DestructionPancake

I'm not sure how timetables for game development are nowadays, but I would think this game would have got the greenlight shortly after we started hearing about Sim City 13'. There's no way they could have not seen the many failures, and occasional success of the game. Hopefully they will build upon that.

It looks like they are on the right track and I can't wait to see more. Of course, even if they're on the wrong track I would buy it just to spite EA.

I'm having a problem with the NAM increased capacity for maxis airports. In the menu, the preview shows the enhanced capacity, but once plopped, the airport still shows the standard maxis stats?

I tried to search but I get a ton of long NWM threads. Can anyone help?

Hi, I'm having a problem and want to know if this is normal or not. Recently, I read here that the occupancy stats in the query tool are just maximums and that to find out how many people are utilizing a building you have to route query. I've been doing this ever since and have noticed that in my two extant regions most of the buildings are between 30%-60% capacity for residents or jobs. Obviously it helps if residential areas are close to industrial or commercial to bring the job numbers up. But if I zone a big industrial area, the middle section will develop but the center buildings will only have freight traffic no jobs. I thought it might be because my population was skewed toward wealthy and educated meaning low income jobs were not being filled, but all residential buildings at all wealth levels are the same way. I have high low wealth demand but the low wealth buildings are only half occupied. Anyone have any insight.

I had been doing that by accident and had no idea what it was. Can you explain what the Demand numbers mean? At first glance, I don't get it. If you zone a large industrial area, the center area will tend to have no workers. To solve this you need to add mass transit from your residential areas to the center of the industrial area. Bus stops work the most effectively since they are small and you can add a lot of them. Subways also work but seem to be more effective in commercial zones. My cities are littered with bus stops. I use grids, so every block is about 13 tiles long and between 4 and 6 wide. Every other block gets a bus stop on the third tile. The stops are also staggered to that if the block at column A row 1 did not recieve a stop, Column A row 2 will, and so on and so forth. There is an increase in usage once I add bus stops, but in a large industrial zone, I'm working toward a more realistic scale, the center is still unused, but as stated above, I have about 1.5 jobs for every resident. So residential is under built.

Okay, so I understand that not all the sims work. So the query tool will only show the movement of the Sims who work in a house or building. So a house that has a capacity of 12 and 6 commuters is to be expected because that 12 includes children and the old? If so, that makes sense, and just means jobs are overbuilt, as I initially thought.

That actually looks good. It looks like it would be a great addition to Sim City game play if this game didn't lack half the fundamental elements of Sim City game play.

My pick would be to release the source code for SC4.

I continue to be amazed by how the utter failure of understanding. First of all, there's a difference between depth and complexity. SC4 had a good bit of both, from what I can see, this new game has neither. While SC4 can get very complicated, the learning curve is not that steep. The more ambitious you get, the more it pushes back. This new game would apparently have no challenge at all if it weren't completely broken. You can max out the tile in 6 hours. Once you max out their half a dozen specializations, the game is done because it has not depth.

Is it just me or did he just accuse us of being losers?

741 Exception reports from as early as 2008 totaling over 40 MB in size...

Thank you, this post helped me to understand what the actual intention of this game may be. But I'll say this, while specialization can be fun, real cities largely do not work that way. Certainly, when you get out into rural areas you may have towns that are dominated by a single industry, mining, logging, oil or whatever. But this only happens in very small towns in the middle of nowhere. In large cities, which is where most people live and what most people can relate to, there will be a tourism industry, a manufacturing industry, commercial industry, shipping industry and so on and so forth. All these things are present in varying degrees in the metropolitan area. So it's natural that people try to approximate this in a game that is nominally about building a "city." I understand no game could have a 1:1 scale for something like that, but it just seems like we've lost capability from SC4.

That is absolutely ghastly! If that's the type of regional map we can expect for the life of this game then, sad to say, count me out.

At this point the deal breaker for me is non-contiguous tiles. I could deal with 2x2 IF they were adjacent and I could switch easily. But they aren't and you can't, so it's a no go for me. There are other issues mentioned here, but this is the major one for me.

Wow, that's amazingly dense. Love all the WTW buildings. Looks like you're light on civic buildings though. What schools, safety buildings are you using?

While I am skeptical of this game and quite sure that it was not what I wanted for a new Sim City. I am glad to actually hear some good news about it. I certainly won't be buying it on launch date, maybe after six months or so when I can see what the capabilities really are. But I am still hopeful as evidenced by the fact I've been checking this board almost everyday. That being said, here's another critique... In the video above on the buildings that have large windows you can see inside and see that there is nothing there. Maybe that will change by launch time. And I'm still not quite thrilled with the scale in this game, but I'm sure I'll get used to it if given a reason to.

I've been playing SC4 for six years now, played on SNES, play 2k and 3k. Being stuck to a single 2x2 tile is a deal breaker. I wish I had something more positive to say but I have to agree with those who say that this game has lost functionality that SC4 had for no reason other than to add multiplayer which was at the top of no one's list. I'm far less than optimistic about this one.

Ok, this has always been a pet peeve of mine with SC4. Why don't parks and recreation facilities have any feedback? User rating? Congestion? Efficiency? Average Horse-shoe score? It's always bothered me that every other civic facility has some level of interactivity while parks are simply squares that suck up money and may or may not make your mayor rating go up. I would like to see parks become overcrowded as density increases. I would then like it if their park effect decreased or even became negative. I'd like to be able to upgrade parks. I would like there to be some interaction between neighborhoods and the parks. As in, family communities need playgrounds and ranger stations. Old communities need walking paths and shuffleboard courts. How well recreation facilities are matched to neighborhoods and user needs affects thier ratings and thus, the mayor rating. I would like it if parks were affected by environmental factors. In high crime areas parks lose their basketball nets and swings. In low health areas they're unused because everyone is convalescing inside the house. I know people are already complaining about micromanagement, but I've always felt this was an oversight. Recreation facilities can be a big political tool and I don't think it makes sense that the parks in Sim City have thus far been fairly shallow. Any thoughts?

I think a "Wildlife" or "Greenspace" zone would be nice as it is difficult not to infringe on those areas even after you mentally zone them. Something like that could have a park effect, perhaps slightly lower, without the maintenance costs. But I'd still like traditional modular plop parks.

I agree about the modular system. That's the best way to fit parks to the needs of particular cities. ALthough, I do like having some large park plops for when you need to take up a lot of space or as a placeholder until you feel like being a landscape designer. I actually think the BSC parks with the paths and gates are almost perfect. IF we got something like that in SC5 with a few more options, and maybe something similiar for plazas and rivers a la peg, I'd be satisfied as long as they actually worked and had some management tasks.

I'm guessing that if someone chooses to build a turn of the century industrial city and consumes all the coal they won't simply "lose", but perhaps gain the option of importing it from "Sim Foreign Nation" at a greatly increased cost a la real life. I'm sure Maxis knows all users aren't neccesarily interested in creating perfect 23rd century utopias.