Mods: which are for looks which change gameplay?

[UpmarketSlums 1]

Hello,

Can someone please explain to me how the majority of mods (buildings, road types, vehicles etc) affect the vanilla game experience?

How do these building mods work? If you install the mod, do some buildings appear randomly (ie. are more just cosmetic) while others are discrete new building types you can select from a build menu (that actually affect gameplay)?

There seems nothing in the mod descriptions explaining any of this.

What happens for example if you install a bunch of building mods, build your city, save then un-install all the mods? What happens to the mod buildings that were in your city?

The sheer number of mods available I have found to be a bit daunting to deal with. I have no idea what in the game will change as far as game play goes if I install any of these potentially purely cosmetic or actual game changing mods, so I have never really got in to the mods.

How do you know if a mod is cosmetic (just replaces/improves on existing graphics/models) or if it actually changes gameplay/adds a new feature that affects how the game plays?

[Koesj 659]

Take a look at the Workshop page.

On the right are a whole bunch of categories, I'll highlight a couple: Maps are maps, different areas to play in. Mods change the game's gameplay and often add new features. Unique Buildings are mostly cosmetic, though they come with certain costs, sometimes prerequisites, and will have beautification effects. The same goes for Parks.

Most of the other stuff is cosmetic changes to otherwise base-game features: the service buildings (Electricity, Water, Garbage, Healthcare, etc.), Residential/Commercial/Office/Industrial growable buildings (max size: 4x4 in-game 'cells'), those kinds of things.

I'd suggest just downloading some stuff and trying it out, that way you get a nice feel for it. Workshop assets, whether they be mods or buildings or whatever, aren't strictly necessary to play the game, but IMO they enhance the experience many-fold 

If you want to know what's good just keep browsing these forums, maybe the subReddit, the official forums (though I steer clear), the Steam community itself, and there's numerous other fansites and communities around. An easy way to quickly choose some stuff to mess around with is sorting the aforementioned categories on the workshop by popularity or number of subscribers. See what other people are adding to their game and whether it fits your playstyle! 

[ghosty20 150]

Anything that comes from:

Mods

Boformer  pretty much everything

TPB  pretty much everything

S, Klyte  pretty much everything

Katalyst6  Network Extensions Mod

Ulysius

Mexahuk (Updated Automatic Bulldoze)

Shroomblaze  pretty much everything

BloodyPenguin (who made the excellent Environment Changer) which allows you to change a maps biome and theme from one to another such changing a European Map to Temperate and so on plus other awesome mods..

Badpeanut

mmotsevil who made the excellent CSL Music Mod that allows you to add your own music into the game..

The One ( Who updated Sapphire UI Base now called Quartz)

 

Maps

MrMiyagi

Zakerias

Scotland Tom made some great maps as well as some awesome LUT's

 

Vehicles

Alex_BY

DANZ | D3S DESIGN

 

These are just some of what is out there are a lot more but these are some of the better creators..

[Judazzz 1,936]

One word of advice: if you intend to create a themed city (like UK, French, SoCal, NYC, whatever), it pays off to figure out what style of city you want to build before you start, and look for matching assets. The alternative is to go on a total subscription spree and get everything you like, but sooner or later you'll need to weed out your collection to keep the game running halfway decent, which, given those few sucky tools we have at our disposal (a woefully inadequate in-game, and downright insultingly poor Workshop asset management), is like the digital equivalent of getting stabbed with a rusty fork (I've been there, done that - the weeding out of my asset collection that is, not the fork thing - but never again  ).
So to spare yourself a lot of hassle in due time, it's best to come prepared!

[Cool_Z 1,547]

3 hours ago, Judazzz said:

... is like the digital equivalent of getting stabbed with a rusty fork...

Using the asset manager is less fun than drowning. 

 

The Improved Asset panel mod by bloodypenguin helps a lot... but we need more than that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=449020940

[Judazzz 1,936]

26 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

Using the asset manager is less fun than drowning. 

 

The Improved Asset panel mod by bloodypenguin helps a lot... but we need more than that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=449020940

Yeah, I got that one as well, but when I delete an asset from in-game, I get automatically transferred to out-game (aka. desktop  )
Also unfortunate that the mod doesn't work when you want to load a specific asset: it's just one (in my case seemingly endless) list without any tools to filter or search your list. Which means if I want to edit a Workshop asset, I'll have to plough through a 1000-item strong list until I find it (while hoping that I don't overlook the asset I'm looking for, or that the asset has a weird, non-descriptive name).
I just can't understand why CO hasn't implemented more robust and feature-rich mod tools for this game - in the long run, it will be modding that keeps the game alive, not CO...

Oh, and while at it: why on earth does the Asset Editor has to load every freaking asset you have before you can even start? Why not start with a file selection window, and then load that one asset (and all props)? Why load every asset in memory before you can start working on the one asset you want to edit. Or worse, when you want to create a new asset? Ffs, why?!?!?
Using the --disableMods parameter doesn't really help, as it's my asset list that goes on and on for miles and miles (and I do want all props at my disposal in the editor), not my mod list.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

9 minutes ago, Judazzz said:

Oh, and while at it: why on earth does the Asset Editor has to load every freaking asset you have before you can even start? 

It's how the whole game works... the game loads everything, even if you don't need it. It's the big weakness of the CSL engine, it does not stream. It loads everything instead of only loading what is needed.

[Turjan 1,048]

It even loads all your workshop items when you start the theme editor .

Well, actually not funny.

[boformer 3,169]

2 hours ago, Judazzz said:

Oh, and while at it: why on earth does the Asset Editor has to load every freaking asset you have before you can even start? Why not start with a file selection window, and then load that one asset (and all props)? Why load every asset in memory before you can start working on the one asset you want to edit. Or worse, when you want to create a new asset? Ffs, why?!?!?

The asset editor and map editor are secondary features and share a lot of code with the normal "city" mode. I think it was a good design decision. It makes mods like Prop Anarchy possible.

[Judazzz 1,936]

57 minutes ago, boformer said:

The asset editor and map editor are secondary features and share a lot of code with the normal "city" mode. I think it was a good design decision. It makes mods like Prop Anarchy possible.

Thanks for the clarification. So CO had their reasons to use this approach, but from an end user's point of view the results are... well.... rather mixed. That mods like Prop Anarchy are possible because of this decision obviously is fantastic (can't imagine the game without it, just look at the screenshots people post here!), but when using the Asset Editor itself it tends to be a bit frustrating, as you'll have to endure the loading sequence time after time when testing out stuff (ie. switching between editor and game).
Oh well, can't have it all, I guess  

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

8 hours ago, boformer said:

The asset editor and map editor are secondary features and share a lot of code with the normal "city" mode. I think it was a good design decision. It makes mods like Prop Anarchy possible.

Damn...I liked Zed and and Turjan's posts before reading this clarification.....excuse my conflicting liking in this session I don't like taking back likes...

[Cool_Z 1,547]

15 hours ago, boformer said:

The asset editor and map editor are secondary features and share a lot of code with the normal "city" mode. I think it was a good design decision. It makes mods like Prop Anarchy possible.

But it still would be better if the game itself didn't load everything at once.