Pathfinding between cities bugged, even with NAM

[MoarTriangle 0]

Hello

 

I had some problems getting sims to use my newly built train stations between cities so I did some testing and found that there seem to be a problem with the pathfinding between cities, Ill show you what I mean:

 

So in this first pic its just a small city with about 600 sims and its only connection is to an industrial town to the east(picture #2). As you see we got about 180 commuters going throught the road(pic 3).

 

1. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=344s0h5&s=6

 

2. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=dzvxnn&s=6

 

3. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=sg0jd3&s=6

 

Now lets say I wanted to add another connection to the east, in this case i will add another road connection but it could be an avenue, highway or even a train station it does not matter the bug is still the same.

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=eriqes&s=6

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=9kqyhf&s=6

 

What is this? Noone is using my new road? Your probably thinking this is because there is no need for them to use my new road with only 180 commuters and no congestion and switching to the new road would not lower their commute time so why bother right? However this does not seem to be the case. Let me show you:

 

I added a bit of street to my old road to increase the commute time, now, surely the sims must be smart enough to use the new road?

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=jpafqf&s=6

 

As you can see the commute time has gone from 0.4 minutes to over 6, yet the sims are still refusing to use my new road!

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=dy8xf5&s=6

 

Yes the querry tool shows 4 sims using my new road but this is due to a few more people moving in to my city(new residens does not seem to be affected by this bug)

 

 

Now the only way for me to get the sims to use the new road and to lower the overall commute time is to either delete the old, very long road connection or to connect my new road to the old one.

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=w9v8zo&s=6

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2i07vd5&s=6

 

As you see the commute time drops as expected.

 

So the problem is that the simulator does not want to change an existent connection, regardless of how much faster(commute time wize) a new connection would be.

 

Now as I said, new citizens will not be affected by this bug so if i were to zone for more residential the new ones would use the new, shorter road connection. Also this bug only exsists between cities and not in them, ie if I had the industrial zone in my residential city I would not have this problem, the sims would always chose the fastest path.

 

So I created this thread just to rant about NAMS pathfinding? No, I love NAM. This thread was created to address the problem(Thought im pretty sure im not the first one to notice this) and also for people who dont understand why sims arnt using the newly built train stations or highways in their cities, and also to provide a solution(by deleting the old connection).

[SimRico 968]

my path question seems more localized into the residential area themselves. ive posted some pics and will findthem to show you where my sims are commuting from one bouse to go to work in another house. Most recent and currently still happening is the house residents goes to work across the the street in a neighbor's house.

i kinda like the idea and as someone online said 'could be the maid going to work'. but yours seems to be broader than my path queries.

[Bdub01 201]

I have come to find out after many long, long months of playing and learning one has to sort of guide or direct sims to the right path. For the longest time I only used one way streets for astatic purposes however now after watching a few "lets play" videos and my own trial and error that one way streets help to guide sims to highways or train stations etc.

and even though this goes against conventional reasoning, the fewer connections to other cities seem to be better... Now before I get a thousand people telling me how wrong I am since regional play is the life blood of the game, I used to have a hundred connections between my cities from streets to avenues and do forth just sort of willy nilly. Too many connections seem to idk overwhelm the path finding or something. Now I guide my sims to the interstate highways which of course has a much larger capacity than a street or avenue. I still have an occasional NJZ here or there and that's usually cause SimRico keeps trying to get them to move to Peyton Place!!! However I don't have near as many as I use to. Now my problem is actually that I have tooany sims using the train stations. I kid you not but everyone of the stations on my Berlin region has at least 200% over capacity. One was at like a thousand and shut down. I never had that happen before. One thing I have never done is use the El or the monorail any tips on how to use it would be nice. I tried it once and it was a big waste of time and money!

[Turjan 1,048]

I kid you not but everyone of the stations on my Berlin region has at least 200% over capacity. One was at like a thousand and shut down. I never had that happen before. One thing I have never done is use the El or the monorail any tips on how to use it would be nice. I tried it once and it was a big waste of time and money!

 

Well, I guess you use stations with adjusted passenger numbers? If you use the NAM, you will normally have much higher traffic numbers. An additional problem is that stations count passengers that just go through, not only those that board or leave. That means that even the common modded stations with 10,000 passengers capacity are easily overwhelmed. Just take for comparison that an RTMT bus stop has a capacity of 64,000. Just adjust the passenger capacity in the reader.

 

I'm not sure what you want to hear regarding monorails etc. I have used them to great effect. Of course, they are a pain to use together with elevated motorways, but it's feasible.

[SimRico 968]

like Bdub, I had a city with a HUGE population and yes, you can get the monorail t shut down because of overcrowding to where either you have to add another station on the line nearby or set up an additional mode of transportation for commuters make a transfer at a station.

 

Once I toyed with forced transportation by setting up breaks or road disconnecting within the city.  From the eye view it may appear all streets and roads were connected, but certain pockets of population (due to the street breaks maybe camouflaged with trees plopped in-between and along the road to appear like overgrown trees,  the only connectible means to get to another part of the city would be a subway or a monorail that happen to be in that 'cutoff' section of town.  Of course pedestrians could still walk to a job that may be across the street or down a few blocks by walking to another street, but if the cutoff section had 100,000  population and the monorail was their only way to where their jobs were, they took that mans.  (remember this was just a toying around) . But as a whole, ive done what bdub has and my population has in the past prompted more monorail or a transferred means of transportation to lighten the load if no larger capacity monorail was available.

[fredrik001 9]

Hello

 

I had some problems getting sims to use my newly built train stations between cities so I did some testing and found that there seem to be a problem with the pathfinding between cities, Ill show you what I mean:

 

So in this first pic its just a small city with about 600 sims and its only connection is to an industrial town to the east(picture #2). As you see we got about 180 commuters going throught the road(pic 3).

 

1. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=344s0h5&s=6

 

2. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=dzvxnn&s=6

 

3. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=sg0jd3&s=6

 

Now lets say I wanted to add another connection to the east, in this case i will add another road connection but it could be an avenue, highway or even a train station it does not matter the bug is still the same.

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=eriqes&s=6

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=9kqyhf&s=6

 

What is this? Noone is using my new road? Your probably thinking this is because there is no need for them to use my new road with only 180 commuters and no congestion and switching to the new road would not lower their commute time so why bother right? However this does not seem to be the case. Let me show you:

 

I added a bit of street to my old road to increase the commute time, now, surely the sims must be smart enough to use the new road?

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=jpafqf&s=6

 

As you can see the commute time has gone from 0.4 minutes to over 6, yet the sims are still refusing to use my new road!

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=dy8xf5&s=6

 

Yes the querry tool shows 4 sims using my new road but this is due to a few more people moving in to my city(new residens does not seem to be affected by this bug)

 

 

Now the only way for me to get the sims to use the new road and to lower the overall commute time is to either delete the old, very long road connection or to connect my new road to the old one.

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=w9v8zo&s=6

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2i07vd5&s=6

 

As you see the commute time drops as expected.

 

So the problem is that the simulator does not want to change an existent connection, regardless of how much faster(commute time wize) a new connection would be.

 

Now as I said, new citizens will not be affected by this bug so if i were to zone for more residential the new ones would use the new, shorter road connection. Also this bug only exsists between cities and not in them, ie if I had the industrial zone in my residential city I would not have this problem, the sims would always chose the fastest path.

 

So I created this thread just to rant about NAMS pathfinding? No, I love NAM. This thread was created to address the problem(Thought im pretty sure im not the first one to notice this) and also for people who dont understand why sims arnt using the newly built train stations or highways in their cities, and also to provide a solution(by deleting the old connection).

You have to load the "end" city, neighbour connection paths do not update until you have loaded the connected city and let it run for a couple of months. Sometimes you have to switch multiple times.

[z1 566]

Well, I guess you use stations with adjusted passenger numbers? If you use the NAM, you will normally have much higher traffic numbers. An additional problem is that stations count passengers that just go through, not only those that board or leave. That means that even the common modded stations with 10,000 passengers capacity are easily overwhelmed.

 

This is all very true, and is one big reason we included transit stations in the new NAM.  The capacities of all the Maxis stations have been raised to realistic levels, and we've also added a number of non-Maxis stations as well, again with proper capacity.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

@Z1:

 

Well, I guess you use stations with adjusted passenger numbers? If you use the NAM, you will normally have much higher traffic numbers. An additional problem is that stations count passengers that just go through, not only those that board or leave. That means that even the common modded stations with 10,000 passengers capacity are easily overwhelmed.

 

This is all very true, and is one big reason we included transit stations in the new NAM.  The capacities of all the Maxis stations have been raised to realistic levels, and we've also added a number of non-Maxis stations as well, again with proper capacity.

 

I'm in the process of making a transit hub because of my station overcrowd issues. The monorails get overcrowded the most. Is there something I should keep in mind concerning what was done in NAM while making the hub?

 

I learned to "direct" my sims over the years too to make their retarded transit behaviors less frequent. I have a kind of funnel method and leaving open areas in case of future transit needs.

[z1 566]

Do you have the NAM installed?  If not, that's really the best solution.  The new stations in it will relieve your station overcrowding issues.

 

For people building stations from scratch (which is a lot more difficult to do properly than it seems), it is essential to read Otherwise, your stations are very likely to break the networks on which they're placed.