A few questions

[Aracari 23]

Just picking up this game again after many years and having a blast. I remember using a much earlier NAM and how frustrating it was to try to do almost anything. Everything seems so easy now, I can make a simple but nice-looking RHW/Avenue interchange in like 30 seconds! And everything seems much more stable, I don't have to constantly bulldoze huge sections after screwing up one tiny thing. Anyways, a few random questions that I'm hoping someone can help with. Thanks in advance!

1. Is it normal that my high-speed rail traffic is producing air pollution, affecting desirability, and allowing me to get "high" customers by zoning commercial backing onto it? Seems weird - heavy rail doesn't do this, and I don't think light rail does but haven't fully experimented. (I'm assuming the HSR is only graphical and would be functionally the same as monorail)

2. There are several ramps to split a RHW-2 into two opposite direction MIS, but they are marked as "deprecated". Does that mean there is a way to create these with flexramps or dragging? I couldn't figure it out or find a guide.

3. I keep accidentally planting trees (with god mode brush) underneath my elevated RHW and ramps. Doesn't actually change anything, but looks stupid. Is there a way to prevent them from growing there, or to remove them without bulldozing the whole highway? Maybe I just need to be more careful

4. Is it actually possible to use the el rail over Road-4? I couldn't find any pieces to transition it to anything else.

5. I accidentally noticed that you can click with el rail on avenues to create tram-in-avenue. Haven't found this documented anywhere. Just curious if there are other little tricks like this that people would recommend.

[Cyclone Boom 16,906]

Hi Aracari and welcome to forums.

While I'm unsure of your other questions with me personally not being a NAM expert, I do know a possibility for your #3 question:
 

2 hours ago, Aracari said:

3. I keep accidentally planting trees (with god mode brush) underneath my elevated RHW and ramps. Doesn't actually change anything, but looks stupid. Is there a way to prevent them from growing there, or to remove them without bulldozing the whole highway?

For this you might find the flora off command useful.

This works without the Extra Cheats DLL as being a standard command in the game. Entering it in the cheats box (Ctrl+X) and pressing Enter will proceed to remove all planted flora in the current tile. Bear in mind this also would include MMPs since they're technically classed as "flora" also. Upon running this command and it's important to then use flora on which makes the flora simulator be activated again. So this is a pretty drastic measure that makes all planted items irreversibly disappear. For making trees be felled without bulldozing your networks, it'd be a useful way around it though.

Speaking of trees and it's possible to adjust the brush size using this little trick. That way to allow more precision planting if it might be useful.

Here's part of a post I made about this technique too:

On 31/07/2018 at 8:35 AM, Cyclone Boom said:

There are some cases where a finer accuracy is desired such as on farm field boundaries. For this I recommend holding Shift and pressing any of the number keys from 1-9. The smaller the number, the smaller the brush. Once setting the number it then gets locked onto that size until exiting the tool or changing to another size. This allows planting on the boundary edges of farms including to fill diagonal empty spaces, while maintaining defined edges.

 

I'll leave your other questions for the NAM gurus.

[Aracari 23]

Thanks - seems a little drastic though! I think I will just have to be more careful.

[rsc204 21,808]

12 hours ago, Aracari said:

1. Is it normal that my high-speed rail traffic is producing air pollution

Absolutely, this is how the Maxis Monorail has always worked, indeed HSR is just an override/reskin of Monorail so functions as such.

12 hours ago, Aracari said:

2. There are several ramps to split a RHW-2 into two opposite direction MIS, but they are marked as "deprecated". Does that mean there is a way to create these with flexramps or dragging? I couldn't figure it out or find a guide.

Absolutely, everything marked as Depreciated will have a Flex Piece or Draggable Pattern that has replaced it. Most of those Patterns are covered in this series of YouTube videos, otherwise this guide is mostly complete too, it's a handy reference. Once the system "clicks" with you though, you'll realise most of these Patterns are very similar. If you build a lot of RHW, it becomes almost second-nature, perhaps except for some more complex multi-tile ramps.

12 hours ago, Aracari said:

3. I keep accidentally planting trees (with god mode brush) underneath my elevated RHW and ramps. Doesn't actually change anything, but looks stupid. Is there a way to prevent them from growing there, or to remove them without bulldozing the whole highway? Maybe I just need to be more careful

As far as I can tell, the issue is two-fold. On one hand, the Flora properties can allow the first Stage of a God-Mode Brush, seeing there is space for it. But it seems to be a bit less good when it is placing later stages, often clusters of trees. The entire tile, wherever Networks have been built, should be off-limits to any props, i.e. the space should be blocked.

In some cases, like Maxis Highway (MHY), you can re-drag the affected portions and it will cull the trees for you. Sadly this is a little too effective and removes often more trees than you'd like. I like to leave a couple tiles gap next to Highways and elevated rail networks especially, so I can keep a ways back when planting, which helps a lot. The other solution is to get some small, probably 1x1 and maybe 2x2 Lots with just trees upon them, use these fillers, which shouldn't overhang onto parallel Networks. One potential drawback is that all trees are in similar patterns, use of Prop Families would help here, but that has issues if you want to use Seasonal trees. MMPs are more effort, but sometimes a better solution visually.

12 hours ago, Aracari said:

4. Is it actually possible to use the el rail over Road-4? I couldn't find any pieces to transition it to anything else.

Unlike the El-Rail over Road network, El over RD-4/AVE is a Flex-based network. You can do so much, just by placing the relevant stretch of RD-4 or AVE pieces, putting both together, transitions between the two. There are some other handy pieces in the Tab-Ring menu also, but for example, you can drag most default Networks through or into these pieces to connect them up. Think of it as a Puzzle Piece on steroids, only it's NOT a Puzzle Piece.

I'm glad you are finding the latest version much more user friendly. So much hard work has gone on to transition to this system, I think one issue users can have, is not knowing what will or won't work. A tutorial video ;) is obviously a great first introduction, but I also recommend just opening a new city, giving yourself lots of money and just building every piece and combination you can. Once you've a familiarity of what is and isn't possible, it's much easier to plan how to implement a working system in a real city.

12 hours ago, Aracari said:

5. I accidentally noticed that you can click with el rail on avenues to create tram-in-avenue. Haven't found this documented anywhere. Just curious if there are other little tricks like this that people would recommend.

This is very useful, it not only builds TiA without so many Puzzle Pieces, again these are not Puzzle Pieces either, but Flex-based. So, want a road through the TiA network, drag away from it with Road on both sides and it'll do it for you. Additional bonus, now TiA can support junctions with RHW's MIS or RHW-4 networks.

Click the same way on Roads, you'll get a Tram in Road (TiR) network. More info on this feature in this video.

It's more for beginners, but I've a link in my signature to some NAM Tutorials, all of which are still relevant as of NAM 36. If nothing else, you might find some other features you didn't know were there.

[Aracari 23]

Thanks!

5 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Absolutely, this is how the Maxis Monorail has always worked, indeed HSR is just an override/reskin of Monorail so functions as such.

Seems like a strange decision on their part! I've actually never used the monorail before, it's too ugly!

6 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Absolutely, everything marked as Depreciated will have a Flex Piece or Draggable Pattern that has replaced it. Most of those Patterns are covered in this series of YouTube videos, otherwise this guide is mostly complete too, it's a handy reference. Once the system "clicks" with you though, you'll realise most of these Patterns are very similar. If you build a lot of RHW, it becomes almost second-nature, perhaps except for some more complex multi-tile ramps.

Perfect - I'd seen that diagram but it doesn't include these RHW2 ramps. That video is new though and is exactly what I was looking for.

6 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Unlike the El-Rail over Road network, El over RD-4/AVE is a Flex-based network. You can do so much, just by placing the relevant stretch of RD-4 or AVE pieces, putting both together, transitions between the two. There are some other handy pieces in the Tab-Ring menu also, but for example, you can drag most default Networks through or into these pieces to connect them up. Think of it as a Puzzle Piece on steroids, only it's NOT a Puzzle Piece.

Mind blown - as if I needed another toy to play with!

Thanks again!