BATs that never turn up in-game

[TheMurderousCricket 5,112]

Hi All,

I've been wondering why some of the buildings that can be downloaded from STEX, seem to never, ever grow during normal game session. Some BATs seem to grow quite quickly just after appropriate zoning is provided. Some, however, seem to never react to any mayoral action or incentive...

There are quite many of these, so if you like, do try them out yourself and see if you can get them to work:

 

Before you say anything, yes - I am aware that some buildings appear more frequently depending on growth stages.

Likewise, I am also aware that the game usually picks buildings which have highest occupant numbers, to quickly satisfy pent-up demand.

On top of that, as I already mentioned, I always try to zone exact size of a given BAT to test it out. In fact, I also sometimes check the .desc and .lot files to make sure that the BAT size is indeed the one displayed in a readme file.

Plusssss, just to make sure, I have all building styles turned on, just in case a BAT is style-specific. 

But in spite of all this knowledge, I now have almost 20 "test" subjects, none of which seem to ever appear in my city. I test these custom BATs in a well-developed city, which produces stage-8 buildings with ease and, likewise, has little difficulty to grow minuscule 1x1 kiosks here and there. Commercial demand is positive across the entire spectrum. However, some buildings, including the ones I suggest for your own testing, are yet to be seen in this city.

Also, one of the things that I find puzzling regarding the "most populous goes first" rule is that I can get large numbers of some petty R$ buildings that have just 20 workers, but R$ 6x4, 6x6 malls that employ around 200 people never work and are always ditched in favor of regular Maxis malls that employ only 80-ish workers.

So I don't really know what to think about all of this stuff. Do you guys have any thoughts? When I open all of my "test" files in iLives, the all seem to have correct properties, purpose and all elements necessary to let them act as "growables" so I'm not sure what stops them from being constructed in my city. Many are also made by renowned BATters that know their craft well...

It even makes me wonder if there is perhaps some property that controls an "x in 1" chance for the building to be selected for construction...? I don't know.

[matias93 7,535]

This really doesn't work as straightforwardly as it should, but maybe you are finding issues with the tendency the game has to replace buildings with ones from higher wealth levels, even if it doesn't have enough demand to keep them occupied for long. At least in my case I noticed a marked difference in the buildings that would grow by using Cori's No Kickout mod, but again, I have seen similar changes when installing a batch of new growables as well, so I guess it depends on the exact mixture between density, wealth level, growth stage, occupancy rate, tileset and local demand, which has so many variations that's almost impossible to replicate from a given plugin setup to other.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,112]

Strange. I've been using NKO for so long that I didn't even think of it as a possible variable in this equation, but why not...

I also had this boot-shaped R$ 1x3 shop in my plugins. Over three months, it grew just one time. Euhhhh... 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,112]

After making a test with DT's Maxis buildings blocker, some of the problematic BATs indeed turned up in the game, but others didn't.

For now, I guess, they can be considered lost BATs. I tried to compare the contents of trouble BATs with the ones that work well, but I can't really find any differences and essential gaps in them.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Most of the "literature" about this was on the SC4D-site and written by Ripple-Jet. Apart from the model that you see visually inside the game - there is a box called LOD. This box defines a volume. If you open bats with the pim you can see this box having yellow outlines. The realtionsship between the amount of tiles of the lot (lot size) and the densitiy of this box (LOD) filled with occupants will define the growth stage. But then - on each growth stage having the same LOD on the same lot but one LOD having lesser occupants than the other - the game will have a property to decide upon. As you state already. Yes.

But now lets imagine the other state. You have a lot of 2x2 lots - maybe 50 in your plugin folder. For you they all look different. but if they have the same lot size, the same LOD size and the same occupant size so the same density - the algorithm can't see any difference between them. It's like forcing it to chosse between element A and element A. And so the algorithm will turn randomly and probably always the first A on the way and therefore always the same lot. This is why there are building families - to get variety even if there are exact same stats.  

We see a lot of different house models - but the game itself it sees only those yellow boxes. It compares volumes of boxes and density. So the game can't decide visually. Therefore you might end up with monotony even if there is variety to choose from on the hard drive. As the game knows nothing about the differences you may see. 

 

[EDIT] This was a teaching old T-Wrecks gave me first - there is more content out there the game is able to make use of it. There won't happen much if you just fill up your plugin folder with stuff doing all the same thing. It's much more fun to see more than one game here. You can create different plugin folders with very different content. One week you play a medieval SC4 the other week ypu play a futuristic SC4, one day you play a desert megacity, the other day you play a rural map in the alps. But I canÄt recommend to play it all at the same time. The game can't really make use of such a broad content. It's some sort of skinflint when it's on choosing growable lots. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,112]

On 15.07.2023 at 4:56 PM, Fantozzi said:

This is why there are building families - to get variety even if there are exact same stats. 

That's interesting but also quite confusing... In at least one example (the federal building) the file has a unique building family, which doesn't appear with any other buildings. Still, it is one of those buildings that rarely even appear in the game.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way - in that case, why some buildings that entirely lack "prop/building family" parameter grow just fine?! 

On 15.07.2023 at 4:56 PM, Fantozzi said:

You can create different plugin folders with very different content. One week you play a medieval SC4 the other week ypu play a futuristic SC4, one day you play a desert megacity, the other day you play a rural map in the alps.

This is exactly the system I employ but I use different building folders for particular regions.

So while my regions are more or less diverse between each other thanks to this, there are still BATs in some of them that simply refuse to grow.

[Propfam 2,308]

It's just the classic SimCity bug duh. I hate it with a passion, even I'm just using Maxis sets. The buildings are always R$ towers and hardly R$$ ones, let alone R$$$. Same with Pane View Condo, you know that 3x3 midrise R$$$. It's pretty hard to grow the specific buildings I want. The only solution is to use blockers. I mean blockers, not just the DT ones. I also made a whitelist that loads after the DT blockers and I encourage you to do the same. This way, I can grow anything much much easier, provided demand, desirability, etc.