Neighbor connection and changing road type

[robdragon 167]

Hey all

question

At neighbor connection points on both sides can you change the road type between  each connection? I'm talking here about keeping the same size as in tiles like keeping the road for instance a TLA-7 but changing it at the other side with say a ave-6 instead. I was curious about it as I'm considering doing just that but not sure if it would work.

I would be going from a TLA-7 to a road 6 or maybe an avenue-6. Since they are the same size in tiles I thought maybe it would work, but again I really don't have a clue if it would. One city is up and running the other is a WIP barely have the network designed yet, thus the question. I will assume that as long as I keep the same tile size of network it will.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

@robdragon

Since this it purely NAM related I'm going to punt it into their field.

[robdragon 167]

thanks!

[Tarkus 6,932]

Neighbor connections with multi-tile NWM networks are a bit . . . odd still.  Doing TLA-7 on one side and AVE-6 on the other should work, though with both the normally drawn Neighbor Connection and with the NWM Neighbor Connection pieces (which don't fully work), traffic will tend to crowd the middle tile no matter what.

If you run into a situation where you're trying to use one of the dual-tile NWM networks to make a Neighbor Connection, I'd recommend converting to Avenue before the edge of the tile instead of using an NC piece.

-Tarkus

[robdragon 167]

Thanks @Tarkus

I was afraid of that. I was thinking that I may have to do that. At least now I won't have to back pedal.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

20 hours ago, Tarkus said:

the NWM Neighbor Connection pieces (which don't fully work)... trying to use one of the dual-tile NWM networks to make a Neighbor Connection, I'd recommend converting to Avenue before the edge

Yow, this is the first I've heard of this. I probably have a hundred or more TLA-5 connections and a dozen or more TLA-7 connections sprinkled around my region already (all employing the NC pieces). I also h ave at least one border having a RD-6 on one side and TLA-7 on the other.

I'd like to know more so I can decide what to do with these things if/when I see them again. Are the tech details of the NC pieces discussed somewhere else?

And do real highways have the same NC piece issue?

 

[Tarkus 6,932]

My own testing with the TLA-5 NC in one of my regions showed that it seemed to suppress the amount of traffic using the congestion, when compared to a standard Avenue, and as described above, the TLA-7/AVE-6 seemed to exhibit center-tile crowding to at least some extent.  The issues are actually covered in the NWM Feature Guide in the latest version of the NAM Documentation.

The RHW ones do not seem to suffer from the same problems (though they are not without their quirks--to be expected, given what we're having to work around), and my working hypothesis is that this is related to network speed.  

To get into the technical aspects of the NC pieces, they are designed to get around the game's limitation that traffic in both commute cycles must enter and exit on the same network tile (or same two tiles, in the case of networks that carry the 04 median flag by default--Avenues and the Maxis Highways).  Essentially, they use a series of extra paths to (a) establish bi-direction flow, thereby allowing commute traffic to exit/enter on any of the tiles on the network to satisfy the game's limitations, and (b) ferry the traffic laterally to the correct side of the network, upon reaching the destination city tile. 

The contraflow and lateral paths actually exist 50 meters below the surface, thereby hiding what in NAM parlance of a decade ago, was known as the "Nicole Richie Effect" (this was in the news at the time), which existed with the previous (and unsightly) "Loop Connector" method of establishing RHW NCs.  (In fact, the code name for the NC pieces was "NREEs"--"Nicole Richie Effect Eliminators".)  One will still see some remnants of "spider cars" on the rocky crust at the edge of the city tile, an effect we considered much less problematic than the NRE.

The pathing for the NWM NCs was ported over almost rock, stock, and barrel from the RHW NCs, but yet, they've never worked as effectively, and the only variable seems to be the underlying base network (RHW vs. Road).  Because the RHW network has a much higher speed than the Road network (the base of all of the NWM NCs), the lateral "ferrying" seems to come at minimal cost for the RHW NCs, but at a great enough cost with the NWM ones that it attenuates usage, particularly when there may be other surface street neighbor connections nearby that aren't saddled with the requirement for that lateral motion.

The solution, most likely, entails somehow changing the underlying CheckType structure of the NWM NCs, to add an additional faster network, to speed up the lateral motion, but still allow them to be plopped directly over top of the stock draggable connection for the NWM network.  A FLEX piece solution is also very likely, since it would minimize the number of required menu items.

I'll also add that, theoretically, OWR NCs should be possible using similar techniques to what is already in place, though such connections would likely require reserving a strip of land at the city tile's edge to make the hidden loop connection.  This has yet to be tested, however.

-Tarkus