WaterHornet

Since I can't figure out mass transit for the life of me a mod to help us figure out what buildings are being influenced by bus stops/park and ride/streetcar stops would be super handy. Either I'm doing something wrong (and have been for the year and a half I've been playing) and placing stops in an inappropriate fashion or the game has a funny way of handling mass transit. I don't know why tourists insist on getting off at the university and why shuttle buses keep telling me they're bringing riders to the neighbor when it's too early in my region to have intercity mass transit. I know there's a green AoE for the street but is there some sort of "pineline/sink" the stops follow? Being able to visualize the kind of places the agents will be interacting with would be super helpful. Otherwise, I'm zoning wrong, placing stops wrong, or the mass transit is just wonky and I'll have to simply get over it and stop trying to figure it out... I'm a dummy so I'll add this too. Is there an overlay that exists (or can it exist if it doesn't) that shows what wealth level each shopper Sim is. Any time you click a Sim it just shows one Simoleon in the pop up box. It makes it hard to keep track of shoppers because from the dialogue box every shopper appears to be seeking low wealth shopping. I'm not sure how helpful this would be but it's something that annoys the heck out of me.

So here's one for you intrepid modders. I'd try to do this stuff myself but I have zero programming skills and I doubt this old dog can learn new tricks. I posted this idea on the official SimCity forums so I'll just quote myself here: "I know that no one at Maxis is going to read this, but I can't help but feel an urge to voice my opinion anyway. I've gotten back into playing SimCity as I learned the hard way that trying to play with other people is just stupid. Kids come in and make this super messed up city and then abandon it soon after when their weird little experiment backfires. Is it REALLY necessary to have 50 smelters?! I think not. OR you have some snotty brat who drops the game into cheetah speed and gobbles up all the available research leaving the rest of us with nothing to do later in the game. But besides the weird always online thing that I can always avoid by just playing offline, I'm really growing tired of Great Works just not being as great as they were supposed to be (what I'm assuming). I think Maxis should take some of their The Sims 4 money (which I'm sure they're making a boat load of...) and give SimCity some more updates just so those of us who are still playing and being wistful thinking we're getting more content and expansion packs. Or, maybe a modder out there will read this and look into it and see if there's any way to get this to work. I think there is a way and one that wouldn't take a lot of work or effort into rewriting the engine or anything like that. I may be wrong but here's what I'd like to see, and I think that more than one player would agree with me: Firstly I would like to the Great Works showing up in the region view even if they're not directly influencing my little subsection of cities. It would make the maps look a lot prettier without having these huge open areas on just nothing. Secondly I would like to have Great Works benefit the entire region, not just the 4 cities they're connected to. It makes them utterly pointless to complete when such a small area of the map is able to benefit from them. I'm using the largest 16/4 maps as a point of reference. Obviously the smaller maps that only support one Great Work influence the entire region because the HAVE to. But the large regions are silly in that the Great Works only offer the immediately connected cities a boon and not the entire map. The Arcology: People living in the Arcology should be able to reach all cities on the map. I've seen residents travel from all cities on a map using whatever mass transit methods available. At least I'm pretty sure I REMEMBER seeing it happen. If I recall correctly any city, regardless of if it's connected via road or not will at least use the ferry to get across the water to the other cities on the other side of the map. I'm not sure if municipal airports support this or not. But, Arcology residents should be able to spread across the map using whatever mass transit they can find to get where they want to go to influence the other cities of a region. The International Airport: Duh...this should be an easy one and probably the most logical. It should be used as a connecting hub for the entire region being able to transport workers and shoppers to any city that has a municipal airport. The Solar Farm: This one I don't mind being only influential to the cities it's connected to. It's not like you can bottle up sunshine made electricity for transportation (or...can you?). What would be nifty is to have some sort of collecting array you can plop in your city that the mirrors from the farm can beam light into to super heat water (provided by your city) to run a turbine to produce cheap electricity with the giant bubbles that the Great Work produces. The Space Center: I'm at a loss for this one. Again, if residents can get across the invisible barriers set up by the need for a road connection then you can at least get some sort of bonus for having residents of your city visit the space center. Maybe somehow manipulate the game to send shopper agents to the Space Center to come back and provide education like the public library does? Before I get told in no short terms that the development team is dead and has moved on, at least let me have my little dream. I will however not be surprised to hear that the modding team can do no such thing as it would take either too much work or the engine doesn't support this kind of gameplay addition. If it doesn't come directly from Maxis (though it should...like I said some of that The Sims 4 money could be diverted away for at least a LITTLE bit more development to bring the spark of life back into the game and they really should have some pride in their work...) then maybe the modders out there can finagle some way to at least get the Great Works to show up in the region view instead of the map looking like some desolate wasteland. If writing code to get Great Works to actually have any influence at all over the entirety of the map, than at least coming up with some way to have them show up in the other slots would be good enough for me...and the other players too I think!" I'm also thinking of somehow twisting the game into a new shape with ploppable modules to add to Great Works? I know this is probably impossible, I'm nearly positive that everything in this post is currently impossible without having deep access to the game's code but I figured this would be the only place that would take these ideas seriously. If Maxis isn't going to continue to provide us with content for the game then they should fully hand over the ability to generate new, free content to the community. Oh and some new Great Works would be awesome. I don't know what they'd be or what they'd do but the 4 we have are a bit bland...

I had a hard time as a lot of modders don't specify if their mods are tested online. I found one that's made basically ONLY for online and it allows you to open up the Global Market from in the game instead of the main menu only. There's a mod to fix the texture of the parks to make them blend in with the ground below them to give them a more natural feel. The Extended Workers Data tool is made by a Maxis employee so that's like a given that it'll work and has been tested online. I literally went through every single mod posting and only downloaded the ones that specified if they were okay for online play. I know what you mean though, the site doesn't allow you to view online and offline-only mods easily.

I'm just NOW getting into modding the game and only if they're compatible with online play. I'm too nervous to start messing around with files that are offline only. Knowing me I'll forget what I have installed and I'll mess up mu installation somehow. And I'm not looking forward to having to clean up my mess. As it stands I just downloaded a bunch of new texture replacements, a tool to open the Global Market in game (c'mon Maxis this should have been in the release), and the Extended Worker tool. I've yet to install them...I'm just reluctant. I'll get over it though and I'm sure my enjoyment of the game will sky rocket. I don't know why people flipped like rabid animals back in 2013. Sure the simulation isn't as deep as we wanted it to be and the server thing was a nightmare, but the game is relaxing and fun to me. The always online component was a really stupid move but as far as the game itself goes I've been having a lovely time mod free until now.