Low Density Omega Towns

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

My current pet project is creating an all low-density Omega Town.  Yes, yes - medium and high density are more profitable - that's why it's a project, not a serious undertaking.

 

A few things I'm finding:

 

Good:

 

-Nowhere near as much desperation for power and water and sewage and garbage pickup.  I can run four omega factories and have a full low density map with one fully tricked out coal plant.

 

-Low traffic makes Omega deliveries easier.  I still get the whining about slow deliveries, but it's not as rampant.  I run low density roads east-west and then high density avenues north-south for the sims to get to work.

 

Bad:

 

-It's hard to balance the RCI.  You want to make sure all of your frieght has a commercial place to go before you switch to omega, and there's enough commercial for residents to work at and go shopping.  I've had towns where the people moaned about unemployment, and ones where I have not-enough workers.

 

-Once you get up to using drones, they don't fill in as well as I expected them to.  Usually one fully-tricked-out  only-drones-no-Omega trucks factory can handle a few blocks of medium or high residential quite comfortably, so they'll fill up a huge city of low density in no time, right?  Wrong.  Still only a few blocks.  I'm not quite sure why this works this way, but I suspect because of the low numbers of drones per house and the rate of drone replacement you're replacing drones for more houses faster, whereas higher density buildings build up a larger stockpile of drones to tide them over before they need new ones.  Mind you by the time I get to this point my town is full and profitable BUT I only have drones to a few blocks of the town and the completionist in my gets annoyed.  I strongly suspect the game testers didn't have many people working with low-population cities in general - not just Omega cities.

 

The future:

 

I'm thinking about making a square in the center of the map and working in that.  I think trying to fill the map at the beginning is a mistake, besides I run out of room fast trying to get enough low density.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

If I remember correctly, medium density low wealth is most profitable. High Density has lowered franchise profits per capita (and far lower freight production per worker). Low density should not be too difficult.

--Ocram

[AmpsterMan 5]

If drones work for residential the same way freight works for commercial, the density of the building doesn't matter, only its tile size. To elaborate, a Med and High Dense building use the freight numbers if they are both the same tile size (4x4)

I tend to agree with you; SimCity doesn't do smaller cities well.

Also, just noticed this may be the same town you were refering to in your other thread in General discussion xD

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

I officially give up.  I've tried many times with many cities and drones are always the sticking point.  You just cannot sustain a population with all-low density that will ensure you have workers for all of the omega factories you need to supply omega to factories and drones to all houses.