Industrial desirability bug?

[StarlitBeach 160]

I think I have spotted a bug, or at least an interesting discrepancy, in the way that industrial desirability is calculated. I find it hard to believe I'm the first to notice this, but couldn't find any mention of it when I tried a forum search, so apologies if it's old news.

One of the desirability factors for all types of industry is slope. At least one advisor dialog suggests that industries prefer flat terrain, and this is what the Prima Strategy Guide says about it too. At this point you might be able to guess what the bug/discrepancy is... It's actually the other way around! Industries prefer building on slopes - the steeper the better.

I happened to notice it yesterday when I was taking a look at the desirability factors in the developer exemplars. Each industrial developer exemplar has the Slope Effect property, described as "How much slope is a factor in desirability". In every case it is set to 0,0,50,10 - suggesting that the steeper the slope, the greater the desirability boost. At first I thought it must actually be using a "flatness" variable rather than slope, but it turns out that desirability really does increase with slope.

 

Here are two industrial buildings in different parts of the Big City Tutorial tile, which I had been using to test a few things:

 

An I-M building on relatively flat terrain...

 

...and an I-HT building on more sloped terrain

 

From the query.txt files for these I got the following information:

 

I-M on flat terrain

...

| Slope: 1.2

...

| Desirability equation for I manufacturing
|   desirability = base value: 47
|   + land value effect, f(value: 1): 0
|   + slope effect, f(value: 1.6): 0

...

 

I-HT on sloped terrain

...

| Slope: 9.1

...

| Desirability equation for I high tech
|   desirability = base value: -94
|   + land value effect, f(value: 204): 6
|   + slope effect, f(value: 16.9): 3

...

 

I'm not sure why there are two different numbers for slope, but it's clear that the more sloped terrain the I-HT is built on is having a small positive effect on desirability, while the flat terrain where the I-M is has zero effect.

 

I tried a few different options for fixing this. Here's I-HT desirability in the same tile with the original slope effect of 0,0,50,10:

 

Here I've reversed the relationship to 0,10,50,0:

 

And here I've tried restricting the range of slopes that give a positive effect, and adding a negative effect to steeper slopes (0,10,10,0,20,-10):

 

The overall effect on desirability is fairly small because slope has much less weight than other factors such as crime and pollution. Reversing the relationship to 0,10,50,0 increases desirability slightly over the whole tile, except on the steep undeveloped terrain the other side of the river (note the green square on the steepest ground in the first image that disappears in the second). Giving steeper slopes a negative effect reduces desirability in the more hilly terrain to the west and across the river.

So although it's not really a big deal, it probably does reduce I-HT desirability a bit in cities on relatively flat tiles, in a way that I can't believe was intended.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

9 minutes ago, StarlitBeach said:

I find it hard to believe I'm the first to notice this, but couldn't find any mention of it when I tried a forum search, so apologies if it's old news.

I can say I've never heard of it before. Ofc, there were lots of things explored before I joined, but it's not come up in GD since 2016. (I'm sure I'd remember if it did.)

Brilliant discovery you've made. Nice work!

[Cyclone Boom 16,846]

@StarlitBeach

Make that 100% of the admin team who haven't heard of this before.

Super sleuthing, and very meticulously researched and articulately presented with your findings.

It does continue to amaze for what can be discovered all these years later, and certainly although SC4 edges towards its 20th birthday next year, there's still many things still which can be found when delving into the modding side. Certainly well worth pursuing all these possibilities.

[StarlitBeach 160]

Thanks @CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom

I was quite surprised myself - it wasn't the first time I'd looked at the developer exemplars. I guess it's quite an easy thing to overlook...

The fix is simplicity itself, but I could put together a readme file for it and upload it later or maybe tomorrow. I'd be inclined to go for the last option I tried (0,10,10,0,20,-10) because it makes industrial slope preferences a bit more restrictive without having too dramatic an impact on overall desirability. One problem is that it will conflict with the Less Abandonment mod (which I use), since that also changes the I-HT developer exemplar. I'm not sure if there are any other popular mods it might conflict with. I could include a Less Abandonment version of the fix for I-HT, with appropriate credit given to @Bones1, as long as that wouldn't be considered bad etiquette (he doesn't seem to have been active for a while so might be difficult to contact him).

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

2 hours ago, StarlitBeach said:

I could include a Less Abandonment version of the fix for I-HT, with appropriate credit given to @Bones1, as long as that wouldn't be considered bad etiquette (he doesn't seem to have been active for a while so might be difficult to contact him).

Exemplars of this nature are exempt so you can post a modified version which includes your tweaks (as long as you give the credit like you intend to do).

Which reminds me: I apologize for my reply in the intro thread where I assumed you might need help with custom data views. I now see you have that completely figured out. Also, I do like the color scheme you are using. It reminds me of the Parks Aura.

 

2 hours ago, StarlitBeach said:

I'm not sure if there are any other popular mods it might conflict with.

It just occurred to me that it would conflict with CAM too. I've only checked the CAM_2.1.0_PlayStyle_Extended.dat file, but I'm certain it'd interfere for the other CAM play styles too.

Here's the data in text format if you want to peek at it:

x Cori's Lua Output-1652056575 (For CAM_2.1.0_PlayStyle_Extended).txt

(Use your fav text editor and search for "Slope Effect".)

[StarlitBeach 160]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

It just occurred to me that it would conflict with CAM too. I've only checked the CAM_2.1.0_PlayStyle_Extended.dat file, but I'm certain it'd interfere for the other CAM play styles too.

Thanks @CorinaMarie. Looks like someone was already aware of this issue because CAM fixes it - the Slope Effect in that file has been changed to act in the right direction in most cases. I'll be sure to make clear that my fix is not compatible (and not required) for CAM users.

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Which reminds me: I apologize for my reply in the intro thread where I assumed you might need help with custom data views. I now see you have that completely figured out. Also, I do like the color scheme you are using. It reminds me of the Parks Aura.

No worries, I learned how to do it from the thread where you were discussing and testing the Parks Aura and other dataviews. I liked the colour ramp in Parks Aura so much I ended up making my own custom dataviews using it. The only changes I made were to use a different shade of purple and add magenta for the highest values (and black for values below dark red in some cases, but I didn't use that for desirability).

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

1 hour ago, StarlitBeach said:

I liked the colour ramp in Parks Aura so much I ended up making my own custom dataviews using it. The only changes I made were to use a different shade of purple and add magenta for the highest values (and black for values below dark red in some cases, but I didn't use that for desirability).

Yay! And if you decide to publish any of your data views, it's certainly fine by me if you use those colours. There's nothing sacrosanct about them. There's another thread wherein someone used my colours for education and with set ranges the same way Parks Aura does. I use their mod for that all the time now as it's much more apparent what it depicts.

[StarlitBeach 160]

Yes, Parks Aura and that education dataview by @dylansan inspired me to make mine show important threshold values in the same way. The desirability views above are designed to show the Less Abandonment growth thresholds (90 for $$ and I-HT, 120 for $$$), plus the distress threshold of 50. I'm still testing it to make sure the scale really is correct. The 120 threshold seems to be absolutely spot on, but the 90 threshold may not be quite right. And I haven't tested the 50 threshold yet. I may publish the desirability views when I'm happy with them, since they are the ones that add the most value at the moment. I do want to try out a couple of ideas to replace the less useful ones (C$ especially, and also I-D) first though.

[StarlitBeach 160]

 

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

7 hours ago, StarlitBeach said:

I do want to try out a couple of ideas to replace the less useful ones (C$ especially, and also I-D) first though.

Maybe replace R$ too since the riff-raff Sims will live anywhere (except within radiation).

If it's helpful, here's my latest notes within Ingred.ini as of 24 March, 2022:

Cori's Notes in Ingred.ini

Other prior versions are attached in various threads so you might already have a copy. Search for "Cori" to find specific notes I've added.

[StarlitBeach 160]

10 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Maybe replace R$ too since the riff-raff Sims will live anywhere (except within radiation).

If it's helpful, here's my latest notes within Ingred.ini as of 24 March, 2022:

Cori's Notes in Ingred.ini

Thanks, that will be useful - I did have a look at ingred.ini and could figure out what some of it meant, but it turns out there's some stuff that wasn't in there that you've been able to add.

I've started a new thread in the modding forum to discuss some ideas about desirability dataviews:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

1 minute ago, StarlitBeach said:

I've started a new thread in the modding forum to discuss some ideas about desirability dataviews:

Excellent! C'ya over there...