Marshall Printing Competitor

[cogeo 960]

Hi NYBT Team,

I would like to ask a question. I did check the list of the NYBT creations, but wasn't able to find what I was looking for. Is there any NY-style CO$$$ similar in size to the ingame Marshall Printing? It grows like a weed, if you build a NY-only city (and imo it's not particularly good). It has 245 jobs, and the next bigger CO$$$ available is Walton Plaza (832 jobs), ie a MUCH bigger one, and it is stage-7, compared to 6 for Marshall. This means that you are going to get an awful lot of Marshalls before getting any Walton. So I'm looking for a building (or buildings) similar in size to Marshall (ideally similarly modded and lotted too - but I would be willing to do this part of the job myself, if it's not already done)?

And if we relax the "NY-tileset" spec, the list could include more generic buildings as well.

While there are many great BAT creations on the STEX, in many (most) cases they are strangely modded (often as landmarks), and lotted in oddly sized lots, thus requiring special zoning. So you are going to get maybe 1 or 2 in your city (I guess you don't want to fill the city with the same building). But this can't be your bread and butter of commercial development. The bread and butter of commercial development is mostly ingame and grows in standard-sized lots, ie 3x3 and (mostly) 2x3 (yes!) - not to mention that two 2x3 lots can be subsequently aggregated to form a 4x3 hirise. In general 3-tiles deep lots are the most versatile, as they are capable of growing from tiny shops to large hirises. Given that due to the simulator settings, only a portion of the development can be stage-7 and 8, this means that one is going to get a very repetitive look of ingame medium-sized buildings (like Marshall) unless of course you disable the ingame stuff. For many players this is out of the question though, as the Maxis stuff is in genearal good quality, and well modded and lotted (eg covering all growth stages or having the same building growing also in larger but lower-stage lots), so one would have to carefully download and install a lot of custom content, and risking leaving "gaps".

So an alternative good solution could be to make specially designed, modded and lotted buildings, to compete with the ingame stuff. Such an example is the building by gn_leugim, specially made to compete with the ingame Reflect Systems Incorporated, a building similar in size to Marshall, growing as weed in Euro cities. Also madhatter106 has released a set of small-medium CO$$ competing with the ingame stuff, and I have made (but not released yet) a set of 3 small CO$$$, competing with the ingame Chalmers Co.

I think this is the way to go. If anyone is interested, here are my suggestions of the buildings that should be targeted:

- Marshall Printing, of course.

- Maybe a couple of CO$$$ ca 450-500 jobs. These would fill the gap between Marshall and Walton. Such an example is the 0x4000008B family (Bunch Engineering and Ferrara Inc), only these are unique to the Chicago tileset, with all other tilesets lacking similarly-sized buildings completely.

- The notorious Wren Insurance.

- And of course, as many 4x4s as possible, as there is only one ingame NY-CO$$$ (true) 4x4 (Lind Entertainment).

If any of the above already exists, please let me know.

Regards

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Interesting information you have given us.

Well as for a building the size of Marshal Printing and similar style, we don't have a lot of those. We have some bigger NY styled buildings but nothing at that size. One of the closest things we got is Aaron's Transportation Building, but that may be more of a competitor with Wren Insurance(though I think the Transportaion Building is CO$$ but that can be easily remodded). I think we have more modern buildings closer to that size, like perhaps Jumpthefecne's 77 Water Street and 10 Hanover Square.

The small buildings you've made look interesting too, btw good competition with those Maxis buildings.

I don't think we have any 4x4 buildings much, most are 4x5. Though I believe Darknono35's recreation of the Woolworth Building was a 4x4 size.

This may not be the most detailed response but I hope it helps in some way.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

I'm not 100% certain on the growth stage, but this fits your mantra fairly well. I think if you look through more of the BSP catalogue that you'll find other suitable replacements as well. It's not CO$$$ but that can be modded easily.

[Jasoncw 12,001]

I think the BSP BATs should help reduce the problem since there are a lot of medium sized CO$$$ but I have all the BSP BATs and those buildings still grow a lot in my cities.

I have an art deco 1x3 that has about 240 jobs almost ready to release (I haven't gotten around to making the icons yet), but it's a 1x3/3x1, and I think it's a stage 7.

[cogeo 960]

@Sgt Pepper: Thanks for replying! I see that there are not many Maxis-compatible BATs/lots released, probably because not many BATters pay much attention to this. But from the game-player point of view, it is really "tiresome", I would say, as you need to zone specifically to get certain lots, and in this case you have to know the lot size(s), and therefore look into the documentation or the plugins folders. And one may be willing to do this for certain - almost landmark status - buildings, but for the bulk of commercial development this is prohibitive, not to mention that lot sizes (esp depth) are not easy to match and therefore zoning can prove a nightmare. With standard-sized lots there's no such problem, as the player knows that almost all of the commercial development comes in some few "universal" lot sizes. So he can start with 3-tiles-deep zones and try to form 2x3 (preferably in pairs, so that it is possible to get 4x3 at some later stage) and some 3x3 lots. 2x3 are really versatile, as they can accommodate from small lowrise offices to small - and in some cases quite tall actually - skyscrapers, and be combined to 4x3 later. 3x3 can also accommodate big buildings, and they often contain the same buildings as in 2x3 lots, but they are one stage lower (this makes stage transitions easier). 3x2s usually contain the same buildings as 2x3s. Finally, some 4x4 zones can be laid in the main CBD, but given the poor Maxis collection, the player has no option but use the NDEX stuff, which although is high-quality in general, it is quite generic and sometimes not well modded, eg large 4x4 skyscrapers with thousands of jobs set to stage-5 while they should definitelty be stage-8. So no NY- or Chicago-styled cities, and a lot of fixing/modding.

@Ion_Cannon: Thanks! Indeed, nofunk has released excellent stuff, but my comments above apply in this case as well. Actually I wished he was more active in the forums and ask him to make some few "derivatives" of his buildings if possible, so as to match the Maxis dimensions and lot sizes. Eg those white art deco buildings could easily be modified to become competitors to the Marshall Printing I mentioned in my original post, or the missing stage-6 2x3 (ca 500 jobs). But unfortunately it seems that he is not BATting anymore.

I would like to post a screenshot of one of my cities:

This is a euro-styled city. As you can see, I have just started getting medium-to-hirise development. Not many options for buildings of this stage, so I had to use the (ingame) Reflect Systems Incorporated, and gn_leugim's Happy Offices (a competitor). But I would still get a very repetitive look, so I grew them in quads. At some later stage these will be combined to 4x3s. But with only two buildings of this stage, this would not be much of a help either, so I (temporarily) enabled the Houston tileset, to get Brink Real Estate (the beige buildings), as both Houston and Euro tilesets in SC4 are mostly modernist and generic (I could not use any NY or Chicago building here). And you can see the problem, although these will finally be replaced by something bigger, it will mostly be that (awful) Vu Blue Denim Headquarters, before getting the 4x3s, and even then a big portion of the development (due to the simulator settings) will still be stage-6 and -7, ie... Reflect Systems and Vu Blue throughout my city! (of course this is the NYBT forom and the discussion is about NY-styled BATs, but the same principles apply here as well).

I have a complete list of all CO$$$ buildings (incl stats) and lots in Excel format, with all buildings sorted by size and categorised appropriately. Also a small (incomplete) list of certain CO$$ buildings. Looking into this, you can see how poor the Maxis collection really is. If anyone is interested, pls send me a PM.

  Edited July 11, 2012 by cogeo  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

You're very knowledgeable about all this, and this is something I've never paid attention before to when placing my BATs on a lot. I'd figure that the Tile Set would match the Maxis building that a BAT would replace in the lot editor? Or is there an actual option in the default Plug in Manager that I have never noticed before?

I can understand your frustration with repetition. I try and download as much as i can get with buildings, and even with all the variety I have in my massive plug in folders, I still get repetitive buildings. It must be the way I zone cities perhaps?

After reading this and rethinking again on it, I feel a little bad about not having a building that could fit your description. Marshal Printing is always a 2x3 lot or 3x2 yes? I think after I finish my recent 2x2 tall building with the pyramid in it's NY Style that I'll try making something to match Marshal Printing's size. I just got back from a trip to NYC you see, so I'm quite inspired right now.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

The tileset is set to all four options by default. You need to restrict it afterwards using e.g. iLive's reader. The tileset is defined entirely and exclusively in the building exemplar and has nothing to do with the lot.

As a control freak, I actually have a "cheat sheet" that contains all plugins I use, together with tilesets, densities, growth stages and lot sizes, even road orientations (left/right corner or regular lot), sorted by RCI category/wealth. This way I have an overview of my available options, for example like this: "Let's see... my city has reached commercial stage 5 or 6, and I'm playing in Chicago tileset. Currently there's high CO§§ demand... now which CO§§ BATs can I grow, and on what lot size and density?" However, I'm well aware that this approach doesn't have the slightest mainstream compatibility whatsoever.

What's more, even playing this way I still have a few Maxis buildings that keep repeating. That's why I understand cogeo's wish for more alternatives in the vanilla sizes and stages.