and wires like in sc2000... Firstly those pipes and wires were unrealistic anyway and secondly that shouldn't be the job of any Mayor fictional or not. Laying overland powerlines or mass water conveying infrastructure like from a reservoir across a state, maybe. Laying a pipe from houseA to underneath_road_pipeX, no. That's the job of a plumber employed by the Council or a private company contracted by the Council.

The Council/Mayor in SC is more a local government in the sense of it's being an actual authority of an independent nature, and I like to think of Regions/Cities as micronations or city states in that they are so semi independent that they are hardly affected by SimNation.

However obviously with a SimWorld involved things change, especially with MP mode. However I would still like resources to be intelligent and not require me to do all the grunt work. I shouldn't be laying pipes, I should be approving construction of a water tank or doing a business deal with Somewhereville to buy water. But digging wells is their job not mine. I'd love to see mining economies, army bases and reservoirs. Love to. But they shouldn't have to be dealt with like in a strategy game. I'd rather bother about building and managing a city, than becoming a surveyor for a mining company.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I have suggested previously, roads with underground lines. They cost extra but carry water and electricity with them (in lines directly underground). You would have to do this manually yourself in SimCity 4 (but you can zone directly over a road without laying down any usable zone spaces but that road instantly gets streetlights and carries electricity) so having an automatic utility road (more expensive of course) would be far easier for casual players and busy mayors.

[Jahnri 21]

Lets be honest, Simcity was never entirely realistic. Like people said, building powerlines and pipelines are usually the mayors say. The mayorship for simcity has always been about giving someone the tools to build a city from the ground up and see how all the bits and pieces work together and get those lightbulb moments of how real life things mite work or work better even.

This current edition is just offering us more tools to see how a city works and lets use delve more deeply into the inner workings of cities and the management of resources.

Sure a mayor mite not plop a mine down, but it gives the player the option of seeing the impact.

Thats what simcity is all about. Hopefully always will be.

[Mark Waybill 242]

However I still think OcramSeattle's suggestion a good one. Long distance or major wires/pipes could still connect production facilities, and if regional gameplay allowed largescale infrastructure with realistic limits then these could become an important part of spread out development that doesn't form a conurbation. However making every single pipe and power line is a bit silly, surely, when many of us would like to make cities of a large and complex nature without unecessary time wasting. And of course the educational aspect of this vicinity is perfectly obvious with larger pipes and lines, and the fact that they could still be visible as underground/overground features. One addition that would be nice is overground water pipes, more realistic for intercity water transportation, at least if the cities I have lived in are anything to go by.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

One thought that has occurred to me on occasion is being able to switch hats. That is, most of the time other people in the game: council members, managers, etc; are just NPCs, but what if the mayor could take over one of their functions for a short time? And, by the way, I am against the idea of Advisors a la SC4.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I've thought a lot about that I won't go too off topic but I believe eventually we will be able to become any citizen we like, whether a Council member, Mayor, God, or Joe from Joe's Corner Shop. I think The Sims will eventually integrate with SimCity to the point where it is one game.

But back on topic I don't know to what depth resource realism will be going in this release, so this is quite speculative, but if this direction of greater realism was decided upon, then something to consider would be the fact that there isn't just coal or oil. There's brown coal for instance, and various degrees of oil type, there's slate etc Probably not important. But there is peat also and varying types of wood so...

Environment/resource essentially being forest and tree, I think maxis will be able to create a level of realism that is just right, not too boringly real to the point where we can't do anything fun, but not too simplified to the point where we are making 'yes or no' decisions (Mayor would you like to build a coal power plant or a flower garden?) But thinking about various species of plants and animals, if eventually flora and fauna were simulated to a greater depth of realism and detail, with miniature cycles of glassbox elements (birds eat food like people, create waste etc) it would be interesting to see effects on actual animals/plants from pollution etc.

erosion could be simulated as could weather, but then we'd end up with nothing. Climate change i think would be problematic in SC as I'd like to think a coast side city will still be there 100 years from now, and wouldn't want to think the melting ice sheets would ruin my nice city. However if water flow is to be simulated properly, thus allowing for creeks and waterfalls etc etc (which of course we haven't seen in a LONG time) erosion would be a logical addition. At what point do we stop and go 'wait climate change/erosion will eventually destroy my city unless it evolves' or should we follow that path and have to deal with buildups of sediment or cliff falls?