Keln

Well, perhaps it does not interest you, but what interests you does not apply to me. I do, in fact, find nuclear explosions fascinating. It is my express hope that I shall never live to see a real one, either near me, nor on the television broadcasting from some foreign nation. But in simulation, I am very much interested to see it. I like to see the effects of such a weapon. Not death, but the material effects on the infrastructure of a modern city. Unfortunately I have not found a realistic version of one yet, or, perhaps the effect is much less than I had thought. Many things interest me that I may never want to see for real. I have always been interested in reading about and seeing pictures of the greatest conflict in history, WWII. But I would not want to see it in real life. There is a vast difference between simulation and reality.

Well, I had originally had 2 roads sandwiching a rail line. This runs north to south my entire industrial sector on the western part of the map. It's a big map, the eastern main section of New York. Eventually, there were alot of traffic problems up in that northwest corner, so I decided to build a ground highway parallel and to the east of the road/rail/road combo. I did this, and also added another road parallel to the east of the highway. This combination runs together from about mid-map western edge up to the northener edge and to another town. Eventually I received the army base as a gift from doing UDI missions (evil ones). I decided to place it in this northwest corner right next to the eastern road that runs parallel to the aforementioned ground highway. Next to the Army base, I finally placed a fire dept airstrip. All went well like this for a good while. I dunno, probably a year or two. Well, I began to survey my transportation schemes as I do from time to time and figured out the ground highway was barely being utilized. So I bulldozed it and zoned some more ID/HT. No sooner was I finished with this project than the Armybase just collapses into nothing but an outline of the grounds of the army base (ie. the buildings disappeared with a loud noise). I was kind of confused, but I just bulldozed the remains and rebuilt the AB. It didn't last a second or two. I kept trying this. Everytime I set it down, dozens of tanks and army trucks appeared in like a huge traffic jam on the road by the base. I cannot be sure, but I swear I saw them shooting for no reason. It is my theory that this cased the destruction of the base in each case, but as to the why, and the correlation of such a thing with the removal of a ground highway 3 spaces away and not actually in contact with the base is a complete mystery. Seems to me that if this is an easter egg, it would be quite difficult to duplicate it. I think, more likely, it is a 1-in-a-million error or "bad instance" caused by an alignment of the right things. Somehow it depended on: a) The previous exsistence of a ground highway 3 spaces away. b) A connection with said ground highway to the road coming into contact with the spaces on which the army base is built. c) Building an army base on those exact tiles after a and b were in exsistence. d) Possibly the NAM modification being installed e) A base full of poorly trained tank drivers, maybe... I honestly don't know. I tried restarting the game, and my system and all of that, and as long as the highway is gone, it blew up. As long as I keep the highway (as well as all above stated details) privates will be peeling potatoes and scrubbing latrines forever in my city.

I rebuilt the ground highway and the armybase is fine now. Some strange NAM bug maybe.

But I like the army base.

Well, I have placed them before in other cities and it never happened. This one I earned with Dr. Vu missions in my growing city of 600,000 souls, and since I've never had financial troubles in this city, it is a belated entry. There isn't anything spectacular about it, just kind of like plop the AB down, and then all the buildings fall down and a teeming mass of tanks and army trucks that had been on the road by the AB disappear, leaving only an outline of an army base to bulldoze. Keep rebuilding, and it keeps re-falling. It had actually lasted a year or so in the city before this started happening. The only change I have made in the general vicinity is to bulldoze a ground highway I had put in to better manage traffic to that far, industrialized, corner of the map. It was sandwiched betwixt two roads...one road directly connected to industries, the other to the armybase. The hwy had been there before I plopped the armybase. Since nobody was using the thing, I decided to get rid of it so as to free up more space for zoning IHT. It wasn't long after I had removed the highway, zoned the IHD/HT, and restructured the roads, that the armybase started handing me it's DD214 over and over again. I didn't really change the road by the base at all. I don't get it.

My army base keeps exploding, always within a few minutes of placing it if not a few seconds. It looks like the tanks are shooting at each other on the road and blowing everything up. This a bug?

Here's some pictures of my city being nuked.

Yeah, once upon a time I had to study different nuclear accidents. After learning alot of reactor engineering stuff, reading those reports and data, etc was pretty entertaining. Alot of "what the heck were they thinking?". But anyways... I tried starting fire to a nuke plant with lightning. I tried many bolts. It didn't work... The lightning looks and sounds cool, but it seems kind of ineffective.

And also most cores built in the last 2-3 decades are incapable of a true meltdown. Once upon a time, plants like Chernobyl used a seperate moderator and coolant, so that when the coolant dried up (ie. turned to steam) due to a casualty, the moderator was still there (graphite) and kept the core at power, thus leading to a meltdown. Nowadays, the moderator and coolant are both purified water and if it turns to steam it doesn't bounce them wee little neutrons back into the fuel rods/pellets and thus the core shutsdown rather quickly before too much damage can be done. This is called "negative temperature coefficient of reactivity". Well, in case anyone was curious.

That's a silly misconception. A nuclear meltdown does not cause an atomic explosion. The core just melts and alot of bad nasty fission particles may or may not get released to the enviroment.

Thankyou both very much.

Can you rename a Region? if so, then how?

Well, being that there are folks that have built multi-million sim cities, there has to be a way around this. The residential buildings being abandoned are now affecting my commercial interests which have not enough customers.

Commute time is killing me as well. I didn't have a whole lot of traffic issues before with the standard NAM settings. I have built an extensive mass transit system (bus, rail, subway) as well as double roads, avenues, and highways. It was all green, with a little yellow and a red spot or two on the map. Well, commute times were causing alot of the bigger residential buildings to be abandoned "due to long commute". Sometimes across the street, another smaller residential building have a "short" commute time. It's wild. I have tried everything to no avail. I even re-installed NAM with different settings, even the radical one. The commute times actually went UP drastically with the radical mod. All it did was erase traffic congestion completely. I'm totally at a loss, my city has stalled in growth because of this. I'm at 225K population and about 1/3 of a large city map used, so there isn't even that far to travel. The buildings with the longest commute are the ones closest to the jobs! I even built an industrial sector in the middle of my city (it's all Hi Tech) and this didn't help. They could spit on their office window standing in their front yard, but still a "long" commute.

I wouldn't use Phoenix as an example of a typical city for anything. It's built like the pre-planned grids so many seem to hate. I loved living there, so easy to get around in a grid. The only thing I hated was the diagonal Grand avenue and the RR tracks. It was a nightmare getting through one of those intersections sometimes. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't LAX pretty much in-town? I know Chicago, Indiannapolis, Louisville, Columbus, and Cincinnati stick theirs kind of out of the way. Chicago used to have Miegs Field, which was a small airstrip on the lake, but the mayor shut it down for some reason a few years back. Heck, Cincinnati's airport isn't even in the same state, they stuck it in Florence, KY.