On Education in SC4: A Detailed Deep Dive with Simulation Data and Recommended Modification

[Tyberius06 12,234]

3 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Although I note, by the way, that there are very few downloads that actually use these stats. Even the Mattb325 collections on SC4Evermore by @Tyberius06 do not yet have these stats applied to the educational buildings there.  I only first saw them applied to the SimGoober collection.

@Kel9509First I have nothing to do with Mattb325's civic collection (with the education stuff) or other collections from him (yet), apart from the transportation collection, that indeed, I have updated. But I already mentioned this to you. Yes, I updated the SimGoober education stuff with the modern set-up, that @Ulisse Wolf tailored due to the CAM numbers and I trimmed down a bit here and there. Between Matt and SimGoober's updated collections there is a big difference. Matt's contents were modded by himself by using the original PIM-X calculations that the BSC came up with; they had a different approach in mind at that time (they lower the capacity, and the radius, so if a school reached its limits, the player was encouraged to plop a new school to fix that). SimGoober's educations were updated by a newer version of the PIM-X new_properties.xml, which considered more the CAM style playing; more residents, players will reach the school capacity limits sooner, and then they need to sacrifice real estate for more schools... Some of the changes came because of these "complaints" as far as I know.

However....

4 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

@Ulisse Wolf since you did some of these edits for New Properties and CAM, I wonder what you think?

I don't have the new_properties.xml in front of me right now (not even interested in editing anyhing in it currently), but IIRC the only things that Ulisse edited were the student capacity at first, then he and I started adjusting the plop, monthly and bulldoze costs and the civic jobs because they were all tied to the student capacity algorithm. His edits mainly contained a quadruple calculation to this student capacity (one of the base values in the calculation was multipled by 4, f.e. it started like 50+whatever and whatevery, and the 50 became 200). But because of this quadruple effect the costs and jobs properties got quadrupled too, that seemed a bit too steep. So in most of the cases now some parts of the cost and job calculations got trimmed back down with different division calculations, and also I changed the bulldoze and plop cost calculation NOT to be based on the student capacity but it's rather based on the volume of the building/model itself. 

4 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

There are some slight tweaks to the Opera House's properties in NP - like # of "students", radius, the costs, and its query and the addition at my request of Catalog Capacity - though none of those affect EQ per se.  So I think I'll drop the Opera House from this mod.

The opera house calculations in the new_properties.xml are following a revised version of the operahouse fix itself. So all the new operahouses more or less start with the same base values that the opera house fix provides (including the query). So yeah, PIM-X has an inbuilt operahouse fix. 

4 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Private Schools

Next are Private Schools. 

I am not sure all the purposes of the private school and stuff like that, I've never been too interested in these. However there's gonna be one change that we are considering to implement and that's the implementation of the RippleJet Private School with Slider fix, that will bring a new UI (under new ID) for the private schools which have been run through or created with the new PIM-X.

Now I started checking out the NP. These values don't come from us. Apart from the lowered EQ boost to 8 (that was 24 in the original PIM-X NP, I have no clue why it is now 8), however the other 

<!-- School Effectiveness vs. Average Age --> values were not changed from the original one. 

ORIGINAL PIM-X NP from 2010

 

Quote

 

<CATEGORY Name="Private School" ID="0xcc8fba8c" ParentID="0x2c8fbc37">
<HELP> This selection will filter the display to only show High School plug-ins. To create a plug-in of this type drag a model to High School. In the lot editor this plug-in building can be found by choosing and replacing the building on the CV4x3_9-12LargeSchool_0317 lot. </HELP>
<FILTERS>
<NEEDED ID="0xaa1dd396" Value="0x1503"/>
<NEEDED ID="0xaa1dd396" Value="0x1514"/>
</FILTERS>
<PROPERTIES>
<eval name="Students" value="max(SCCSPrivate,50*int(1+Volume/1500.))"/>
<eval name="CivicJobs" value="int(ceil(Students/30.))"/>
<eval name="Jobs1" value="5+int(CivicJobs*3./4.)"/>
<eval name="Jobs2" value="2+int(CivicJobs*1./4.)"/>
<eval name="Jobs3" value="0+int(CivicJobs*0./4.)"/>
<eval name="Radius" value="8*int(27.5+2.625*Students**0.4)"/>
<eval name="TCost" value="50*int(1+0.005*Students**0.9)"/>
<eval name="MCost" value="6.5*TCost"/>
<eval name="CCost" value="TCost+MCost"/>
<eval name="PCost" value="50*int(1+0.014*Students**1.1)"/>
<eval name="BCost" value="10*int(1+0.005*Students**1.1)"/>
<PROPERTY ID="0x0A36AFA2" Value="0x0A376642"/>
<!-- SFX:AlarmSoundId -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x27812832" Value="0x02"/>
<!-- Wealth -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x29244DB5" Eval="0x20"/>
<!-- Flammability -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x2A499F85" Eval="QueryForSchool"/>
<!-- Query exemplar GUID -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x4A4C132E" Set="0x8A8B7DD1"/>
<!-- SFX:Activate Sound -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x4AA60EBC" Eval="Students"/>
<!-- Catalog Capacity -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x68EE9764" Eval="2.00000000,3.00000000,0.00000000,0.00000000"/>
<!-- Pollution radii -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x6A36AFAB" Value="9.32999992,15.25000000"/>
<!-- SFX:AlarmTime -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x6AD54804" Eval="CCost"/>
<!-- Catalog Monthly Cost -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x8A2602B9" Eval="ItemOrderForHighSchool"/>
<!--  Item Order  -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xA92AE446" Value="24.00000000"/>
<!-- School EQ boost -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xAA1DD396" Set="0x00001503,0x00001514,0x00001902"/>
<!-- OccupantGroups -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xAA1DD397" Set="0x4A55BA9D"/>
<!-- SFX:Query Sound -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xC9299662" Value="20.00000000,0.00000000,30.00000000,0.50000000,40.00000000,5.00000000,50.00000000,2.50000000,60.00000000,0.00000000,70.00000000,0.00000000,80.00000000,0.00000000"/>
<!-- School Effectiveness vs. Average Age -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xE921A936" Value="0.00000000,100.00000000,100.00000000,100.00000000"/>
<!-- School Population vs. Distance -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D283" Value="0x09188F4C,0x4A538CC6"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Department -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D284" Value="0x00000000,0x00000001"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Line -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D285" Value="0xEA5654B6,0x4A5654BA"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Purpose -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D286" Eval="MCost,TCost"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Cost -->
</PROPERTIES>
</CATEGORY>

 

Current Version of the NP:

Quote

<CATEGORY Name="Private School" ID="0xcc8fba8c" ParentID="0x2c8fbc37">
<HELP> This selection will filter the display to only show High School plug-ins. To create a plug-in of this type drag a model to High School. In the lot editor this plug-in building can be found by choosing and replacing the building on the CV4x3_9-12LargeSchool_0317 lot. </HELP>
<FILTERS>
<NEEDED ID="0xaa1dd396" Value="0x1503"/>
<NEEDED ID="0xaa1dd396" Value="0x1514"/>
</FILTERS>
<PROPERTIES>
<eval name="Students" value="max(SCCSPrivate,200*int(1+Volume/1500.))"/>
<eval name="CivicJobs" value="int(ceil(Students/30.)/4)"/>
<eval name="Jobs1" value="5+int(CivicJobs*3./4.)"/>
<eval name="Jobs2" value="2+int(CivicJobs*1./4.)"/>
<eval name="Jobs3" value="0+int(CivicJobs*0./4.)"/>
<eval name="Radius" value="8*int(27.5+2.625*Students**0.4)"/>
<eval name="TCost" value="50*int(1+0.005*Students**0.9)"/>
<eval name="MCost" value="6.5*TCost"/>
<eval name="CCost" value="TCost+MCost"/>
<eval name="PCost" value="10*int(1+0.014*Volume**1.1)"/>
<eval name="BCost" value="10*int(1+0.005*Volume**1.1)"/>
<PROPERTY ID="0x0A36AFA2" Value="0x0A376642"/>
<!-- SFX:AlarmSoundId -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x27812832" Value="0x02"/>
<!-- Wealth -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x29244DB5" Eval="0x20"/>
<!-- Flammability -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x2A499F85" Eval="0x12121205"/>
<!-- Query exemplar GUID -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x4A4C132E" Set="0x8A8B7DD1"/>
<!-- SFX:Activate Sound -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x4AA60EBC" Eval="Students"/>
<!-- Catalog Capacity -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x68EE9764" Eval="2.00000000,3.00000000,0.00000000,0.00000000"/>
<!-- Pollution radii -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x6A36AFAB" Value="9.32999992,15.25000000"/>
<!-- SFX:AlarmTime -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x6AD54804" Eval="CCost"/>
<!-- Catalog Monthly Cost -->
<PROPERTY ID="0x8A2602B9" Eval="ItemOrderForHighSchool"/>
<!--  Item Order  -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xA92AE446" Value="8.00000000"/>
<!-- School EQ boost -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xAA1DD396" Set="0x00001503,0x0000150b,0x00001514,0x00001902,0x00001938"/>
<!-- OccupantGroups -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xAA1DD397" Set="0x4A55BA9D"/>
<!-- SFX:Query Sound -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xC9299662" Value="20.00000000,0.00000000,30.00000000,0.50000000,40.00000000,5.00000000,50.00000000,2.50000000,60.00000000,0.00000000,70.00000000,0.00000000,80.00000000,0.00000000"/>
<!-- School Effectiveness vs. Average Age -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xE921A936" Value="0.00000000,100.00000000,100.00000000,100.00000000"/>
<!-- School Population vs. Distance -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D283" Value="0x09188F4C,0x4A538CC6"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Department -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D284" Value="0x00000000,0x00000001"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Line -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D285" Value="0xEA5654B6,0x4A5654BA"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Purpose -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xEA54D286" Eval="MCost,TCost"/>
<!-- Budget Item: Cost -->
<PROPERTY ID="0xAA1DD399" Eval="0xA08063D0"/>
<!-- OccupantGroups for SubMenu -->
</PROPERTIES>
</CATEGORY>

 

Speaking of it. @Kel9509, there is an ongoing development of a SC4PIM-X 2026 by @CasperVg, that we are discussing, developping and testing on a dedicated discord thread on the SC4Evermore Channel. You and anybody else are welcome to come there and make suggestions to that development, because after a while that new tool will become the "gold standard" for editing and custom content creation. 

About education a bit more. There is a "settings.ini" file in the PIM-X install folder which contains some basic stuff, that I was not aware until recently.

Quote

SCCSElementary = 500
SCCSHighSchool = 750
SCCSPrivate    = 1000
SCCSCollege    = 1000
SCCSLibrary    = 10000
SCCSMuseum     = 300
SCCSOpera      = 25000

HCCSClinic     = 500
HCCSHospital   = 750
HCCSOther      = 1000

This is an edited version, but you can see, that many of the school stuff has a base value in the settings ini. 

To be fair. I am not a CAM user, so if you or anybody comes up with a sensible mod that can be used with heavily modded (using custom contents and not just the Maxis stuff), but not CAM gameplays, I would go for it for sure...

[memo 1,469]

The current EQ stats in the New Properties file have all just been eyeballed, without any deeper in-game testing documented anywhere to show they lead to a balanced gameplay. It would be most beneficial to find some kind of middle-ground between CAM and non-CAM gameplay, so that there don't need to be two CAM/no-CAM variants for each educational building out there.

The premise that CAM would require different EQ stats than without CAM isn't too convincing. CAM doesn't necessarily imply denser cities. CAM mainly just spreads out the stages from 1-8 to 1-15. It doesn't assign higher RCI capacities to growable buildings, so it shouldn't boost the stats for educational buildings too much either. Of course, if you build a super-dense city at stage 15 with lots of downloaded skyscrapers, you'd also want to download some high capacity educational buildings that fit into those neighborhoods, rather than plopping the Maxis default educational buildings.

[Kel9509 1,476]

5 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

To be fair. I am not a CAM user, so if you or anybody comes up with a sensible mod that can be used with heavily modded (using custom contents and not just the Maxis stuff), but not CAM gameplays, I would go for it for sure...

I appreciate that.  I am not looking to revisit past decisions necessarily, and I am only looking to hopefully provide something complete for non-CAM users to use. And yes, you did tell me you didn't update Matt's collection except for the transportation lots, although SimGoober's got the new values.  I also did notice the revisions to cost and jobs in New Properties and think those were necessary fixes since things seemed a bit distorted.  

As you properly note, there is a problem that exists in that some collections have educational properties that take wildly different approaches (Mattb325 vs. SimGoober is a perfect example).  I had reluctantly expressed my concern about these new values being included in New Properties, which would mean that anyone who downloaded those newer collections would be faced with the inevitable choice to re-set the values back to the a Maxis-standard, or to go through the lengthy effort and convert all prior downloaded educational buildings to the newer values.  

I'm also aware of the new PIM-X and had a suggestion for @CasperVg in the discord also, though not as much as you have. The new version is incredibly important (mostly for transportation reasons) and will be the gold standard for new buildings very soon.  One thing I noticed, however, is that I believe he is considering auto-updating New Properties in that new version of PIM-X so that it always uses the newest version.  So these issues will only persist unless tackled somehow.

44 minutes ago, memo said:

It would be most beneficial to find some kind of middle-ground between CAM and non-CAM gameplay, so that there don't need to be two CAM/no-CAM variants for each educational building out there.

Not trying to revisit past decisions, but I addressed this by wildly lowering the filling degree for my non-CAM game so that libraries and schools didn't have massive amounts of excess capacity.  I wanted to use PIM-X to apply the Educational Realism Mod functions, but not balloon up my capacities so that I would still need to plop some amount of schools instead of merely plopping only one.  For libraries I often used a filling degree of like 0.1 or 0.2, very low.  Same with schools and colleges sometimes. The standard use of 0.5 filling degree does not apply anymore, at least to these educational buildings, for a non-CAM game.

I can guess what @Ulisse Wolf might say: forget all about this and install CAM Core, which takes care of not only this but a lot of other bugs and problems and doesn't alter the RCI mix to have higher stage buildings.  But that, to me, is a greater effort that converting my existing downloaded educational buildings.  Also, I do not want to destroy my existing region and restart my gameplay.  I think that CAM Core needs more documentation of what it exactly does and possibly how it can be tweaked.  For now, it's a one-size-fits all solution I'm not comfortable with (maybe I'm too fearful here).  

Anyway, all I want to do is update @xBlaze89x's mod to include the few reward buildings he didn't edit, as well as the Private Schools (which should absolutely have sliders and I'll make the BSC Common Dependencies with the Maxis slider Override a dependency if necessary).  If no one else wants or needs this, that's fine.  I am just trying to offer a solution to the community. 

The Private schools looked curious to me so I was wondering what people thought about them.  Personally, I like the idea that they might do all from elementary to junior college, with a slight EQ boost as well.  They are rewards, after all.  

[Ulisse Wolf 4,444]

On 20/06/2026 at 7:49 AM, Kel9509 said:

Next are Private Schools.  The normal base game treats them as both an Elementary School (for Age 20) and a High School (Age 40), as well as a Junior College (Age 50), with a better EQ boost as well.  As @xBlaze89x noted, the base school EQ is 24 for both Elementary and High Schools.  But for Private Schools, the base EQ is 30 - probably because it's got resources a public school doesn't have.  Following the charts above, a Private School has the following stats:

It was most likely a mistake caused by distraction or frustration. In any case, the EQ Boost value for private schools needs to be adjusted, so I'm setting it to 24.

Right now I have a dilemma: is it worth creating a vanilla controller?

We currently have CAM Controller, which is a total conversion of the RCI simulation. Then we have SPAM Controller, which is vanilla but with an improved version of the farms.

If we create a vanilla version, we’d have a basic controller with only modifications to the water system, education, and crime,which I consider a bit outdated compared to SPAM, which has fully functional farms for long-term gameplay.  But if there's interest, I can create the Vanilla controller  (Something I haven't seen much of because everyone jumps on the SPAM or CAM Controller bandwagon, and this was already happening in the past when the SPAM vs. CAM rivalry was very intense.)

My long-term goal is to have a unified standard because I've seen many mods that follow too many different standards (PEG, Mattb325, BSC Team, AMPS, and so on), which means updating the mods to bring them up to modern standards (either with a theme pack or by updating the mod directly), and I'm noticing this with the SPAM lots, which are a complete disaster. (In theory, since there's always something that needs fixing, if we're going to put in the effort, we might as well fix all the services and utilities once and for all)

20 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I can guess what @Ulisse Wolf might say: forget all about this and install CAM Core, which takes care of not only this but a lot of other bugs and problems and doesn't alter the RCI mix to have higher stage buildings.  But that, to me, is a greater effort that converting my existing downloaded educational buildings.  Also, I do not want to destroy my existing region and restart my gameplay.  I think that CAM Core needs more documentation of what it exactly does and possibly how it can be tweaked.  For now, it's a one-size-fits all solution I'm not comfortable with (maybe I'm too fearful here).  

SIM (formerly CAM Core) is divided into 90% that cannot be modified (graphics, SFX, LUA, UI, images) and 10% that can be modified (Exemplar Building and Exemplar Patch).  Also because SIM is a sort of BSC Essential where you can connect mods to use certain features.

Personally, I don't recommend it if you're not an expert, but if you are an expert, you can make changes, keeping in mind that you'll need to save your own changes because you might lose them with updates.

 

[Kel9509 1,476]

12 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

It was most likely a mistake caused by distraction or frustration. In any case, the EQ Boost value for private schools needs to be adjusted, so I'm setting it to 24.

You mean for non-Education Realism Mod private schools?  Because New Properties currently has the ERM baked-in.  If you're going to bake the ERM mod into New Properties, I propose that it have a slight boost over public schools.  With the ERM baked-in, Elementary schools have an EQ effect of 8.5 and High Schools have an EQ Effect of 8.  I propose Private Schools have an EQ effect of 9, and apply to all ages from Elementary to Junior College.  So their stats would be as follows:

Private School			Effectiveness
cost	EQ boost	radius	age 20	age 30	age 40	age 50	age 60	age 70	age 80	capacity
2320	9	552	5	5	5	2.5	0	0	0	1000
		EQxEffect	45	45	45	22.5	0	0	0

I don't know anything else about how the game treats Private Schools but I think they accept all Residents of any wealth level, although they also offer Cap Relief to R$$$ of 6,000 which is fine.  

12 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Right now I have a dilemma: is it worth creating a vanilla controller?

If I understand you properly, I don't know if this is strictly needed.  Can you be specific about what's involved in the creation of a controller for so-called Vanilla users like me (I'm not strictly vanilla since I've applied the ERM now)?  You mentioned water, crime, and education - are those just capacities and radius effects (and the application, or non-application, of the ERM)? If so, maybe what's needed is a better distinction between the creation of CAM buildings that have a large radius and capacities, and non-CAM buildings that do not have such huge radius and capacities.  Maybe a New Properties for CAM, and a New Properties for non-CAM.  I'm wondering if the new PIM-X can toggle between them somehow, like with a setting or a switch.  If so, it might make it very, very easy to convert and re-calculate between a CAM building and a non-CAM building.  Maybe the new PIM-X could even apply further mods like the ERM as an on or off toggle as well, possibly.  Just thinking out-loud.

In fact, if it were easier or standardized somehow, I'd be more than willing to assist in helping to fix building sets that should be converted to CAM or non-CAM, in order to address the distinctions between sets that you and @Tyberius06 noted. 

Overall, I think the ERM is a fantastic idea because it's just too easy to get a 150+ EQ in a city with merely an elementary school, high school, and library.  I never plop a college or university.  So I went through the trouble to convert every educational building to the new ERM stats.  Since I used New Properties, I lowered the filling degree a lot in order to make capacities realistic for my non-CAM game.  Maybe there can be recommendations for filling degree settings for non-CAM users if New Properties continues to be universalized.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,444]

9 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

You mean for non-Education Realism Mod private schools?  Because New Properties currently has the ERM baked-in.  If you're going to bake the ERM mod into New Properties, I propose that it have a slight boost over public schools.  With the ERM baked-in, Elementary schools have an EQ effect of 8.5 and High Schools have an EQ Effect of 8.  I propose Private Schools have an EQ effect of 9, and apply to all ages from Elementary to Junior College.  So their stats would be as follows:

The value 9 seems right to me

11 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

If I understand you properly, I don't know if this is strictly needed.  Can you be specific about what's involved in the creation of a controller for so-called Vanilla users like me (I'm not strictly vanilla since I've applied the ERM now)?  You mentioned water, crime, and education - are those just capacities and radius effects (and the application, or non-application, of the ERM)? If so, maybe what's needed is a better distinction between the creation of CAM buildings that have a large radius and capacities, and non-CAM buildings that do not have such huge radius and capacities.  Maybe a New Properties for CAM, and a New Properties for non-CAM.  I'm wondering if the new PIM-X can toggle between them somehow, like with a setting or a switch.  If so, it might make it very, very easy to convert and re-calculate between a CAM building and a non-CAM building.  Maybe the new PIM-X could even apply further mods like the ERM as an on or off toggle as well, possibly.  Just thinking out-loud.

Let me give you an example. CAM and CAM-SPAM users can access a feature in the utility exemplar that allows them to use partial simulation for fresh water and saltwater, which is disabled in the vanilla configuration. As a result, a vanilla user is unable to properly run a lot that is designed to use fresh water or saltwater.

REM modifies some parameters of the Residential Exemplar. “Crime Doesn't Pay” and “Crime and Police Station Fixes for ModPacc Zero” also modify the Crime Exemplar.

It's not about radius or anything like that; it's about making superficial changes to the game's simulation. So I'm wondering: Is it worth creating a vanilla controller, or should we just let the CAM-SPAM controller be a “vanilla plus” that includes more functional farm behavior than vanilla?

[Kel9509 1,476]

37 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

It's not about radius or anything like that; it's about making superficial changes to the game's simulation. So I'm wondering: Is it worth creating a vanilla controller, or should we just let the CAM-SPAM controller be a “vanilla plus” that includes more functional farm behavior than vanilla?

Ok, that clarifies things a lot.  The way I see things, Vanilla users start the game with no addons and they may slowly apply addons that still work with the base game, like NAM or even a ton of basic fixes here like I-R, I-HT, even the Universal Commercial CAP fix.  I also have the CoriBoom Modpacc Zero Crime and Police Station Fixes, again in a "Vanilla" game. It's people who are incremental downloaders, and do not start a new region with a new simulator like CAM or CAM-SPAM in mind.  Also, they are likely people who also are playing on older regions and do not want to destroy their existing regions.  People like Haljackey, for instance.  

If a person wants to apply new things like Advanced Water Management, then yes they may have to re-do their plugins and downloads and start over again, unless that mod can somehow be made for a "Vanilla" game.

I suppose a "Vanilla" controller would be useful for anyone who wants to continue to keep their existing regions and incremental downloads, but also take advantage of new features like Advanced Water Management.  The main idea is to be able to keep existing regions (bulldozing all educational buildings or police stations isn't as catastrophic as restarting an entire region).

The ERM includes an override of the Residential Simulator, since it changes the EQ degradation from 0.2 to 0.1, and the EQ Reset value to either 20, 40, 60, or 80 (depending on the user's choice).  It makes sense that when working with a system of integrated mods, like CAM, or CAM-SPAM, incompatibilities are strictly drawn between mods that change systemic things like the Residential Simulator.  CAM famously listed a bunch of incompatible mods because they changed things that CAM also changed.  An ERM "vanilla" mod that I'm proposing to release would be identified clearly that it conflicts with CAM, for instance.

So I guess my answer is - maybe?    If a "Vanilla simulator" can take advantage of new things like Advanced Water Management without requiring people to destroy existing regions, then I see no reason against it.  There is definitely a group of people who do not want to destroy existing regions to convert to CAM.  Many of those people, like me, have to apply individual fixes since that was the way things were done before they were integrated into something like the SC4 System Integration Module.  As for me, I'm reluctant to move over to that SC4 System Integration Module because I don't precisely know how it will affect things, and I would really need to know what a "Vanilla simulator" would do before I install it.

In the meantime, I'll clean things up and release a version of the ERM that incorporates Private Schools into the ERM (with sliders) and the other reward buildings.  @xBlaze89x included CAM 2.1 files in his beta version but I'll remove those since those are depreciated.

EDIT: I still think that PIM-X needs an option for CAM and non-CAM buildings, because there is no way that can really be universal.  It doesn't scale up properly like growable buildings.  

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

I also have the CoriBoom Modpacc Zero Crime and Police Station Fixes, ...

An important realism aspect of this is the ability to have variable funding without causing police strikes. I presume that'll continue in all future versions which are absorbing CB's and my work.  

We had intentions to overhaul the Fire Stations with the same feature, but RL got in my way for a few years. 

 

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

(bulldozing all educational buildings or police stations isn't as catastrophic as restarting an entire region)

I'd suggest using the method I developed in the both the Police Stations and City Halls Fixes wherein all of the old plops can remain in place.  

[Kel9509 1,476]

On 6/21/2026 at 11:35 PM, CorinaMarie said:

An important realism aspect of this is the ability to have variable funding without causing police strikes. I presume that'll continue in all future versions which are absorbing CB's and my work. 

I see that @Ulisse Wolf released his Vanilla Controller.  It's saturated with CAM language (which, despite all efforts, I will always equate with higher stages - please strongly consider abandoning the term "CAM" for anything other than high-stage buildings) and I don't know how it differs from the regular game otherwise.  I highly suggest detailed explanations of what goes on under the hood would be useful for all of these various Controllers.  Not sure if it incorporates any ERM, or anything else.  Also, I'm not even sure if I could use it at all since the documentation doesn't even tell me what mods it may be incompatible with and whether I'd need to un-install a one-off download like Less Abandonment or something else.  And finally, I'm not sure if it's any better than what I have right now, absent documentation saying what it really does.  Also, does this Vanilla Controller make any ERM I release completely worthless?

As for police strikes, I've been stalled in working on what I planned on doing due to real life work.  I realized last night, however, that with all my one-off mods installed including your police fixes, that any ERM I wanted to use for myself, let alone release publicly, should be compatible with what I already use.  And that's just another way of saying that I'm not even sure what your police station mod fixes and if it is itself a residential controller already, or something else.  Same with the Less Abandonment Mod, I-HT fix, or anything else.  I don't really mess with these Controller setups myself otherwise like Ulisse Wolf does all the time, so I'm not sure if anything I create for an ERM would override something I'm already using.

And then there's the issue of options.  I liked that @xBlaze89x had options for the reset value for new residents to be 20, 40, 60, or 80%.  Personally, I was going to set mine at 60% but still of course want to offer the options to others.  I assume that the new CAM Vanilla Controller has a standardized setting for everyone, probably at 80.  

Based on what you say above, I assume that the police fixes are baked into the Residential Simulator somehow, right?  So if I incorporate any fixes in your mod they'd need to be kept in any Residential Simulator I release as well, correct?  This is probably why Ulisse Wolf decided to create a Vanilla Controller, to incorporate possibly your Crime fixes as well as the ERM, and anything else (again, documentation would be really nice!).

On 6/21/2026 at 11:35 PM, CorinaMarie said:

I'd suggest using the method I developed in the both the Police Stations and City Halls Fixes wherein all of the old plops can remain in place.

I recall that optionality but I'll need to read up on how you did that, as it sounds incredibly complex.  As I said, I am going to have to bulldoze dozens of my downloaded educational buildings all over my region to make this mod work.  It might  be too much effort to allow people to keep the old Maxis educational buildings but also encourage them to be bulldozed as well.  We'll see how hard it is, if this planned mod of mine even makes any sense given the CAM? Vanilla Controller's existence now.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,444]

5 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

please strongly consider abandoning the term "CAM" for anything other than high-stage buildings)

It's part of the CAM brand, so I'm not interested in this.

6 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I highly suggest detailed explanations of what goes on under the hood would be useful for all of these various Controllers.

The documentation is the least of my worries. With the new PIM-X, a lot of things in the documentation are changing, so it will have to be rewritten from scratch. The same goes for the SPAM documentation,since I’m currently working on resolving the last final issues, I’m not interested right now in writing documentation that most people won’t even bother to read. You can review the changelog to see the changes between the different versions

 

[Kel9509 1,476]

36 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

It's part of the CAM brand, so I'm not interested in this.

I'm not the only one noticing this is an issue, but that's your choice to muddle things.  There's a reason why you renamed CAM Core.  It's just confusing if it doesn't involve growth of high-stage lots in some manner.  I don't even understand what CAM means anymore.  It's a far cry from Tarkus's explanation on his blog.  But this is all besides the point anyway if you don't explain what things do, which is part of explaining what they are.

36 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

I’m not interested right now in writing documentation that most people won’t even bother to read. You can review the changelog to see the changes between the different versions

Let me understand.  You release a mod that affects the simulator, designed for people with existing regions and downloads, and won't even tell them what it really does and if something is incompatible with it?  I mean, the CAM 2.1 manual had a very detailed list of common popular mods that were incompatible with it.  How do you expect anyone to install this if they have no idea what it really does and whether it will work with their downloads?  Trust their luck?  I'm not asking for a the formula for the ratio of radius to fill value, or whatever.  Heck, even a note like - "hey, this mod is incompatible with X very popular mod.  Make sure you uninstall it."  That would probably require less effort than the work involved in making this in the first place. 

And I hate to ask but WHAT changelog?  This is brand new.  Or are you referring to the entire CAM changelog otherwise?  Was I just supposed to know to look at the CAM Controller's changelog if I'm not even using that mod?  

Why be so dismissive or blase?  I'm not a newbie asking about how to install stuff on Reddit, so I don't understand the hostility or dismissiveness. 

EDIT: Also, part of the problem is that you baked in the Educational Realism Mod's requirements into New Properties without any discussion or consideration otherwise, and now we are still faced with a situation whereby old mods and collections are "obsolete" with these requirements.  Whether they'll ever get fixed is anyone's guess, particularly if you are completely dismissive of anyone who asks about a mod's effects at all.  @memo suggested that at least a middle ground for things, but New Properties is basically CAM-only at this point and Vanilla users are screwed otherwise.  Too bad, @memo.  You had a nice suggestion but I guess we're all just newbies or something.

@CorinaMarie I appreciate the help because frankly it looks like the entire SC4 world is going to be forced into CAM gameplay at some point (whatever CAM even means anymore - here apparently it means creating a library you need to have a filling degree of 0.01 in order to run it in your game without blowing out all capacity).  @CasperVg's new PIM-X will incorporate the New Properties that is strictly CAM only because of a single person's decision.  

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

5 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Based on what you say above, I assume that the police fixes are baked into the Residential Simulator somehow, right?

It's been too long ago now for me to remember any specific details.   It was explained in detail tho over the course of three separate topics I created which are all still extant.

 

38 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I recall that optionality but I'll need to read up on how you did that, as it sounds incredibly complex. 

I did write a tutorial for it here. And I seem to recall @Null 45 or @memo or someone derived another way to accomplish the same thing. I believe the key point is if we can create mods which don't require bulldozing dozens or hundreds or prior buildings it'll be so much easier for peeps to convert to a new version.

[Kel9509 1,476]

7 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I believe the key point is if we can create mods which don't require bulldozing dozens or hundreds or prior buildings it'll be so much easier for peeps to convert to a new version.

Thanks, yes I think that'd be nice if I could make that work.  I think I'll have to continue with this mod since who the hell even knows what the so-called CAM Vanilla controller even does?  Will it work with existing regions?  Does it even incorporate the ERM?  I looked at it and it seems so, but there are some things I don't necessarily understand about it.  Will it wreck someone's existing region?  "Screw you!  We don't have time for documentation!"  

I get that people can become tired due to endless newbie pestering, but frankly I'm not sure who appointed someone so dismissive as the decider for all things SC4.

[CasperVg 546]

Quote

@CasperVg's new PIM-X will incorporate the New Properties that is strictly CAM only because of a single person's decision.  

PIM-X is quite data-driven, but I don’t handle the maintenance of new_properties.xml, that’s mostly done by @Ulisse Wolf and @Tyberius06 nowadays. I’d prefer having both “default/vanilla” categories and CAM v4.0 categories (at least for Civics) so the tool can be easily used by modders interested in either CAM v4.0-style calculations or vanilla calculations. Both CAM and vanilla-style mods (and players) deserve solid property values and accurate modding, which is exactly what PIM-X is designed for. Personal changes to the new_properties.xml are always possible, by overriding the default one by placing a new version in %APPDATA%/sc4pimx/new_properties.xml, which will take precedence.

  Edited June 23 by CasperVg  
add possibility for personal override

[Tyberius06 12,234]

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

@CasperVg's new PIM-X will incorporate the New Properties that is strictly CAM only because of a single person's decision.

 

1 hour ago, CasperVg said:

I’d prefer having both “default/vanilla” categories and CAM v4.0 categories (at least for Civics) so the tool can be easily used by modders interested in either CAM v4.0-style calculations or vanilla calculations

Both vanilla and CAM style values/options can be added to the new-properties.xml, but the main question is what is default?!

Because @Kel9509 even PIM-X 2009 (aka the BSC created/maintained new properties) did not have vanilla values. In fact the whole point was getting far away from the Maxis values. However as much as I saw and understood, the BSC used a different approach in PIM-X civics calculation, as I mentioned, because the goal/their standard was to push people to plop more schools if one reaches its limits...

However that is exactly the opposite what many people wants (or at least a vocal minority). That's why there is a huge demand on radius doublers and capacity doublers etc... 

As I mentioned before in many occasions my used to be playing style was hybrid. If visually I need a school or want a school, I plop it, because I want it. Will it be used? Don't care about that. So in that sense I don't care about the large capacity and its effects on gameplay. But that's a personal choice. 

What we can NOT have is the demand for two-three separate override versions of the same lots: vanilla, BSC, CAM. That would be absolutely, total non-sense and completely unmaintainable...

So in that sense first we need to decide that a common ground of values will be used for updating stuff that we/I restore, because I won't make 3 different versions just to satisfy everybody. I am willing to go through once more on the SimGoober civics and in that sense I need to update the JBSimio and some other civics too, because these shifts on value calculations happened in the past 3 years while the restoration also updated contents. However that won't make Mattb's stuff involved, that will still run on its originally set BSC values that came with PIM-X 2009. If someone wants to make a 3rd party override mod for that with whatever values they choose, be my guest, but needs to be a proper override mod.

To be fair I don't know what all these controllers are doing and what's their relation to the education stuff. That's @Ulisse Wolf's project just like most of the modern CAM stuff.
I don't understand why any farming stuff has any relation to these, but I am not developing these mods either.
More deeply I was only messing with the Opera House algorithm in the NP, as I wanted to mimic the effect of the OH fix with PIM-X values. All these EQ boost and stuff like that are above my pay grade I have no interest in them, never had, never touched them and I don't even want to to touch them.
Since I discovered that the base school values are in the config.ini and can be changed (see my post above), I am questioning whether the above showed quadruple effects in the calculations are really necessary there or it would be better just editing the base value in the config and let the other part of the calculations alone. I don't know. 

Consider this. Whatever values Matt used in his education stuff stay as is... Whatever other BSC/LEX related stuff have been/will be restored needs to use a common ground. I don't care what that common ground will be. Come up a sensible value/method and that's gonna be used for the restoration. 

Now besides this, we can add options to the new properties, BUT then if a creator release a new building model and they use CAM values, then whoever is not using CAM but wants the building, they need to create there own version, because no creator can be expected to cover all these options out of the box. 

I don't know if @CasperVg was able to add something to the UI, that by ticking a box an existing and a certain way modded civics building exemplar would be able to be updated and traverse between two or more pre-set modding options based on value calculations in the PIM-X new properties. 
So if one is modding something with CAM values and Kel wants them to have non-CAM values, then Kel double click the filling degree (in new PIM-X 2026) that will bring up comparison value editing window, there is a tickbox, now the program will call the calculations from the NP related to the command from the tickbox... 
I don't know if it will be possible, to be fair. 

Otherwise we need a default value. The stuff that we restore or PIM-X, will use this default value and if someone wants to deviate from that, they are welcome to do their own 3rd party overrides or ReLots. 
 

[Kel9509 1,476]

On 6/23/2026 at 2:07 PM, Tyberius06 said:

Otherwise we need a default value. The stuff that we restore or PIM-X, will use this default value and if someone wants to deviate from that, they are welcome to do their own 3rd party overrides or ReLots. 

This is very well spoken, and again I appreciate it. 

Though, why Matt325's stuff is forever prohibited from editing to a "modern" update standard, but SimGoober and JBSimio's can be freely updated, I don't understand why.  Maybe that's beside the point, but I do wonder.  Matt's intent carries forward forever somehow?  I wish I had that kind of staying power.  I wonder why SimGoober doesn't have it.  Or is it because it's ok for a Staff member to modernize, but no one else can (you said I'd need to make an explicit override mod)? That might make sense, if the updates were fair. But what if those staff members start "modernizing" all civics to a CAM standard with high capacities and ratios and forget about out-of-the-box players?  Would that be fair?  What if they do that by making the modding tools biased to their style?  Also, I see things being updated that, were I to do it, I'd probably be given a stern talking to. And it is odd when a creator happens to notice their stuff has been updated without their explicit permission, though maybe they're ok with it in the end.  I guess we all dodged a bullet there, huh (we wouldn't want another WolfZe situation, would we)?

Still, you are essentially correct that, despite optionality, a person may end up being forced to mod things to how they want them no matter what (maybe the next hot BATter is a full blown CAM zealot or something).  I completely agree.  But my point is, right now the modding tools are geared towards essentially forcing not only the ERM on everyone now by default, but also using a CAM standard.  And this CAM standard might apply for most civics, unless one happens to know the ins-and-outs of writing PIM-X New Properties code, which frankly is beyond almost all of us. @CasperVg may pull a rabbit out of a hat and could bake in some awesome options, as I've seen in the 2026 PIM-X channel, but the options need to exist in the first place.

Shouldn't at least the modding tools be neutral here, even if there is a default?  If there's a default, then shouldn't we as a community endeavor to not forget about the other half, or third, or quarter of the community, that prefers the non-default?  Maybe in fact they're the silent majority, as I suspect they are.  Shouldn't we try to accommodate them in the best manner possible, if we're as welcoming as we all claim?

I started out by saying that I wasn't going to revisit past decisions and fight over the inclusion of the ERM in New Properties.  But maybe I should've.  So permit me to be blunt: It was a dumb idea then, and it's still dumb - at least for anyone who actually wants to play this game and not turn it into a painter.  All the capacities of educational buildings are CAM-sized (how many 3x3 libraries does a person need with 900,000 books?).  Now you, @Tyberius06, may have extra work to update collections like JBSimio's Education Pack, and maybe others.  And players need to update their entire downloads to make it work with new packs like SimGoober, again if they actually play the game.  In the meantime, players are faced with the certainty that either they avoid all packs with the ERM standards applied, or mod the hell out of their game, or, as someone may intend - to install CAM and its various one-size-fits-all Controllers with zero documentation on how it affects their regions and other plugins.  How convenient.  The long-term 10+ year regional players are left in the past to rot, apparently.  They just don't need to install new BATs, after all. 

Ultimately, I'm just trying to offer another mod for people to use if they choose.  And I'm trying to be fair to the players who want to play, particularly those who have regions they're growing.  How fair is it to tell someone to bulldoze their home garden after years of effort and pruning and work to make it look right?  That's what re-starting a region would be like.  I daresay that if @Haljackey ever lost his region, his interest in SimCity4 would cease to exist.

So with all that said:

1. I think it is completely upon us as a community to develop modding tools that are neutral, or fair, or offer optionality when possible.  

2. For the ERM, I think it's fair to include in New Properties so long as there's a version without it.  I don't think "default" building stats should depend on a mod, or CAM.  This is not a "fix" like Private Schools with Sliders, or the Opera House.  It's an option on how to play the game being forced in a modding tool, which isn't right.

3. I also think it's fair that, unless a happy compromise can be provided as @memo suggested, an option for civic buildings exists that does not force CAM capacities and a CAM radius. 

4. Assuming that the Staff here appreciates their own community and the accepts some principles of neutrality in the toolset, I will be happy to contribute to efforts to make those things happen, as well as possibly modding or editing collection packs to include ERM variants or non-ERM variants, if needed, just like there's IRM variants for Industrial collections and CAM variants and Vanilla variants.  

Some people like playing the game, even as a challenge.  Are we going to up the starting funds, up the capacities, the radius, the effects of everything just because of complaints from Reddit that the game is hard at first?  How dumb are we going to make things?  Now starting funds for an easy game are at 1 million in CAM.  No, thank you.  They can play their easy way so long as the tools aren't forcing their playstyle on mine - as they are right now.  That is wrong.  But more broadly than that, I'm not going to shit on half of the community merely because I prefer a certain type of game style, and I'd  hope that the Staff here and those making the tools to mod the game won't do that either.

Thanks, Tyberius for all of your efforts to not only update things for all of us, but keep packs alive with variants (IRM and non-IRM, CAM and non-CAM).  I think you're a pretty reasonable guy and understand one style of play doesn't fit all.  And I hope that things can more forward positively for the players here, a ton of whom are just playing Vanilla and incrementally adding to downloads and do not want to destroy their regions or install mods that conflict with half their plugins any more than a person would bulldoze their home garden.

[Tyberius06 12,234]

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

why Matt325's stuff is forever prohibited from editing to a "modern" update standard, but SimGoober and JBSimio's can be freely updated, I don't understand why.

Matt's intent carries forward forever somehow?  I wish I had that kind of staying power.  I wonder why SimGoober doesn't have it.

Not to brag about myself, but this is why I do these updates and make decisions about these things (often after I was consulting with others; moderators, members, admins), because in many cases I do understand the why. The community has a 20+ years of evolution and history and connections/relationships and various intersite or onsite politics which I examined and investigated and tried to understand and learn. Like history studies... It takes time...
That being said, most if not all of Matt's contents (RCI or civics etc...) were made by SC4PIM-X, which is the modern update standard. The only exception was mostly his transportation stuff, because the more recent changes in the traffic simulator and some further developments regarding transit properties (Switches and capacity) came around 2021-2023. There is a key point: SC4PIM-X (2010), that we use was developed by the BSC Team members and standardized some stuff the BSC-way. Like the civics, which has lower capacities compared to the Maxis values. I explained the purpose of this already (what their thinking was).
From this there is a bunch of used to be intersite politics (from that 2007+ era), which were discussed elsewhere so I won't go into details. JBSimio, SimGoober, Deadwoods (and others) they started modding Simcity4 early on and mostly between 2004-2012-ish. The majority of their contents were made either with Maxis PIM or earlier development versions of the PIM-X or completely mocked up guess-numbers how they felt at that time. I had experienced that, that SimGoober commercials made or updated (by the BSC Team) around 2007 had different capacities and stages than the same commercials updated by the last 2010 version of the NP which was still maintained by them. So the "standard" is mostly the PIM-X calculations (whether you like it or not) that we use for updating stuff. Matt's contents were made by this standard, the others' contents were not, or only partially (even before my updates in recent years). Also it does matter, that while updating stuff, one use the proper filling degree (FD) for the volume calculation. The default 0.5 is NOT always the proper value (sometimes it's 0.1 or 0.68)...

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Or is it because it's ok for a Staff member to modernize, but no one else can (you said I'd need to make an explicit override mod)?

Let's not make this "them vs. us" discussion that would not be fruitful for anybody. I did not say that you need to make an explicit override mod. I said, that the updates will be made in a way which is "standard" and others can make and release whatever they want... 

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

But what if those staff members start "modernizing" all civics to a CAM standard with high capacities and ratios and forget about out-of-the-box players? 

It is a theoretical what if. Let's be fair, currently you are vocal about the high capacities, because it does not support your playing style and try to be vocal for others who might or might not exist, others were vocal about the maxis or even the lower BSC capacities because they wanted to support their 0-10 seconds skyscrapers and these lower capacities did not support their style. Where do you draw the line? We can not please everybody all the time. Currently the vocal majority is pro-CAM with all its benefits and disadvantages to others.
To be fair out-of-box players will need to understand a bit the game before they start jumping into the modded gameplay world. The same way as certain people projected their vision (based on reviews and comments going around in the community) and made certain changes in civic capacities to fit into CAM gameplay, you are doing the same and mixing yourself with the out-of-the-box players. You and the out-of-the-box players are completely different, so you can only speak in your behalf and not in their. You wanted to make a custom version of the ERM that fits your vision... That's far from the out-of-the-box...
If one wants to do out-of-the-box civics, then the Maxis PIM is still available... I tried and managed to restore as many model name xml property as possible so Maxis PIM can be used with most of the model packs where the models have the 0x88777601-G-I xml property. Little history: many modders and teams (BSC included) back in the days deliberately removed this xml property from models and model packs just to prevent others to use their models with Maxis PIM and generate their own building exemplars. SC4PIM-X bypassed this limitation of the Maxis PIM.

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

What if they do that by making the modding tools biased to their style?

You DO realise that SC4PIM-X has always been biased towards the BSC's style and standards, but what they did was that on one hand introduced CAM and its higher stages and unlocked higher building capacities, on the other hand did the opposite on the civics part and halved the stats. That was their way.

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Also, I see things being updated that, were I to do it, I'd probably be given a stern talking to.

Yes. You can make your own version and upload under your account and nobody will say anything. When we modernize and update stuff, it's not just about capacities. The older the contents are, the messier they get. There are tons of stuff to "fix" from inherited other 3rd party mods or inherited irrelevant maxis stuff, typos here and there. You can get involved, it's not like we are part of an elit club.

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

And it is odd when a creator happens to notice their stuff has been updated without their explicit permission, though maybe they're ok with it in the end. 

Well, in those posts everything was written down. I won't repeat myself. I stand by my decisions and reasons there. That certain creator and I had a series of conversation of the situation which should not concern you, as it was not your contents and you were not involved in it. 

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I guess we all dodged a bullet there, huh (we wouldn't want another WolfZe situation, would we)?

Please don't make wild assumptions on things that you don't know or don't see the full picture.
We did not dodge any bullet, because there were no bullets at all. The situation with WolfZe was, that he was kind of taking 3rd party models from internet model warehouses, that he claimed as his own creations and tried to monetise them behind a steep paywall breaking both EA rules and the rules of those internet model warehouses. And the reason of the removal of those files was not entirely his demands, but the might be legal demands of those 3rd parties whose models he used. There was a reason he had to shut his patreon page down after all. Apples and oranges.

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

And this CAM standard might apply for most civics, unless one happens to know the ins-and-outs of writing PIM-X New Properties code, which frankly is beyond almost all of us.

It's never too late to learn new stuff, nobody was born with this knowladge out of the box. We all learnt how to edit certain properties and then experimented with them. 

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Shouldn't at least the modding tools be neutral here, even if there is a default?

They were never, as I pointed out above. Even the Maxis PIM doesn't have neutral values, it does have a bunch of broken ones though...
So far I only heard complaints about that the new calculations (CAM) are forced to everybody, while it doesn't matter which calculations are forced to everybody (Maxis, BSC or CAM), because yours are yet again different, hence you are considering making your own version of ERM.
So now what? Either way you need to do your own version for yourself (and you can share that with the community as a 3rd party mod) because you don't seem to be happy with any of the previous ones.
As for considering every wishes and playing styles in the community, you need to stay on the field of reality... I/we can not do that. Do you have the capacity for that? Do you have the time? Do you have the motivation? Because you are also welcome to do 1-2-3-4 different versions to try to accomodate everybody, please everybody, share these on the exchanges and then everybody can cherrypick the version they wanted to use. Or one can learn and tailor stuff to their own style, but we are not responsible for that.

So no, we do use a standard and anybody who is not happy with that can learn and make their own version. 

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Thanks, Tyberius for all of your efforts to not only update things for all of us, but keep packs alive with variants (IRM and non-IRM, CAM and non-CAM). 

Well little history here again. CAM and non-CAM, yes. The BSC kind of did the same practice (that you are complaining about), when they moved/copied stuff over to LEX. They updated used to be non-CAM lots with the same TGIs to be CAM only. So when I started updating stuff recently, I chose to re-enable the non-CAM versions too. Where I could do it I used the original TGI for the non-CAM, but PIM-X'd version, while the CAM versions got a new TGI.
HOWEVER, with IRM or non-IRM I don't have this kind of consideration. It was discussed internally and in certain cases we chose to publish non-IRM versions or IRM versions separately, but many/most of the udpated industrial contents are coming considering the IRM sorting method only. The PIM-X does not consider that by default; making lots IRM compatible happens as post modding changing the density as appropriate for IRM.

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

1. I think it is completely upon us as a community to develop modding tools that are neutral, or fair, or offer optionality when possible. 

Go for it if you wish, please. But please, don't put extra burden to anybody, act yourself. Don't just speak about it, but learn, experiment, develop, provide; come up with exact ideas (not just vague sentimental ideas), what and how you wish to see. Because your phrasing about neutrality (which has never existed in reality) is very vague... 

11 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

4. Assuming that the Staff here appreciates their own community and the accepts some principles of neutrality in the toolset, I will be happy to contribute to efforts to make those things happen, as well as possibly modding or editing collection packs to include ERM variants or non-ERM variants, if needed, just like there's IRM variants for Industrial collections and CAM variants and Vanilla variants.  

Some people like playing the game, even as a challenge.  Are we going to up the starting funds, up the capacities, the radius, the effects of everything just because of complaints from Reddit that the game is hard at first?  How dumb are we going to make things?  Now starting funds for an easy game are at 1 million in CAM.  No, thank you.  They can play their easy way so long as the tools aren't forcing their playstyle on mine - as they are right now.  That is wrong.  But more broadly than that, I'm not going to shit on half of the community merely because I prefer a certain type of game style, and I'd hope that the Staff here and those making the tools to mod the game won't do that either.

I quote this whole part, because it is just rinse and repeate of the previous things. As I said, there has never been such thing as neutrality in tool sets. I mean in the two main building creation tools, which are the Maxis PIM (pretty much broken in some way) and the SC4PIM-X (which worked for 1.5 decades following the BSC style and standard). These are the two global editors (Reader is completely different that's a manual tool with not much automatic calculations) and none of them are neutral. So what is neutral? How do we know that is right? 

That being said and closing this whole wall-of-text, @CasperVg, @Ulisse Wolf and I discussed the situation and the following will happen. The new SC4PIM-X 2026 by Caspervg will come with a revised new_properties.xml, which reverts the main capacities and calculations on the civic stuff to its 2010 version as this is still kind of a BSC developed tool and we are honouring their decisions, but it also contains advances and developments which are touching different unrelated areas. (The revised NP is already available on the github replacing the current one.)
Although there are partial exceptions:

• Opera House. The student capacity says:

  <eval name="Students" value="max(SCCSOpera,50*int(10+Volume/120))"/>

  The SCCSOpera is set to a fix 25k as minimum in the config.toml, the separate calculation is measured to a PIM-X'd maxis opera house with a 0.6 FD (filling degree) and it would give around 24.850 student capacity. So technically it has an inbuilt OperaHouse fix. Also the Plop cost is set to give 68k. This might be going to be steep for other buildings. I'm not sure about this, never been, but the original PIM-X calculation would give even higher plop cost. The maxis Plop Cost and the OperaHouse fix plop cost is 68k, I tried to mimic it with calculation.
• the plop and bulldoze costs were based on capacities, I changed that to be based on the Volume (dimensions * FD). It just feels a bit more logical. The monthly cost is still based on capacities.
• The Private School has a new pre-set GUID (0x12121205), the new UI with the slider is currently in the Maxis UI Overrdies.dat, but later it will be also placed into the BSC Essentials. Currently nothing is using this UI ID. These changes kind of following RippleJets Maxis Private School with sliders fix. 

The new_properties.xml with the higher capacities for civics to better serve CAM gameplay has also been made available on github as New_Properties.xml-patches.

These new_properties.xml files can be used with both old and new PIM-X by replacing the NP file in the install folder (old PIM-X 2009) or overriding the default one by placing a new version in %APPDATA%/sc4pimx/new_properties.xml, which will take precedence (new PIM-X 2026).

The restored contents on SC4Evermore (and probably in general) will use the default BSC style calculation as it is described above; the necessary updates on those civic contents that came out with the higher capacities will be updated once again, and since we don't want to waste stuff which have already been done, both the CAM specific versions and the BSC style will be included or separately uploaded with a note, that only ONE should be used at a time and they should not be mixed and matched.

That would be it... 

**update: The JBSimio stuff are not affected at all. They are running on the original BSC/PIM-X values as I see only the contents restored last year (2025) might be affected by the higher capacities like the SimGoober contents. So even less reason to worry...

  Edited June 25 by Tyberius06  
additional info.