Power Supply Problems

[tails2489 350]

Of course!

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

9 hours ago, tails2489 said:

Of course!

Ok, then.

So here's your city itself now with a population of nearly 101k:

 

Ofc, this is not in isolation. You may recall I created a random region and imported your city into a large tile. Then after playing to see if there were any save problems I noticed how I could grow things very easily due to The Plopmatic 9000 mod/lot. Peeking inside with Reader, that actually sets all the demands to 50k each. (They didn't update the graph to display more than 6,000.)

Anyhow, I terraformed by hand so the water looks a bit more natural at the region level and then I've grown satellite tiles:

 

The surrounding ones do not have the Plopmatic plopped in them and I'm still concerned how that masks the real demands, but that's not the point here.

Edit: Since you haven't been online since I posted, here's the later latest:

[tails2489 350]

Hey that looks great! This looks like one of my cities, the scale is exactly right and the downtown is right where I pictured it (in the middle, of course). I wasn't considering a cross-bay bridge but I may reconsider now that I've seen it. It's cool to see your region too, since in my region this is a coastal city and in yours you made it more inland on a lake.

I am wondering how you see the Plopmatic effecting your feeder cities as opposed to playing without a demand mod. I like to use the plopmatic on my large cities so that I get the demand to create a large city in less time and also for the instant cash to build freely. But I don't use it for the feeder cities as I figure I really only zone low residential and agriculture in these cities and I usually have a tonne of jobs in the big city to lure these sims in. Do you notice larger Res demand in your surrounding cities than you would expect otherwise?

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

6 hours ago, tails2489 said:

I am wondering how you see the Plopmatic effecting your feeder cities as opposed to playing without a demand mod. ...<snip>... Do you notice larger Res demand in your surrounding cities than you would expect otherwise?

I originally started in your large city tile first (and only) and built it up to 35k or there abouts without any feeder tiles. I'd save, then bulldoze the Plopmatic, and check the demand bars. (Then exit without saving since I didn't have the lot at that time.) What I noticed there is that I could way over zone and grow commercial such that all the blue bars fell thru the floor without the lot in place. Even having the lot now I've not plopped it in any other tile.

Having already created several thousand jobs in your city tile I noticed in the others that the green residential bars were nearly maxed (as in around the real 6000) and the yellow ones were up, but appropriate to the education of the main tile. As I've continued to play that has held consistent as in I see no ill effect in any other tiles other than negative demand for commercial and that's attributable to my over growing those in Toydaria.

[tails2489 350]

Cool thanks! It's working the way I hoped and thought it would then.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

negative demand for commercial and that's attributable to my over growing those in Toydaria

Commercial is finicky in other ways too. Have you examined the customers of your commercial zones? (Customers high / medium / low)

I have only had success with commercial zoning when the traffic is already there (before I zone it) and stays there. I now ruthlessly de-zone all commercial that tells me it has "customers low" (such as after the traffic simulator reroutes my commuters to a different road).

 

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

On 24/03/2019 at 1:20 AM, jeffryfisher said:

Have you examined the customers of your commercial zones? (Customers high / medium / low)

Yep.

Here's the traffic volume overlay:

 

And since I don't have time before getting ready for work to crop and make a nice collage, here's a bunch of pics using the Query tool on the commercials:

Toydaria City - Commercial Customers.zip

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Lookin' good. With my traffic settings in TSCT, my rule of thumb is that I can zone commercial when morning traffic approaches 1000. In my traffic display, that shows up as a yellowish green.

What surprises me is that freeway traffic suffices! I can zone commercial facing a sleepy street/road but with an active freeway behind the lots, and the noise from the freeway somehow gives the businesses plenty of customers as drivers zoom past. That little bit of weirdness guides some of my city-design, as I now reserve the cells along freeways for eventual commercial development.

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

4 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

What surprises me is that freeway traffic suffices!

IKR!

I deliberately had that in mind for where I grew them. I learned that placement idea from some post here on ST. Might likely be one of yours where I read about that trick. Had I planned on playing this city more seriously, I'd've taken more care in laying out that CBD. Mostly I was fascinated with zoning high density in a watered area and having skyscrapers grow immediately. (That doesn't happen in Corillion since it's mostly rural and I've never installed any demand mod there.)

[tails2489 350]

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

I see the skyscraper are growing now. How's your population?

And for that missing 1341959902 Plugin (posted in the Oddities thread), convert that to hex of 4FFCAEDE and then opening your city in Reader look for that listed in one of the exemplars as the Plugin ID property. If you see it then near the top of that exemplar properties you might find the human readable name to help you figure out which one you've removed.

[tails2489 350]

Just 50,000 so far.. I think I'll top out at around 85,000-90,000 with some added density in the core and eventual development of wooded areas near the two most prominent highway interchanges.

As for the plugin issue, that sounds a little complicated for my knowledge of the game but will see if I get anywhere with it. Thanks!

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

3 hours ago, tails2489 said:

As for the plugin issue, that sounds a little complicated for my knowledge of the game but will see if I get anywhere with it. Thanks!

It can be a bit tricky, but there is hope.

Last year I replied to a question about this by posting a possible method to identify missing plugins based on the hexadecimal value. As Cori explained, this would involve opening the city file in Reader and searching in the Instance column for the value of: 4FFCAEDE

If this can be found, then opening that Exemplar entry might reveal clues on the name it refers to. The task thereafter would be to track down precisely what lot this is.

Should you wish, we can look into this if you'd like sometime.

[tails2489 350]

CB that might be best. Unless you want to further explain what Reader and Exemplar are lol. 

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

Reader is iLive - Reader 0.9.3 and how to use it in The Reader, Beginners Guide.

Then opening your city (the one I've been playing) looks like this. I clicked once on the Entry column button to sort them by name:

 

Then on the right hand side I've highlighted the two properties we've referred to: Exemplar Name and PluginPackID. As an example for the above, you see 2D45F0C7 as the value in the Instance column in the left pane and as 0x2D45F0C7 as the value for the PluginPackID in the right pane. Each time you click another line in the left pane, the right pane changes to show you its contents. You would be looking for 4FFCAEDE.

I'd recommend against saving your city from within Reader. It's fine for peeking inside, but it's not designed for altering anything in a city tile. It is, however, one of the main tools for editing plugins.

For us to take a look for you, we'd need a new, current copy of your city (via WeTransfer.com).

[tails2489 350]

Hey gang thanks for all the info, still no luck on my end. I am sure it's a simple enough process once you get familiar with it but I'm still having issues getting the reader set up to use it properly. I have saved the current iteration of the city to this link (https://we.tl/t-LoLyzTfYnD). I am trying to think of what's been added to the city since the last time I didn't get this plugin error message. My guess is the lot causing the popup is either the submarine base which is on my airport island, or one of three Japanese castles I've plopped into the city. Always appreciate your expertise.

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

@tails2489

I've checked and double checked that 1341959902 does convert to 4FFCAEDE hex and I'm not seeing that in the new copy of your city. The closest one is 4F1A2F11 which says it's Kobe Port Tower.

^ In the above, I sorted by the Instance column so I can be sure I'm not missing it.

So now I'm confuzzled and don't know what to suggest.

[tails2489 350]

I really appreciate you looking in to it. Nothing seems out of the ordinary with this city anymore other than that popup when first loading the city so I'm not too worried about it unless something changes. Was just alarming the first time seeing it.

[tails2489 350]

Just started my first new city in MONTHS... AND... Again? Really?

What could possibly be causing this in each new city I start?

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

4 hours ago, tails2489 said:

What could possibly be causing this in each new city I start?

Ofc I'm going to guess there's another bugged windmill. Using the divide and conquer technique I showed in this prior post will be how to find the culprit. The why part is much more troublesome as I've really no idea at all. It seems that one (or maybe more) power plants (windmills) have their function corrupted after placement.

Is this D'Qar one you started just now from a completely empty tile? Or was it also partially (or fully) created about the same time as Toydaria? Do you have any mods installed related to power generation? This is extremely confuzzling and something I'd never seen until your post starting this topic.

[tails2489 350]

Same region but far away from the previous city. This city originally just had 1 Gas Power Plant and almost half the zoned Ag land was without power. I thought something buggy was going on so I demolished and replopped the plant and same result. I have since added 1 Winmill to the affected area and now the map looks spotty like the pic I posted above. No power mods that I am aware of, but as I have speculated before my plugins folder is just a mess of things so who knows what it could be.

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

I'd prolly just put them on pause, demolish every power plant of any kind, save, then exit, then come back in and rebuild and see if that fixes it.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Just to add...

It might be a wise idea to double check you've got a new complete backup copy of your region before experimenting with this. Then it could always be restored to this current condition should saving tiles cause irreversible changes. Thinking back to the issue in your prior Toydaria city tile, logically this is related. If bulldozing those wind turbines could solve the issue again (or selected areas), and it seems likely that somehow there's one or more content items in your Plugins as the culprit of this behaviour.

For it to happen again in a new city tile that's not bordering the previous as affected is interesting, and I think more likely points towards an item responsible. Still there is a possibility for this to be a random glitch again, but for happening with the same recurring symptoms suggests there's a root cause.

[tails2489 350]

Okay so I deleted all the power plants and power lines over my rivers, saved, exited, reopened and began replopping. All was good until my last addition which was running power lines over the river at the bottom of the map, it caused the spottiness to return again. I demolished the power lines and again all was well except I had two separate grids now. I saved, exited, reopened and ran the line over the river again and all appears good now. Very strange.

[tails2489 350]

I'm sure I'll keep this thread alive in 6 months when I start my next city. (I mentioned earlier this was my first new city in months, I should have specified large tile city. Not that it should matter.. but I have made several small filler towns in between this and the last large city tile I was working on back in the spring.)

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

4 hours ago, tails2489 said:

Very strange.

Agreed. As CB mentioned, it seems likely there is some culprit in your plugins somewhere. As long as you have a workaround of bulldozing and rebuilding the power stuff it's prolly not a major issue worth worrying about any time soon.

 

4 hours ago, tails2489 said:

I'm sure I'll keep this thread alive in 6 months when I start my next city.

Sounds good. Pop back in whenever you like and let us know how it's going.

[powerfullshammy 81]

Um why not just use a Large Wind Power Field?

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,869]

@powerfullshammy

Thanks for popping in to post and providing a linky to the Wind Power Field Plant file. Since it is still right here on our STEX, I'll edit your post to change the linky.

-Cori (doing the admin thing)

[powerfullshammy 81]

10 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

@powerfullshammy

Thanks for popping in to post and providing a linky to the Wind Power Field Plant file. Since it is still right here on our STEX, I'll edit your post to change the linky.

-Cori (doing the admin thing)

Thankz

[tails2489 350]

14 hours ago, powerfullshammy said:

Um why not just use a Large Wind Power Field?

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/3166-wind-power-field-plant/

Cause I didn't know that existed?