Less $ Emmigration

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

Normally, when the situation of your city isn't that optimal, Sims will just emmigrate, leave it behind. This makes a lot of sense, specially for wealthier Sims. But I think $ sims should have a lower chance of abandoning your city, forcing them to endure more hardships if you want to be a dystopian dictator.
In part, the reasoning of this possible mod is to allow us to see more of the riot events in the game. In order for a riot to occur, mayor satisfaction has to reach real lows in an area, which is logical; but it seems that every Sim just opts to leave your city way before such real lows are allowed to be reached; resulting in very few riots in the game, if any. Is it possible to lower the threshold in which R$ Sims decide to leave your city, so that we can see them rioting if we opt to be not-so-good leaders? A look at some exemplars suggest the "Desirability Threshold Decline", maybe this is the threshold that the game uses to decide if a Sim stays or leave, and so this is the number I should lower?

This exemplar uses a Sint32 data type. For R$, the default value is 0x00000032, which seems to mean 50 according to this converter. Should I lower this number to 0? Are negative numbers allowed? According to the converter, it is possible, but maybe the game places a hard positive-only limit?

[CorinaMarie 29,642]

7 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

A look at some exemplars suggest the "Desirability Threshold Decline", maybe this is the threshold that the game uses to decide if a Sim stays or leave, and so this is the number I should lower?

I'm sure you are familiar with the Exemplar Properties Page. And looking there says: Tracts with desirability greater than this value never abandon. And, ofc, you know tracts are groups of 4 x 4 cells and are counted from the upper left corner. So, that would only keep alive the buildings and (presumably) their occupants. I'd question that tho. I believe it might keep them from abandoning for desire related issues, but not from job lack or commute time.

 

7 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

For R$, the default value is 0x00000032, which seems to mean 50 according to this converter.

That is the correct conversion (and that's a well designed site).

 

7 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

Should I lower this number to 0?

Sure. Give it a try and test in game.

 

7 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

Are negative numbers allowed?

Yes, if your question relates to hexadecimal itself. For instance you can use your converter site to see -100 in decimal is 0xFFFFFF9C as a Uint32 in the game.

Ofc, the more important question is: Does the game recognize a negative value for that property? It's quite possible. Might be you could plunk in 0xFFFF8001 and everything that has grown would be tinkled pink even if you blow up some Nuclear Power Plants nearby.

(I doubt it, but then again, it could work that way.)

And, from my own experience there are some properties in the game which treat any negative number the same as zero. I don't recall which ones I was investigating a few years ago, but the fact it wouldn't deal with negatives negated my brilliant idea (whatever it was).

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

Actually, I was looking at some ordinance mods, and noticing how they can impact Mayor Rating directly, I thought of something: in the end, what really triggers the riots is the local Mayor Rating, right? What if there was a law that completely destroyed the city-wide mayor rating without affecting desirability? Perharps this way we can have a fertile ground for riots (thanks to the low popularity) without Sims just leaving the city (desirability is untouched, and I believe it is the main driver behind exodus).
I was checking this Ordinance Mod, particulary its Youth Curfew Act modification,  and this possibility came to me. But this idea depends on riots and exodus having different triggers (mayor rating and desirablity, respectivelly).

[CorinaMarie 29,642]

11 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

What if there was a law that completely destroyed the city-wide mayor rating without affecting desirability?

I used the Maxis version of the Youth Curfew Act and at 0xFFFFFFCE (-50) and Big City kept right on going, but when I did a 2nd test at 0xFFFFFF9C (-100) we did get a riot.  

^ I’m not sure if it was the overall Mayor Rating hitting -20 that caused the riot, or just how fast the rating plummeted.

So, it seems to me you are on to something and prolly need to test for the exact threshold where it is or isn't riot inducing.

Then if +Mayor rating can be added to ploppable lots (which I seem to recall is possible), maybe try +1 for a 10 or 20 cell radius. For a dystopian idea, they could be modded to look like armed guards at checkpoints or something. This might allow a delicate balance to be achieved during game play.

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

I think this is indeed the way to approach this. I made some modifications to the Ordinance Mod, including this Youth Curfew Ordinance, making it even more extreme. I also made modifications in other areas, but I would like to know one thing: the demand modifications, they are additive or multiplicative?
For example, suppose I have two ordinances, each one giving a -25% penalty to I-Ag demand. If I enact both of them, the final impact would be -50%, or -43% (1-(0.75*0.75))? I think the second case is the obvious answer, but I changed such demands in some of the ordinances and, when enacted, Ag demand in Big City Tutorial went from super-high (I'm using CAM) to complete exodus-like. Maybe is this mod interaction with CAM?
 

Ordinance Mod - V2.0_Updated.dat

 

I don't know, maybe I went waaay overbord with the impacts of the ordinances, even though that was kind of my idea (making the ordinances more impactfull). I will try different numbers to see what I get. But when the exemplar says "a -25% impact on the demand", I thought it meant "your demand for this developer will always be 3/4 or what it would normally be", is this how it works?

[CorinaMarie 29,642]

10 minutes ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

If I enact both of them, the final impact would be -50%, or -43% (1-(0.75*0.75))?

While I don’t know the exact answer, you might be able to figure it out using my mod found in: Those Stretchy RCI Graph Demand Bars. This would let you see exactly how the demand numbers change and reverse-engineer which calculation is correct. Be sure to grab the CAM version. 

It was originally made for v2.1, long before v2.5 was released. I know CAM significantly boosts demand, but I’m not sure if this part differs between versions.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,414]

46 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

It was originally made for v2.1, long before v2.5 was released. I know CAM significantly boosts demand, but I’m not sure if this part differs between versions.

The RCI simulation of CAM 2.5 remained identical to CAM 2.1.1.

So the Those Stretchy RCI Graph Demand Bars mod should also work for CAM 2.5

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

Some updates:
I've been playing with the Mayor Rating approach for more riots in the game, and it looks to be more promissing than the Desirability one. Instead of angering Sims trough desirability, I'm doing it trough Mayor Rating.
Recently, I've been messing with the Mayor Rating Effect exemplar present in some buildings, such as the Federal Prison reward. I particulary liked this cohort because it allows us to localize focus of mayor ratings better, instead of simply reducing it globally troughout all the city; now we can more easily have different neighborhoods in the same city tile with vastly different views about the governance of the city.
I changed the parameters of such exemplar in some key buildings, like the aforementioned Federal Prison, to test its effects. I've noticed two things:
1- Most of the buildings have a huge radius of effect, meaning that if you plop a Federal Prison in one corner of the largest city, you can expect at least half of the tile to suffer the negative impact. Ok, maybe the radius isn't that big, but I did find it to be larger than I wanted. I reduced the radius for 32 tiles ( 0x00000020  in hex) because I think it fits the idea of a "neighborhood" better, specially once you consider the size of cities in number of cells. Now, "this radius size is good" is obviously a subjective statement, so let's not focus on it; what truly matters is that the radius parameter really works and play an effect in the game.

2- When it comes to the other parameter, the magnitude of the effect, I experimented with some numbers. It works fine as well, you will see a clear impact in the game if you input huge numbers here. What I need to know, now, is a sense of scale for these numbers; and for that, knowing the range of numbers the game use to store the Mayor Rating effect would be useful. For the federal prison, I tried using a magnitude of -50 first. It worked, but not neraly as much as I thought. I could see the difference, but it wasn't as big as I expected; so I cranked up the rating damage all the way to -200. Now we can see the red appearing in the Mayor Rating Visualization map; and yes, with it comes the riots! I'm not so sure about it, but it looks like the game stores the Mayor Rating data between -256 to +256? Or is it -100 to 100? I understand that the Federal Prison isn't the only thing affecting the Mayor Rating in that area, but still, if this number ranged from -100 to +100, a building impacting a -50 should have a larger effect than it showed up in my opinion.

This is what I've discovered in the few tests I did. In my opinion, this could be a promissing way of inducing more riots in the game; but I will keep looking for better values for the Magnitude effect.

PS. I understand that the focus of this thread kind of veered away from the "Less R$ Immigration" title; my focus was always trying to increase the odds of riots appearing more in the game in a more natural manner, I thought that preventing R$ emmigration was a good way to approach it, but then this Mayor Rating effect came into view. If desired, I could start a new thread more focused on this new approach.

[CorinaMarie 29,642]

9 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

I understand that the focus of this thread kind of veered away from the "Less R$ Immigration" title; my focus was always trying to increase the odds of riots appearing more in the game in a more natural manner,...

Since the first post is yours you can edit that and it'll give you access to changing the topic title. (If you want. You don't have to.)

Looks good for your experiments. I've not much time for any experimenting, but I like where you are going with it.

 

9 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

I've been messing with the Mayor Rating Effect exemplar present in some buildings,...

It sounds like that might be a property in the Building Exemplar. No? And if so, have you considered adding it to something growable? I seem to recall @SimGoober made a set of adult C$ lots that had a bit of a negative aura and perhaps you could add your negative Mayor Rating to them (if they don't already have it).

Or if this sounds like something you'd like to tinker with, I have my own Growable Garage on a 1 x 1 low density lot that has a slight negative effect (tho I forget what I gave it) if you want an easy basis to tinker with. Let me know and I'll attach it to a post.