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With Mass Transit, you can take control of not only the waterways, but also the sky. Last week I wrote about Ferries and how they offer excellent solution for connecting isolated islands to the city with fast routes. Blimps are another way of doing that, but work better for larger settlements, as they have a higher passenger capacity than Ferries.

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A blimp gliding over the city

The basics of Blimps are much like Ferries. Since they do no work on roads, you need to mark Pathways for them to travel. Blimps fly from stop to stop and need a route to the Depot. Pathways are two-way, basically like virtual roads for Blimps, so you have exact control over where they travel. Stops need a road connection, but other than that, can freely be placed anywhere on the map. Depots need to be connected to roads as well, but can send vehicles to any line they have a Pathway connection with. The amount of Blimps per line is determined by the public transport budget for them, but can be adjusted more carefully with the new slider for vehicles per line. Blimps glide over the city, ascending and descending on their own, following the marked routes.

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That's some quality education right there

As an extra benefit, there is space on the sides of Blimps for advertisements. By default they show adverts from various companies, but if you wish to use the space to your city’s benefit, you can set a policy so that Blimps show educational posters. This boosts your city’s education facilities a little bit, and of course looks quite cool.

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Cable cars operating on a slope

And then there are the Cable Cars. Don’t think of the San Francisco Cable Cars, but the type that travel steep hills suspended on cables. The Skylines Cable Cars are very useful on slopes, but can also be placed on level ground. There are two types of stops: end-of-line stops and stops where Cable Cars can pass through and continue to further stops. Pass through stops can also be used at the ends, but end-of-line types can be used to get that finishing touch. Cable Cars lines are somewhat easier to set up than other types. Built the stops you want to have in the city and connect them with cables. When any two or more stops are connected, the line will start to operate automatically. All stops connected to each other are considered one line. Cable Cars do not have Depots, so no Depot connections are needed.

Cables can go over roads and their height can be adjusted with PgUp and PgDown, just like roads. However the cables cannot pass over houses. Cables can be built on water, even so that the concrete bases of the pylons are standing in the water.

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Cable Car stop in action

Cable Cars don’t have a huge capacity, but they run often, allowing a constant stream of passengers to be transported. Avoiding roads is a huge plus, that’s less vehicles on the roads so less traffic congestion. Operating on level ground, slopes and allowing cables to go on water makes sure Cable Cars are very flexible as means of transport and can be used in many different cases.


What will your city get first, Cable Cars or Blimps?
 
You don't need heating if you don't play on a snow map ;)

Heating is not really an issue on a snow map. You just use it. The temperature is generally cold enough that you build it and turn it on and forget about it.
In the non-snow maps, you can have temps go from maybe +5°C to +25°C (just approximating), and the demand for heat comes and goes as it swings up and down. And it can go up and down annoyingly frequently at times. I find it tedious. If I am playing infinite money, it doesn't matter, but if you are balancing a budget (and I try to get as much income as possible to allow for the maximum rate of building stuff), it can be a pain.
 
Guys (and girls) could you include the trams and give them hubs too?
I know the trams are part of the Snowfall dlc but I don't like it.

They don't do stuff that is in another DLC. It might be nice if the game with MT could check and see if you have SF, and if so, allow tram hubs. If you don't have SF, then it doesn't give you them. That would probably be the best solution.

I'm trying to picture what hubs a tram would actually benefit from though. It's easy to place a bus stop or metro station near a tram stop. Maybe I am not imaginative enough, but I don't really see the need.
 
I would have prefered having multi-track metro stations way way more than having blimps.

I wasn't keen on blimps, but I have warmed up to them.

Mutli-track metro would have been 1000x better for me though.

I really don't like running too many mods, and would prefer it be baked in by CO. Then it just works. Modders have done amazing things, but there can be issues.
 
I think developers don't exactly know what the community wants!

Um - well, it's not about the few people who write in this forum, on steam or facebook. You cannot speak for the other millions of "silent" players you won't notice cause they don't complain.

Now it looks life the free update is just a mixture of parts from the most popular mods and paid stuff gives only good looking buildings nothing else

As the people from CO said: yes, it is inspired by mods. The paid content also adds game mechanics you as a regular player won't notice. Like implementing new a.i. types (in ND the helicopter class a.i., rescue team a.i., every disaster. that means some hundreds of thousands of lines of codes, searching for bugs, optimizing, searching for bugs caused by optimizing, fixing code that's now broken but was not broken in 2015, testing, fixing bugs which were created by other bugfixes and so on.), designing new UI elements, new policities and other mechanics. Also: JUST good looking buildings? Do you even barely know how time-consuming a decent looking building is? - I don't think so.

So what happens when paradox will add this "attempt to incorporate features from Traffic Manager" to the base game? People who never take care of traffic light probably will ignore new features, but people uses Traffic Manager won't have any reason to delete it!

Yes. They also don't have to delete it. So it's also fine for those guys (like me). But you forget something: The new feature also places 3D signs which didn't happen before. This functionality could be used be TMPE too - so we might see a new version of it which adds 3D yield signs to crossings. So I really don't get your point here - still this part is FREE to use, or to ignore. Implementing all features from one mod one guy is working on since one year by a game development company for free? Oh yes, sounds like some great plan *ironic.

The same is new road building system. Without an ability to change angle between roads by pressing one hotkey it is just better to keep using Precision Engineering.

Oh, okay, so where you've got that info from? I didn't hear that there isn't a hotkey for something like this... you might give me some link to the source of that info. At this point it's only guessing.

[...] i just think that this game is moving wrong way. I just expect that when a developer decides to add features to the game which are already in mod he should incorporate the whole mod plus something more

It's not. Think about how the game was back in 2015 - without any update and any mod, crashing on startup at "Paradox" screen. No day/night mode. Copy & paste a mod isn't a solution. Investing endless amounts of time into free stuff won't keep your company alive. Putting free stuff into a paid DLC would make people angry. - Also, it's not "just some roads which are available in NExt" - especially the highways are way better as you are able to use them on outside connections - in case of NExt highways you are only able the 4-lane version there. Also the new networks feature a sound barrier version each.

But if Paradox won't change their mind the only reason for me and other experienced players who love micro-management, the only reason why we should buy Mass Transit is that it just looks nice.

You shall only speak for yourself. I am an experienced player too and came from SC4, City Life, Cities XL and SC2013 - I was not able to find a city building game / simulation close to SC4 till C:S. Sure it's not perfect. Also it's not intended to be a super micro management simulation. It's intended to look pretty also. - I think you should move to transport fever as you get more possibilities in simulation there. I, for myself, am thankful that C:O still updates a nearly two year old game and adds new content for free!. Remember SC4? Rush Hour came out and... fullstop (I won't count the "Deluxe" version.)

I will probably buy Mass Transit in the future as i bought Natural Disasters, i just think the best city-building game nowadays deserves more.

Why do you buy stuff you are not interested in, to be honest?

Oh, btw. - you seem to also completely ignore that they going to add some reworked traffic a.i on the free update which allows ambulances and other emergency vehicles to not get stuck at intersections anymore...

Long story short:
I'm fine with what CO does, I love the stuff they'll add for free and I like the new network related things as they offer new frameworks for new mods too, even if some networks might look not that useful by now. So don't write like you are the community - you are not, sorry.

I had to write this too ;)
 
See? That is exactly my problem. It takes up too much micromanagement or so much money and it is just impossible to calculate how much electricity you need. All your plane to manage your city well is damned. It was really annoying and I just had to quit. I would buy that DLC IF I could turn off those things (temperature thing or heating thing) because i'd really like trams. But the heating is just annoying and was no fun at all.

But you are going to have temperature swings and the need for heating whether or not you buy the Snowfall DLC. It was included as part of patch 1.3.0-f4 that was issued at the same time as Snowfall. Snowfall just gives you the option to provide heating pipes which I find more convenient. You don't have to use them but you will need to provide power for heating.
 
They don't do stuff that is in another DLC. It might be nice if the game with MT could check and see if you have SF, and if so, allow tram hubs. If you don't have SF, then it doesn't give you them. That would probably be the best solution.

I'm trying to picture what hubs a tram would actually benefit from though. It's easy to place a bus stop or metro station near a tram stop. Maybe I am not imaginative enough, but I don't really see the need.
My question is why are trams paid content in an expansion that is unrelated to trams (Snowy weather = trams?)? Why wouldn't trams be included in an expansion that focuses on mass transit?
 
My question is why are trams paid content in an expansion that is unrelated to trams (Snowy weather = trams?)? Why wouldn't trams be included in an expansion that focuses on mass transit?

Probably to give those of us that didn't care about the snow features a reason to buy it?
 
Real quick: If blimps have better capacity than ferries and fly, what reason is there to build ferries?
 
My question is why are trams paid content in an expansion that is unrelated to trams (Snowy weather = trams?)? Why wouldn't trams be included in an expansion that focuses on mass transit?

Snowfall came before Mass Transit, maybe they could have been in MT had SF not been made.

Trams can handle some snow:

Apparently better than (some) buses can:
 
The game has a 4-way cloverleaf highway intersection, and a 3-way T highway intersection. I wish they would add a 3-way Y highway intersection.
 
I'm not a big fan of blimps, but the cable cars look like they will be really nice on certain map (and still excited for ferries). I just really hope they add an 'L' or '+' shaped double track subway station. I have a vanilla city and the subway system could use some love.
 
@autobusik2
You mixed up Paradox and CO, since it's not Paradox who develops this game. That aside, I totally resonate with the feeling that every patch/dlc since the initial release left a lot to be desired, too say at least, and the developer doesn't seem to be going the way players want them to (I don't even want to talk about Natural Disasters, I mean, come on, this game is about building cities, not destroying them). Along with things like mutli-line metro stations, rendered tunnels , etc., I really want and need some serious improvements to mods/assets management as well as the performance, since the game is barely playable when you have hundreds of assets and dozens of mods installed (even with a relatively powerful machine, mine is i7 4790 + GTX970) and it's nightmarish to manage them properly. Unfortunately performance optimization and QoL improvements doesn't really make good website headlines even though they might be what matters the most to those who still plays the game on a regular basis, and CO showed little to no intention to make substantial improvements in these regards really makes me sad. Yeah they can easily say that the games just isn't meant to be played with that many assets and mods but if they really care about their community, that's the area they need to tackle to make every second we spend in the game a better experience, IMHO.
 
I would have prefered having multi-track metro stations way way more than having blimps. This is disappointing.

Totally agree.

The most important parts of real mass transit is big interconnected stations where passengers can quickly switch platforms between rail, metro, bus and other transport means in hubs directly without detours. Skylines is really detailed in how you can make walkways to allow passengers access to for example rail stations in different ways, so multi-track/platform stations and interconnected stations would be the next logical step.
 
Blimps have higher capacity than ferries? This seems strange for me.
 
and the developer doesn't seem to be going the way players want them to (I don't even want to talk about Natural Disasters, I mean, come on, this game is about building cities, not destroying them)

While I can't come up with a reference, I do believe a lot of people were asking for disasters.
 
Skyscraper blimp parking hopefully, like Empire state building
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Skyscraper blimp parking hopefully, like Empire state building

See, now *that* is a reason to include blimps. Even if it is wildly impractical and unsafe in real life, at least it has some precedence.