Pump and plant replacement delay

[countermoon 46]

I've had this problem for some time, and it gets worse the bigger the city is. When a plant needs to be replaced, I usually replace my water pumps at the same time. After plopping them, there's a delay when the new structures start to work. During that delay, buildings all over the city report they have no water and then turn black. For good. The last time this happened, it nearly annihilated my city and it was almost like starting over. I had about 40,000 people and over 300,000 dollars. Things were going great. But simply have to replacing plants and pumps nearly devastated the city, all because of that delay when they started to work again.

Why the delay? I don't know. Everything is hooked up. Plenty of pipes, and the pumps aren't even that far from the city. I started connecting a solar plant or windmills to my pumps so that when the plants start to fail, the water will keep pumping. But then that didn't work. So I'm really at a loss to counter this grossly unfair part of the game.

[CorinaMarie 29,613]

I personally recommend using the Degrade_radical.dat found in Paeng's Age Degradation Mod. That means you only need to replace Maxis power plants and water stuff every 5000ish years.

(Note: It only applies to newly plopped items.)

[countermoon 46]

I dislike cheating.