Idealcastle

Its a great idea and a mod, but a few issues, first it's not being updated or has not been in a long time. Another thing, this lets you place items outside the border, but not on roads, (some yes) but a lot of the buildings are able to place anywhere on the map, this is very bad for the agent system. If you place a sewage plant outside the border and not on a road, just randomly in the terrain, this will not work, it will not help or do anything to your city, and besides the workers will not be able to access the jobs. That mod is a start, but its not complete or safe since the agents get messed up.

The current state of SC13 isnt worth it. At least not yet. major problem is the map size. I actually just re installed SC4 on the computer tonight. and boy I really miss those maps and huge regions. I actually want to play that more than SC13 right now. so much more you can do. You can control so much to your budget, giving you a lot more depth to the game. SC13 is very above the surface stuff. nothing but fancy graphics. I really hope we start seeing better updates to the game. Cause as of right now, there's only so much everyone and myself can mod, the core of the game still needs work.

Bigger maps may never be available in the current state of modding, Maybe not by expanding the fictitious white dotted lines, but maybe modifying everything to be allowed outside the boundary. So I spent most of the day today working up a regional freeway mod, (finally allowing freeways to be bulldozed and full control over them) most regional road mods don't allow bulldozing, And then for added bonus to allow all roads outside the boundary. I found a few things in this attempt to build larger cities. First, I figured out, anything you build, such as modding the freeways and inter-connected streets to other cites, will not be rendered once you load the other cities. So that is a fail. you can't sync all the cities to use connections with streets or roads from other cities. I think you need to modify on the region level and not being inside a city itself (which only maxis can do) Another thing, I was able to transfer water, power etc down freeways (but it of course doesnt allow passed your border, I made it so you can place freeways within your borders to better optimize traffic, such as restructuring the freeways for congestion), I was also able to allow you to plop any buildings/services onto a freeway (plopping only worked in the border) of course could build a mod to allow you to plop buildings outside boundary and possibly onto freeways. But again, would require power/water to have another mod to leave the city limits (still not sure if that is available in modding) A lot of potential, but also a lot of issues that would need to be addressed. But the more you can mod the elements outside, it can become closer to allowing you to build everything outside city limits (expanding the city, without expanding actual borders itself). But this also posed another issue, Zoning, I was able to get zones to work on freeways as well, but they dont build or construct anything outside borders (again another mod, but still unclear if it could happen due to maxis restrictions, zoning and resources, power, water etc seem to be locked up)

Here's what I propose. Maxis needs to allow all game configuration within mods (including maps) allowing us to mod our own regions and map designs. Now, yes some computer from 1990 will not work on this, and maybe the average user playing won't be able to do a map the size of a full region, but, let us choose, give us the option to mod that, if it crashes, those users won't use or be able to use. But for the ones with the machine, the power and the modding ability, we'd want to try that out, we're the ones that can handle the simulation. Offline mode was stated they aren't able to do. yet they did. If they have to rework some of it, then do it, but bigger maps are needed, We want to build on all the land, don't limit. I know this is the story that has been going on since its release, but some of us want to play more than just a metro area, more than just downtown, like the old days, farm land, or outskirts and urban areas. I don't think any of that will ever happen, but it would be cool if the game didn't have such limits. Wonder what they are working on now... their updates have started to slow down since offline mode. I really wish Blizzard (creator of World of Warcraft) bought Maxis, (they make Great games) or at least WIll Wright was still on the team, seems like the wrong people working for the fans that once loved the game. (I still like the game, but interest in its limitations and ability have fallen, need more to make this game have a longer life expectancy. Once you've built a city, you use so much land for large resources, like power, oil, service builds (hospital etc), I know making a region a full city map would be insane, and with the graphs and glassbox agents to handle that would be crazy. But something, at least larger than what it is now, not just a perfect square, why not make more of the land around the city accessible. There's so much land, esp near the water that you can't build on, another idea, like SC4, connecting streets from one city to another, have the borders touch each city. or at least make more cities within the region, and have all the borders touch, that way we can make a huge city, but controlled by different cities etc. Just another idea. One highway connection isnt going to cut it. Not with the traffic load)

Hello, I wanted to post my opinion on mods and the naming convention. When there becomes thousands of mods, and hundreds of them just for Roads, its going to be a lot of wasted time checking each one out, the name of your mod should say in one point what it does. This is my opinion, but I'm a very organized person when I program, When I install mods on the game, I rename all of them as such Mod-GRAPHIC-BurgerKing, or Mod-ROADS-CloserRoadGuides, this way all of the graphic changes are sorted and so are the other types of mods to know what Ive installed and what could conflict with each other. The name of your mod in the exchange, should be more descriptive. You can say more than one word. At least 5 would be great. I know this is only the beginning, but there will be many more mods as this unravels. and they'll be so hard to find due to the vague names. If someone creates a mod and says "ModBuildings", what is it? It should say "All Buildings maintenance free". (a side note) We have a building category, we may need a road category too. You can mod buildings and you can mod roads just the same.