[The Final Dakar]

They seem to have designed the game with a focus on money, which is nice (yes, lowest common denominator stuff) because it gives you more flexibility for playing around. (And you can still get hammered if you provide excellent service).

I do find the city specialization thing confusing as hell, however. Oil, Ore, Coal, etc. all seem like something private industry would be doing and profiting off of, which you'd only get a fraction of through taxes.

Also the Trade Port is terribly designed. Unlocking this huge thing but not being able to store anything other than freight until you unlock them through buildings is retarded.

---

The best thing we could do to alleviate some space/money is to get the solar farm up. After that, I'm happy to focus on supplying water and sewage for the region in another plot.

I don't see regional coverage of Trash, Fire, Police, and Hospital as efficient enough, in the long run.

---

FYI sek, Nuke plants are huge gambles. If your education level drops for some no reason (and given this game it will), you could suffer a nuclear meltdown, and good bye to half you land for 30 years. And also **** you if the fallout comes my way.

Don't do it. I'd rather we just claim a plot dedicated to power if anything.

---

I'm convinced more than ever I need to start a new plot so I can start splitting my priorities.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

FYI sek, Nuke plants are huge gambles. If your education level drops for some no reason (and given this game it will), you could suffer a nuclear meltdown, and good bye to half you land for 30 years. And also **** you if the fallout comes my way.

Don't do it. I'd rather we just claim a plot dedicated to power if anything.

Well my education level is not going anywhere, especially since I saw you also have a University. Not to mention I'm researching safer and more efficient means of producing nuclear power.

The main issue is I'm currently spending about 3k/hr on power production and that's only going to go up. I doubt anyone else is going to have the budget to absorb those costs anytime soon. Hence, Nuclear.

I will do you the favor of looking into it more, perhaps some online horror stories will dissuade me.

[The Final Dakar]

Almost makes me want to build a trailer park.

[The Final Dakar]

sek, you seem flustered by my vast wealth. (Evil smile)

Plopped another Ore processing facility, maxed, and Alloy smelting facility, maxed. Rejiggered my oil production, I'll likely demo it and replop it to drain the last vestiges of oil soon.

Had some houses finally beg for high density streets. Made the conversion and my pop went from 15k to 60k in 30 min. Feels really excessive, but thats the fake high density numbers for you.

Was thinking while a region took forever to load, having to pull the save file from the cloud might be another reason for the city size limitation.

My city is just getting pummeled from the extracting germs, but even providing heavy medical my profit is ridiculous. Opened a second city to help provide utilities, but apparently resource sharing has been designed to prevent utility cities?

[sek929]

Which is completely retarded, they make us use cramped lots but don't allow a full shuffle of utilities off-site.

Last night was a prime example of this. We discovered that any excess utility (water, sewer, etc) in one plot is divided by the number of claimed plots. So 600 extra water with 6 lots would only allow 100 water to be bought by any other plot. I see the point of this, in theory, but when I set up a city just to pump water and I can't make use of more than a fraction of what I need I get very pissed. Not to mention, buying water seems to be bugged anyways. It says I am using 0 from two plots, when I am clearly buying nearly 200. On the regional screen it actually shows me selling water to my neighbors.....insane.

So what started as a cost-saving move to produce much more power with nuclear ended up with the following. A second city with a maxed water pump (which brought that budget in the red) of which I can only buy 1/5 of what I planned, and an additional 3 extensions of my current pump and even more expenses per hour.

Imagine what is going to happen with a huge region. You can be producing 1000 MW of power and only able to use 50 per plot, that's crazy.

Like I said, in theory this idea makes some sense, but why can't set my own claimed plots on a "private" setting and only allow the cities I have claimed to make use of resources?

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Last night was a prime example of this. We discovered that any excess utility (water, sewer, etc) in one plot is divided by the number of claimed plots. So 600 extra water with 6 lots would only allow 100 water to be bought by any other plot. I see the point of this, in theory, but when I set up a city just to pump water and I can't make use of more than a fraction of what I need I get very pissed. Not to mention, buying water seems to be bugged anyways. It says I am using 0 from two plots, when I am clearly buying nearly 200. On the regional screen it actually shows me selling water to my neighbors.....insane.

I tried googling this. Other than a forum thread I didn't find any mention of it. Are you positive this is the case?

I understand the reasoning, but its rather poor in execution (surprise!). I can understand not wanting utility cities as it undermines part of the mechanic of having zone and design around needs but as a provider, you get put in this absurd situation where you must knowingly waste a significant fraction of your excess (i.e. 5 cities in the region, 1 pumps out an excess 100 MW, only two others want as much as they can get, you waste 50%)

I'd be more ok with this if a city was limited to taking not more than 2/5th or 1/2 your excess (allowing two cities in a 5 city region to claim 80 - 100% of that theoretical excess).

All the more reason to get the solar farm up and running ASAP. If you're not on tonight I may end up researching it myself.

[sek929]

The math checked out to the decimal place, I read it on whatever forums I stumbled upon in a rage past midnight last night.

I was just playing, and my buddy texted me and said his city was rolled back, and now it says city is processing and he can't load it. Fun fun fun.

I am already about 15% into Solar Farm research, I started it last night after completing the nuclear reactor upgrade. I am considering gifting my other town a million bucks, and building three maxed out water pumps. Hopefully enough to supply my entire city and then some.

[The Final Dakar]

sek, I researched and built a solar farm since you weren't on. Bled $10 million trying to get up and running. As a reward, my city is incapable of providing 300 workers for it to function.

So,my second town is drowning in the "out of money" glitch. I have a surplus of jobs, yet somehow my residents keep running out of money. Leading to this:


...and yet, my city is still profitable.

I added a uni and spotted a rare frat.


Anyway, despite the problems, town two is absolutely rolling in the dough. Maxed out the Commercial and Electronic HQs.


It seems poorly thought out that you can shut these off at no consequence. Also, it would go a long way to making budgets seem less retarded if specialization budget was paid out of specialization profit.

Oh another set of glitches I'm facing in this town was once I let it run for a while, my sims stopped going to school, but are begging to go, even though I have bus stops everywhere. Prior to that, everyone was very well educated at the high school, yet no one was recycling. Just an absolutely ****ed city.

---

Back at home, I waited til resources started straining, then destroyed all my ore mines, smelting factories, and oil wells to start remaking the city as a tourist haven. Surpsiringly, in the interim I managed to tread water thanks to alloy production from recycling.

My hard work paid off with this nice view:


and this one:


I had a continual problem with a lack of workers that I suspect is a glitch. I tried to have hi-tech industry to supplement income, but my workers kept getting dumb because the university never had workers. I had a surplus of medium wealth, so this indicates university workers are low wealth?! Also, the reason I had unemployed mid-wealth is because I had an equal number of mid-wealth from the region commuting and stealing their jobs (but they did not reciprocate).

During the restructuring I gave in and decided to rezone most of my midwealth to low wealth (I had something like 4k positions unfilled). I also removed all my industry and university. Briefly I filled most of the jobs before it went back up - leaving me wishing there was a way to see where unfilled jobs are located. It feels like a glitch.

Also, I feel like they need to give certain jobs priority - utilities and government funded ones. Not staffing the uni or now, the solar farm, is really stupid and crippling. If it weren't for your energy output I'd have been screwed several times over.

Speaking of which, I have this feeling that whatever it is that makes my industry city so glitchy is what prevent us from being able to use its resources. Several time I tried to purchase available resources from other towns, but it would never actually supplement me.

The one real glitch my tourist city is suffering from is the phantom air pollution. Most of my city has some level of germ complaint and its a pain on the ass, though not crippling.

Other:

* Public transport usage is still wonky. I'll have 1 - 2k using most streetcar stops, then suddenly have one at 4 to 7k riders. You can watch the passengers get off and just run to the stop, over and over.

* Get a complaint pipes are backed up, even though there is surplus.

* The fire dept. is a joke. No matter what it seems there will always be unsuccessfully fought fires every day.

* plopping a tourist attraction causes way too many hotels to spring up.

I'm sure I'll have more to add later.

[The Final Dakar]

Blog Article

[The Final Dakar]

Well, I think I'm going to have to start a new city in a new region. One of my plots is decimated by the No Money bug. The other saw its 5th or so natural disaster and in the ensuing destruction my ploppables layout got all effed up and I don't have enough space. I really like the plot, but between that and the tourism being wildly variable (let the city run for a few days, casinos went from -13k to +13k then back to -13k) that it's aggravating to play.

I don't quite get how the jobs thing works. Far as I've read there's no such thing as straight medium or high wealth jobs. Rather, some industry types require more of those than normal.

Also, sek couldn't manage to keep the Solar Farm running. That's with three cities for it to pull 300 workers from now. Just odd.

[sek929]

I'm down for a new region.

I, too, have encountered the "out of money" bug to great extent, despite the fact that I have 0 unemployment. I also have a crime problem, despite having a very expensive Police Precinct. Also, also, the layout of my city is awful, and it would be nice to start with a fresh slate.

I think my issues arose from growing my city way to fast, and not building up an appropriately balanced population. I also would like to be able to build more than one great work, and also have enough damn workers to staff them as well.

You going to claim the biggest region and we'll go from there? I would like to start off with an oil producing plot again, but maybe take it a bit slower this time and let my residents catch up to my industry.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I think my issues arose from growing my city way to fast, and not building up an appropriately balanced population.

Did you upgrade roads slowly?

Originally Posted by sek929 

I also would like to be able to build more than one great work, and also have enough damn workers to staff them as well.

Another great work, how do you mean? As in since you missed it this weekend?

Originally Posted by sek929 

You going to claim the biggest region and we'll go from there? I would like to start off with an oil producing plot again, but maybe take it a bit slower this time and let my residents catch up to my industry.

I'm going to loo around and see what regions appeal to me/have interesting plots.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Another great work, how do you mean? As in since you missed it this weekend?

I mean having a region with the ability to build multiple great works. Solar farm, Arcology, Space Center, etc...

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I mean having a region with the ability to build multiple great works. Solar farm, Arcology, Space Center, etc...

Oh. So, I'm under the impression that those are limited to or only created by those clusters that are physically connected to them, but honestly, I've seen nothing either way from my time on YouTube. Does a plot in a three Great Work region get to draw upon all those Works?

Semi-related, I'm curious if I found the reason to keep those HQs employed. I unlocked a Metals HQ last night and when I plopped the expansion it said it was unlocked for the region. Are HQ unlocks region wide (like City Hall additions)? Are they supposed to be but bugged?

I set up a new Region on the Antarctica server. I chose Horizon Archipelago, FYI (11 plots, 3 Great Works). Anyone from NN who wants to join us, let us know.

[The Final Dakar]

Oh, I forgot to note, I think I already have the pollution bug off the bat. It depends on whether Maxis' design is retarded or not. Basically, I do have a lot of high-pollution industry, but I'm seeing a lot of pollution in places that are not down-wind of them. Further, I'm seeing circles of pollution appear out of thin air in places that are just grass.

[sek929]

Any reason to use the Antarctica server?

Also, if multiple great works in a single region don't benefit everyone then what the hell is the point?

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Any reason to use the Antarctica server?

Cool name, easy to remember.

Originally Posted by sek929 

Also, if multiple great works in a single region don't benefit everyone then what the hell is the point?

Great Works are monumental projects that require one or multiple cities and players to complete. They can only be built on a region's Great Work Site(s). The locations of great works are not customizable and the completion of the structures will benefit all the cities in the region.

Alright, that's answered.

[sek929]

I also vote we don't claim any more cities than we need to early-on, that way excess resources wont get unnecessarily divided up.

[The Final Dakar]

God dammit.

Great Works are massive projects in SimCity (2013) that require Sim workers, lots of materials, and Simoleons. They may only be built on areas known as Great Work Sites, the locations of which aren't customisable. Working together with other cities in your region will help ease the burden on your city and the finished project will benefit everyone in the region or just the surrounding cities.

Is consensus to much to ask?

[sek929]

Considering there are only a handful of great works to build, you think they'd be able to tell which ones were full-region and which ones are not pretty definitively.

[The Final Dakar]

It's a wiki, people are giving their best guess since Ea is anything but clear.

Worse news:

Example, Titan Gorge, I set up a mining camp on Hickory Ridge to support my city at Conestoga Crossing. Because there is no direct connection, I cannot even gift money to CC, nor can I share in the benefits of the Great Work located at CC. Doesn't this strike anyone as retarded? What's the point of playing with 16 cities or players if not everyone can interact with each other? It's a glorified 4 city multiplayer game. Why even bother with a larger region?
To clarify, all 8 cities surrounding the two aforementioned cities are inhabited, so there should be some form of "connection".

So I just realized my mining town I started last night might be for naught if the next plot I'm interested in isn't directly connected. *sigh*

[sek929]

Aren't all the cities connected via the highways anyways? I was able to send money to my buddy, and his plot was across the whole map from me.

I'm not trying to sound dramatic, but there's a chance this game wears thin on me before the Mac version even comes out....

[The Final Dakar]

My pessimism might be justified

Originally Posted by sek929 

Aren't all the cities connected via the highways anyways? I was able to send money to my buddy, and his plot was across the whole map from me.

Yeah, but that was a one Great Work region, so all the cities were considered one big happy family.

Originally Posted by sek929 

I'm not trying to sound dramatic, but there's a chance this game wears thin on me before the Mac version even comes out....

I don't disagree. If only because the bugs continue to prevent playing the game effectively.

[sek929]

Well I'm going to log into the new region and start my city soon. Take it a bit slower, plan my population better, and see what happens.

[The Final Dakar]

Will you be able to log in with me inviting you?

Edit: The region is called MacNN

[sek929]

Oh yeah, no, no I won't...

However two things are happening this weekend. Bachelorette weekend my g/f will be from Friday to Sunday, and I'm bringing home my new kitten. So I will be here gaming out, and periodically frolicking with kitten, alllll weekend.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Oh yeah, no, no I won't...

However two things are happening this weekend. Bachelorette weekend my g/f will be from Friday to Sunday, and I'm bringing home my new kitten. So I will be here gaming out, and periodically frolicking with kitten, alllll weekend.

Is there a way I can log into Origin from work to send an invite? Probably not as it requires SimCIty. I won't be home til late tonight, either (Unless I stop in between dinner and the movies).

I'm in for SimCity and kitten pics this weekend, though. And Skype voice chat. Because their chat is a joke.

[sek929]

You need to send the region invite from within Sim City, unfortunately. Which is doubly retarded, I'll explain.

You have to become friends on Origin, then, you both need to be on Sim City on the SAME server to become friends there. Then, even though you just created a private region set to friends only, you STILL need to send another invite to your friend for them to log into the region.

Yo dawg, we heard you liked invites....

In more troubling news my errant clicking in XP has apparently resulted in a few nasty pieces of malware that may require a nuke&pave to remove. Luckily, these worms appear to be structured to screw with my browsing experience, and shouldn't affect the way the machine runs. However, I'm going to look into this tonight and do a fresh install if need be.

[The Final Dakar]

Did they model their online system after Nintendo?

Christ, PC BF3 players have to add friends separately rather than use their Origin friends list as well.

So glad this isn't on Steam! (The other advantage of installing boot camp is I'll finally be able to try DOTA2. If I have the guts)

[The Final Dakar]

This game is pretty god damned fun when its working correctly. Either the pollution in this game was designed weirdly or I briefly had the bug strike my new region – again, I was watching circles of pollution just materialize over empty fields with no polluting facilities upwind, either.

Sadly, I keep finding cool plots that are small. Sek picked probably the best one in the region. Still I rather like mine. Do have some issues with the rail station not wanting to connect to the rail that passes through unless I branch it off (wasting space).

[The Final Dakar]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...hbnBVdHc#gid=1

Jobs numbers I said I'd post. Unfortunately it doesn't differentiate between the baseline required jobs and the additional optional jobs for each building.

[The Final Dakar]

sek, before I logged off last night, I noticed you were using my waste management. If you wanna make sure there's excess power, I think I'll be able to provide a good amount of water and sewage in return (I have a nice sized area dedicated for them and my town won't be taxing it until it its high density, maybe)

I'll do clean energy research this weekend. Will focus on Clean Oil and the Space Center Great Work.

[The Final Dakar]

Feedback for this thread has been non-existant, but for those who might be interested this is our current region. Plots 4, 5, and 6 have been claimed thus far.

[sek929]

That's a fine tradeoff, at the moment I'm pumping more oil then two trade depots can keep up with so I'll go back to my old standby, an Oil Power Plant.

[The Final Dakar]

Oil Powerplant is great just because of the amount of energy it'll output vs. the amount of space it takes (Coal is half the output).


In my coal region I don't know how its supposed to work, but an advanced mine with fully maxed out delivery trucks can't keep up with its output even when not completely maxed out with coal shafts. It's absurd.

[The Final Dakar]

Oh I keep forgetting to mention, but the way this game runs is just another indictment of PC gaming for me. It's likely my perceptions are misguided or unreasonable, but I feel like a sim game running on late 2009 hardware should look passable. However, it mostly runs sub 20 FPS with no shadows and minimal lighting effects. No console game I play runs this bad and the hardware is three years older.

[boy8cookie]

path of exile... go download it, since you're bootcamped anyway.

[The Final Dakar]

So apparently I've been playing this game with a hand tied behind my back. I was working on my casino city when I started running low on funds, so I started mining ore then tried to expand to alloy creation when everything went to shit. Casino cities take a bit of luck and skill, and when that luck dries out and you have no skill, get ready for everything to go tits up.

Of course, I'm pretty sure the casinos are bugged or bugged by proximity to tourism being bugged. After I installed my passenger train and plopped a few casinos, my tourists swelled to 22k peeps a day, which was absurd. By the time my city ran out of money, it was down to 2k. I think the latter was more realistic than the former (I think seks city only had like 10k people), but that kind of shift is absurd.

With no one to turn to, and surmising having more people in the local area might help the tourism, I claimed the next town over, which turned out to have the largest, flattest plot I've played so far. With only a little bit of coal to kickstart industry, I managed to create a trade behemoth that's probably earned 20 million+ lifetime and still has room to grow.

(Side note: The various HQ notifications popped up several times in the new city and twice I saw my next-door gambling HQ give me access to the advanced casinos before locking them away. So they are supposed to be universal)

Thanks to my failed Metals HQ in my tourism town, I was able to expand to smelting early and from there things snowballed. Up until that point, I kept splitting my fund between growing industry and laying out the city. Once my income was cemented, I completed the layout and redid a few streets to avenues where needed. Once the population grew I plopped a train station and university and began cranking out hi-tech industry, which lead to my first processor factory.

Traffic was/is a nightmare, deservedly so, despite my planning. I've alleviated a bit thanks to public transit, but I also picked up on the source of my problems – the end-shift, money-in-my-pocket, store spree. I noticed that on one of my avenues one block would constantly be jammed, with the opposing lane U-turning as soon as possible. Once I noticed the culprit was the commercial buildings, I rezoned more commercial for the opposing lane, then even more the next block up. It's a work in progress, but traffic has thinned out enough that gridlock doesn't last hours.

Predictably, I have been hit with the Out of Money glitch, leading to moments where I have to demolish 25 buildings. At one point I checked and had over 420 homeless. I've got it back under 300 now, but its still feels absurd, even for my pop size.

Speaking of large population, one the city gets over 80k, the game begins to suffer even more. I had to reduce more settings to low. Sitting at 160k people, its still rough at times. If I forget to turn down settings from Medium I'll get outright stalls.

---

With a cash infusion from my new city I returned to my casino town and set to work renovating. I ripped out my oil wells and ditched the alloy production idea. I'm now redesigning it and finding some luck as my tourists per day is rising, either thanks to the new city or better allure. With a little luck, I think it'll be self-sustaining soon.

[The Final Dakar]

Guy with awesome "terraforming" skills.

Terraforming with Sim city 5 - Imgur

[sek929]

Those are some pretty awesome shots, the longer I place roads the more I realize working in only 2 dimensions is extremely limiting at times.

I didn't get to play as much as I had planned this weekend due to adorable kitty, but I still continue to make good progress. Traffic is an issue at certain times, but my fire service hasn't been impacted and everything appears to be working well. Unemployment is still at 0, and despite the constant struggle with worker shortages the balance between residential classes is far more even. At this point (80k residents) last time almost 8 thousand unfilled low wealth jobs exist, now it's around 1k per class.

Oil drilling is winding down, my only remaining need for it is the oil power plant, which I can only assume needs to be upgraded for the sake of the region. Processors are up and running again, but I'm relying solely on importing the raw materials to make them. In order to make enough plastic I would need Oil HQ, Refining Division, and Oil Refinery. It's not worth the space loss alone for those buildings. However, once the prerequisites are met for any given building, do the original buildings need to remain for it to operate?

My buddy had the out of money glitch something fierce Saturday night. Saying at one point over 20 buildings were abandoned with it. He told me later that he seemed to have fixed the issue.


Shot of the most current state of my city. My budget was in the green up until today, when I had to add a proper Fire Station in order to get HazMat coverage.


Before we started the new region in my old city. This is after I bulldozed my Nuclear Plant because the solar farm was up and running. Even after the solar farm said it was closed I still had power in huge blobs going around my city, despite being told I had a massive deficit.

[The Final Dakar]

EA Forums

Update 3.0 Notes

• New: Added more Hotel models to increase hotel variety.
• Traffic: Updated routing system to improve traffic. Routing system now understands more information about u-turns, required vehicle stops, and vehicle behavior on certain road types. This should make traffic smarter.
• Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic.
• Traffic: Fixes one issue where a car won't move causing traffic to back up behind it.
• Traffic: Vehicles can now make right turns on Red. This should improve some cases of traffic.
• Traffic: Trading polish that will improve regional traffic when one city has a lot of jobs and its neighboring city has a lot of workers.
• Air Pollution: Fixed more issues where cities that placed air polluting buildings received large amounts of air pollution from unknown sources.
• Service Vehicles: Fix for disappearing service vehicles on cities that whose vehicles had disappeared before update 2.
• School Buses: Fix for issue where school buses were getting stuck at neighbor's city or arcology.
• Audio: Tuned audio on French Police Station.
• Trading: Fixed issue where fire servers were not trading consistently between Brakeman's Folly and Twain in Whitewater Valley.
• Trading: Sewage trading: Sewage will now take a more direct route to regional sewage plant instead of throughout the city.
• Trading: Made gifting more reliable.
• Ferry Terminal: Ferry Terminal can now send its sewage to the output pipe and treatment plant.
• RCI Tuning: Fixed issue where sims going to a park via transit would sometimes lose their money or happiness on the way home.
• RCI Tuning: Bulldozing abandoned or rubble buildings will now prevent new developments for 6-12 hours.
• RCI Tuning: Less Happiness is taken from wealth 2 and 3 buildings when rent is due when no money is present.
• RCI Tuning: Fix for issue some users experienced where buildings would stay abandoned because moving trucks would not be able to move in.
• Trees: Trees now last longer, but also do not eliminate as much ground pollution.
• Radiation: Radiation causes less ground pollution than previously.
• Transit: Changed thought bubble suggestion to add more trains to deal with crowded passenger trains to suggest that you add more train stations.
• Transit: Improvements to lights to make rail look better at night.
• Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them.
• Transit: Tuned the chance buses or streetcars will go to high-traffic stops first as a minor traffic improvement.
• Roads: University pedestrian paths can now cross streets.
• Manufacturing Trucks: Fixed issue some users experienced where manufacturing trucks left the city and were lost permanently.
• Delivery Trucks: Fixed issue where some users would experience a loss of resources is their delivery trucks returned to garages without proper storage.
• Sports Parks: Tuned the amount of skateboarders and neighborhood athletes at the sports parks.
• Data Layers: Zones are now visible in heavy data layers.
• Edit Mode: Added more valid snap points in edit mode. This improvement is most noticeable on Parks.
• Buildings: Addressed some cases where buildings would stack on one another.

Notables in bold. I'm impressed they took the time to add new graphics. Too bad hotels are too populous to begin with once you add attractions.

I swear they snuck in an air pollution fix in 2.1, but it'll be nice if it completely evaporates in 3.0

I swear i sent 4.5 mil to my city Sunday, and got back 3.5 in return.

By my count 9 bullet points address traffic. That's like 20% of the improvements. I say damn.

[The Final Dakar]

SimCity Interview with Maxis’ Kip Katsarelis | IncGamers.com

One thing we are finding out is it’s just misinformation a lot of the time. What are perceived bugs are really just, well that’s the way the system is designed, and what we are trying to do is better communicate the design intentions through developer blogs, release gameplay videos and answer questions on the forums. Inform the community a little bit better.

Vision vs. Reality.

I want to ask about resource costs because we have been monitoring these since launch. After launch the sell prices fluctuated but for the past few weeks the prices have remained stagnent. Why is this?

We had some issues in the first week with performance so we had to turn off the fluctuating markets. Last week we turned on the fluctuating markets on the test server and players really loved it. We found an exploit when it was updating and we retuned it. The retuning seemed really good. The problem was that it was only updating every time you loaded your city So players could actually lock in a price and if they never logged out of that city they could kind of take advantage of it so we pulled it back down as of 2nd May.

Jesus christ, who cares! What % of players will care enough to exploit that? Or have stable enough connections to get away with it?

One of the big issues, and you read this all the time, is comments from the community with regards to city sizes, and it’s a controversial issue. There’s not been any confirmation that city sizes will be increased but have you looked at other ways to help players by creating features such as underpasses or flyovers so that players can try to maximize the space allocated?

First I want to formally acknowledge that it’s the number one complaint from players. Bigger cities is a huge technical undertaking for us and so that was something we had to concede to early on in design but looking at ways to get players to more efficiently pack their cities is something on our radar right now. I can’t be specific on details with regards to what that means but it’s definitely high up on our list.

So you’re not actually looking at solutions to increase the zone size, but what you are looking at are ways to make things more efficient within the space that is currently provided, is that right?

Yes.

If my performance woes are any indication, you guys don't have the means to increase city size without crippling a lot of players. Optimize your code, yo.

That obviously has a knock-on effect on the whole simulation. So every bug that is found has a massive impact on the simulation not working.

Right. But they’re not all bugs. There are some things where you might look at it and go this is not behaving as expected but it’s how it behaves and it’s pretty consistent. The idea there is that this is the SimCity world we created modelled off the real world and it behaves in its own way. What we are hoping is to inform players how the simulation works, spread that knowledge that players can manipulate the sim and they do have the levers to do that.

I guess my point was that even the smallest bug can have larger ramifications within the game.

Definitely, definitely.

I have a feeling this relates to tourism and casinos.

What is your take on mods with this verison of SimCity. They proved incredibly popular with SimCity 4 so are you going to support them in this SimCity?

From a development perspective, we’re not anti-mod. We’ve actually brought in some of our modding community before launch. We’ve talked to the modding community for both SimCity and the Sims, so it’s one of those things that, we need to get the core product out the door.

Valve’s Steamworks didn’t happen right away, these things take time and so we’re already watching what people are doing.

Yesterday I saw that someone has already decomposed some of our texture systems and re-textured some of the buses. We’re watching that stuff which is cool. We’re just not in a position right now to talk about modding in any real way just yet. We want to get the game solid and we’ll move forward from there.

So are we going to see mods support?

It’s a possibility

Could he be any more equivocal on the matter?

The DLC also goes back to the topic of space limitations. The more DLC you push out, the more space it takes up in your city and people will be concerned they won’t have anywhere to put their giant ball of twine.

The design intent was build a region of cities with up to 16 cities, that’s a lot of real estate to fill up and we’re finding there are not a lot of people playing more than 2 or 3 cities so you’ve always got another city you can build and play with that DLC content. There are options there.

Talk about not understanding your players. Or not caring.

[The Final Dakar]

sek, I have the Space Center started, if you'd like to chip in Fuel from your oil rich town. I'll provide all the alloy and processors.

Also, I keep forgetting to mention that this game kills the CPU so hard the music skips and stutters.

Lastly, I'm coming up on 200k peeps. Its crazy (an, of course, CPU killing)

[The Final Dakar]

3.0 update dropped today. Looking forward to seeing how cities grow without the abandoned building bug.

[sek929]

I'm working towards getting fuel up and running, this means hitting the first goal for the Petroleum HQ (which I never built) so it may take a bit. After the fuel requirement is hit I will actually be running very low on oil, which means I'm going to need another solution for power.

I'm actually nearing 130k, whereas my last city crested 90, and then promptly devolved into abandoned buildings.

[The Final Dakar]

I did hit a record 600 homeless last night. Later is already under 300. I watched it and it seemed to reduce by 3-5 every few second. If the bug fix works suspect I could go damn near zero, considering I have a surplus of jobs.

[The Final Dakar]

Any thoughts on 3.0?

My abandoned problem has slowed down, though I wonder if that 12 hour moratorium is hiding the effects. I'm now having issues with "Need workers" and had Medium Wealth Shops asking for shopped across the street from Medium Wealth homes asking for shops.

The air pollution seems perfect now. In my one town I need to decide what to do with the garbage dump because the incinerator is catching a few homes on its way out.

Was watching the recycling trucks, since they fail to get all the recycling everyday. At one point I watched one do a lap around an entire block (ignoring recyclables to be picked up), then turn down a street and do a U turn (ignoring more recyclables) before finally picking some up. Hoo boy.

Space Center is all set and only needs fuel.

Casinos seem more intuitive, but I'm at a loss as to how they might be profitable without using the tourist traps.

[The Final Dakar]

After you went AFK last night, I had a population explosion of 20k people that coincided with my city unable to find workers or educate people. I've been pretty screwed ever since.

[The Final Dakar]

Space Center up and running. Gives 100,000 per successful launch, as well as a boost in tourism and supposedly aids industrial tech level.

That 100,000 every few days ended up stabilizing the budget of my tourism city. Still, its in a precarious spot as I can raise taxes to encourage growth, nor build new casinos.

On the bright side, it sees almost no abandoned buildings and very little sickness. However, under my approval rating there's an unequal amount of complaining about sickness.

Really, crime is the only issue I'm having to deal with.

[The Final Dakar]

Any chance of a sek spotting tonight?