Pedriana Plants Killer Modd - Buggy Water Zots?

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

@RandyE recommended the Pedriana Plants Killer Modd which states " This modd will not affect existing Pedriana Plants ". However, some of the Pedrianas already grown and a Barthelet Stables wind up with no water zots. Without the mod installed they are ok. If I let it run for a few months then they go all dead and black soot colored.

 

Is this intended? And why would it affect some of the already existing Pedrianas and not others? Perhaps because of the base lot it selected? The mod has 5 exemplars in it and it appears they are for specific Lot Configurations. Two have their Growth Stage set to 255 and three are set to stage 15. (0xFF and 0x0F respectively)

The mod does seem to block new Pedrians from growing as advertised. Is it doing this by blocking the 6x5, 7x6, 4x4, 4x6, and 6x4 bases that are the possible choices for Pedriana, but that other farms could also randomly select?

I guess I'm more concerned that 5 base lots will not be available to my other growing farms. Do I understand that part right?

 

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

I still have the mod in my 'base mods' folder that loads for any city I work on, but I don't think I ever tested it on cities started before I installed it.   What I've seen is that its the building that is blocked, all the various lot configs apparently grow normally, but I don't build agriculture as intensely as you usually do.    I agree It would be nice to just have fewer of the buildings, rather than block it completely, so its a radical measure.  One solution may be to re-lot the building and make it less likely to grow.     

As for the more complicated programming, it looks a lot of work to resolve the questions you raise.  I think for agriculture specific development, it may be 'moar beddar' to look for another solution where the Pedriana grain elevator building can be limited, but not 'killed'.   I've never used 'lotplop' in the cheats menu for ag, but I'll try plopping the building with the blocker installed and see what happens.

The water zot mystery is interesting.   It reminds me of the weirdness of my water pump lots where the connection was displaced, but not disabled.   Maybe try a grid of water pipes?

Before I came to Simtropolis and discovered the wonderful world of SC4 beyond vanilla, I never knew what a 'zot' was.  Now its one of my favorite words...  May I recommend the amazing 'zot' remover mod?       

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

On 6/27/2017 at 1:35 AM, RandyE said:

One solution may be to re-lot the building and make it less likely to grow. 

Re-lotting stuff is on my agenda for some day way in the future to learn.

 

On 6/27/2017 at 1:35 AM, RandyE said:

Maybe try a grid of water pipes?

Doesn't fit with my imaginary story in which I somewhat model the real world where I live. Here the small towns (and ofc bigger cities) will have public water, but homes in prolly 75% of the land area in Indiana need their own private well for water. I did check and having water to Pedriana's is why those don't have zots. I'd forgotten I'd started small town upgrades over that way and those two are in the radius of the pipes.

It still doesn't explain why Barthelet Stables gets the No Water Zot tho.

 

On 6/27/2017 at 1:35 AM, RandyE said:

May I recommend the amazing 'zot' remover mod?    

You can, but I'll just roll my eyes at you. That only masks the symptom. It doesn't keep the farms from dying.

I've solved this problem by simply not using the Pedriana Killer. It's more of a curiosity thing for me. Why does it even happen? And how is the B farm related to a mod that's not supposed to have any affect on any of the existing farms?

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

Its an interesting level of detail you're doing in modelling the tile accurately to a real location, right down to the waterworks.   If its just now one lot that is showing a no-water zot, and you're providing a certain amount of water, is it possible the B lot is not getting a sufficient amount from your supply? 

Now you got me wanting to build an agriculture tile.    Okay, its now high priority.  I'll fix that Pedriana monstrosity somehow --it just needs to be tamed.

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

On 6/27/2017 at 4:06 AM, RandyE said:

... is it possible the B lot is not getting a sufficient amount from your supply?

No, no, NO! That's not the issue. Without the PPK mod it doesn't need any water. I can run the game year in and year out and there is never a No Water Zot. My whole discovery is that it appears any existing farm lot in the sizes blocked then mysteriously must have water to survive when pre-mod install they did not. This particular lot falls into the category of a blocked size.

See?

 

I'm guessing peeps either install PPK before starting a city tile and therefore these never grow to reveal this or peeps water the entire tile without regard to whether or not said farms require any water.

To me it boils down to an odd quirk of the game in which previously grown lots that are later blocked from growing suddenly have a water requirement. I'm curious what causes that. Maybe no one knows cause it's never come up. It's one of those loose ends that make me go: Hmmmm? It's similar to how a grown CS$ (and others) do not require water, but if plopped from the landmark menu they do even when Water Consumed is set to 0x00000000.

[SimCoug 5,977]

34 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

To me it boils down to an odd quirk of the game in which previously grown lots that are later blocked from growing suddenly have a water requirement. I'm curious what causes that. Maybe no one knows cause it's never come up. It's one of those loose ends that make me go: Hmmmm? It's similar to how a grown CS$ (and others) do not require water, but if plopped from the landmark menu they do even when Water Consumed is set to 0x00000000.

I've made my own lot blockers (for custom lots) that set the growth stage to 'ff' and notice the same results as you (existing lots develop a no water zot).  My guess is the some where in the game registry it gets confused because those lots should not exist, yet they do, so the game goes 'blurp' and we get water zots.  

Which is a shame, because in theory it should work with existing lots... all we are doing is changing the growth stage to something that is not achievable.  I wonder if blocking the lots using another method other than growth stage would accomplish the same 'water zot' result.  

[twalsh102 1,601]

OK, this took some digging, and I'm not really sure what it all means, other than that there has be some correlation between what I found and what you are experiencing.

Without further ado:

All Lot exemplars refer to building Family IDs rather than to specific Build exemplar IIDs.

3 lots (4x4, 6x4, 4x6) refer to Family ID 0x70000050.  This family appears to have a single member - Pedriana's Plants
1 lot (7x6) refers to Family ID 0x70000054.  This family appears to have a single member - Barthalet Stables.
1 lot (6x5) refers to Family ID 0x7000004F.  This family appears to have a single member - Alvin's Acres.

The Industrial Resource (I-R) Developer exemplar says that there is a Water Supply CAP at Stage 3, which supposedly means that any IR lot through Growth Stage 3 can grow without needing to be a watered lot.

I JUST HAD AN EPIPHANY!  Given the previous paragraph and, given that because of the Pedriana Plants Killer Modd changing the Growth Stages of all lots to either 15 (0x0F) or 255 (0xFF), they are now lots that require water, hence the No Water Zot, and eventual abandonment of the lot.

So the creator of this mod was only partially correct when stating that it doesn't affect existing instances of Pedriana's Plants in that it doesn't make them disappear.  However, he made a mistake in assuming that all players would water all their zoned areas as soon as feasible, so as not to inhibit growth of their cities, and to offset the fact that un-watered structures are 25% more likely to catch fire.  He also apparently unknowingly added Barthalet Stables, and Alvin's Acres into the equation

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

On 6/27/2017 at 4:06 AM, RandyE said:

I'll fix that Pedriana monstrosity somehow --it just needs to be tamed.

On 6/27/2017 at 9:15 AM, SimCoug said:

 I wonder if blocking the lots using another method other than growth stage would accomplish the same 'water zot' result.  

Ok, I'm making this up as I go since I don't know what I'm doing or what repercussions this might have. I've grabbed the Pedriana's Plants Building Exemplar out of SimCity_1.dat:

 

Then I changed the Occupants Groups to simply be 0x00001006 (Building:Park):

 

Saved it as it's own new file and here's what it looks like:

 

So, existing Pedriana's do this in the game:

^ And with preliminary testing they do not grow new ones. Nor do the existing ones get the silly No Water Zot.

 

Honestly, it seems roundabout goofy to block a particular building by staging out all the possible lots it could grown on and thereby causing them to not be available to other buildings which we do want to have said lots available. Ofc, since I have such limited understanding of modding there's prolly some side effect(s) I don't know about. This might cause the game to explode or something.

I uploaded it to the STEX as Cori's Friendly Pedriana's Plants Killer in case there are any gullible guinea pigs out there.

 

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

It looks like the lot zot puzzle is sufficiently solved.  Ag generates water pollution, so I was on the path of looking at the point the no-water zot would also be set by an overly polluted lot.  

In SC4, according to the CorinaMarie moisture detector mod (replacing the Maxis radiation detector), the water table is saturated enough to access fresh water anywhere on the tile, otherwise pollution or power failure will cut the supply.

A replacement building for the Pedriana grain elevator monster (keeping the lot config) would reduce the repetition.    In SC4 the repetition of buildings is a problem in RCI in growth stages less than about 6 or 7, usually the larger sized lots are also the higher growth stage and don't repeat as excessively, but then the Ag has its own strange behaviors as its an unfinished product in SC4.

In how you're using the water table and the pumps to reflect a real condition/location, the grain elevator would seem mostly out of place, as Indiana is not Montana (drier plains and higher mountains.)  Grain Elevators are more common on grain producing prairies.

Edit:

Tested the lot configurations in both blocking mods, using no blocking as a control, in either application the polluted water source flagged the zot by knocking out the pump, saw no difference in lot size or building model in the limited time spent growing a variety of farms, so can't verify all possible combinations.  Good news is in either application of blocking the grain elevator, it can be selectively lotplop-ed using the extra cheats window.  The elevator is easy to find as its the last stage 3 building in the list under I-R (Industrial Rural).  In SC4 Ag the water source must be piped into the farm and/or a sewage treatment plant used nearby as in general fresh water flow is required to displace organic pollutants.

  Edited June 28, 2017 by RandyE  
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