Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

[eran0004]

Update: It seems like I got it working now. I reverted to my old save, edited the ship paths, but instead of using Move It I bulldozed all of the ports and built new ones in their place. Now there's just one outside connection per terminal and as you can see the number of ships is a lot more realistic. I also managed to fit a third cargo terminal in there.

To conclude: Never ever ever ever use the Move It mod on seaports.

 

[Samus]

It's funny how the most interesting stuff you build seems to come out of nowhere, rather than extensive planning. I made this junction and I was just going to continue backing houses onto it, probably with a gap of trees and paths. Then I thought maybe I'll make a very small raised rocky bit of land instead, it could look nice. Nothing too drastic.

Then before you know it I'm terraforming what was originally completely flat land and...

Had absolutely no intention of doing that but before I know it I've made a natural walking/camping mountainous area with a path above the road between it. Think it should look pretty good once everything else is built around it.

Yet it feels like when you do plan ahead and think "Yeah, i'm gonna build X there later" it never turns out as well as you'd hoped. Just me?

 

[eran0004]

Yet it feels like when you do plan ahead and think "Yeah, i'm gonna build X there later" it never turns out as well as you'd hoped. Just me?

It depends on the size of the build, but for the bigger projects it always takes at least two iterations before I’m happy with the result. Sometimes you need to start building before you get an idea about how it should be.

 

[MatskiMonk]

So since the new PC didn't arrive this week owing to graphics card supply issues... I've been fiddling around a bit more with Cooper County tonight.

Some randoms...


Scumhole shack (GTA:VC reference). It actually operates as a trash facility. Farm windmill on site generates electricity also.

First thing I made using PO's. Still trying to get the highway geometry to smooth out, but the walled off sections under the slip roads, and graffitti are PO's. Also this was my first experiment with the lane marking mod.

Again, nothing special, just trying to get used to more detailing. Here on the left, I thought I'd flesh out the crematorium asset with some memorial gardens. On the right I was experimenting again with PO's, this time to recolour a 1×1 asset black - it's in the back yard of the fire station and serves to be a fire training tower.

.. in Suburbia ... ooooohh.. ... the new town that sprunt up to support the expanding forestry industry...

The edge of the new town, with some remnants of the old town...

Again, just a PO experiment. I wanted to flesh out the high school, so it has an additional 'wing' on the left... I like to think this is for sciences... I also tried to make a sports field as part of the highschool.

Another shot of the Martel logging yard...

... and the local impact...

__

All these shots were optimised in PS before uploading. I need to get my head around LUT mods to get them to look like this in game.

 

[redhed17]

Love the windmill. I hadn't seen one like that before. It'll be like playing a new game when the new PC is sorted.

Scumhole shack (GTA:VC reference). It actually operates as a trash facility. Farm windmill on site generates electricity also.

View attachment 965620

 

[eran0004]

Looking good @MatskiMonk !

Edit: I spent around one million credits on building a second port in the city to the southwest.

Around half of the budget was for tweaking the placement of the passenger terminal until the cruise ships stopped doing this:

To compensate for the cost I invested in a new oil field. Although I got carried away and ended up extracting way more oil than I needed. In the end I just turned off 25% of the pumps and temporarily turned off another 25% just so that they all wouldn't spawn their trucks at the exact same time.

 

[Samus]

I'm guessing not since people say the traffic mod is practically essential on PC, but when two single lane slip roads merge to a two lane highway at an interchange is there any tricks to stop the idiotic AI all trying to immediately cross into the inside lane, causing traffic from one lane to stop while the other cuts across?

The stupid thing is that at the next node some of them move back to the outside lane!

 

[MatskiMonk]

I'm guessing not since people say the traffic mod is practically essential on PC, but when two single lane slip roads merge to a two lane highway at an interchange is there any tricks to stop the idiotic AI all trying to immediately cross into the inside lane, causing traffic from one lane to stop while the other cuts across?

View attachment 965724

The stupid thing is that at the next node some of them move back to the outside lane!

I don't know of one. Could try running it into a two line highway for a node or two.

 

[eran0004]

I'm guessing not since people say the traffic mod is practically essential on PC, but when two single lane slip roads merge to a two lane highway at an interchange is there any tricks to stop the idiotic AI all trying to immediately cross into the inside lane, causing traffic from one lane to stop while the other cuts across?

View attachment 965724

The stupid thing is that at the next node some of them move back to the outside lane!

The only trick I know is to increase the angle between the roads so that the one-lane road joining from ground level shows an arrow turning left instead of straight on. They will still pick the inside lane if they feel like it leads to a more direct route to their final desitnation, but those who are happy to sit in the outside lane should be able to go there straight away.

 

[Samus]

The only trick I know is to increase the angle between the roads so that the one-lane road joining from ground level shows an arrow turning left instead of straight on. They will still pick the inside lane if they feel like it leads to a more direct route to their final desitnation, but those who are happy to sit in the outside lane should be able to go there straight away.

I'll give it a try. I've got pretty good at managing console traffic, usually keep it around 90% even with 75,000+ but some of the things they do is just so frustrating!

So another unrelated question, in my early progress snow city when I check my exports panel I see that literally every single industrial zoned building is currently exporting generic goods (purple). Does that just mean I've not got enough commercial in my own city for them to sell to?

 

[MatskiMonk]

So another unrelated question, in my early progress snow city when I check my exports panel I see that literally every single industrial zoned building is currently exporting generic goods (purple). Does that just mean I've not got enough commercial in my own city for them to sell to?

It can do, if you have high commercial demand.

If commercial demand is low and your exporting a lot, it means you're more than meeting your own needs, and profiting from export.

If your exporting a lot, but importing a lot too (of the same thing) then perhaps theres some logistics shenanigans afoot.

Obviously generally better for the bank balance to be exporting a lot than importing a lot.

 

[Samus]

It can do, if you have high commercial demand.

If commercial demand is low and your exporting a lot, it means you're more than meeting your own needs, and profiting from export.

If your exporting a lot, but importing a lot too (of the same thing) then perhaps theres some logistics shenanigans afoot.

Obviously generally better for the bank balance to be exporting a lot than importing a lot.

Ok thanks. Will check later but I believe imports were about 200, and only the stuff I wasn't producing locally yet (Ore & Oil). So good there, exports were about 1200, 80% of which is generic goods from my generic industry buildings. It seemed on and off whether the unique factories were exporting, although I only have two so far in this city.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I wish my new computer would turn up...

 

[eran0004]

@MatskiMonk I hope you ordered a ton a RAM

In other news, the Node Controller mod had a nice update that comes in handy when building railways. You can now see the slope for each node and segment, which will come in handy when building realistic tracks. I try to keep the maximum slope at around 1%, especially for cargo railways.

A while ago I was modifying the standard 4-lane road to create an inverted version (for bus streets and diverging diamond intersections) and complained that my modified road had such poor texture resolution compared to the vanilla version. Turns out that the reason for this is that I ran the asset creator on medium texture quality in the graphics settings and apparently you must have the settings at high if you want the asset to keep the high resolution textures. So now I have reloaded the road in the editor and fixed it.

Also, a small concern I have is that when I started the game today I got an "assertion failed" error and I'm not sure how serious it is. It didn't seem to have any effect on the game from what I could tell. Not sure if it's because I modified that road that I had already placed. I saved under a new name and will check if the error is still there tomorrow.

 

[MatskiMonk]

@MatskiMonk I hope you ordered a ton a RAM

32Gb... for now... I'm running it on Max settings too, so it's running a dog slow, janky, perma-buffer style frame rate too, once it's eventually loaded. I'm comparing it against stuff I see on YouTube and Instagram, and it doesn't help when it's on basic settings.

Agreed, the updates for the node controller and the lane marking tool are great - these mods are for the detailers what Traffic Manager is for the general game. The junction I mentioned in an earlier post that wouldn't show fillers on one side of the junction fixed itself, which was good, and the copy/paste function is a real time saver. I have a lot of lumpy roads and train tracks to sort out, despite only having built one and a half neighbourhoods!

I've not had an 'assertion failed' error myself.

 

[redhed17]

Watched Biffa's latest traffic fix video earlier, a futuristic stunning city of circles with 350k population! The city was made with despawning on, and Biffa turns despawning off for his traffic fix vids, and the city started running so slowly, (made my city's look fast ) even on the high end system Biffa has. And he wants to increase the population. It's a multiple parts vid series, so it will be interesting to see what effect any population increase has on the performance of the game.

 

[TheCracker]

Started to delve into Industries a bit more this last week or so. The map i'm using has plenty of forest, a fair bit of farmland and just a smidgen of ore, but no oil on it's previous four-tile layout. Got some of my specific industry areas up to four stars which opened up some of the unique factories (including the colossal, now renamed, Milk Milk Lemonade Factory). This in turn required me to provide them with glass and metal etc, so in the small patches of ore available i've built a small industrial area above it. Some of those new factories started begging for plastic too. So a new tile/land package was purchased with a seemingly substantial oil field beneath it. Again, all good. The factories are now starting to provide goods, it's still a bit slow going as i'm finding the new oil industrial area is struggling to keep up with demand from the two factories that require plastic. Instead of sharing the production between them it sends all it has to one and then at some point seems to randomly flip to the other, which grinds one to a halt whilst the other flourishes. Unlike the forest and farm areas, the ore and oil areas seem to diminish rapidly. The ore area is practically dry and the oil field rapidly heading that way too, and this is after only a handful of IRL game hours. Worryingly, i've also noticed a new spate of shops closing down due to lack of goods. I can't understand why this would be. I've not increased retail areas or built more housing since downloading the DLC and industrial areas have either been replaced like-for-like or are additions to what was there previously - but now i'm having shops closing left right and centre. Why would this be?

 

[MatskiMonk]

a futuristic stunning city of circles with 350k population! The city was made with despawning on, and Biffa turns despawning off for his traffic fix vids, and the city started running so slowly,

Damn, I was hoping a spec like Biffa's would see me to 500k at least!

Milk Milk Lemonade Factory

<childish> tee hee </childish>

Why would this be?

Mostly because the mechanic behind industries is a bit borked. I'd suggest reducing the output of the unique factories to the minimum, build some warehouses near them and or near the extractors for each of the constituent materials, and set that to balanced (if they're miles apart the time taken by the trucks to get around can cause problems). Wait till they're out about 75% full, then slowly nudge the output of the unique factories up. You need to give it time to buffer some materials. Keep in mind you don't want extractors pulling out limited resources and over producing at any point, because they may then export it. In the mean time, I'd probably build some generic industrial and maybe make sure you've not severed any outside connections for importation. On the off-chance you're on PC using the EDS mod, turn it off and get 'rebalanced industries' instead.

Personally I always play with unlimited resources on. I hated spending ages building the logistics and infrastructure only for something to run out, so you then have to go and spend a bunch more time creating another polluted part of the map to get more.

 

[TheCracker]

Personally I always play with unlimited resources on. I hated spending ages building the logistics and infrastructure only for something to run out, so you then have to go and spend a bunch more time creating another polluted part of the map to get more.

Is this in the settings options somewhere? Even on console version?

I have plenty of warehouse storage available - placed liberally if only to improve the visual aspect of the areas. So i guess i just need to give it time to all bed in and settle down. Because the ore and oil resource fields are on the very fringes of my playable area, transport links are quite long and overly complicated now.

Thankfully i'm now using this particular map as a bit of a test bed. See what works and what doesn't. I built a ferry route which has been used literally twice now even though it looks to service several population hot spots.

 

[eran0004]

The error I mentioned earlier seem to have gone away now, so that's good.

Here's some brutalist architecture, it's the new residential area overlooking the port. A great view of the sea from the top floors.

 

[Samus]

Is this in the settings options somewhere? Even on console version?

On console it's one of the cheats on the second screen as you start or load a map. It does disable trophies though.

Also if you turn it on an already active map it won't regenerate any areas already depleted, it will just stop what you have left going down any more.

Oh also just an FYI, you can essentially create a forestry area anywhere, you can just plant down the trees yourself.

 

[eran0004]

My old map theme looked a bit too dry, almost like a desert, so I downloaded something a bit greener from the workshop. It has a really nice rock texture as well, looks good with the quarry and the old mountain road.

I also downloaded a new collection of trees and bushes, among them a low poly tree cluster that is great for making dense forests. There's also an amazingly good looking pine tree collection on the workshop now, they look insanely good up close but they're kind of bad for the framerate so I'll only use them for special details, such as the botanical garden.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I'm running my game maxed out with Ultimate LOD on... I can literally count the FPS Node tool/Lane marking tool glitches out sometimes too, with any junction that's been edited appearing as though it has a white overlay.

Built a farm whilst watching the opening of Spa 24... downloaded a load more assets too.

 

[eran0004]

The level of detail of these pines is insane

 

[eran0004]

Here’s an interesting video about improving the frame rate of the game:



And I have made some minor modifications to one of the bus stops in the city center, using the node controller mod and the intersection marking tool. Shifted the roads sideways to line up the lanes and added a combined pedestrian / bicycle crossing.

 

[Samus]

So jealous of all these nice junctions on PC!

Anyway playing this game more and more really makes you appreciate how hard city planning must've been (and still is) as all the big cities around the world grew and grew. You start building an area up, spend a few in game years on it, then a while later you realise it'd be far, far better if you bulldozed the lot and did it all over to fit in with your newest expansion. Or that it really would've been good to run the train line through there, now it won't fit and have to go around or unrealistically underground. Can do that in the game if you have the time, can't in real world. Makes you understand a lot of the quirks of our real cities.

 

[MatskiMonk]

^ Agreed.

I'd never paid much attention to road hierarchy before, but once you start noticing it, it's really quite obvious.

 

[eran0004]

Of all the traffic jams I have seen, this has got to be the dumbest. It's a bunch of tourists circling around the car park for no apparent reason.

 

[eran0004]

I revisited the roundabout overlooking the waterfront. It's the last roundabout remaining of those I built before the node controller mod so the time had come for a facelift. Here is how it used to look.

For the redesign I took inspiration from Liberty Square in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Here is the result. The surrounding area received an upgrade as well, with some higher density and more commercial buildings. At the bottom of the picture you can see the roof and flag of the UK embassy.

 

[eran0004]

Today's mini-build: A small mansion overlooking the sea.