Removing zots from game

[DennyFrontier 8]

Does anybody know if there is a mod that simply removes all of the zots from the game (transportation, water, electrical etc) without affecting other parts of the game play? I know that the tastyzots cheat is there but when that cheat is enabled it also removes the zone color from the ground if nothing has been built on it and the cheat disables itself every time you switch graph modes. Which make sit annoying having to type it in all the time.

Appreciate any help, thanks

 

[rsc204 21,866]

Whilst I don't know of another method other than the one you describe, a few words of caution here.

Zots serve an important purpose and whilst you might want them gone briefly to make a screenshot or the like. Simply making them disappear in the longer term is just ignoring some hugely fundamental problems that will bite you. If electricity or water is required for a lot, it will eventually abandon, removing the zot isn't going to power or water such a lot. Likewise, no road access/job zots tell you the zoning in question simply isn't working. In summary, ignoring these problems will just cause the simulation to fall over and stagnate growth completely. If you really must build without adding essential elements of the game, consider using a mod that removes the need for electricity/water. However, there is no such mod for road zots, without working transport/road connections, growth is simply not possible. If this is simply a funding related issue, just use one of the various methods to "cheat" extra money into existence. I prefer to use the "Moolah ###" cheat, where you replace ### with how much money you want. But there are numerous solutions for this aspect, with an unlimited budget, there isn't really a good reason not to have water and power IMHO.

[matias93 7,535]

Even considering Robin's wise point about the need for zots, there should be some relatively easy way to get rid of them persistently. As they are stored as props on the game files, they should be overrideable by an invisible prop.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

4 hours ago, DennyFrontier said:

Does anybody know if there is a mod that simply removes all of the zots from the game (transportation, water, electrical etc) without affecting other parts of the game play?

I'm not aware of any as I'd never searched. There are very good reasons to want them in your game as @rsc204 stated. On the other hand, it is your game and as @matias93 suggests it's quite trivial to create such a mod.

Zots Begone by Cori v1.0.dat

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Zots Begone by Cori v1.0.dat

Nicely done. Testing and I can confirm it works as designed...

Before
(Maxis default Zots)

 

After
(With Cori's mod installed)

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, rsc204 said:

no road access/job zots tell you the zoning in question simply isn't working.

Sometimes, but they usually mean only that the route-finder hasn't run to completion yet; give it at least a year at turtle speed before taking those zots seriously.

Even then they can mean that your NAM settings in TSCT are flawed, not allowing enough commute time. Those zots can also come up because some of your sims don't have cars, and you haven't built any bus stops for them to reach work sites beyond walking distance.

What's interesting (for those who think dilapidated housing is interesting) is that if you lack high-wealth jobs for new McMansion residents, after they abandon, their big house can be occupied by a larger number of medium-wealth sims who can find work (or the cycle can even repeat so that a shockingly large number of low-wealth sims end up living in the house. In other words, as long as you connect some kind of job zones, the game usually sorts itself out.

[rsc204 21,866]

2 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Even then they can mean that your NAM settings in TSCT are flawed, not allowing enough commute time.

Highly unlikely unless you've manually edited the TSCT settings. Since the default Simulator Z was designed such as to allow sims to have pretty much as long as they need to find a job. So if such zots persist, it's far more likely no suitable jobs exist or the sims are finding themselves in an eternal commuter loop.

3 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Those zots can also come up because some of your sims don't have cars, and you haven't built any bus stops for them to reach work sites beyond walking distance.

Again, the base Simulator Z is sufficient to allow sims enough time to literally walk the entire length or breadth of a large city tile. So provided there is a valid path with which to walk, this too can be ruled out. Z who created the current simulator made a lengthy post explaining the ins and outs of it, along discussing the problems with the Maxis simulator and how those were overcome. It's not light reading, but for those interested, it's very comprehensive:

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

21 hours ago, rsc204 said:

the base Simulator Z is sufficient to allow sims enough time to literally walk the entire length or breadth of a large city tile. So provided there is a valid path with which to walk, this too can be ruled out.

That's a nice theory, but I haven't seen it in practice. About half of my sims need buses to get to work or else their houses get no-road zots and abandon. That's with NAM after using TSCT to lengthen allowable commute time even further than the default. It could be my customized car / mass-transit / fastest settings that are doing that.

One other phenomenon I've come across is if a civic building (e.g. school or hospital) has jobs in it but some residents can't get there from where they live. The residents will ignore the jobs they can reach, putting up a no-job zot. This is especially prone to happen where water divides available land into separate communities, so I've learned to build bridges or at least install ferries so all jobs are reachable from all residences in each "city".

Yet another failure mode is when a choke-point becomes so congested that no more sims are allowed to use it. For additional residents trying to path-find to work, it's as if the connection isn't even there, so they put up zots. This happened to me in one of my early cities that was divided by a freeway having only one overpass (avenue) between all of the residential and all of the industrial.

But the most common (for me) is the simulator not running to completion. During rapid population growth, the construction planner soaks up many available CPU cycles adding residents faster than the path-finder can process them. If the path-finder gets too far behind, then those residents put up zots and eventually abandon because of commute time. I've seen half a neighborhood abandon because the simulator was overwhelmed. Bulldozing the dead houses gave the simulator a do-over when it could succeed on benighted half.

[DennyFrontier 8]

On 5/4/2019 at 6:43 PM, rsc204 said:

Whilst I don't know of another method other than the one you describe, a few words of caution here.

Zots serve an important purpose and whilst you might want them gone briefly to make a screenshot or the like. Simply making them disappear in the longer term is just ignoring some hugely fundamental problems that will bite you. If electricity or water is required for a lot, it will eventually abandon, removing the zot isn't going to power or water such a lot. Likewise, no road access/job zots tell you the zoning in question simply isn't working. In summary, ignoring these problems will just cause the simulation to fall over and stagnate growth completely. If you really must build without adding essential elements of the game, consider using a mod that removes the need for electricity/water. However, there is no such mod for road zots, without working transport/road connections, growth is simply not possible. If this is simply a funding related issue, just use one of the various methods to "cheat" extra money into existence. I prefer to use the "Moolah ###" cheat, where you replace ### with how much money you want. But there are numerous solutions for this aspect, with an unlimited budget, there isn't really a good reason not to have water and power IMHO.

I know how zots work. Im not asking for a mod that replaces the requirements for the lot. I just want the icon to disappear. For example I dont want the game to tell me that the lot has no power by showing me a lightning bolt zot. I want to physically see the power outage myself and then consult my data map. Likewise if I see an abandoned lot I will manually check the data map for water shortages/ transportation connections etc. Hopefully that helps explain what I am looking for. Thank you

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

3 minutes ago, DennyFrontier said:

I want to physically see the power outage myself and then consult my data map. Likewise if I see an abandoned lot I will manually check the data map for water shortages/ transportation connections etc. Hopefully that helps explain what I am looking for. Thank you

It might be worth trying the mod Cori created in her post above. I believe that will do precisely what you're looking for.

[Daeris 1,116]

I think I'll try out Cori's zotzapper for some screenshots. Of course, I wish there were an easy quick on/off zot button. This makes me ponder the question, for the cheat mod, can new cheats be coded into that? Or are only the original dev cheats enabled with that cheat mod? If new cheats could be coded, I wonder if we could do a drawzots/hidezots type of cheat for example.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

2 hours ago, Daeris said:

This makes me ponder the question, for the cheat mod, can new cheats be coded into that?

It's possibly possible, but that's quite a rarefied field of programming with only a couple or three peeps who understand it.

 

2 hours ago, Daeris said:

If new cheats could be coded, I wonder if we could do a drawzots/hidezots type of cheat for example.

You could use the already coded tastyzots cheat.

It does toggle itself back on when going to a different view (such as zones) and returning to regular view, but it's good for getting screenshots. Just toggle it on each time you need it.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

2 hours ago, Daeris said:

This makes me ponder the question, for the cheat mod, can new cheats be coded into that? Or are only the original dev cheats enabled with that cheat mod? If new cheats could be coded, I wonder if we could do a drawzots/hidezots type of cheat for example.

For this it can be done by entering the tastyzots cheat and running that again. This will toggle them off/on respectively.

It does need to be re-entered when entering a tile again though since it resets to the default "on" display, and so that'd be where Cori's mod still is useful.

Edit: And I see @CorinaMarie replied above before me, which means you just got two answers for the price of one.
Special combo deal on offer today!

  Edited February 2, 2021 by Cyclone Boom  

[Daeris 1,116]

7 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

You could use the already coded tastyzots cheat.

4 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

For this it can be done by entering the tastyzots cheat and running that again. This will toggle them on/off respectively.

Oh oh, didn't even know about this cheat. I'll try that! Sorry, I'm a bit of a hot mess today.   

Thanks you two.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

2 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Oh oh, didn't even know about this cheat.

There's a real nice PDF somewhere of all the cheats. I'm sure CB'll post a linky to it soon.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

9 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

There's a real nice PDF somewhere of all the cheats. I'm sure CB'll post a linky to it soon.

Here it is:

 

And the PDF of the guide is attached to this post.