Proximity Effect has no impact on desirability - Vanilla game Bug?

[dylansan 65]

(I wasn't able to find any information or discussion about this, so if you know of anything, please point me in that direction)

According to the Prima Guide for SC4, proximity to certain buildings has a desirability effect for each developer type. For example, Commercial Service has a desirability penalty if far from Offices or Residents of the same wealth level.

This concept is supported by the game data itself. In each developer exemplar, there are the following properties:

Proximity Effect:R$
Proximity Effect:R$$
Proximity Effect:R$$$
Proximity Effect:Co$$
Proximity Effect:Co$$$

For Commercial Service $$ for example, the R$$ proximity effect is assigned value pairs from 0,0 up to 255,-20. This implies that if R$$ buildings are very close, there will be no desirability impact, but if they are far away, there could be up to a -20 desirability penalty. Similar values are assigned for the Co$$ effect, with a maximum penalty of -10.

However, while looking into all the desirability factors in an attempt to balance things, I noticed that these values never seem to matter. Here's a snippet of a Query.txt from a Cs$ building.

...
| Desirability equation for Cs$
|   desirability = base value: 35
|   + land value effect, f(value: 1): 4
|   + slope effect, f(value: 3.0): 0
|   + R$ proximity effect, f(0): 0
|   + R$$ proximity effect, f(0): 0
|   + R$$$ proximity effect, f(0): 0
|   + Co$$ proximity effect, f(0): 0
|   + Co$$$ proximity effect, f(0): 0
...

Notice that all the proximity effects are zero, and they are all calculated from f(0), implying the game is calculating the distance to each of these types as 0. In reality, the only R$ buildings are across the map, and there are no Co buildings at all.

In fact, in every query I've ever taken, I've never seen the calculation do anything but f(0).

For residential buildings, this results in an actual desirability effect: +5 for being near residents of the same wealth, and -5 for being near each of the other wealth levels. The net effect is -5 for every residential building no matter where it is or who is located nearby.

I considered whether this could be related to the NAM, as I know that affects calculations of distance, but even after removing all my plugins, I get the same results. All proximity effects seem to calculate proximity as zero, making the effect totally meaningless.

 

Can anyone help me confirm that this is the case, or offer counter evidence that shows this value does actually do something? I like this concept in theory and I would even like to try strengthening it to require more strategy when zoning. But if it doesn't work at all then there's nothing to strengthen.

[Propfam 2,295]

Ah yes, unfinished Maxis project.

Oh sorry. I made an uncomplete statement. Quite ironic. What I really mean is Maxis probably nixed the feature in the game release. But still, this is a hypothesis. Not really a fact.

[CorinaMarie 29,866]

On 3/14/2021 at 3:06 PM, dylansan said:

(I wasn't able to find any information or discussion about this, so if you know of anything, please point me in that direction)

(I've not seen this discussed before. That's not conclusive proof, but I'm glad to see you've started it as a new topic.)

 

On 3/14/2021 at 3:06 PM, dylansan said:

I like this concept in theory and I would even like to try strengthening it to require more strategy when zoning. But if it doesn't work at all then there's nothing to strengthen.

We do know that a bunch of things are inter-related in the calculations so this could be one that washes out to zero as implemented. Or, it could really be one of those things that was planned and even explained to the Prima peeps before release, but was then nixed prior to the game release.

Based on other modding you've been working on, you'll already know that making some extreme changes to these and testing in the game will be the best way to see if they do anything at all.

 

14 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Ah yes, unfinished Maxis project.

Is this a generalized statement? Or is there some info you can link to showing it really is something which Maxis did not complete?

[Propfam 2,295]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Is this a generalized statement? Or is there some info you can link to showing it really is something which Maxis did not complete?

Oh sorry. I made an uncomplete statement. Quite ironic. What I really mean is exactly what you said in your own second paragraph. In other word, Maxis probably nixed the feature in the game release. But still, this is a hypothesis. Not really a fact.