Garbage problems

[Themightypierre 1]

How do you stop garbage just becoming a total nightmare. I am building my fisrt city approaching 200,000 and I just can't keep a lid on garbage, short of building a new city and turning the whole thing to landfill. Any good tips or mods appreciated.

 

Thanks guys. This is about the best forum I've come across gaming wise for helping newbs out.

 

 

[Wuzzle 1]

Right so i did a quick search and found these:

and

problem solved!

[Turjan 1,048]

...short of building a new city and turning the whole thing to landfill.

 

Funny that you mention that. This would be the official exploit. Take a tile that isn't of much use for anything else, zone a large garbage dump and close the city before any garbage has been deposited there... and never touch the tile again. This "city" will then offer ridiculously cheap garbage deals.

 

Anyway, even if this is an "official" exploit, I usually take a different approach with waste-to-energy plants.

 

Here's one that's relatively in line with the ingame one but doesn't produce much pollution:

This one is a bit cheaper and completely clean (doesn't deteriorate either): http://www.bripizza.net/sc4/wtoe/wtoe.html

This one is very cheap and completely clean (good for smaller towns):

Or even smaller:

 

Of course, there's the classic solution for big cities:

[47ply 1,100]

I agree with Turjan about the other city but it can still be a productive neighbor as well with carful neighbor deals you could be spending on garbage removal to said city and making it up on the back end by selling water and power back and don't forget the toll road to and from the city connection tax those garbage trucks lol HAVE FUN........

[Prophet42 1,501]

Also, do a search on the STEX for black hole management company.  This little 4x4 building gets rid of a large amount of garbage.

[herbigharo32 5]

Making a whole map as a landfill has severe limitations due to limited capacity to import.  Peg has a chut where you can just toss it all off the edge of the map.  Then there is the hyperspace disposer; at 9 million creds to buy, a middle class city is one that can afford it so the trash gets sent to 3 out of 12 cities currently on map.

[Shark7 118]

My preferred method is to build a large 'regional' garbage dump (though in truth I build several of these where the city tile the dump is in and the 4 adjoining cities can utilize it) and build a large fenced in facility with a small landfill and as many waste to power plants as needed.  I import garbage into the regoinal dump, and in turn it produces a ton of power to be used/exported back.

 

This system also has a positive side effect of causing less pollution since the garbage and power plant is one and the same.

 

One thing to remember is that with this system, I only build a small town in the garbage dump tile (and I play on all large city tiles, much easier to make an area look rural) since the dump itself will be quite large and the idea is to import garbage, not produce so much that it takes all the capacity for just that tiles city...and lets face it, who wants to live next to the garbage dump?  I keep the town away from the dump.

 

There are so many different ways to accomplish the garbage gone goal that you should be able to find one that works for you.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

"Dirty Lil, Dirty Lil

"Lives on top of garbage hill.

"Never washes.  Never will.

"[Haawwk]-patoo!  Dirty Lil."

[cogeo 960]

 

...short of building a new city and turning the whole thing to landfill.

 

Funny that you mention that. This would be the official exploit. Take a tile that isn't of much use for anything else, zone a large garbage dump and close the city before any garbage has been deposited there... and never touch the tile again. This "city" will then offer ridiculously cheap garbage deals.

 

Anyway, even if this is an "official" exploit, I usually take a different approach with waste-to-energy plants.

 

Indeed, there seems to be a bug in cost calculation (and therefore deals) concerning landfills. The game seems to calculate the cost basesd on the landfill maintenance cost, which in turn depends on how much full the landfill is. For a large, almost empty landfill the game offers ridiculously cheap deals. The city will may make some little money for a few months only, but then the landill will be requiring more and more maintenance, soon becoming an economic black hole. Do not expect the city will make any money from landfills. Instead, as Turjan has pointed, you can use this ciry as a cheap way to get rid of your garbage. Not only the deals will be incredibly cheap, the landfill will not get full either, And of course, exploiting a bug is a "cheat", no matter whether the game allows it or not.

 

I agree with Turjan about the other city but it can still be a productive neighbor as well with carful neighbor deals you could be spending on garbage removal to said city and making it up on the back end by selling water and power back and don't forget the toll road to and from the city connection tax those garbage trucks lol HAVE FUN........

 

I don't genarally agree. As said above, don't expect making any money from importing garbage and send them to your landfills. You will be losing money instead. You will be paying for "maintenance" (?!), even if you "decommision" (disconnect) yout landfills. Landfills are not cheap to run, instead they are extremely costly. I have calculated the cost at about 3.0-3.3 $/ton (yes, that much)! This is the 2nd most expensive service in SC4, after recycling centres, which cost as much as 20.0 $/ton, doing nothing but wasting money. But the game never charges rates any close to these numbers (because of the bug). In general, utilities in SC4 are not profitable. Power plants are not profitable because you can operate them at only 75-80% of the capacity (otherwise they wear fast), but the game gives you 10% proftit margin for deals (over the cost), so a deal would only cover 80 x 1.10 = 88% of the cost. Deals (for the selling city) are good only for getting some money for your excess production, not for making money. The only utility type that really makes money is the W2E plant, but this is due to... another bug, as you are paid twice (both for the garbage you import and the electricity).

 

I have uploaded two packages on the STEX that you may be interested in, a non-generating Incinerator (includes an enhanced version of the Graph Mod) and the Neighbor Deal Mods, allowing deals lower than 1000MWh or cu.m per month and/or increased profit margin. Take a look.

[Jim14409 448]

I have used the for several years now and love it. According to the comments some find it "unrealistic" but in most of my cities I just want the garbage gone so I can concentrate on other things. Plop this plant down and forget about garbage. It doesn't have to be babysat either as it lasts and lasts.

 

There is a dependency that the creator doesn't mention and I installed it so long ago I have forgotten which one (sorry). However it is one of the common packages that most users who use plugins already have installed. Someone else may remember specifically which one. By the way, it works without the dependency and shows a tree covered lot and parking lot. The beautiful building shows up when the dependency is installed also.