Transforming a CAM building into "non-CAM"

[carlosmarcelo 975]

Hello everyone! 

Unlike NAM, I see that the CAM is something more optional, which slows the growth of the city, something I would not like. 
Yesterday I came across a building that I really liked, but it would only work if I had CAM installed. 

I opened the .sc4lot file in the reader and came across a property called "Growth Stage" and put it 12 to 1. 

This was not enough for the building to appear and I know that there are other factors in "real time of play" that determine whether or not a building will appear, however, I am in doubt as to whether this is sufficient or not, so I ask the question to the most experienced guys:

How to transform a CAM building into a non-CAM building? 

  Edited March 31, 2020 by carlosmarcelo  
Text correction and change title better

[rsc204 21,808]

4 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

I opened the .sc4lot file in the reader and came across a property called "Growth Stage" and put it 12 to 1. 

Well for starters a growth stage building from CAM to vanilla, it's very unlikely this change is correct. Before you go too far down this path, make sure you've a good familiarity with what Growth Stage actually means.

The next problem with many, especially higher Growth Stage lots, the Capacity Satisfied (# of Sims/Jobs) is probably going to be very high. For starters, note that Vanilla SC4 can never generate > 6,000 demand, CAM extends this greatly. So you need to adjust this figure too, but this may be difficult to automate for very large buildings especially. Ideally, you need to balance both the Growth Stage and Capacity of all your content, so they will grow harmoniously together. Sometimes similar buildings with low capacity can sprout up all over or be ignored in favour of more dense lots.

You can in theory use PIM-X to recalculate these values, but so far as I recall, those will be set with CAM optimised figures. Here's a practical example, using RDQ's Chrysler Building model:

With the default Filling Degree of 0.5, we're offered Stages 12-14 only, at 12 that's 8,973 jobs. Both those figures are simply not going to work without CAM or some other mod installed. Since this is a very tall building, it's absolutely going to be Stage 8, knowing this, we can use trickery to generate values that should be balanced. To do this, simply reduce the filling degree and see which values offer the appropriate growth stages for the vanilla game.

• Using 0.1 I get stages 7-9
• Using 0.2 I get stages 8-10

The latter of those sets the Capacity at 3,591, which should compete well with other Stage 8 offices. Not the most ideal calculations, but it should be OK. There isn't an absolute formula for these things, you just need some feel for what looks right. The best reference for that is SC4 Tool, it has an in-bulit reference of all Maxis content. Of course, throw that under a bus if you've a lot of custom lots installed and they aren't similarly balanced.

[infamousjbe 592]

4 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

came across a building that I really liked, but it would only work if I had CAM installed. 

I feel that....      have a folder dedicated to lots that need to be De-CAM-ified. Just never got around to it. 

[Terring 6,473]

Or, just use the Lot Editor. I'm not kidding! It's possible to make a CAMelot available to unCAMed games simply by using the Lot Editor. Here is how.

Suppose there is a cool building that we really want it. A building so cool that we must have it. The problem is that the building needs CAM to be constructed in our cities, and we don't have/want CAM for our personal reasons. I personally have 2 reasons for not using CAM, a practical one and a philosophical one. The practical one is that I've been working on a mod that replaces most of the Maxis-made grow-able buildings with SimMars buildings, and it's just not CAMpatible. I also have SPAM, and SPAM together with CAM is not a good combination. The philosophical reason is that I want to simulate a post-scarcity civilization, where automation, AIs, 3D printing, renewable energy, and declaration of Earth and all of its natural resources as the common heritage of the world's people, allow my Sims to have free access to everything they need. That's something that CAM just can't simulate it. RCImulti - MODpack made by @niloluiz on the other hand is my weapon of choice, with homejobs (simulating teleworking and other things) , rebalanced jobs (so even the "poorest" Sims can "work" in my state-of-the-art industries) and no caps (I prefer to build parks and reweards because I want to, not because I have to). Long story short, CAM is just not my cup of tea.

But that cool building is still there, flirting us! OK, we can mod it to make it non CAMpatible, but we can do this simply by using the Lot Editor. Here is how.

First, let's find a cool building to make it non CAMpatible. For this example I'll be using one of @Fantozzi's awesome farms from his Colossus Farming mod. A farm too cool to ignore it. As we can see, the original lot is stage 10, so we need CAM to have it in our cities. But it's possible to make it available as a stage 3 building. Not by hacking, not by extra modding, but by using the Lot Editor itself. All we need to do is to use the size-stage algorithm.

The Lot Editor can calculate the growth stage of a RCI building based on the size of the building and the size of the lot. The bigger the building, the higher the stage. The bigger the lot, the lower the stage. This means that it's possible to get apartment buildings, skyscrapers and heavy industries by simply increase the size of the lot. And CAMelots are not exceptions! By putting any number in the Width/Depth cells (including the same number that it already has) we can low the growth stage from 10 to 3, making this cool farm available for unCAMed cities as well. In this specific example, just click the Depth cell and hit 4.

Now all we need to do is to save the lot, but the trick is to click the Save As button. There is a reason why I recommend to save as. Sometimes you'll find out that some creators managed to save the data on the lot file, probably to reduce the kilobytes and prevent further modifications. In this case if you just click the Save button, you'll erase the data and make the lot useless. So let's save as to play safe. You'll also have the original lot as a backup if you need it.

And that's it! All we have to do now is to close the Lot Editor, open the game and see our cool CAMelot farm being constructed in our unCAMed cities

Will it work on industries, apartment buildings and skyscrapers as well? Yes, I had done this thing many years ago with no problems at all.

So all we need is to play with the Lot Editor to unCAM the CAMelots without actually unCAMming them, since we don't mod them and we only play with their lots, right? Not so fast, because the Lot Editor comes with a serious limitation. It will not allow you to have grow-able lots larger than 6X6, unless you use another modding tool (like the Reader I think) to do it. In other words, you can't have a CAM building larger than 6X6 in your unCAMed cities by using this method. If the lot is 7X7 but the building is smaller than 6X6, you can go on but you'll need to reduce the lot. If the building is too big, forget it.

However there is a second way to get CAMelots on unCAMed cities, which is even easier since it doesn't need the Lot Editor, but I don't recommend it. And that's by plopping it. By getting the SimCity 4 Extra Plugin by @Buggi, you can use the LotPlop cheat to select the CAMelot you want and directly plop it on your city. Easy, simple, but risky. First of all, those buildings need a large enough demand to support them, so building a stage 15 skyscraper in a not ready city will bring more mess that it can clean. Even worse, plop-able RCI buildings doesn't work properly. Plop-able commercial buildings are fine, but plop-able industries will not release freight trucks and plop-able residential buildings will not work at all and eventually get abandoned. That's why I personally try to avoid plop-able RCI when it's possible.

So not one, but two ways to get CAMelots in your non-CAM cities without actually unCAMming them. I don't consider this as an illegal cheat because we use legal and legitimate ways and tools to do our job. But if it's still considered as something illegal, please let me know. I just want to help.

[carlosmarcelo 975]

Thanks for answers, but they are new informations for me. I will read again later and I will try the lot editor first and I will come back to tell the results. 

I'm happy for there are ways to transforming CAM lot in not CAM lot. 

[xxdita 1,097]

For industrials, anything over stage 4 can be set as stage 3 for vanilla. 

 

[rsc204 21,808]

21 hours ago, Terring said:

So not one, but two ways to get CAMelots in your non-CAM cities without actually unCAMming them. I don't consider this as an illegal cheat because we use legal and legitimate ways and tools to do our job. But if it's still considered as something illegal, please let me know. I just want to help.

It doesn't hurt to have other options. Most people barely know it exists, but the Maxis tools contain an application, Plugin Manager (PIM) as well as the LE. Sure, the LE will change the Growth Stage for you, but that's not the same as recalculating the values of both the Growth Stage and Capacity Satisfied. You could just edit this value in Reader, how you change it is not what's important here, so much as getting values that actually work. Capacity Satisfied is real important, because as I said, if a CAM building (which let's face it a Stage 12 CAM lot will), has a higher capacity than the possible demand, it can simply never grow. But even so, if the values are too out of sync with your other content, it can cause problems for growables.

As such, however you go about it, it's not enough to just change the Growth Stage, it may work, but there is a good chance it won't too.

[xxdita 1,097]

There are plenty of stage 8s that are nearly impossible to grow in vanilla as well. Some custom content is just larger than what Maxis provided. 

CAMelots don't necessarily have more capacity than their vanilla counterparts. Cobalt Tower by Dusktrooper was originally a stage 8 with 4000 CO$$$ jobs. The CAM version is stage 13 with 1125 CO$$$ jobs. PIMX gives more balanced stats all around than any of the Maxis tools available, thanks to the variable filling degree. 

For Residentials and Commercials, any CAMelots stage 9 to 15 would have to be stage 7 or 8, usually 8. 

If you aren't ready for CAM, but still want larger capacity buildings to grow, my Turbo Mod works perfectly with vanilla SC4 as well as CAM 1.0.  

[xxdita 1,097]

22 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

Hello everyone! 

Unlike NAM, I see that the CAM is something more optional, which slows the growth of the city, something I would not like. 
Yesterday I came across a building that I really liked, but it would only work if I had CAM installed. 

I opened the .sc4lot file in the reader and came across a property called "Growth Stage" and put it 12 to 1. 

This was not enough for the building to appear and I know that there are other factors in "real time of play" that determine whether or not a building will appear, however, I am in doubt as to whether this is sufficient or not, so I ask the question to the most experienced guys:

How to transform a CAM building into a non-CAM building? 

Actually, CAM allows for faster growth in your cities, with a higher max demand possible than vanilla. CAM 1.0 and 2.0 Standard growth stages are both balanced in line with Maxis. CAM 2.0 Skyscraper lets you reach the higher growth stages with lower regional capacities. 

The biggest benefit of CAM is that it extends that possible growth stages, allowing your cities to continue growing much longer than the vanilla game can. Vanilla stops at stage 8 for residential and commercial, 3 for industrials. CAM raises that to 15 and 10, respectively. 

This allows for growth to continue in your cities long after vanilla cities are maxed out. It also allows for buildings with higher capacities to grow at later stages, instead of trying to force all skyscrapers into a single growth stage. I have no problems reaching stage 14s or so in a single medium tile city, using CAM 1.0 and can easily go over 1million population. Stage 15s are more difficult to get to, and may require playing multiple cities. 

[xxdita 1,097]

On 3/31/2020 at 3:23 PM, Terring said:

I personally have 2 reasons for not using CAM, a practical one and a philosophical one. The practical one is that I've been working on a mod that replaces most of the Maxis-made grow-able buildings with SimMars buildings, and it's just not CAMpatible. I also have SPAM, and SPAM together with CAM is not a good combination. The philosophical reason is that I want to simulate a post-scarcity civilization, where automation, AIs, 3D printing, renewable energy, and declaration of Earth and all of its natural resources as the common heritage of the world's people, allow my Sims to have free access to everything they need. That's something that CAM just can't simulate it. RCImulti - MODpack made by @niloluiz on the other hand is my weapon of choice, with homejobs (simulating teleworking and other things) , rebalanced jobs (so even the "poorest" Sims can "work" in my state-of-the-art industries) and no caps (I prefer to build parks and reweards because I want to, not because I have to). Long story short, CAM is just not my cup of tea.

I should probably clear some things up with this. 

There should be no issue with CAM and any lot overrides. The only thing you'd need to pay attention to is making sure that all of your installed content is modded with the same balance. 

The same is true for anyone using the Industry Doubler or similar lot replacement mods. These things just don't function properly when mixed with custom content that isn't specifically modded for it as well. Such drastic changes in gameplay require dedication. 

It is true that CAM and SPAM do conflict. CAM has more possible growth stages for farms as well as all RCI types and just has more balanced mechanics. SPAM has a number of other issues that make using CAM 2.0 Rural a much better option. 

I really like some of the mods in the RCI Multi pack. There are no true CAMpatibility issues with either the no caps or homejobs mods, though I would not recommend the homejobs mod to anyone that enjoys the game's simulators, It pretty much defeats the purpose of NAM completely. I suppose if you're looking for an even more sandbox version of the game, homejobs would do it though. 

What this mod does is turns the capacity of residential buildings into civic jobs as well. So it really doesn't matter who could be working in IHT, because instead of that, they're working in their neighbor's garage. 

The rebalanced jobs mod seems redundant when used with homejobs. But even on its own, it ignores balancing the actual Census/Workforce Drives that would make R$s even care about working in IHT. 

I should mention that the R$$$/IHT fix also ignores the Census/Workforce Drives, but it is a much smaller change than this rebalanced jobs mod. These Drives are balanced in CAM 2.0. 

I also play with no caps. It's not that I mind placing parks around the city, but I always hated having to remember which lots provided what kind of cap relief and how much. Plus keeping a list handy of the custom content I use is just impractical. The r_standard_uncapped.dat works just fine for that, though I am using a mod of my own creation to do the same. 

The included Demand Mods are problematic, like any artificial demand mods are, especially when combined with no caps. 

When I can get Reader going again, I'll verify, but if there is any part of the RCI Multi mod that is truly inCAMpatible, it would be the desire_override.dat. But if that's the case, then it's a simple enough fix for anyone that wanted to use it with CAM, just as with @CorinaMarie's NKO mod. 

But really, the desire_override.dat would be more useful if it simply lowered the Desirability Threshold Growth and Desirability Threshold Decline values, instead of relying on parks at all. 

Aside from possibly the r_standard_uncapped.dat, there is no part of this mod that I would ever recommend for anyone to use. The homejobs idea was original at the time, which is what originally drew my attention to this pack of mods. But civic jobs do not count as actual employment as far as most of the game is concerned, so this creates a huge imbalance. 

For most of the other cheats, there are better alternatives available. 

[carlosmarcelo 975]

18 hours ago, xxdita said:

The biggest benefit of CAM is that it extends that possible growth stages, allowing your cities to continue growing much longer than the vanilla game can. Vanilla stops at stage 8 for residential and commercial, 3 for industrials. CAM raises that to 15 and 10, respectively. 

Thank you: your explications was better that descriptions in the download file, I earned other vision of CAM.  But, even this, it isn't this modification what I want in this moment: I have little time to cultivate cities, so I prefer it to grow to the maximum quickly so that I can do urban experiments with it or build another city with new ideas, and then another and so on.

With your words, I begin to think about the possibility of using CAM when I get sick of growing up to stage 8, but I'm currently far from that. My main objective at the moment is to insert different buildings in my cities, increase the variety of RCI buildings, and there are very few CAMs that I want to bring to my cities. 

I don't like mods that alter demand and jobs because I know there is a science behind that I don't have much time to learn it. My only exception is Industry x4 because I felt a positive difference in the evolution of cities, but it is on my list to review it and replace it with IHT and / or Industry Doubler. 

With everyone's explanation, I understood that it is not just changing half a dozen properties, there is a reasoning behind it. I will make everyone's suggestions and I intend to report the results here, but for now RL prevents me from doing so. Thank you all.

[Terring 6,473]

9 hours ago, xxdita said:

There are no true CAMpatibility issues with either the no caps or homejobs mods, though I would not recommend the homejobs mod to anyone that enjoys the game's simulators, It pretty much defeats the purpose of NAM completely.

This is true if you use the 100pct_homejobs_uncapped.dat file, which gives all the capacity of the residential buildings in jobs. By making all Sims working at their homes or an the garages of their next house, there will be no need for industries, shops and offices, no need for buses and subways, no need to build avenues and highways. You don't even need to build a single main road. You could have entire cities with only apartment buildings and streets. Not only NAM, but most of the game contents and mechanics become obsolete with those setting. This is something I've already tested it. However this allows us to simulate different philosophies and social-technological achievements, such as societies where all Sims can telework for distant corporations or for themselves, or cities in which all Sims let the machines doing all the hard job, so they can live however they want in a post-scarcity money-free society. Lots of possibilities.

Of course the 100% is too much even for me, so I choose the 25pct_homejobs_uncapped.dat that provides 25% of the residential building capacity in jobs, which is high enough to give me an allowance but not too high to strip away any kind of challenge. I like having some main roads and industries in my cities and I also like giving my Sims more options on whatever they want to do.

10 hours ago, xxdita said:

The rebalanced jobs mod seems redundant when used with homejobs.

In a world without war, poverty and hunger, without the fear of losing jobs and income, the incentives and options will me tremendous. Thousands of different things will be due in a society where everybody will have food, housing, education, anything you want. That's another thing I want to simulate in my game.

10 hours ago, xxdita said:

The included Demand Mods are problematic, like any artificial demand mods are, especially when combined with no caps. 

Yeah, I avoid this kind of mods too. Artificial demand mods can mess up with your cities and remove every part of challenge and fair play.

[xxdita 1,097]

12 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

Thank you: your explications was better that descriptions in the download file, I earned other vision of CAM.  But, even this, it isn't this modification what I want in this moment: I have little time to cultivate cities, so I prefer it to grow to the maximum quickly so that I can do urban experiments with it or build another city with new ideas, and then another and so on.

With your words, I begin to think about the possibility of using CAM when I get sick of growing up to stage 8, but I'm currently far from that. My main objective at the moment is to insert different buildings in my cities, increase the variety of RCI buildings, and there are very few CAMs that I want to bring to my cities. 

I don't like mods that alter demand and jobs because I know there is a science behind that I don't have much time to learn it. My only exception is Industry x4 because I felt a positive difference in the evolution of cities, but it is on my list to review it and replace it with IHT and / or Industry Doubler. 

With everyone's explanation, I understood that it is not just changing half a dozen properties, there is a reasoning behind it. I will make everyone's suggestions and I intend to report the results here, but for now RL prevents me from doing so. Thank you all.

Sorry. I know it's a bit much. There are far too many inaccuracies and misconceptions about CAM being circulated by people. 

But as I said, you can generally change any Residential or Commercial lots at stage 9 or higher to stage 8, and any Industrials at or over stage 4 to stage 3 and be just fine. There's rarely any need to recalculate a building's overall stats. 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

12 minutes ago, xxdita said:

But as I said, you can generally change any Residential or Commercial lots at stage 9 or higher to stage 8, and any Industrials at or over stage 4 to stage 3 and be just fine. There's rarely any need to recalculate a building's overall stats. 

If the vanilla game has a maximum demand of 6000, how would a stage 9+ CAMeLot that is converted to stage 8 be able to grow when that building's capacity is over 6000?

[xxdita 1,097]

29 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

If the vanilla game has a maximum demand of 6000, how would a stage 9+ CAMeLot that is converted to stage 8 be able to grow when that building's capacity is over 6000?

That's a much more complex discussion, but the simple truth is:

On 4/1/2020 at 7:02 AM, xxdita said:

There are plenty of stage 8s that are nearly impossible to grow in vanilla as well. Some custom content is just larger than what Maxis provided. 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Nearly impossible and completely impossible are two different things.

[xxdita 1,097]

Vanilla can come in different flavors as well. 

But any tool used to create a building desc for a model follows a certain formula to determine a building's appropriate stats. This is determined by the size of the model. 

When we're discussing skyscrapers, then by nature we're discussing larger models. Not even Maxis tools have a hard limit on building capacities. So bigger building = more capacity. 

[xxdita 1,097]

@CorinaMarie This stage 8 building has a capacity of 7,080 R$$. That should be just out of reach and impossible to grow if your theory is correct. 7,080 is certainly over 6000. You'll see no such complaints by reading the STEX comments, in fact, just the opposite, 5 months before CAM went public and well before my Turbo Mod. So in a time when vanilla was the only real option, in this sense. 

When you already have a stage 7 in place, then the stage 8 that it will upgrade to can be up to 6000 capacity larger, not 6000 total. 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

4 minutes ago, xxdita said:

That should be just out of reach and impossible to grow if your theory is correct.

I wouldn't call it a theory. I asked a question.

 

5 minutes ago, xxdita said:

When you already have a stage 7 in place, then the stage 8 that it will upgrade to can be up to 6000 capacity larger, not 6000 total.

Thanks. That's the part I was not aware of. Now it makes a whole lot more sense.

[MMR_Sim4 2]

This info is exactly what I needed, I'm trying to modify ks_jpn's CAM files because I love a lot of his buildings - but can never get them to grow since I have other mods that conflict with CAM. 

It's difficult to use CAM features and I just prefer other gameplay mods.