Regional Resource Redistribution

[FourWinds 29]

I picked up Simcity after all the reviews and hoohah, and so know what I was getting myself into. I knew about the tile size and always-on a brought it anyway.

 

When I first started playing I became aware of the whole mining and refining and producing aspect of the game and I thought to myself..

 

Eureka! I get it; what Maxis are trying to do is push me to manage each 'city' separately and have them interact by sending all the resources around to ultimately produce chips and TVs. I even thought at that time that perhaps the tile sizes would indeed increase in size, so that eventually they were all overlapping each other and the 'region' became a number of overlapping cohesively interacting neighborhoods.

 

 

So I get to the point of the post. What I think is the biggest omission in the game if you're a single player user like me: I can't automate that resource production, supply and use! I have to 'gift.'

 

There needs to be a change here to enable a single player game. There's no need for mining or production to stop dead when I'm not 'in' a city; buses go there, there is commuting that may be about to get better, but for some reason (perhaps leader-board paranoia) Maxis feel the need to steal my one player bike.

 

Perhaps trade depots could point at other in neighboring cities. Maybe a regional 'trade hub' kind of thing.

 

What do you guys think? Perhaps Maxis will read this thread and give us something.

[VanGioRobNelli 29]

I believe you have stated the biggest issue/design flaw of this entire game. 

 

How can trading be a specialization?  For example, we should be able to mine raw ore and coal in one city.... truck it over to our next city... which it either can be exported or smelted.  It is absurd that it has to be "gifted".  This is not how real economies or industries work.  One company will mine the ore and SELL it to another company to craft/smelt/whatever it. 

 

For example:  that 3 city region... One city could be low population and for nothing but drilling and mining.  That city could then SELL the goods to the population/education/electronics/special factory city to be produced into another good which THEN could be exported.

 

Once again, I shake my head at EA/MAXIS.

[FourWinds 29]

I don't want to turn this into a bashing thread.

 

I thought we could tell them what we would like.

 

I'm thinking about how city A - when you leave it - should continue drilling/producing or whatever, and then send that on automatically.  Perhaps an average of the last three months of the trade depots receipts or something. I was hoping we could thrash out a way to implement such a thing.

 

I'd like to hear what you guys think would be a good way to have this work.

[CosmicSpeed 28]

I think it is just the nature of managing only one city at a time. 

 

Sometimes I leave my city when it is making negative Simoleons or has service or civil demands and re-structure my neighbors to meet the demands for the original city. If the city was running in real-time, I would have no idea what to expect.

 

It would be nice for a regional transaction option or tab with the transactions coming into effect when going from city to city and have the ability to control in-our flow and the such.

[Cykik Visage 0]

The whole dang system is flawed because supply chains and T1 resources are all pointless. You don't need oil. You don't need coal. You don't need ore. You don't need to recycle. You don't need to manage your water because you can create a infinite supply too. All you need to do is start a new city, pause the game, take out 2 loans, zone as much as you can afford off the road network your made (R/C only). Take out your third lone, drop your power and water and wait for your budget to balance. Run that $%&^! until you pay your loans off, and drop your city services (fire/health/police*). Get your student capacity to 1000 or so and start building education up to community college. Plop that $%&^! (community college) and smack 5 2 plop wide industrial buildings near by the college. Boom you got 5 medium tech industry buildings. Delete them because industrial is pointless in SimCity 2013 and plop 1 supply depot and 1 or 2 processor facilities. Import alloy and Plastic and export your Processors. Once you've unlocked consumer electronics drop 1 TV factory and replace your supply depot with the large depot hooked up to rail or water. No computers. 1 factory per 2 processor plants. Continue importing alloy/plastic and now export both processors/tvs. Don't try and push your population beyond around 45-55k.

 

Now you should have a city harvesting 0 T1 resources, only importing T2, and exporting T3 and T4.

You should have 45-55k people with only enough C zones to make them happy.

You should have 2-4 proccessor facilities, and 1-2 TV facilities. 

 

Expanding your production from here is optional. If you do this right you should average anywhere from 5M-10M per month depending on how well you established your supply chain and wether or not you overdid your utilities/city services. If you can buy power thats nice. Everything else (power even if needed) are all taken into consideration in the +5-10M/month figure.

 

I've only been playing for 3 weeks now but my step brother and I bought the game together and have had time to test a lot of the manufacturing. I think I've got it down about as good as it gets. Lately now I'm just playing in Sandbox though testing different zoning/networking concepts. Being able to make a filthy rich city to fund an entire region in 4-5 hours has made non-sandbox seem like nothing more then a restriction now. Why play with broken leader boards and unlockable concept that when the only thing required to access them is time commitment. Anyways that a side rant for another thread I guess.

[tnobles 38]

I think it is just the nature of managing only one city at a time. 

 

Sometimes I leave my city when it is making negative Simoleons or has service or civil demands and re-structure my neighbors to meet the demands for the original city. If the city was running in real-time, I would have no idea what to expect.

 

It would be nice for a regional transaction option or tab with the transactions coming into effect when going from city to city and have the ability to control in-our flow and the such.

I built a city with a fully upgraded high school, then started three other cities and plopped school bus stops. All three cities had education levels of three fairly quick. I always wondered what would happen if I ran the original city for a few days. Combined, the other three cities had more than 4,800 students.

[VanGioRobNelli 29]

Fourwinds, I did not mean to bash by my post, I just ended up on a rant.  My apologies.

 

The more I think about it, this entire idea is almost next to impossible for them to implement with their current region mechanics.  

 

I like COSMICSPEED's idea of the regional transaction tab, but even then, how can you manage everything else going on in that dormant city?  Traffic? Services?  Disasters?  Population fluxes?  All these variables can affect your trade.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

Has anyone noticed that the adviseor tellys you to buy power from cities your not connected to???????

[FourWinds 29]

Well I still think this sucks, even if the original post didn't provoke as many responses as I thought it would.

 

Every time I play the game the issue gets on my nerves. Some aspects of the neighbors are 'simulated' - I mean made up based on some kind of last played condition I guess - when they're in their async' limbo: the commuters going there are doing something right, their students get educated, etc.

 

Why the hell not production, drilling, and distribution? 

 

Other issues with the game I can put up with or laugh off. This dichotomy of addressing some aspects of single player neighbor limbo and not others does my head in however.

 

Sad 'kin' face.