Industrial Employment - What's going on?

[Pepe The Great 228]

Hello All

I can't seem to figure out how industrial buildings work in this game and how they are employing sims inside the same city tile.

In the first picture, we can see this tech industrial building (I-HT) is working as intended. sending out goods through freight trains, employing hundreds of sims who travel to work by using buses, cars, and trains. all is good.

However, in the second picture, nothing works, the factory (I-HT) is not sending out goods using freight trucks or any other methods, and it is not employing any sims, despite the fact that I do have limited (like two or three buildings) unemployment (R$$ and R$$$) inside the city. I also checked building detail, and the game shows me this building is employing 638/700 sims, i also tried fast forwarding time, the building never get dilapidated despite forwarding in-game time by years.

Here the 3rd picture shows the same type industrial building (I-HT), same location, yet this factory is sending out goods via trucks and trains.

Now, in the 4th picture, we can see this I-M factory is also working, because it is sending out goods using freight trucks and trains. but it's somehow not employing any sims.

What baffles me is that all these four factories are located in close proximity from each other, and they are all well within the service range of the local train station (the blue arch structure) and the bus stops. So why aren't the other two building employing anyone?

Thanks for reading.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

4 hours ago, Pepe The Great said:

it is not employing any sims, despite the fact that I do have limited (like two or three buildings) unemployment (R$$ and R$$$) inside the city.

Just because the jobs are available, doesn't mean that your Sims are educated or healthy enough to take them. I-HT jobs usually require high education and your Sims may simply be too stupid or morbid (excuse the wording ) to be eligible for these jobs. Employment in SC4 is not as straightforward as in other games.

4 hours ago, Pepe The Great said:

I also checked building detail, and the game shows me this building is employing 638/700 sims

Nope. This does not indicate how many people are employed there! It just indicates how many people could possibly be employed there with the current circumstances and dynamics. I agree - it may be confusing. 

4 hours ago, Pepe The Great said:

Now, in the 4th picture, we can see this I-M factory is also working, because it is sending out goods using freight trucks and trains. but it's somehow not employing any sims.

Same as before. It might be the case that all Sims eligible for I-M jobs are just employed elsewhere or can't be employed because they are not healthy or educated enough.

In all honesty, the factories in SC4... don't need to have any employees in order to work.  Goofy as hell, but that's how it is...

In any case you don't have to worry that they will become dilapidated or go out of business.

[Pepe The Great 228]

6 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Just because the jobs are available, doesn't mean that your Sims are educated or healthy enough to take them. I-HT jobs usually require high education and your Sims may simply be too stupid or morbid (excuse the wording ) to be eligible for these jobs. Employment in SC4 is not as straightforward as in other games.

Nope. This does not indicate how many people are employed there! It just indicates how many people could possibly be employed there with the current circumstances and dynamics. I agree - it may be confusing. 

Same as before. It might be the case that all Sims eligible for I-M jobs are just employed elsewhere or can't be employed because they are not healthy or educated enough.

In all honesty, the factories in SC4... don't need to have any employees in order to work.  Goofy as hell, but that's how it is...

In any case you don't have to worry that they will become dilapidated or go out of business.

i see, i will see what health and education level that my sims are at.

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

... or healthy enough to take them.

I forgot I was going to ask about this.

I was aware of how the chart shows education is a factor, but what data have you found showing their health matters?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

31 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I forgot I was going to ask about this.

I was aware of how the chart shows education is a factor, but what data have you found showing their health matters?

This is not entirely straightforward but rather my logical extension of the information presented in the Prima Guide, which I quote:

- Good health increases Life Expectancy (LE).

- It increases EQ by lengthening LE (and therefore the Sim’s time to gain education).

And also:

Like Education Quotient, HQ is set at birth, increased by living under the effective coverage of healthcare structures (...) and passed to the next generation of Sims. How, therefore, you treat your Sims now impacts how healthy their offspring will be and how hard you’ll have to work in the future to improve their lives. 

Ok, perhaps it isn't a requirement per se, but good health allows Sims to achieve more and better in their lives. This, in turn, gives their children an easier and faster start in life.

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

2 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Ok, perhaps it isn't a requirement per se, but good health allows Sims to achieve more and better in their lives. This, in turn, gives their children an easier and faster start in life.

Got it! I follow your logic on that.

I often get smart Sims (190+ EQ) via good health and the education passed to their decedents all while using elementary schools, high schools, libraries, and museums and no need for a college or university. (I even spent 505 years one time documenting the passing on of said EQ showing the long term effect when the population is super stable.)

[Pepe The Great 228]

27 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Got it! I follow your logic on that.

I often get smart Sims (190+ EQ) via good health and the education passed to their decedents all while using elementary schools, high schools, libraries, and museums and no need for a college or university. (I even spent 505 years one time documenting the passing on of said EQ showing the long term effect when the population is super stable.)

this is valuable information. i was not aware of the fact that Colleges and Universities aren't that useful in SimCity 4. i guess the game is simulating real life, college degrees these days ain't worth a lot. i will need to building more museums and libraries.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

38 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Got it! I follow your logic on that.

I often get smart Sims (190+ EQ) via good health and the education passed to their decedents all while using elementary schools, high schools, libraries, and museums and no need for a college or university.

It's simply a head-start for the descendant generations. Not an apparent benefit right from the start, but over time it really changes things.

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

4 minutes ago, Pepe The Great said:

i was not aware of the fact that Colleges and Universities aren't that useful in SimCity 4.

Wait!

It depends on your play style. They are quite useful for nearly everyone as they let your Sims get smart much, much quicker when used with all the other educational facilities too.

What I mean, is I generally play rural style with small towns throughout (and a few big cities in my region), but for the most part I get everything grown and then run a few hundred years while I'm placing hedgerow trees between a million farms and so I can afford to wait for the extremely slow method of progeny inheritance to get the same end goal of highly educated Sims.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

Damn, Cori, so it's possible to achieve the 190 mark just through the inheritance mechanism...?! 

[Pepe The Great 228]

2 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Damn, Cori, so it's possible to achieve the 190 mark just through the inheritance mechanism...?! 

i'm not even aware there is a thing called "inheritance mechanism". i thought sims just need to go to schools, that's why quite a few of my cities don't have a single library or museum. is that what libraries and museums do in this game? to function as a part of the "inheritance mechanism"?

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

7 minutes ago, Pepe The Great said:

is that what libraries and museums do in this game? to function as a part of the "inheritance mechanism"?

Yes, in a way. Each education facility has a certain age range for where they are most effective. Museums and the Opera House (use our MZ mod since the Maxis vanilla one is bugged) are targeted towards the eldest Sims and so with long lifespans they aren't affected by the EQ degradation that is present without them. Then when Sims die they pass on half of their final EQ to the next generation. This lets the kids start out smarter and gain more EQ from a higher level starting number.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

190 mark just through the inheritance mechanism...?! 

Yes, but it needs a super stable population. If you have Sims abandoning and coming back, those are getting reset to their base level education. To put this in context, Cori in her 505 Year Education Experiment showed how with a slow long term plan, she achieved highly educated Sims without a college or university.

Here's the topic if you're curious for the full picture:

 

47 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Opera House (use our MZ mod since the Maxis vanilla one is bugged)

For anyone wondering about this, here's the topic we made:

On a side note...
We've received very little feedback on our mod. So if you (or anyone) does try it sometime, we'd greatly appreciate your impressions of it.

(We do plan to resume MZ modding sometime, but have been caught up in other things and RL stuff lately.)

[Pepe The Great 228]

58 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Yes, in a way. Each education facility has a certain age range for where they are most effective. Museums and the Opera House (use our MZ mod since the Maxis vanilla one is bugged) are targeted towards the eldest Sims and so with long lifespans they aren't affected by the EQ degradation that is present without them. Then when Sims die they pass on half of their final EQ to the next generation. This lets the kids start out smarter and gain more EQ from a higher level starting number.

Thanks for the clarification.

so schools (elementary, high school and colleges) are kind of like EQ accelerator.

while libraries, museums and opera house are kind of like computer hard drives. so which age group of sims prefer libraries?

btw, why is your Opera house's monthly cost so high?

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

14 minutes ago, Pepe The Great said:

so schools (elementary, high school and colleges) are kind of like EQ accelerator.

while libraries, museums and opera house are kind of like computer hard drives. so which age group of sims prefer libraries?

They all function essentially the same. It's the target age which is different as well as the amount of EQ boost.

Found this for you:

On 7/11/2013 at 5:55 AM, z1 said:

Here's a brief table showing what ages are affected by what educational building.  Note:  The ages don't signify the age of the students themselves, but the average age of the family in the household.  This means you don't have to worry about who's a student and who's not.  Note that all effects start at an average age of 20.

Building                       Target Age

Elementary School     20-50

High School                 30-60

Private School             20-60

City College                  30-80

Libraries                       20-100

Museums                     30-100

University                     20-100

Opera House               80-100

However, it's a bit more complicated than that, because the educational impact is not uniform with age.  In the Prima Guide, there are little graphs for each entry, charting the EQ Boost (in percent) vs. age.  All changes occur linearly.  To summarize:

Elementary School:  5% boost to age 30, dropping to 0.5% by age 40, and dropping to zero by age 50.

Libraries:  30% boost to age 60, dropping to 20% by age 80.

High School:  Zero until age 20, rising to 0.5% at age 30, rising to 5% at age 40, declining to zero at age 60.

Museums:  Zero until age 20, rising to 0.25% by age 30, staying at 0.25% until age 50, rising to 0.75% by age 60, rising to 1.5% by age 70, rising to 3% by age 80.

City College:   Zero until age 20, rising to 0.5% at age 30, rising to 1.5% by age 40, rising to 5% by age 50, dropping to 0.5% by age 70, dropping to zero by age 80.

Private School:  5% until age 40, dropping to zero at age 60.

University:  2.5% at age 20, dropping to 0.5% at age 30, staying at 0.5% until age 40, rising to 5% at age 50, staying at 5% to age 60, dropping to 1.5% by age 70, and dropping to 0.5% by age 80.

Opera House:  Zero until age 50, rising to 5% at age 80.

 

14 minutes ago, Pepe The Great said:

btw, why is your Opera house's monthly cost so high?

It's prorated to be the same cost per Sim as the original. What you are seeing there is the cost of 100% funding which is for a lot more Sims than the Maxis vanilla Opera House.

After plopping, simply use the Query Tool to open and adjust the funding slider for the amount of Sims you have attending.