NetPCDoc

Quick note - connections to unplayed (i.e. un-named cities) as well as those leading off of the edge of the Region Map are all considered to go to SimNation. Supply and Demand can be conveyed - via the appropriate mediums - to any where in the region; but non-utilities won't function well at longer distances. Examples of appropriate mediums: Water - uses water pipes Subways - use subway tunnels Ferries - use water-ways (non-moded-surface-water / non-canals) etc. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello haibei, While in city mode - there is a hide/show menus control (underline in box - usually in the bottom left corner). While in region viiew - the region controls include check boxes to hide/show city info (name / mayor) and hide/show transit. Graphic options may increase or decrease automata - such as cars / trains / airplanes / etc. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged

Hello chris0101, Quick Answer - Not able to mod this. However - have you tried the zoning keys on your keyboard? With PC's and Windows - the "Alt", "Ctrl", and "Shift" keys can be used in conjunction with zoning; I believe the "Alt" key will allow you to change the orientation of your zoning - prior to releasing the mouse button; note - if you have avenues / roads / streets on two or more sides of your potential "lot" - you can switch between the two denser ones (i.e. if choice is road on north, avenue on south, and street on west - can switch between avenue and road). In some cases you may need to put in (or leave out) some transit (avenue / road / street) prior to zoning in order to get the desired orientation. The "Ctrl" key, if memory serves correctly, will allow you to zone larger lots - without waiting for the game to combine smaller lots into larger lots - or waiting for the game to offer larger lot alternatives. The "Shift" key overrides the auto-street function when you don't want streets in the middle of the area you are trying to zone. For Landfills - you may have to resort to zoning larger ones to start with (or completely overlaying existing ones when expanding). -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

A Quick wish-list of improvements above and beyond what SimCity 4 allowed: Better (especially Small) "City" type transit options - Sidewalks, pedistrian pathways, bicycle pathways; then streets / roads / avenues; and then trains / subways / highways / air/sea/space-ports. With actual functional transit (paths?) between intra-city ports, inter-city / intra-region ports, and (maybe?) inter-region ports. Having actual destinations in neighboring cities (maybe even in neighboring regions) - once these are actually incorporated (played / started). Maybe a way to plop eye-candy (Fire Hydrants / Newspaper Boxes / Rural Mail Boxes / Telephone Booths / Park Benches / bus stops / subway access / etc) on existing sidewalks or along beside tranist routes that don't automatically include sidewalks? If / When modding permitted - better tools / abilities for transit enabling non-transit lots - and / or placing transit in non-conventional areas (such as plopping subway / bus Access on existing sidewalks). Water Transit pathing, maybe? Maybe - underwater transit (a.k.a. Submarines)? A way to add in additional transit "Types". Surface Water - where raised and underground transit can cross as-is - but ground transit has to be converted to either raised or undergournd to cross; with shallow draft water transit. Water-falls and Hydro-Electric Plants. As well as the Deep Water - where raised and ground level transit requires bridges to cross - with deep draft water transit. Ability for "Over Ground" Bridges to convert directly to "Over Water" Bridges (and vice-a-versa) - and the ability to place ground level transit such that it crosses under "Over Ground" Bridges; and remeber to allow water transit to cross under "Over Water" Bridges - at least whenever the water level isn't at too high of a Flood Stage to allow this.. Ability for bridges (at sufficiently differrent Heights / Elevatoins) to cross - maybe bridge intersections if both at same height (would an "Over Water" Highway Clover Leaf "Bridge" Intersection be just too much?) -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello bcbeerboy, Please Note - the following concerns buildings that are designed to grow - not buildings meant to be plopped. Ah, the old Lot Size / Parcel questions' Please Note - the game can (and given time - will) re-parcel lots to the sizes that your sims desire - within zoning of the same type and densitiy. Laying out zones without using any of the Shift (Shift/Ctrl/Alt) keys, but just dragging deep and wide will show you what size of lots/parcels your sims are currently ready for (or currently desire); note - you can use the escape (a.k.a. ESC) key to cancel the zoning - prior to releasing your mouse button. The lines you get while zoning multiple lots are indicating LOT Boundaries. The arrows, when present, indicate the orientation of the lot(s) and should be adjacent to transit tiles (a.k.a. streets / roads / avenues). While you may get some of your smaller buildings on larger lots/parcels with lot-filling eye candy thrown in, you won't see larger buildings appearing on smaller lots/parcels (i.e. lots that are too small for the building's foot-print). Generally speaking you need a fair amount of population to get zones wider or deeper than three (3) tiles without using any shift (shift/ctrl/alt) keys. But, by using the ctrl / alt / shift keys, you can lay out larger lots so as to encourage larger buildings to appear sooner -or- just to remind yourself where you want to have larger buildings later; in these cases do beware - the game may re-parcel these larger lots into smaller ones that may require you to come back and micromanage from time to time. Also - the game can re-parcel two or more adjacent smaller lots of the same type and density into a larger lot when your sims start demanding larger lots. I've had my fair share of difficulties in getting streets of one-by-one lots to go in back-to-back - the game keeps wanting to combine/reparcel these into two-by-one and two-by-two lots; and these always seem to end up facing the wrong street. Hoping this helps, -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello All, Just a few more thoughts - As well as the City Details graphics setting, have you all checked: Number of Cars/Sims? Building Draw Speed? Texture Quality? and Visual Effects? For Custom (downloaded) Content - have you read all the read-me files and downloaded and installed all of the dependancy files? Some Custom Lots may not have parked cars - as these are (usually - timed) props. For those not seeing parked cars - are you seeing impromptu groups of sims coming and going from time to time during the Sim (Game-Time) Day. Note - except for construction vehicles building transit networks - you shouldn't expect to see any vehicles when the game is paused. Please enjoy the game, -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello ri0tiny0urcity, One possible cause for programs to crash - and then mysteriously heal themselves - is if you have lost sectors on your hard disk drive (like from a hard power off while windows is running); sometimes just running the drive utilities to correct any problems that might exist - along with a system re-boot (or two) will solve these issues. I had a lot of issues (like this) with Windows 98 Second Edition - that were corrected simply by running scandisk. Windows XP seems to be pretty good at checking for things like this on boot-up (but it may take a couple of system boots for XP to decide it needs to check). Another possiblity is a corrupted windows swap file - which again - just takes an extra system boot or two to fix. For Microsoft Windows Systems - Just remember to do a proper restart or shutdown until it does heal itself; as additional hard power offs can compound the problem. Then I did have one system where the processor fan died - and the computer acted really weird until I replaced said fan; I was lucky enough not to have to replace the entire computer. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello moneymoneymoney, Most power plants can be safely operated down to 50% condition - as long as you keep the funding up - before you replace them. Just to be safe - I try to replace my power plants at about half of their advertised expected life span. Then again, I'm so safe that I always enact the Nuclear Free City Ordinace (and run coal plants in neighbor cities until I can get a fusion - a.k.a. Hydrogen - power plant going). rkddudgns - I don't know that anyone has actually sat through the half-life times - but take our word for it - it is a VERY LONG TIME! Some of the modders once found the reference to this - and 10,000 Sim Years sounds like the minimum requred before there is any chance of cleaning up radiation; that is - it probably will be longer!! -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello Strategist01, The problem you mentioned - on details going away after upgrade - is becase the latest upgrade/patch will lower the detail settings - and you need to go back into the graphic settings and increase (at least) the city detail setting. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello Dizastrow, Not enough info to really sink ones teeth into - but: Make sure that the parking areas have access to street/road/avenue (this shouldn't matter - but just in case). Then watch said parking area (at zoom 5 or 6) with the game at slow (i.e. crawl speed) for a couple of days, as the timed props (such as parked cars) tend to show for only a part of each day. Or, maybe see if more vehicles show up while in U-Drive-It mode. Hoping that something helps, -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello nosyreporter, While bussing across city boundaries would be nice - and while the area of effect for City Colleges and Universities would appear to be large enough - alas - no provision was made for wasting local tax dollars on educating those poor folks from other cities. Rather - a city with better schools will attract more of those sims that are ready for a better education - while any city without schools gets the lazy sims that don't want no education, nohow, anyway. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello ewd76, While this is a nice idea - it is not all that easy to do - The service area circles that currently exist are tied to a funding rate. While commute patterns involve the overall length of the commute, the available transit options within the general line of the commute, the length of any chosen transit option within the cummute path, the wealth level of the given commuter, etc. For example - one (in theory) could drive to a parking garage, walk to a bus-stop, take a bus to within walking distance of a subway station, take the subway across town, walk to a El-Rail station, and then take the El-Rail to within walking distance of the desired (C or I) destination. Just how does the service area of the bus, subway, and El-Rail stations - for a trip such as in the example above - compare with a more direct trip (say walking to a monorail station, take the monorail - which just happens to have another station at the right distince and in the correct direction, and walk to the desired destination). On second thought - let us just throw out all of the above realism - and go with this idea. This would definitely cut down on all of the commute hassles. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello BigfootsMonk, Please be careful with your nomenclature - usually a less than 100% (i.e. 10%) efficeincy indicates an overusage (i.e. overcapacity) facility. Generaly a fully funded 2,000 capacity facility would require about a 20,000 usuage to rate a 10% efficeincy. Enjoy the Game, -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Originally posted by: CaptCityAs for the Water min and max, I never noticed any effect when trying different values for water tiles, but land tiles would be different shades of green when changing the settings. Maybe something to do with 'soil type'? quote> That's not "soil type" - the various shades of green are showing different elevations. Seems to go (low to high) from a sandy (tan) to grassy (lush green) to scrabble (or rocky). And, if I remember correctly - this pattern will repeat - based on where you are between the points that the God Mode Raise Terrain (Lower Water) and Lower Terrain (Raise Water) Tools step to. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

Hello mrbisonm, I have not researched this particular area - but it seems that the region.ini values do reflect choices made when you genereate a new region from the SimCity Region view. And manually changing the "Name =" value in the Region.ini file will actually change the region name in the game. If you aren't using custom terrain - you could just keep regenerating a region - until you get the land/sea levels that you want? When using a custom bitmap - you may be able to go back and re-work the bitmap (if you have the appropriate tools/software) - so that the rendered terrain is at the correct land/sea level. The first tool to come to mind is the SC4 Terraformer - that uses it's own version of a bitmap to make region wide changes of this type. -NetPCDoc No detail is too small to be micromanaged.