Building a Big Channel - Need Help

[mrbisonm 1,622]

 

This is NOT a City Journal, nor a "show us Thread". This is a thread that will help me with custom content to understand, plop, grow or play with and find. I will need ideas , suggestions and a lot of help to finish the region, so I can upload and maybe create a city journal (bigger than Nexis of Genesis)  later this year , which will have already more than a tousand new models from Nexis, never uploaded, nor seen before.

                                                                                                                       Believe me when I say I worked thousands of hrs on this.

 

Ok, Intro:

I am playing on a funtastic region since almost 7 years now. I have brought it up

to 19 + Million Population, and it's doing well and fleurishing. Only about 20% of

each citytile were plopped with Lots, mostly Landmarks and Parks, adjustments of

roads and landscape, etc.The rest is grown RCI.. I also used all my Bats and Lots

(Nexis), most of them have never seen (uploaded) before.....The region contains

sofar:

2 Cities, 11 Towns, 21 Villages and more than 60 Street-Junction Housings.

I have almost everything, I think, things like cities, mines, industries,

harbours, airports, power facilities, water treatments, parks, forests, farms,

lakes and ponds, waterfalls, bridges, beaches, Natural Reserves, small canals,

energy parks, fishing harbours, Loggers and ........too many things to mention.

The details all over the region are remarquable (as the 3 pictures below show) and

done with a lot of care to make it look to the closest thing of natural reality.

Models were very carefully chosen from a Plugin Folder that has 14.7 Gbs, plus 4

others interchangable Plugins of approx 2 to 3 Gbs each, making this a region

built with a total of almost 25 Gbs of Lots and MMP's......and believe me, it

wasn't easy to do so.

Now I am at a point where I could need some help from everyone. Every suggestion

and idea will be considered and then put to use  to build my next project(s) in

this region. As you can see, I terraformed the right Peninsula to make it look

like a prolongation of the continent. Now I want to build a Channel (Canal) where

the blue line is, so that it looks like ships come from one end (the East) and

travel to the west to the next City of Lendt where I have a medium big Harbour,

just right of the red bridge to the Island, on the mainland. Since I have NEVER

built a channel (canal), I will need suggestion, ideas and help with this.

So to start with my first question on this project: I know that with the ctrl+x

cheat and typing "setwaterlevel Nr" we can lower/raise the waterlevel, so I can

work in a dry environment to create the canal walls.
       Question 1: What is my level now (never modified it) on the region? I need

to know to be able to come back to the same level as before without drowing all my

farmland and villages.
       Question 2: How deep should I dig the canal?
       Question 3 : Looking for good looking  retaining wall texture lots or even

seawalls (I have tried a few that I was able to find quickly, but didn't come up

with something good looking. I need some good looking walls, close to real life.
       Suggestions please ?

There will be dozens of more questions coming.
Thanks

Fred

  Edited May 24, 2020 by mrbisonm  

[Silur 3,308]

Hi, Fred!

I will follow this topic and wait for new surprises ... 
Good luck to you! 

[mrbisonm 1,622]

....and hopefully you will be able to help me with something I will need to know. (smile)

 

[mrbisonm 1,622]

I am ready now to receive the first suggestions and help. Thank You.

The introduction has been edited above.

Fred

 

[zzsteven 41]

Regard question 1: Just exit to the region and then open the city tile again. The setsealevel cheat isn't persistant.

Question 2: I use Peg's beach plop things on the shoreline. It gets the beach almost to sea level then "setsealevel 0", I lower the seabed to 15 meters below the plop things. When done I exit to the region then open the city tile again. The water is back at the level it was before.

[mrbisonm 1,622]

3 hours ago, zzsteven said:

Regard question 1: Just exit to the region and then open the city tile again. The setsealevel cheat isn't persistant.

Question 2: I use Peg's beach plop things on the shoreline. It gets the beach almost to sea level then "setsealevel 0", I lower the seabed to 15 meters below the plop things. When done I exit to the region then open the city tile again. The water is back at the level it was before.

Question 1: perfect! I didn't know that the setsealevel cheat will go back to the original level once exit and re-entered. Good thing to know.

Question 2: How do I measure/lower (or know when I reached)  those 15 meters  or any other depth lower? I usually use Godmode tools and then roads to level, does it show somewhere how many meters I've gone down?

Thanks zzsteven, much appreciated!

Fred

[zzsteven 41]

2 hours ago, mrbisonm said:

Question 1: perfect! I didn't know that the setsealevel cheat will go back to the original level once exit and re-entered. Good thing to know.

Question 2: How do I measure/lower (or know when I reached)  those 15 meters  or any other depth lower? I usually use Godmode tools and then roads to level, does it show somewhere how many meters I've gone down?

Thanks zzsteven, much appreciated!

Fred

1-Plop Pegs CDK Leveler: 

 

2- Demo CDK Leveler; using the road tool expand your beachfront. I prefer to level and straighten all of the coast that will have retaining walls.

3- Use setsealevel 0; expand a section of your coast line into where the water will be. Your sea floor is now at the same level as the coast.

4- Use the 15 meter hole digger lot to lower the sea floor to 15 meters.

5- Follow the coast line where the retaining wall will go with the road tool. Straighten/ level coast as you go.

6- Exit city tile and re-enter.

Most retaining walls and docks like a 15 meter depth. Some retaining walls have to be plopped before the water comes back, (J Stimsons walls come to mind, he also needs to be a smidge deeper than 15 meters).

Hope this helps.

ZZ

[mrbisonm 1,622]

24 minutes ago, zzsteven said:

1-Plop Pegs CDK Leveler:

2- Demo CDK Leveler; using the road tool expand your beachfront. I prefer to level and straighten all of the coast that will have retaining walls.

3- Use setsealevel 0; expand a section of your coast line into where the water will be. Your sea floor is now at the same level as the coast.

4- Use the 15 meter hole digger lot to lower the sea floor to 15 meters.

5- Follow the coast line where the retaining wall will go with the road tool. Straighten/ level coast as you go.

6- Exit city tile and re-enter.

Most retaining walls and docks like a 15 meter depth. Some retaining walls have to be plopped before the water comes back, (J Stimsons walls come to mind, he also needs to be a smidge deeper than 15 meters).

Hope this helps.

ZZ

will try this tonight....Thanks

 

question 3: Looking for a good and realistic seawall or retaining wall, I have tried a few, but really not something I liked most. I need to see what you guys think looks best in a top-realistic region.

Or should I make my own? I can do this too, but what texture looks best? Suggestions will be appreciated.

Fred

 

 

Edit: I found this one as  for the Channel walls sofar, personally I think they look good and realistic. What do You all think?

 

  Edited May 24, 2020 by mrbisonm  
added picture

[tails2489 350]

Hi Fred, which region are you using here? Is it one found on the exchange? Thanks.

[11241036 5,115]

@mrbisonm

Regarding your first question: The default game's sea level is 250 (in metres). But, as already pointed out, you should never use the Setsealevel cheat. It's not persistent, and worse, it demolishes bridges and tunnels every time you use it. The one way I use to alter the sea level is via Reader: You can open your terrain mod and search for the "Sea Level" property. You can edit the values in any way; lowering the value will lower the sea level. It will stay that way in any city you open from that point on until you edit the settings again. (Don't worry if the region view doesn't change; it will as soon as you save a city again.)

Alternatively, you can download the Diagonal Bridge Enabler; it comes with a file that sets your sea level to 0 entirely. Make sure to read the Readme, it's tricky to use. Link

There are multiple ways of creating channels. It needs to be told that first you should make a decision: Do you want to make a channel with ploppable or game water?

In the first case (which is entirely possible), you can lower the area where your channel will be to barely above 250 m to have a good transition to the in-game water, and then you can use ploppables to cover the area. It's important to note that ferries cannot use channels with ploppable water. BSC Channels or Diggis Water Systems may be of interest to you; to find them, you can Power Search for "BSC" and "diggis" over at the LEX.

In the second case, you just need to lower the area to any value below sea level. As you already showed off, you can use this breakwater set to cover the banks; I think that's a pretty good idea. If you like a more urban set (for urban areas), you could use the Quais de Seine set as well (link). It depends a bit on your taste. Also, JayStimson has released some seawall sets that might be of interest to you: https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/42900-jaystimson/content/?type=downloads_file

The depth of the seabed doesn't probably matter that much with most custom content, especially not with the breakwater set or the Quais de Seine. Only with ploppable water, you way want to make sure that bridges are high enough to create pleasing overpasses, but that's what NAM is for. Also, if you want ferries to be able to pass the channel, the water needs to be rather deep and the bridges rather high (I unfortunately don't know how deep and how high). Additionally, some custom content (I believe Stimsons Seawalls belong to this category) may require you to temporarily lower the sea level, as explained above.

[mrbisonm 1,622]

1 hour ago, tails2489 said:

Hi Fred, which region are you using here? Is it one found on the exchange? Thanks.

Well, kinda complicated, me and maps. I never use original uploaded maps as they come. This map was done with several regions put together because I wanted different terrains. I took 4 or 5 (if I remember right) greyscale maps and fitted them together in paint (gimp). Then I do detailed terraforming before I start playing in each tile. So, sorry, you won't be able to download this map anywhere, only parts..........I guess.

Fred

 

43 minutes ago, 11241036 said:

Regarding your first question: The default game's sea level is 250 (in metres). But, as already pointed out, you should never use the Setsealevel cheat. It's not persistent, and worse, it demolishes bridges and tunnels every time you use it. The one way I use to alter the sea level is via Reader: You can open your terrain mod and search for the "Sea Level" property. You can edit the values in any way; lowering the value will lower the sea level. It will stay that way in any city you open from that point on until you edit the settings again. (Don't worry if the region view doesn't change; it will as soon as you save a city again.)

Alternatively, you can download the Diagonal Bridge Enabler; it comes with a file that sets your sea level to 0 entirely. Make sure to read the Readme, it's tricky to use. Link

There are multiple ways of creating channels. It needs to be told that first you should make a decision: Do you want to make a channel with ploppable or game water?

In the first case (which is entirely possible), you can lower the area where your channel will be to barely above 250 m to have a good transition to the in-game water, and then you can use ploppables to cover the area. It's important to note that ferries cannot use channels with ploppable water. BSC Channels or Diggis Water Systems may be of interest to you; to find them, you can Power Search for "BSC" and "diggis" over at the LEX.

In the second case, you just need to lower the area to any value below sea level. As you already showed off, you can use this breakwater set to cover the banks; I think that's a pretty good idea. If you like a more urban set (for urban areas), you could use the Quais de Seine set as well (link). It depends a bit on your taste. Also, JayStimson has released some seawall sets that might be of interest to you: https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/42900-jaystimson/content/?type=downloads_file

The depth of the seabed doesn't probably matter that much with most custom content, especially not with the breakwater set or the Quais de Seine. Only with ploppable water, you way want to make sure that bridges are high enough to create pleasing overpasses, but that's what NAM is for. Also, if you want ferries to be able to pass the channel, the water needs to be rather deep and the bridges rather high (I unfortunately don't know how deep and how high). Additionally, some custom content (I believe Stimsons Seawalls belong to this category) may require you to temporarily lower the sea level, as explained above.

There's a lot of interesting and helpful info in your post. ok, the setsealevel cheat, I used it a lot and never had problems with it. Usually I use it only once in a citytile, when I build under water things. In this tile, I do not have bridges yet, I will build them after I have created the channel and I know, that using the cheat sometimes does strange things, like disappearing roads or bldgs etc. But.....there's no town nor a city on this tile and most of it can be easily repaired and will be easier done by using the cheat, than me trying to understand the "ilive somethingmod".

The channel I want will be real water, I never use ploppable water for big surfaces, only for small rivers and creeks, like the picture above in the city suburbs. Yes, i would like that the bridges are higher, since it should be real-looking, so the bridge height should be high enough for Ferries to travel under, also the channel deep enough.

BSC Channels or Diggis Water Systems or even marrast and JRJ wallsets do not really look as what I would like to have for this project, and I already have them and used them elsewhere on the map. My channel will entirely run through an agricultural country scene, no city nor town in sight, as you can easily see on the map picture above. So the walls have to look like this too, and the "Quais de Seine set" will definitively not fit in this environment at all, but, I like the Seine set, didn't know it existed, and will surely download it for use in one of my cities. Thanks for the link. The Stimsons Seawalls I will try tommorrow night, they look good, I think, didn't know this one neither.

Here is an example of what I found so far, I think it is a marrast set. it looks fairly good, not exactly what I wanted, but if nothing else and better comes up, it should be ok. I like the idea that it has the fences on top. I need to find more choice for seawalls or embankment walls and more suggestions. I have no idea what is all out there to download these days.

Question 3 : Still looking for good looking  retaining wall texture lots or even seawalls.  I need some good looking walls, close to real life.
       Suggestions please ?

Question 4: Definitively, the channel in the picture below is not wide enough, nor deep enough. I used the Digger twice on the same spot, I guess that means it is 30 meters deep, but now I am asking myself a question, does the walltexture lots hold up with higher walls? Can they be still plopped at 45 or even 60 meters height?

Question 5: How large should the channel be to look good without taking half of the citytile? Like in the pic, 4 tiles are way too narrow. I want to plop some big cargoships in there, going in both directions, without looking "crowded" or "jammed together".

Thanks

Fred

 

 

[Lucario Boricua 7,050]

The larger cargo ships available for SimCity 4 tend to be 3 cells wide, or at the very least span partially into three cells. The exception would be extremely large full-scale arircraft carriers, which are likely to reach up to 5 cells of width. Ensuring that the ships have lateral room would require at least 1 cell per side of each shipping route, meaning that a single shipping lane would have to be at least 5 cells wide and be all-water (and thus excluding the canal-side walls). Two shipping lanes per direction would thus require 10 cells of width of water only, along with the canal walls (1 cell width per side), for a total width of 12 cells (192 meters in real-world units). This works if the canal cross-section is either rectangular |_____| or a trapezoid with steep walls \_____/.

If the canal has more gently-sloping sides >-----<, such as might be the case of a canal with unlined banks (think of the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal), the sides may have gently sloping walls which are flatter than 45 degrees (1:1 slope), we're looking at widths of 256 meters (16 cells) for the straight portions of the Panama Canal (two directions of traffic for Panamax ships, one direction for New Panamax size), to 300 meters (curving portions of the Panama Canal), or even up to 320 meters (20 cells) in the curved portions of the Suez Canal, for one direction of traffic (canal currently being expanded to handle both directions). If doing ship locks, these are usually narrower (saves on construction costs and fits the discharge basins on the side, if used) and are usually flush with the maximum ship size allowed through (in this case, typically 3 all-water cells wide, exceptionally up to 5 all-water cells wide).

 

Some examples for the larger ships in SimCity 4 (source is for the screenshot, not for the files):

 

Source: jacko2110 in Can't Find it? Ask Here!

 

 

Source: crushproof in city journal entry First Port of Call - Dun Laoghaire

 

Source: tiemanjw on Exporting Ploppable Ships

 

 

Some examples for real large shipping canals:

 

Suez Canal as seen in Google Maps.

 

Panama Canal in Google Maps.

[mrbisonm 1,622]

37 minutes ago, Lucario Boricua said:

The larger cargo ships available for SimCity 4 tend to be 3 cells wide, or at the very least span partially into three cells. The exception would be extremely large full-scale arircraft carriers, which are likely to reach up to 5 cells of width. Ensuring that the ships have lateral room would require at least 1 cell per side of each shipping route, meaning that a single shipping lane would have to be at least 5 cells wide and be all-water (and thus excluding the canal-side walls). Two shipping lanes per direction would thus require 10 cells of width of water only, along with the canal walls (1 cell width per side), for a total width of 12 cells (192 meters in real-world units). This works if the canal cross-section is either rectangular |_____| or a trapezoid with steep walls \_____/.

If the canal has more gently-sloping sides >-----<, such as might be the case of a canal with unlined banks (think of the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal), the sides may have gently sloping walls which are flatter than 45 degrees (1:1 slope), we're looking at widths of 256 meters (16 cells) for the straight portions of the Panama Canal (two directions of traffic for Panamax ships, one direction for New Panamax size), to 300 meters (curving portions of the Panama Canal), or even up to 320 meters (20 cells) in the curved portions of the Suez Canal, for one direction of traffic (canal currently being expanded to handle both directions). If doing ship locks, these are usually narrower (saves on construction costs and fits the discharge basins on the side, if used) and are usually flush with the maximum ship size allowed through (in this case, typically 3 all-water cells wide, exceptionally up to 5 all-water cells wide).

 

 

 

Thank you for the explanations on the width of the ships and how large the channel should be.  When you say "cells" then I suppose you mean groundtiles or gridtiles, right?  So be it....16 tiles large.

The channel will be on flat ground only. I already looked at both channels with all interests, the Suez and the Panama on google maps. My channel will be almost straight through, just as the picture above shows.

Thank you for your help.

Fred

[Lucario Boricua 7,050]

Yes, I use cells to refer to the groundtiles. I don't like using tile because it's confused with the city district / city tile. If you go with the unlined channel, 16 cells (groundtiles) would be the appropriate width, if it's a lined channel (with sea walls), then 12 cells (groundtiles) would suffice.

[mrbisonm 1,622]

Thanks Lucario,

I will fiddle around tomorrow while playing the region and see what I can come up with the 12 lined grids or 16 unlined ones. I will also try out some walls to see if there could be a good one there.....I'll show a pic tomorrow.

Still haven't figured out exactly where to build the channel though, leaving me with 3 choices. 1, 2 and 3.

1. the original location when I thought creating one first.

2. After having examened the Nr1, I realized that it was on two medium citytiles, maybe not an excellent idea, or maybe it doesn't matter neither. 2 would be the shortest on a large citytile.

3. Then I saw this one, Nr 3, also on the same large citytile as 2. A nice and interesting challenge maybe. It would enter from the east by a natural bay and pass by a freshwater lake (very close, only 6 gridtiles) and that the city administration wants greatly to be conserved and hit the westside at not very deep waters, which will have to be altered a bit .

Still to decide....

Fred

[mrbisonm 1,622]

So, questions 1, 2, 4 and 5 have been answered,  but still looking for the sea/embankment walls. Also the location of the channel has been more or less decided on. It will be a little north (above on the last pic) of Nr1 and go right through the forst and between the two small lakes, where the dot is. What do you think?

The depth will be 45 meters, that's the depth when my watermod becomes less transparent. Walls will still be able to plop on the sides of the channel. The width is 15 gridtiles, meaning 13 tiles on the ground and 15 at waterlevel, which seems to be realistic enough and with ships going in both directions and compared to the nearby dwellings (houses), the channel will look good enough for me.  (see pics below)

Question 6:  Somewhere on the channel I would like to build a harbour, medium sized and industrial looking harbour. Something like on the side of the channel, not too big.Anything you could propose how, which one (lotsets) and where (close to the sea or inside the mainland)?

Thanks

Fred

[mrbisonm 1,622]

I finally decided to build the c hannel a little higher than planned, having taken my time to find the perfect location for it. I also decided to use three different walls, depending on the area. The widening spot will be a harbour, medium to small sized. I would have loved to find a gate or lock somehow, but nothing was created for real water, and I don't feel like starteing to BAT again, after I just finished with my MFP1 projet for the last 7 years. So, it will not be as I hope, but hey, maybe something will come up later and modifying the set won't be a problem for me.

I will now concentrate on the harbour and then back to the airport and finish this city, Lendt. The next one up north is already waiting for me.

Thank you for the help, info and suggestion, many curious came to see, only a few actually help, much appreciated.

Fred

[Ke|is 3,337]

Love the map !! Where can we find it ?

[Dreadnought 8,231]

Yo, guy --

Here are a few pictures of what I tested out a week ago, give or take.  This is going to be a rough idea of the Imperial Dockyards in Wilhelmshaven and this is based on the northern entrance through ship locks.  Since there are no locks for us to use, I came up with the idea of a controlled channel entrance -- then decided the channel needed to be divided for safety reasons.

Those are JS Concrete seawalls along the outer harbor mole, with Marrasst Embankment Seawalls along the outside of the ship channels.  The divider is custom made from a PedMall pavement texture, WMP Seawalls, and some prop do-dads.  Not bad -- as improvisations go.

NOW -- If I just had a set of overhanging props as lock gates -- some open, some closed -- then we would be in business !!

Ta --

 

 

[Dreadnought 8,231]

Yo, guys --

I am pretty much finished with the ship channel I was working on. 

I still have a lot of work to do on the remainder of the naval dockyard, but the channel, itself, is complete.  Just a bit more filling in to be done -- but that will come with time.

 

[deanva 70]

How many tiles long are the freighter and cargo ships?

[Dreadnought 8,231]

37 minutes ago, deanva said:

How many tiles long are the freighter and cargo ships?

It varies from ship to ship and the best thing you can do is to plop them next to a shoreline with the grid formation visible -- then simply count the squares.

Crude -- but effective.

[deanva 70]

I figured that just wondered if there was a standard length