Expanding the regional play

[Terring 6,476]

The greatest gift that Maxis/EA gave us with SimCity 4 is the regional play. Instead of cities in isolation, we have an entire region with plenty of cities to interact with each other. While awesome, it's still limited. For instance, pollution will not cross the city borders and airports will provide support to the commercial zones only in the city they've been build and not it's neighbors as well. And I really hate when I have to build airports in every single city. Why not having airports providing a mayor regional role as well? Why not having hospitals and schools helping the neighboring cities as well? Overall, why not enhancing regional play?

Actually, there is a mod that can do that. The Regional Tracking Mod, made by @Daeley. This mod store specific data from your cities and make them available for the entire region to enhance regional play. The mod can be used to have a look at a detailed regional population report and has even been used to donate money from one city to another. So my question is very simple. Can we use the RTM to enhance regional play even more? Can we use it to have airports, seaports, civil services, sport facilities, marinas etc not only on local action but also on regional one, providing support to the neighboring cities as well? For instance, why building airports in every city if we can use the RTM to have one or two for an entire region?

Just asking

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

18 minutes ago, Terring said:

Can we use the RTM to enhance regional play even more?

I've peeked inside that mod before and it's where I learned some key aspects about Lua Coding. I'll venture to say: Yes, quite possibly there are more enhancements which could be added.

On the other hand, you could mod some simple lots that add a portion of the effects from an airport, seaport, civil services, sports facilities, marinas, etc and plop those in a neighboring city.

[Vigilante1987 180]

Corina's suggestion is a workable kludge, but making a new RTM would be a more elegant solution. (which is basically what Terring is proposing)

[Lucario Boricua 7,050]

Here's an example of a very useful lot facilitating regional-scale gameplay, the SFBT airport shuttle. This lot provides the CAP relief effects of an airport, while also acting as a large bus station. This helps the player have a realistic region in which either one or a handful of airports handle the actual flight needs of its metropolitan population, while still providing the airport benefits to any sufficiently large city hosting the airport shuttle. It does need an account at the LEX to download.

 

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3295

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

a very useful lot facilitating regional-scale gameplay, the SFBT airport shuttle.

And maybe an update to that lot could integrate it with an updated RTM, with real airports adding to regional airport capacity while shuttle stops draw from it (and perhaps that capacity could be designed so those shuttles are needed for full access).

[Terring 6,476]

Yes it's true, we can (and already have) mod buildings and add extra effects to simulate regional influence, but this is more like bypassing a limitation rather than actually solving it. By limiting the influence buildings into their own cities we limit their true potential as well, limiting the regional play and also removing many points from realism. Here is an example. This little town has a nice hospital placed at the edges.

The hospital covers the town but it's ambulance radius goes beyond the town borders as well. So why not making the very hospital providing medical support to it's neighboring towns as well, without the need of building new hospitals in those towns? We could probably do it with airports, schools, fire stations etc. This would make the game-play even more interesting and challenging, but also more realistic, especially if you want to recreate a city like Athens that has most of its mayor hospital at the center. If you try to do it in SimCity 4, you'll end up having plenty of hospitals in one city and no hospitals at all in its surrounding cities, and nobody in those cities would enjoy that.

Our cities can already share the RCI demand and the transportation systems. Let's make them sharing more stuff as well, if of course it's possible.

[drocca 173]

I remember in SC3K that it was limited to one city, but it was the equivalent of a "large" tile (maybe larger) and the biggest individual SC3K city could be bigger than a large SC4 tile, but on the whole, an SC4 region can be several times more populous than an SC3K city. I feel like SC3K had a few things more realistic than SC4, for instance, how hospitals several miles away from the residents still worked. I think in SC4, hospitals and schools have to be within a mile or so of their populace to have any effect, and that's with the large ones and maximum funding.

I would use mods, but I feel like I'm walking on eggshells playing SC4 on my 4 year old Asus with Windows 10. I will when I go to a new computer some time soon. I think a good mod might be to allow schools/hospitals to work across an entire city tile. That way you'd only have to place them in one area per city tile, the largest city tiles are, what, 4x4 miles? 

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

7 hours ago, drocca said:

the largest city tiles are, what, 4x4 miles? 

Kilometers, but otherwise yes.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

12 hours ago, drocca said:

I think a good mod might be to allow schools/hospitals to work across an entire city tile.

They exist, and they are good, especially for low-density development. 

In higher density cities, a large hospital will not be able to serve all of the potential patients within its max radius, so having larger radius becomes unhelpful.