(Mod) AMPS Development Thread

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

15 minutes ago, RobertaME said:

. it might confuse people. City-wide

I agree it could. City wide works to me.

Edit How about City Wide Power Network

  Edited March 5, 2021 by Kloudkicker  
Just cause.

[RobertaME 1,376]

18 minutes ago, rivit said:

Yes that looks great

 

9 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

City wide works to me.

In-game pic...

Good?

[rivit 3,391]

Check - on with the next one... 

[RobertaME 1,376]

24 minutes ago, rivit said:

Check - on with the next one

OK. I just distributed that to all power plant and generator queries.

BTW: Each plant type displays its own information. The sample was for a Natural Gas plant, which is a Peak Load plant, so all the data was about Peak Loads. Base Load Plants will only show Base Load data and Intermediate likewise.

Next up are the transformer, substation and transmission station queries. Each one shows it's section of the grid's data.

I built 47 total 500 kVA Commercial Transformers, then built four 5 MVA Distribution Substations, then one 3 MVA Substation, and a 500 kVA Substation. (pictured below and created by @Simmer2) That makes a total of 23500 kVA of Distribution capacity and Transformer Capacity. Then I bulldozed one Transformer lot, so my Transformer capacity dropped by 500. Since the Distribution Capacity was already "using" it, that's why it shows -500 kVA available. (i.e. a 500 kVA deficit)

Note the "Manufactured by" notice at the top. With the Transformers it's easy to do that, since they're ALL made by @Kloudkicker. Once I figure out how, I'm going to have every query say who made the lot you just queried. (using an in-game company name so as to not break "out of character", so-to-speak)

Next I built two 10 MVA Transmission Substations. Here it shows the smallest substation, totaling up the 23,500 kVA capacity, less the 20 MVA Transmission capacity allocated for that portion of the grid, less the 500 kVA deficit due to insufficient transformer capacity... for a new Distribution capacity remaining of 3,000 kVA. (23,500 - 20,000 = 3,500 -500 = 3,000)

Then I build a 10 MW Coal Power Plant. Here is the query for the Transmission station that services it, showing the 20,000 capacity less the 12,500 kVA for the Coal plant, leaving 7,500 remaining. Not enough to build any other large plants... I'll need a 3rd Transmission stations for that. (which means another 7 MVA of Transformers and 6,500 kVA more of Distribution Substations... likely two 3 MVAs and another 500 kVA)

Here's the Coal plant, showing it's stats and the network stats. Since the city's power demand is so low, only 400 MWh.month, the vast majority of the Coal plant's power is going to waste, as shown above. We could always build Tesla Powerpacks...

...but as you can see, we'd need a LOT of them!

Comments and suggestions regarding the queries welcome! (please?)

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

I like pie charts. 

It gets better and better every update. Not sure how to improve the amazing job your doing. I have nothing but anticipation.

[Skyroguen 67]

On 3/2/2021 at 3:49 PM, RobertaME said:

I would most definitely do that... if I knew how.

Unfortunately, I know of no way right now to restrict a building to 1 per region, let alone making it have regional effects. I'm sure there's a way... but it's beyond the scope of this current project. I'm still working on getting the custom queries working. (I have to get over120 Global Variables and nearly 150 text references put in)

Speaking of which, there will be 15 custom queries initially:

Solar, Wind, Coal/Wood, Waste, Geothermal, Fission, Oil/Gas, Fusion, Battery, Transmission Substations, Distribution Substations, Transformers, and three lot-mod specific queries: Wind Farm Maintenance Facility by @Kloudkicker and the Step-up Transformer and Inverter from @Simmer2's Modular Solar Panels. (the lot set that started this all)

As for the power lots, if possible I'd like the Power Company Central Office to look a little like the one I grew up with; the NV Energy building in Reno, NV...

Overhead view

No reason really... I just always liked the building and its what I think of when I thing of a power company building. @Skyroguen gets it. :^)

Anyway, back to work on the queries...

oh, i know that building.....inside and out.

[RobertaME 1,376]

I had a thought... I know... dangerous! :^Þ

In looking at my test city where I got these snapshots, there's a dichotomy of information. I'll explain... no, it would take too long to explain... I'll sum up... no... if I sum up it won't make sense... I'll explain... ;^)

In my test city, I have only two power plants, a 10 MW Coal plant and a 4.5 MW Oil plant. Thus my total power output is a maximum of 8,000 MWh/month; 6,000 from the Coal plant and 2,000 from the Oil plant. Because of the way SC4 natively handles power, distributing it across all power plants equally, there's two sets of information I think will lead to confusion.

Note the number circled in red. That's the Maxis "even split" number. The number circled in blue is the SPA derived load for all Peak Load power plants. This is 498 MWh higher than the Maxis value because of this...

The Coal plant is a Base Load plant, which by the SPA cannot exceed 60% of the total demand for power. Thus why it's capped at the number in blue... 1,996 MWh. The city's total power demand is 3,328 MWh and 60% of that is 1,996 MWh... but the Maximum Base Load value is 502 MWh LOWER than the Maxis "even split" value. (the 4 MWh difference is a difference in the EXACT power demand of 3,331 MWh versus the REPORTED power demand of 3,328 MWh plus a 1 MWh rounding error) In other words, the Maxis engine is taking too much power from the Coal plant and not enough from the Oil plant to match the SPA figures.

In an ideal setup, the number circled in red would match the number circled in blue when you only have 1 power plant of that type, but we can't make individual power plants in the core game engine take an uneven split of the power. So, we have two sets of information being displayed here from two mutually exclusive sets of rules; the SC4 "even split" rules and the SPA "proportional load" rules. I think showing both will just lead to confusion. Since the point of this mod is to re-write how the player interacts with the power system, I think the SPA rules need to overrule the SC4 rules when it comes to data display. This leads to my thought...

I know this is sort of a radical concept, but what would people think about dropping the individual plant data from the query and ONLY show the SPA data? The real Maxis data then becomes hidden behind the curtain of the SPA. It doesn't really MATTER what an individual plant's ACTUAL power used is under the Maxis rule set anyway since the SPA is enforcing its own set of rules over top of the Maxis rules, and individual plant output is really irrelevant. Thus, we drop "Power Used" and "Capacity Used" and only show "Max Capacity", "Plant Condition", "Actual Capacity", and "Cost per MWh". The rest of the data is from the SPA instead and all Base Load plants would show the same data, except their specific condition and cost per MWh.

Other random musings...

What I would LIKE to do is figure out a way to create new query target specific variables that I can control. "Power Used" is referencing id=0x00001038 in the UI file, but that is likely a variable created by the game engine as it doesn't seem to be defined anywhere in the Maxis DAT files. I tried making variables referenced through the "captionres" function that pointed to an LTEXT that referenced the target's Exemplar Properties the way the Item Description Key's LTEXT files can, such as using #m:ea54d286# in the description LTEXT to return the target's "Property ea54d286" which is the Monthly Cost value as a money value... but it didn't work... just the same as you can't use Global Variables in an item's Description LTEXT... only Exemplar Property references as noted above.

I know there has to be a way to return the GUID of the current target, I've seen SOMETHING like that before, but I can't remember where I saw it in all the LUA code I've looked through. The contents of UI LTEXT files can contain LUA code to execute and return a value. It's doing that in the pictures above. What I need is an instruction that returns the current target's GUID so I can write a function that calls up specific information on THAT building, rather than just returning generic global variables and the results of equations. (sort of like get_plant_data ({target's GUID},"MAX_POWER") or get_plant_data ({target's GUID},"MANUFACTURER_NAME") or similar... the missing element is that {target's GUID} part)

@CorinaMarie, would you happen to know a way to return the currently selected target's GUID... or some way to show lot-specific data OTHER than the id= function? (or alternately, a way to make NEW id= calls so the id= function can be used to recall controllable lot-specific data) Also, is there a list somewhere of the the UI file id= functions? I only know a few like id=0x00001038 is Monthly Cost and id=0x00001062 is "Plant Condition", etc. and the existing tutorials I found on custom query design basically just said, "Don't mess with them." which isn't very helpful for in-depth Query design.

Back to the point...

Lacking being able to call for data on the currently selected lot, I don't think there's a way to make the query display non-contradictory information that is lot specific... which means dropping the lot specific data entirely... which I'm loath to do if it can be helped as I wanted to include the Lot Creator's "Company Name" in the query.. which is decidedly LOT SPECIIFIC data. Still, a lack of lot-specific data may be better than contradictory information.

Thoughts?

Edit: There IS a way to make lot specific calls from every lot, but it's a huge pain... create and assign unique UI queries for EVERY lot under the SPA. ::shudder::

  Edited March 5, 2021 by RobertaME  
Typos and an addendum

[RobertaME 1,376]

19 minutes ago, Skyroguen said:

oh, i know that building.....inside and out.

Yes... I know YOU do! LOL!

[RobertaME 1,376]

Side-track...

So I have a list of 25 content creators for nearly 70 lots that are fully supported under the SPA. Each one is fully credited in the lot details, but I want to do something more to highlight the work of these creators in a highly visible way. As I've done with @Kloudkicker's Transformer lots, I intend to list each content creator as the "Manufacturer" of each lot they added to the SPA... but I want to list them as though they're an in-game corporation. So... here's my working list:

Creator          Manufactured by              Construction Co.
1dera3           1Dera3 Solar Solutions   
Andreas Roth     The Andreas Roth Group   
BIWDC            BIWDC LLC   
BurroDiablo      Consorcio BurroDiablo    
carrot1984       Carrot 1984 Innovations   
Cat fan          Cat Fan Coal Systems   
Colyn            Colyn Power Products   
deadwoods        Deadwood Construction   
DK1              DK1 Electric Concepts   
fukuda           Fukuda Corporation   
homefryes        Homefryes Electronics        Kloudkicker Industries
JPouX            JPouX International Power   
kaos78414        Kaos Home Power Systems   
Kloudkicker      Kloudkicker Industries   
Mathe Man        Mathe Man GeoIndustries   
Maxis            Maxis Power Consolidated   
mrbisonm         Mr. Bison M and Associates   
onlyplace4       Onlyplace4 Electric Power   
Pegasus          PEGPROD LLC   
shoRt-mAn123     Shortman 123 Motors   
Shy Dude         Shydude Electric   
SimGoober        SimGoober Industrial   
Simmer2          SM2 Energy Corp  
Subgrav          Subgrav Holdings Inc.   
Takingyouthere   Taking You There Machinery   Kloudkicker Industries

Suggestions welcome, especially if you're on this list!

  Edited March 6, 2021 by RobertaME  
Corrected Co name by request of Creator

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

10 hours ago, RobertaME said:

I know this is sort of a radical concept, but what would people think about dropping the individual plant data from the query and ONLY show the SPA data?

I believe that'll be much, much better than showing conflicting information.

 

10 hours ago, RobertaME said:

@CorinaMarie, would you happen to know a way to return the currently selected target's GUID...

Unfortunately, no. I've only tinkered with the UI queries a wee little bit. You prolly already know much more about them than I do.

 

10 hours ago, RobertaME said:

Edit: There IS a way to make lot specific calls from every lot, but it's a huge pain... create and assign unique UI queries for EVERY lot under the SPA. ::shudder::

If that's what it takes then it'll be worth it in the long run.

[rivit 3,391]

11 hours ago, RobertaME said:

I know this is sort of a radical concept, but what would people think about dropping the individual plant data from the query and ONLY show the SPA data?

I agree this is quite feasible. We would never know there was a difference as long as we can track:

• the Plant Condition % - this tells us a lot about how soon we need to do something about replacing it.
• the Capacity Used % of the plant (SPA capacity used % that is) - that tells us how heavily we are driving it/depending on it. 

both of those are reactions/affect the cost/benefit of moving the funding slider.

To be frank I never thought of the absolute values and steered by the % approaching disaster, and how low could I fund it, while not driving the plants at 100% which would degrade faster. In the SPA world I'll be focussing much more on the network as a whole and will probably need to learn how to add and subtract - a different game

~

Random  : The changes to the Waste to Energy generator will hurt as that has a funding slider bug (I think in the exe) that allows you to clean up 500 tons of trash for close to 0 bucks a month - a lifesaver in times of financial stress. As you explained it in an earlier post that looks like it might be a very non-viable strategy now.

[RobertaME 1,376]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I believe that'll be much, much better than showing conflicting information.

 

Unfortunately, no. I've only tinkered with the UI queries a wee little bit. You prolly already know much more about them than I do.

 

If that's what it takes then it'll be worth it in the long run.

I was afraid you were going to say that. :^/ That means that there's a lot of information about how they work that is simply no longer available... lost to the community. I'll just have to experiment and see what works and what doesn't. This will slow things down a LOT. It also means that some things I want to do may not even be possible and I can't know it before trying.

Not blaming you or anyone else... it's just mildly frustrating is all. ::sigh::

35 minutes ago, rivit said:

I agree this is quite feasible. We would never know there was a difference as long as we can track:

• the Plant Condition % - this tells us a lot about how soon we need to do something about replacing it.
• the Capacity Used % of the plant (SPA capacity used % that is) - that tells us how heavily we are driving it/depending on it. 

both of those are reactions/affect the cost/benefit of moving the funding slider

Agreed. The Power Used stat was always sort of useless, anyway. It was just the Global Power Usage Percent times the Actual Capacity of that plant.

Power Used can be calculated, but it would require that I be able to pull the Plant Condition as a variable and not just a display value. I'll have to tinker around and see what's possible.

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

Sweet set of company names.

I was wondering about power plants that are not supported. How is the power output from those plants affect the mod? Are they ignored and not counted?

If using unsupported power plants, how does the simulation treat their output? Does it get used at all or shared or one output get used before the other?

[RobertaME 1,376]

12 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

Sweet set of company names.

Thanks. Some could be better. I appreciate ANY suggestions for improvement.

13 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

I was wondering about power plants that are not supported. How is the power output from those plants affect the mod? Are they ignored and not counted?

Once done, unsupported plants will be counted as whatever load their Power Plant Type is associated with (i.e. Base for type 1 which is Coal, Intermediate for type 9 which is Wind, etc.) and will get a generic query that replaces query ID 0xEA5655E4. (if they use query 0x6A562F56 which is used for W2E plants, it will be similar to the other W2E plant queries instead of a generic one) That part of the code is still VERY much a WIP. I'm not looking forward to it because it's going to very complicated and messy. :^/

22 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

If using unsupported power plants, how does the simulation treat their output? Does it get used at all or shared or one output get used before the other?

OK... here's how it works...

The only way to count unsupported power plants is to use the following equation:

UNSUPPORTED_COAL_PLANT_COUNT = game.g_power_plant_count_coal - (LARGE_COAL_COUNT + SMALL_COAL_COUNT)

This determines the number of unsupported plants that are constructed in the city that use the Coal Power Plant type. Repeat for each type: Fusion, Nat Gas, Fission, Oil, Solar, Waste, & Wind. (Microwave was going to be type 4 between Nat Gas and Fission, but they appear to have never completed it)

Lastly we get a total count of all unsupported power plants...

UNSUPPORTED_ALL_PLANT_COUNT = (UNSUPPORTED_COAL_PLANT_COUNT + UNSUPPORTED_FUSION_PLANT_COUNT + ...)

Then you run a check for unsupported power generation in the city:

UNSUPPORTED_POWER_GENERATION = game.g_power_production_capacity - (GEN_I_POWER + GEN_B_POWER + GEN_P_POWER)

... where GEN_x_POWER is the sum of all power generation from supported power plants of that type.

Here's where it gets messy. Since we have no way of telling how much power each unsupported lot adds to the total power produced, we have to just split it up evenly. If we had a way to retrieve a data point something like "game.g_power_production_capacity_coal" we could at LEAST divvy it up proportionally by production sector... but as far as I can tell we don't have that option. So instead we get...

UNSUPPORTED_COAL_POWER = UNSUPPORTED_POWER_GENERATION * (UNSUPPORTED_COAL_PLANT_COUNT / UNSUPPORTED_ALL_PLANT_COUNT)

UNSUPPORTED_FUSION_POWER = UNSUPPORTED_POWER_GENERATION * (UNSUPPORTED_FUSION_PLANT_COUNT / UNSUPPORTED_ALL_PLANT_COUNT)

...etc. (with appropriate checks to ensure we avoid a divide by zero error)

Lastly, these unsupported plant power totals are added into their appropriate power generation types... Intermediate, Base, or Peak.

Potential Issue:

Some power plants (such as @Simmer2's Tesla Power lots) don't use a standard Power Plant Type, or they use the incomplete type 4. (unsupported Microwave) These power plants will not integrate, yet will still produce power. The effect will be to increase UNSUPPORTED_POWER_GENERATION without increasing UNSUPPORTED_ALL_PLANT_COUNT, which just means the power is divided equally among all types. No problem, right? What if there ARE no other unsupported power plants built? Then we have unsupported power generation but no divisor. So the power is added to the pool, goes unreported in the queries, but still counts toward powering structures. So we'll get a dichotomy of information from the queries and the Power Grid chart.

All this before even accounting for power degradation...

We have a LONG way to go... :^)

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

13 hours ago, RobertaME said:

kaos78414        Kaos Home Power Systems   

How does Kaos Control Power Systems sound? More friendlier to me

[RobertaME 1,376]

10 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

How does Kaos Control Power Systems sound?

Like a quote from "Sonic X"? LOL!

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

@RobertaME I feel that the industrial transformers are a little strong on the negative effects. I was using one close to some high tech industry and it really dropped the building values in a big area. I know they should have some, but an industrial area would need a transformer close by,  in RL, correct.

It can be seen using the handy dandy Cori's Parks Aura mod found below. (A must have! ) 

But this seems to be a little more than I would expect. This is from one industrial transformer highlighted with the bulldozer tool. There is a prison and a 3MVA Distribution Substation right there also and they are not as close to the same effect.

And here is the park aura after it is destroyed. Red= bad park aura and purple= good park aura. All from one transformer. What do you think?

[RobertaME 1,376]

2 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

@RobertaME I feel that the industrial transformers are a little strong on the negative effects. I was using one close to some high tech industry and it really dropped the building values in a big area. I know they should have some, but an industrial area would need a transformer close by,  in RL, correct.

It can be seen using the handy dandy Cori's Parks Aura mod found below. (A must have! ) 

But this seems to be a little more than I would expect. This is from one industrial transformer highlighted with the bulldozer tool. There is a prison and a 3MVA Distribution Substation right there also and they are not as close to the same effect.

And here is the park aura after it is destroyed. Red= bad park aura and purple= good park aura. All from one transformer. What do you think?

The large negative Park value is very much intentional. NOBODY likes living around heavy duty transformers or substations. In RL, any time a city lets a power company build a new substation, land values all around it plummet. I represent that with a large negative Park Rating for heavy transformers and substations. The largest units also have a negative Landmark effect, ruining Commercial land values as well. Here is the table of effects:

While it seems like a lot, it's EASILY overcome through the use of parks and plazas. One 6 MVA Industrial Transformer is a 1x2 lot. Six Large Green Parks around it would almost completely ELIMINATE the negative park effect. That is also intentional. It's not insurmountable, but it is DIFFICULT and EXPENSIVE to do so. The better bet is to just put them out away from residential and commercial lots, as directed in the advisor messages and lot descriptions. Negative Park and Landmark values have NO effect on Industrial lots, not even High-tech lots.

In my test city, I had 3 and 6 MVA transformers scattered all throughout my Industrial center that was full of HT businesses and I was still growing more. (I'd taxed Dirty and Manufacturing into negative demand for testing, so the only Ind. lots growing were HT) When I looked at the Demand overlay for §§ and §§§ residential, the entire Industrial area was solid red... as it SHOULD be... while the residential area with only 50 and 500 kVA transformers was a nice green. I used Small Green Parks and Playgrounds to either side of the 500s to not only counter the negative effects, but reverse them. My typical neighborhood block looked like this...

It's overkill, actually. Three Green Parks or equivalent is enough to counter the effects, but I wanted a net positive. The effect of Industrial transformers and substations is so bad it would take a large number of them to counter it, but that's as it should be. There's a substation near me that is surrounded by green space. The city did that on purpose to mitigate the drop in property values when the substation was put in. When they built one near some housing a few years earlier and DIDN'T buffer it with green space, the surrounding apartments and houses became slums.

I'm willing to explore adjustments, though. If everyone thinks it's TOO negative of an effect, I could tune it down... but the negative effects really should stay problematic for Industrial transformers and substations... because that's realistic.

Comments welcome!

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

Maybe its the radius at 45 that's a little large, but that's me.

I did a few tests with just a few lots in the neighboring city. There was empty space there. 

Below is one 500kVA transformer aura in the upper left corner(building is off the picture). Then I placed one 1x2 500 kVA Distribution Substation below at the place with the $146. Neutral area of park aura with some coming from the residential zone at the bottom.

That's is a pretty strong negative affect and a large area, IMO.

And below is after 3 Maxis "Large Park Green" are placed around it's perimeter. I believe it would be a bigger red area if it was not for the aura close by. Not a perfect test but needed a city that was handy to use.

Its just my opinion that they seem larger and stronger than they should be. Just giving my feedback.

BTW, the High tech I thought was being affected was actually manufacturing buildings. There was four of them close by and I forgot my new lot used the same building and I made it high tech. And assumed they were also.  Oops. So it was the manufacturing buildings that were degrading when placed close by and went back to normal after removal of industrial transformer (if they even can do that?) on the first test of park aura, done badly at night.

[RobertaME 1,376]

35 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

BTW, the High tech I thought was being affected was actually manufacturing buildings. There was four of them close by and I forgot my new lot used the same building and I made it high tech. And assumed they were also.  Oops. So it was the manufacturing buildings that were degrading when placed close by and went back to normal after removal of industrial transformer (if they even can do that?) on the first test of park aura, done badly at night.

Three parks isn't enough. Try 6 or 7.

To the best of my knowledge, Park rating shouldn't affect any industrial buildings. Neither should Landmark rating. Odd...

This is a serious request for information I am now unsure of. If anyone knows a circumstance under which Park Rating or Landmark Effect will affect ANY Industrial lots, please provide as much information as possible. Please do not cite anecdotal information. There are any number of things that can make seemingly connected events APPEAR to correlate that are just coincidence. I'm looking for hard data anyone may posses that shows how either park or landmark rating can affect industrial lots. ANY industrial lots. Everything I've read about the game said parks and such had no effect on Industrial lots.

This is VERY important because without the Park and Landmark effects, there's no downside to larger transformers and substations... so no reason to EVER use the smaller ones which effectively become obsolete as soon as you get the larger ones. Some things I DESIGNED obsolescence into, such as the pole-mount transformers and 500 kVA substations. Those are MEANT to be replaced with better technology later. Most lots though are designed to still be useful in their niche even after you have bigger and "better" options.

Note: I am NOT meaning to be condescending, mean, or rude here. I now seriously doubt what I thought to be a fact of the game and I NEED to know if anyone has hard data on the subject so I can proceed correctly. I don't want to ruin people's cities because I misunderstood this aspect of the game's design.

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

9 hours ago, RobertaME said:

Note: I am NOT meaning to be condescending, mean, or rude here. I now seriously doubt what I thought to be a fact of the game and I NEED to know if anyone has hard data on the subject so I can proceed correctly. I don't want to ruin people's cities because I misunderstood this aspect of the game's design.

None taken. 

I am not positive what exactly what I was witnessing, with only a small group of buildings to sample from. The relation seemed like a strong connection after repeating multiple times and the building would recover from degrading. 

I am just trying to understand what maybe happing and the park affects seemed to be the cause. I could be wrong, and sorry if I am.

  Edited March 6, 2021 by Kloudkicker  

[RobertaME 1,376]

1 hour ago, Kloudkicker said:

None taken. 

I am not positive what exactly what I was witnessing, with only a small group of buildings to sample from. The relation seemed like a strong connection after repeating multiple times and the building would recover from degrading. 

I am just trying to understand what maybe happing and the park affects seemed to be the cause. I could be wrong, and sorry if I am.

No need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure people knew I WASN'T being snarky or short. (i'm making special efforts to try and not be misunderstood)

Hmmm...could it be the Landmark effect and not the Park effect that was doing it? It's not SUPPOSED to, but then we're in uncharted water, here! I'll dummy up a lot with REALLY bad Landmark effects and no Park effects and do some testing.

Update:

I decided to just bite the bullet and make custom UIs for each supported lot. It solves nearly all the problems I was having regarding plant-specific data. (except accounting for the local plant's condition... which I'm still hunting for a solution to THAT wrinkle...) While I was at it, I determined the calculation necessary to show each plant's Power Used and Capacity Used.

mwh_rating * ( USED_x_POWER / ALL_x_POWER )

...where x is the letter code of the power plant's energy type; I, B, or P. That allows me to still show local data of Power Used and Capacity Used using the revised SPA figures, so there's no difference in the data display of the basic power plant data we're used to, other than the figures using the corrected SPA data. The Maxis "Capacity Used" is still there, but has moved below the line and become "City-wide Capacity Used" instead, giving an overall grid capacity in addition to the local plant's type capacity.

Here's the first test in a new testing city. As you can see, it shows the Creator's Company name at the top, gives Power used proportional to the Peak Load. Right now this is the only plant in the city, so the numbers are the same for both City-wide and locally for this plant. Let's add a Coal plant...

Now you can see that the new Coal plant has its own data. Due to the low power consumption of the city, still only 1,249 MWh/month, most of the power it can put out is going to waste. The plant is putting out the maximum Base Load allowable for the city's power demand, 749 MWh... 12% of its capacity of 6,000 MWh. (749 / 6000 = 12.48%, so it looks right) Let's look back on the Oil plant...

Now you can see the local stats and city-wide stats differ. The Oil plant is operating at 25%... 500 MWh... because the Coal plant is taking as much of the load as it can. As city power demand rises, 60% of the new load will go to the Coal plant and 40% will go to the Oil plant. You can see that this imbalance will eventually overwhelm the Oil plant BEFORE it overwhelms the Coal plant. Once the city hits 5,000 MWh the Oil plant will be at maximum output while the Coal plant will barely be at half capacity. We can either add another 4.5 MW Oil plant to cover the difference, or we could add a THIRD power plant... let's say some Solar Panels...

The nice thing about @Simmer2's PV Panels is that you can put them wherever is convenient and no road access is necessary! I put down 8 Inverters and 128 PV panels, the maximum allowable without a Step-up Transformer. (which I don't have the Distribution Capacity to build right now) At 5 MWh per tile, that's 640 MWh, as shown in the query. Since the city's power usage has risen to 1,788 MWh, I had to wait a month after building the Inverters before the PV Panels unlocked) and Intermediate power can account for up to 40% of the city's load, that makes the maximum 715 MWh. Since that's less than the PV panels can put out, the grid can take every watt. Let's see what that does to the Coal and Oil plants...

As we can see, Base Load is now down to only 790 MWh. Since that's less than 60% of the current demand, the city's taking just what it needs and nothing more.

Lastly we have the Oil plant again, this time showing Peak Load at its MINIMUM of 358 MWh. Since this is the only Peak power source, and the city can't get by with LESS than 358 MWh, 20% of its total demand, that's what it takes.

If all goes well in my next several tests, I'll release the Alpha-2 with the revised queries and dynamic loading soon™.

Oh... there's also new queries for unsupported Power plants but since I don't HAVE any unsupported power plants installed, I can't show it yet. It's basically the same as the ones for the supported lots, just missing the lot-specific data.

Anyway, I hope this all makes sense! Comments of course are welcome! :^)

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

Not trying to cause any headache over this, and I hope I am not misinforming anyone. 

I ran a few more test on the area in my city with the reported building degrading issue. Here are more detailed pictures with query info. Maybe this can explain my situation I am seeing.

 

Before any transformers, just a JAIL and university driving down the park aura, but a handful of parks to counter that. (PS Those ARE High Tech builds, the light blue ones. I'm stupid)The park Aura(above) and a query on one of two building that will degrade in this test is below.(due to desirability I believe)Above is me placing a 6MVA Industrial Transformer. And below is the park effect afterward.

Below is before the end of the first month. Two builds degraded, this one pictured and one small building(don't care about him)

 

And as soon as I remove the transformer, the building is back to a normal look and has more employees working their. 

Hope this helps.

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

24 minutes ago, RobertaME said:

No need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure people knew I WASN'T being snarky or short. (i'm making special efforts to try and not be misunderstood)

Hmmm...could it be the Landmark effect and not the Park effect that was doing it? It's not SUPPOSED to, but then we're in uncharted water, here! I'll dummy up a lot with REALLY bad Landmark effects and no Park effects and do some testing.

I am apologizing in advance incase I am misleading you.

TBH, I really don't know what is happening. I just started using a lot  more plugins with SPA and the Cori's Park Aura was one of them. So I have not been able to see the effects before.

[RobertaME 1,376]

1 hour ago, Kloudkicker said:

Not trying to cause any headache over this, and I hope I am not misinforming anyone. 

I ran a few more test on the area in my city with the reported building degrading issue. Here are more detailed pictures with query info. Maybe this can explain my situation I am seeing.

No worries! This is important information.

1 hour ago, Kloudkicker said:

Before any transformers, just a JAIL and university driving down the park aura, but a handful of parks to counter that. (PS Those ARE High Tech builds, the light blue ones. I'm stupid)The park Aura(above) and a query on one of two building that will degrade in this test is below.(due to desirability I believe)Above is me placing a 6MVA Industrial Transformer. And below is the park effect afterward.

Below is before the end of the first month. Two builds degraded, this one pictured and one small building(don't care about him)

 

And as soon as I remove the transformer, the building is back to a normal look and has more employees working their. 

Hope this helps.

It does. This means that either the negative Park rating or the negative Landmark rating are affecting Industrial lots. Nothing I've read elsewhere has ever hinted that this was an issue. Perhaps it's because the values are SO negative, moreso than anyone else has probably experimented with, that it's just never been noticed before.

1 hour ago, Kloudkicker said:

I am apologizing in advance incase I am misleading you.

TBH, I really don't know what is happening. I just started using a lot  more plugins with SPA and the Cori's Park Aura was one of them. So I have not been able to see the effects before.

It's VERY helpful! Hold off on any more examples. I'm going to do some testing with experimental lots using various different park and landmark values and see what's what. I need to know our options before we proceed with testing my working version for the Alpha-2 release.

List of things still to complete:

• Add functionality to enforce load balancing by causing power outages when peak power is insufficient, even if total power is sufficient
• Remove Unusable Base and Intermediate power so it can't be sold through neighbor deals or cover peak shortfalls (uses similar process as above)
• Finish system for unsupported power buildings, integrating their power type where possible (queries are done for both regular power lots and W2E lots)
• Determine a method for adjusting all 3 power capacities to include plant degradation (this MAY not be possible... but I'll explore all options)

It's NOT all that much, really... it's just all the HARD stuff! :^Þ

I've decided to put the poll up sooner rather than later regarding the mod's name. Look for it shortly. :^)

[rivit 3,391]

 

19 hours ago, Kloudkicker said:

How does Kaos Control Power Systems sound?

like  a very interesting Joint Venture by two ex spy organisations - negotiations always carried out under the Cone of Silence.

  Edited March 6, 2021 by rivit  
capitalisations missing

[RobertaME 1,376]

On 3/2/2021 at 5:35 PM, Kloudkicker said:

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/references/holland-energy-park.html   This one makes me think of @RobertaME would of be when she was a child.

I missed this comment the first time through!

Cute, but I'm a redhead. :^Þ

[Simmer2 23,785]

Great going here.

@Kloudkicker I decided to recreate SIM Gideon Power Plant...the one you suggested a few posts up ^^^

Still very much work in progress. Got a long way to go. Here are a couple of raw renders.

 

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

1 minute ago, Simmer2 said:

Great going here.

That is a understatement. It's fantastic!

[RobertaME 1,376]

3 minutes ago, Simmer2 said:

Great going here.

@Kloudkicker I decided to recreate SIM Gideon Power Plant...the one you suggested a few posts up ^^^

That is SOOOO going in my supported lots list when it's done! It looks like it should be a large Natural Gas plant... is it? (the mod is sadly lacking in supported larger NG plants)

I know... I know... get it WORKING first... THEN talk about adding supported lots! :^)