Neighbor deal mods

[brianc1327 161]

I am not certain if this is exactly the right forum for this question, but I am currently trying to build up the default area (maxisland or whatever it is called) with "cities of industry" that don't actually have any residential/commercial/industrial areas, but are just for supplying power, water, and trash (though for this I discovered you have to zone a small area as residential or whatever and let the city run for a very short time to to "register" the landfill zones in the "city of industry) services to the "real" city. 

This seems to work quite well for cities bordering right on the "cities of industry," but the further that I get away from the "cities of industry", keeping the reciprocal deals that you need to make get more and more confusing.

What I am looking for is a mod that lets you buy the services directly from the "city of industry" that is actually supplying it rather than having to get it from reciprocal deals.  For example, suppose you had a "city of industry" that produced electricity, then "cityA" immediately to the east of that, and "cityB" immediately to the east of that. 

"City of industry" would have to produce enough electricity for both cityA and cityB and sell it all to cityA, which in turn would have to sell its excess capacity to cityB. The deals get even messier as you go to cityC and cityD and even further east.  They also get messier when you are managing deals for all 3 services, water, trash, and electricity rather than just electricity.

Is there a mod that allows cityB to ignore cityA and deal directly with "city of industry."  Is this even something that can be changed by mods.  I looked through the mods available on this Simtropolis site, and found one that changes neighbor deals, but not in the way I am asking for.

Also, I do not use cheats in my "real" cities, but have no problems using the "weekness pays" cheat to get more money or the "you don't deserve that" cheats to get the hydrogen power plant or the large water pump for my cities of industry.  Is this "bad."

Brian Christiansen

[fredinno 54]

I don't think it exists...

[rsc204 21,865]

2 hours ago, brianc1327 said:

Is there a mod that allows cityB to ignore cityA and deal directly with "city of industry."  Is this even something that can be changed by mods.  I looked through the mods available on this Simtropolis site, and found one that changes neighbor deals, but not in the way I am asking for.

No and as you surmise, it's unlikely that the behaviour of the game could be altered in this way. A shame really, because it is a bit of a pain to organise all the neighbour deal chains. I typically only have one Garbage plant in a region, although I use the Hyperspace Garbage Lot, because the default landfill is buggy. When it comes to power, I often find it easier to spread those across a couple separate cities in strategic locations. In an attempt to reduce the complexity of the neighbour deals.

[CorinaMarie 29,875]

4 hours ago, rsc204 said:

... the default landfill is buggy.

I haven't yet had any trouble with landfills tho I've read about a bug trying to dezone them such as here, here, and here. Is that what you are referring to? Or is there some other bugginess with landfills?

[rsc204 21,865]

Yeah pretty much it's the de-zoning issue. The problem is, once you've zoned an area of landfill, modifying it, even just expanding it can lead to problems. For the most part this tool by Coego is a lifesaver and will usually resolve the issue:

Although I did have one city where I could simply never remove 2 tiles of garbage that just stood out in the landscape so much, I terraformed a hill over them. When that didn't look so good, I turned it into a sort of fly tipping scene with some MMP junk. Fanta made a great mod that allows you to have visual landfills if you want them for aesthetics:

But I always use some other way to handle garbage, such as Incinerators, Recycling centres, PEG's Garbage Dock/Chute etc these days. 

[APSMS 1,893]

I've been lazy, and always use the Black Hole Incinerator; I suppose once I get my cities to where I want them (properly zoned and such) I might take the time to set up real garbage and power facilities, but the Black Hole waste management co. works really well since I stuff it in a corner, set funding to zero, and walk away. I just recently re-enabled road/traffic pollution. Baby steps, I suppose.

[CorinaMarie 29,875]

On 10/7/2016 at 1:13 PM, rsc204 said:

The problem is, once you've zoned an area of landfill, modifying it, even just expanding it can lead to problems.

Ah. That prolly explains why I haven't yet encountered the problem. After one of my first landfills would not fill up by expanding it, I just went with separate ones. Like this:

And then if I want to get rid of them I just bulldoze the street connection and after enough years have gone by they just empty out and I de-zone them.

[rsc204 21,865]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

And then if I want to get rid of them I just bulldoze the street connection and after enough years have gone by they just empty out and I de-zone them.

So long as you don't trigger the bug, then indeed they will empty without issues. But they are so inflexible in terms of change, it's all too easy to run into troubles.

5 hours ago, APSMS said:

I've been lazy, and always use the Black Hole Incinerator

Yeah, my go to mod is much the same (Hyperspace Garbage Disposal), I stomach the almost 10,000,000 cost to plop, along with the monthly costs. Not that this matters, I use Moolah as and when I like, I'm not interested in my citizens fiscal security. I just need to keep the pension records secret until I leave office .

One area where I run into problems is more rural regions, since such things are totally overkill. Ever since I was asked to test these though:

I've found them super useful for little out of the way areas that need garbage, electricity or water.

[Prophet42 1,503]

On ‎10‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 11:19 PM, brianc1327 said:

Is there a mod that allows cityB to ignore cityA and deal directly with "city of industry."  Is this even something that can be changed by mods.  I looked through the mods available on this Simtropolis site, and found one that changes neighbor deals, but not in the way I am asking for.

As stated before no such mod exists.  However there is a mod that will allow smaller cities to buy power or water for less than the game default of 1000 units.  I have found the mod quite usful.  You can find it here.

[fredinno 54]

Is there a mod that increases the maxis landfill capacity? It seems way too small for IRL, since landfills are giant holes in the ground. I also wonder if there is a way to cover a landfill (with grass)

[CorinaMarie 29,875]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

Is there a mod that increases the maxis landfill capacity?

Maybe this will do it:

^ The trash decomposes 15 times faster which, essentially, would mean you need less landfill zones.

 

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

I also wonder if there is a way to cover a landfill (with grass)

1. Remove road access.
2. Let the trash evaporate.
3. De-zone.

Now you have your underlying terrain again.
 

[fredinno 54]

17 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Maybe this will do it:

^ The trash decomposes 15 times faster which, essentially, would mean you need less landfill zones.

 

1. Remove road access.
2. Let the trash evaporate.
3. De-zone.

Now you have your underlying terrain again.
 

I think you misunderstood. I was asking for a mod that would increase the capacity of each individual landfill square (it that is possible- I don't want to lose the actual landfill) and also can have a park built ON TOP of the landfill. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Kills_Landfill

[MushyMushy 3,618]

I can't speak for whether or not the capacity of the landfill tiles can be increased because I don't know, but I do know that there's no way to build anything on an occupied landfill tile. Plus the trash is really just a model and not the terrain so even if a park could be plopped over the tile it would just delete the trash model and the park lot would be at the same height as the landfill tile.

[CorinaMarie 29,875]

On 10/25/2016 at 0:22 PM, fredinno said:

I think you misunderstood.

That's entirely possible. I'm pretty dumb sometimes.

However, let's try a little critical thinking here and see if we can come to a valid conclusion about my suggestion. First, the principle of the landfill in SimCity 4 is that you put in a bunch of garbage and over time some of it decomposes. Like 7% per month. Ofc, you can keep putting in more and it'll balance out that one tile can hold 300 tons. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that if the garbage decays 15 times faster then each tile is handling bunches and bunches (and bunches) more garbage? AKA the capacity has increased.

Did you even download and try the mod? I did.

Here's a city in vanilla with the landfills needed to sustain this city. Notice the graph showing a wee bit over 8000 tons of garbage:

 

Ok, now I installed the mod and let it run for a while:

^ Notice how it now only takes 6 tiles in which to take care of all that garbage?

 

Please explain to me (using really short words cause of my ineptitude of comprehension) how shoveling in 8000+ tons of garbage in an area which used to only hold 1800 is not an increase in capacity.

Thanks.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

According to the article which I only quickly scanned through: The Fresh Kills site is to be transformed into reclaimed wetlands recreational facilities and landscaped public parkland.

This would mean that the operation is no longer a waste management operation and that the idea here would be to

On ‎2016‎-‎10‎-‎24 at 3:30 PM, CorinaMarie said:

• Remove road access.
• Let the trash evaporate.
• De-zone.

Otherwise, the objective is to either/and/or increase capacity of an active waste dump site and plop a park on top.  No, you can't plop a park on top and no such mod is known to exist as it would not likely be possible in the coding of the game.  However,  you can plant trees on an active waste dump in SC4.   

Else the objective is to increase capacity of one single square of dump space.    I think a waste dump requires more than one square to become operational.   So are we talking about only placing one square and having it function to deal with a large capacity?  

Else the mod mentioned above would serve to improve the capacity over a several-squared dump as the minimal space required by SC4 to activate the operation.

It is conceivable that the exemplars could be messed with to make a park function as a waste dump, but I've never seen anything like that.

[fredinno 54]

On 10/25/2016 at 7:29 PM, CorinaMarie said:

That's entirely possible. I'm pretty dumb sometimes.

However, let's try a little critical thinking here and see if we can come to a valid conclusion about my suggestion. First, the principle of the landfill in SimCity 4 is that you put in a bunch of garbage and over time some of it decomposes. Like 7% per month. Ofc, you can keep putting in more and it'll balance out that one tile can hold 300 tons. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that if the garbage decays 15 times faster then each tile is handling bunches and bunches (and bunches) more garbage? AKA the capacity has increased.

Did you even download and try the mod? I did.

Here's a city in vanilla with the landfills needed to sustain this city. Notice the graph showing a wee bit over 8000 tons of garbage:

 

Ok, now I installed the mod and let it run for a while:

^ Notice how it now only takes 6 tiles in which to take care of all that garbage?

 

Please explain to me (using really short words cause of my ineptitude of comprehension) how shoveling in 8000+ tons of garbage in an area which used to only hold 1800 is not an increase in capacity.

Thanks.

It is an increase in capacity- I was looking for more for one that did it without increasing decomposition (because that's a lot less realistic). But I guess there are no other choices, huh

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

decomposition

I think this is where we might have got confused.  That term 'decomposition' specific to the fields of Ecology and Organic Chemistry is not used in the waste management language in SC4, so its kind of 'outside the box' here.  Anybody interested can look up 'nitrogen cycle' or 'nitrogen-fixing' to get a better idea of the basic organic chemical process.   As well, modern waste dumps have to deal with far more chemical issues than what is 'bio-degradable', which also SC4 doesn't deal with.     

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,875]

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

It is an increase in capacity- I was looking for more for one that did it without increasing decomposition (because that's a lot less realistic). But I guess there are no other choices, huh

In my 2nd screenshot you can see in the graph that the garbage has leveled out to a constant amount so that means there are still piles of garbage shown on the landfill graphic. Are you saying you need the graph to be updated to show the capacity as much more? That could prolly be done. I know there is a mod that extends the demand numbers way beyond vanilla's default so in concept that could be done for garbage. If I were going to do this (which I'm not) I would get that mod and look over the code in Reader and compare it to the vanilla to see what variables were changed. Then see if a similar tweak could be made to the garbage graph.

Otherwise, are you saying you'd want the garbage to show on the landfill tiles as twice (or more) tall to represent the extra capacity? That too might be possible, but wouldn't represent the real world very well since it seems likely that a deeper hole for the landfill would be how they would handle more garbage in the same two dimensional square footage parcel of land.