Commuting to neighbour cities

[loopmaster 0]

I was wondering if there is a mod that makes it so citizens don't commute to other cities as long as there are jobs on the active city tile? The system for how citizens choose where they work is ridicolous, in my city they get on a freeway, drive to an interchange thats in the middle of the city, do a u-turn and drive to the neighbouring city, even though there are plenty of jobs in the city. Is there something like it or am i dreaming?

[rsc204 21,817]

Sorry altering this behaviour is something that's way beyond the level of control we (modders) have over the game. Indeed sims may be preferring to commute to neighbouring cities in some circumstances. Bear in mind here too, just because there are jobs in the home city, doesn't mean a given sim is suitable for the position.

Although depending on the layout of your transit near the border, you are right that sometimes sims just prefer to leave the city over sticking around. This is because once a sim leaves a tile, they are assumed to have found work. So if the distance to the border is less than that to another job in the current city, regardless of how far the sim must travel in the new city, that route will seem quicker and thus preferable.

[loopmaster 0]

yep, i know all that. thanks though

[APSMS 1,892]

I wish we had better answers for you, but rsc's answer is really the only one to give. Clever city and road design are unfortunately the only real tools you have at your disposal to combat this problem.

Another alternative could be using your NAM TSCT to reduce the max commute time to something under 600 (minutes) and see if that helps, but it may end up that more Sims commute to the city tile, the job turnover rate is higher (not necessarily a negative, just indicative of undesirable instability), and the simulator may run significantly slower.

This secondary behavior linked to max commute time is because lower commute times force the TS to find commutes for everyone that fit the time schedule. If a given path to a job isn't fast enough, the TS must recalculate a new more appropriate route, and since neighboring city jobs are viewed by the TS to exist just beyond the boundary edge, it may appear more favorable because then the game can handoff any commutes over the limit. The TS also needs to run more iterations with the lower commute time, which slows the simulation down. In fact, you may observe that Sims that live in certain parts of the city under increasingly odd routes because other Sims require the jobs they would normally take, and these displaced Sims need to find work elsewhere because they can reach other job destinations faster than other Sims. The whole thing is a rather odd ball of weirdness, and it was well documented about 5-7 years ago during the development testing for Simulator Z (the current NAM TS). Alas, no inroads were made into the whole commute-to-neighboring-city problem. It appears this behavior is hardcoded into the way the TS works and cannot be modified through current means, or perhaps at all (even with the oft-cited EXE modding, still illegal in the countries most NAM devs live in) without a major rewrite of the games A* traffic algorithm and destination finder.

See this post, and the ones a few steps down as well.