"Open Skylines" CSL Regional Play - Something I've desired to create or see created.

[Need4Camaro 50]

This is just for discussion purposes.

I love Cities Skylines and the incredible amount of flexibility it offers, its quite possibly the best City Simulator ever released with SC4 running neck and neck with it. CSL offers real 3D and feel with a market of mods just as plentiful of SC4 and growing with the ability to make and adjust content in the game seemingly effortless as it was in SC4. I have for the most part completely dropped SC4 in favour of CSL, however; there is one thing I REALLY miss from SC4...and you guessed it... Region Play.

The Maps in CSL can range fairly large, the largest one - 81 tiles, I've heard is about the size of the Metro area of Washington D.C... that's pretty big I'm not going to lie, problem is, thats still only large enough for one relatively large city. I'm also aware of a building limit in CSL as well so most don't see a need for maps any larger than 81 tiles. I specifically play Space Engineers, a game that allows you to craft bases, ships, hubs, anything you like from scratch. It's not so much a great city building being its based on a block system and the population is limited to the exact number of players online at the time, however; the game features a Planet System, meaning you have an entire PLANET to build on and let me say, you do feel very small in the grand scheme of the overall world, on top of which you can also travel to other planets without ever leaving any loaded instance by really physically flying to them. I'd say this is a bit overkill but at the same time revolutionary as you have an entire planet you can do whatever you want on and every time I'm on a planet I always think "Man how awesome it would be if I could build a CSL city here, or a highway there, or a road, train, ect." I'm not attempting to converge CSL & Space Engineers. What I'm saying is, I wish there were some way that we could at the very minimal support regions the size of countries, continents, or even planets to lay down our dream cities.

Such regions, however they may be imbuked (Countries, Continents, or even Planets) could be locally hosted, or shared on a network for multiplayer. Unlike SC2013, all tiles would be accessible, and especially unlike CXL, region / world map would not be limited to a bitmap drawing that populated terrain only after selecting it, everything would be there and accessible and even possible to travel from your alotment clean cross country to another city, another players town, or your own establishment elsewhere in the world. ALSO unlike SC2013 or CSL, it would be an entirely optional feature, not forced.

Connecting Highways, resources, and routes between two major cities would be something only an Admin or Moderator could do on a multiplayer region, however single player regions will impose no such limits.

Mods are shared between each planet and region. On multi-player region, to prevent conflicts with other mods, a Moderator or Admin would have to approve of the mod, until it is..it would go into a pending queue.

Now, tackling the building limit. I wonder greatly, if its possible to enforce only a building limit within the city limits of a certain city, and not the entire region as to allow others elsewhere on the map to continue to sprawl and of course only load their city into your PC's RAM when you're within the vicinity of it as to prevent your PC from slowing to a crawl when you're on a map filled with cities spread 100's of miles apart.

Basically.. I desire to share multi-player regions in a way thats not forced as it was in 2013 or CXL.. Much like I used to do with BlueHope in SC4.

Does any of this idea seem possible regardless of how feasible or infeasible it may be?

[HipHop01 21]

Jesus, this would be the biggest mod to ever come out for CS.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I do miss the regional play of sc4 too. I do like the size we have so far but more space would be nice. I wouldn't mind if beyond 81 tiles we would have to endure loading but the only thing I always found strange with sc4 is the timing (date, time/development between cities). That's where our imagination kicks in and we ignore certain things I guess. CO did mention a while back that they are open to discussion on bigger maps. Lets see what happens in the future.

[boformer 3,169]

On 12.8.2016 at 8:00 PM, Mr_Maison said:

I do miss the regional play of sc4 too. I do like the size we have so far but more space would be nice. I wouldn't mind if beyond 81 tiles we would have to endure loading but the only thing I always found strange with sc4 is the timing (date, time/development between cities). That's where our imagination kicks in and we ignore certain things I guess. CO did mention a while back that they are open to discussion on bigger maps. Lets see what happens in the future.

I agree with you. Bigger maps are the way to go.

[Darf 1,439]

There was a mod sometime ago that let you spectate. Although realtime would be great, I would prefer the SC4 solution. It doesn't require a huge server, lot's of network traffic and it also benefits single player. Having your finished cities be forgotten when your bulking against those limits, but creating a country on itself and being able to spectates other players from the interface would be so amazing. The only thing that this would require would be some sort of rendering of the cities and landscapes on a grand level. Like a automatic basic lod on the whole city.

[Tim The Terrible 586]

It would ne nice to have one 81 tile map fulled in with a huge city (like NYC) in the center, and then have 9 maps around it with suburbs and rural areas. If you would then zoom out it would look totally realistic  Just my thoughts

[Need4Camaro 50]

If I were to submit a request to CO requesting larger maps, and a non-mandatory multiplayer option for multiple users to play and design on those maps, would you guys be willing to support me by posting on that thread? The more supporters the more likely CO will hear it.

[Tim The Terrible 586]

29 minutes ago, Need4Camaro said:

If I were to submit a request to CO requesting larger maps, and a non-mandatory multiplayer option for multiple users to play and design on those maps, would you guys be willing to support me by posting on that thread? The more supporters the more likely CO will hear it.

They said in a livestream they are not going to add multiplayer... ever. Just saying. They are a really small team for such a popular game, and they have a lot of other things on their mind (continuous support, DLC) so even if THEY wanted multiplayer they wouls have to drop all other projects of hire another 10 programmers.

[poshbakerloo 186]

I'm not that bothered about multi player, but larger maps to allow regional play would be great! My city is just on its own