Marc Collins

I think that is true to a large extent. But at least a good portion of the disappointment comes from sophisticated players who are very familiar with past products (from this company and competitors) and who truly wanted the title to excel. When the title comes so close to perfection (definition being what the market already stated it wanted when a recent prior title from a competitor was released and missed the mark), but then fails in a couple of key ways, it is doubly disappointing. No one was happier than me when major elements of CSL were blatant rip-offs of SC4. If a publisher was willing to effectively modernize, update and improve SC4, with modding capability supported from the get-go--what more could one ask? Instead, it appears that CO cold not even competently copy SC4 because a few (only a few) features were missed that are the ones that make the difference as to whether the title has some semblance of long-term re-playability and the possibility of realism (even as option for the portion of the playing audience that might want that). It's like a paint-by-numbers copy of a master painting, except the technician decided to arbitrarily leave out a couple of the colours or to use markers instead of paint. It still looks cool and decent, but anyone familiar with the original art would immediately be disappointed. CSL is still a somewhat hollow copy for me due to some unfortunate key design decisions. It could have gone in other directions instead, like combining the transit of CO's prior titles as a core element, but they didn't do that, either. It's a Frankenstein that just doesn't quite work because the people who made it did not have the intimate understanding of city planning or city management that the original had. Instead, we have a pastiche with some random overlays that do not add-up to a compelling title unless you are interested in "painting" digital cities and do not care much for the substance beneath. What is fascinating, is that I could write this identical review for another reduced quality and intensity, but prettier graphics poseur: Planet Coaster. The most essential sim/management aspects of Roller Coaster Tycoon (same great company, Frontier) have been lost in favour of stunning new graphics and painting capability. It's impressive as a painter and creative tool. Needless to say, anyone interested in the management aspects is disappointed and a few of the may be expressing their disappointment in ways that could get labelled as "haters."

Too bad Planet Coaster suffers from exactly the same problem as C:SL. They updated the graphics so it is now an amazing amusement park "painter." They forgot to even include the level of park management that was already in the predecessor RCT3. The game is hollow and boring from a sim perspective. As a sandbox, it's great. CiM2 has the identical defective AI to C:SL. It also ruins that game.

So if only the intakes matter, why would OwiHH's example above happen? Sealed pipes should be able to pass through an industrial area without causing water contamination, no?

So the water pipes are porous and allow in contaminants from the areas they pass through? In addition to having to worry about the purity of the water intake itself?

Sounds like a brilliant solution to me.

+1

Well, when a normal or remotely plausible range of growables arrives, hopefully as a result of boformer's great project, I will fire-up C:SL again. Until then, I just can't bring myself to invest the time into it. It's so close to being great, it's frustrating. In hindsight, I would have preferred a literal copy of SC4 with a new 3D graphics engine. The items they left out compared to SC4 are critical to realism and the items they added all seem to have controversial functionality issues (based on reading other threads), or, are window dressing (and window dressing is great IF there are not still fundamental sim issues to be addressed). So we have the new graphics engine, but not all the core issues sorted. As mentioned, it may come with time. At least there is a large and enthusiastic user base to keep improving the game.

You can't if you stay within the bounds of the game. Unlike SC4, there is not a variety of realistic lot sizes available to grow normal-scale buildings (such as the many larger-scale commercial towers that you see in the pic above). You have to manually place "custom" buildings, which for me ruins the immersion and fun. Other people would prefer to place everything manually to have total control. Do you want a city simulator or an architectural sandbox?

There are now growable lots/buildings larger than all the ones that ship with the game? If so, I will take back all I have said. But then I don't know why boformer would be bothering to attempt what he is doing if that was the case.

Larger regions, if made up of cities with exclusively unrealsitic itty-bitty footprint growable buildings because boformer hasn't yet finished with CO should have implemented in the first place doesn't interest me. But I have made that point already. Larger regions made up of cities with identifiably realistically different lot sizes (think the largest farms and factories versus the smallest dwellings and everything in between) would be worth something because you could end up with a recognizable urban form at the end of hours and hours (or years) of growing a city. IF boformer accomplishes what he is attempting, then there will still be months and years needed to create all the realistic lot-size buildings to take advantage of the realistic lots. I'm encouraged, but not holding my breath at this point.

Well then, they are colossally stupid If you can make this even half work as a modder, they should be able to either support a mod, or do it themselves. And sorry, but 1,000 new features can be added and it still won't make the slightest difference to me. If you cannot grow a normal variety of normal-sized buildings, and you always end-up with something that is not a plausible or recognizable urban form, then there is no point playing. And it's as infuriating as CiM2 being 95% of the way to perfect, but a few stubborn decisions destroying that title, too. This is now a trend.

Wow, this is what I was talking about way back at the beginning of this thread. Executed exactly as I had hoped. With free-form zones as well, all that is needed are buildings that are designed for the larger lot sizes and we might finally have something that will resemble a normal city. At that point, the crown might actually get passed. Have you experimented with some larger and smaller (placeholder) buildings to see if they actually work in these new zones? The devs should be supporting this officially--or otherwise even if you can get it to work, there won't be enough people making suitable buildings to take advantage. But very exciting!!!

SC4 Steam version works fine on multi-core and ultra widescreen. I switched to that (for about $5) after the recent Windows 10/SC4 fiasco.

Great ideas. We've needed this (realistic scale zoning instead of the silly blocks that are there now) since day 1 (and some of us have said so), but I don't see any movement on it from the devs.