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Traffic is an important thing in any city. Traffic and winter is a whole different challenge! For Snowfall, we wanted to make sure there’s something new affecting traffic. We settled on to two major things: snow on the roads and road maintenance. While the snow plows will be discussed later, this text will shed some light on what else is new in the game.

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The road maintenance service, unlike the snow plows, is available on all maps. What the maintenance service does is that it gives some extra care to roads, allowing vehicles to travel on them faster. Normal roads in normal condition are fine and good, but with a road maintenance service covering the city streets, the traffic can get an extra boost from higher maximum speeds on the roads. The boost a maintenance truck gives fades away with time, but if the service covers the city well, the trucks travel to boost the roads that have the least boost left on them. Road maintenance can be used with the snow plow services, so that boosted roads don’t suffer from snow as fast as non-boosted roads.


Then the thing many people have been waiting for: trams! They are something we have been planning for a long time and finally get to share with you. Trams operate on tracks and reside in a tram depot when they are not on lines. The basic principle is much the same as with buses: the budget defines how many trams are available in the depot or depots, and the vehicles are divided between lines depending on line length. Longer lines get more vehicles than shorter lines. To get more vehicles, increase the city budget for the service. Trams need to be able to reach the line from the depot, so you may need to lay some extra tracks to allow trams to get to lines further away from the depot.

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To build tracks, you can upgrade/downgrade existing roads to versions with tracks, or build new roads with tracks. There are both regular two-way roads and one way roads with tracks. As a finishing touch, tram tracks have overhead wires.


To give the trams some advantages over buses, tram tracks can also be built as standalone versions with no road beneath them. The standalone tracks are very handy for getting your trams to avoid busy intersections or streets known to be crowded. Stops can only be placed on roads and pedestrian pathways, but the standalone tracks allow for nice little detours to keep your trams free from traffic jams.

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Trams have a higher passenger capacity than buses (20 for buses, 30 for trams), but also have a little higher upkeep costs per distance traveled, about 15% more than for buses. For best results, trams should be used as short inner city lines, and buses and metros can handle longer distances. Trams do not benefit from road maintenance boost, but also are not hindered by snow.

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To get the winter theme really going, we have done lots of variations of existing buildings. This means your city does not need to have palm trees waving in the snow storm, or citizens hanging out on piers in the freezing cold. Things like flower pots are modified to fit the winter to keep the city looking consistent. Some buildings are only available to players who also own After Dark, but many are variations to the base game ones. My favourites are the agricultural buildings on fertile land, which are greenhouses on winter maps. You will also see many new parks that fit winter time better than the default parks.


These new additions to the game are available in the paid expansion. We feel they give a lot of new possibilities to handling roads, traffic and public transportation. I can’t wait to see all the cool tram systems you will be building!
 
You thought we'd leave those out? :D

i did. i honestly did.

Tram bridges and tunnels, I forgot to mention those! Yes, the tracks work with the same basic logic as roads, so you can elevated them or dig tunnels.

nice!
so basically it's a slower metro? but it can go on all levels.
or is it maybe integrated with metro, somehow?
 
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Trams are mechanically closer to buses, but have the added benefit of being able to avoid roads with the standalone tracks. They are best for short inner city lines, as the average speed of a tram is very low compared to a metro. Metros are meant for longer distances and building tiny little metro lines would cost an insane amount, so trams are the thing you want to use when you need a public transport type that can be free of roads but work for small areas.
 
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Just one question. Are there any plans in this DLC to offer an alternative to those "double bridges"? This is still one thing, that makes the game look a mit unrealistic. I really would appreciate an highway that works with "one road".
 
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Hi!

I rarely post here, I just felt with all these new feature I have a concern: Traffic and simulation performance.

We all get performance problems with cities above 200k population, the traffic becomes increasingly problematic because the algorithm behind them clearly have some problems modders solved, like the Traffic Manager + AI Mod. Still, those modders can't extract the best performance out the execution alog side the game running.

I have an Core i7 and the game rarely uses more than 3 cores on the CPU and the GPU never gets above 70% usage.

Now we have roads with less tracks for cars and etc, is there any plan to improve the simulation performance to address this increase in variables affecting the traffic flow?
 
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From this statement, we can safely assume that certain maps will have a snow-theme around them, right? Does it work similar to European Buildings theme?

Correct. The snow theme is a special kind of map with different rules/buildings.
 
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"are not hindered by snow."
good thing that you dident took insperastion of what happend in Göteborg a few weeks ago then we got like 20cm of snow under a singel night and nothing worked :p
 
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Awesome! Russian translation done: http://transport-games.ru/index.php...ties-skylines/snowfall-novyo-na-dorogakh-r155


Trams have a higher passenger capacity than buses (20 for buses, 30 for trams)
Umm as I remember now 30 is default capacity for buses? It will change?

For best results, trams should be used as short inner city lines, and buses and metros can handle longer distances.
This is little strange, because IRL (as I know - not only in ex. USSR) trams is heavy transport for large distances, buses - for simple lines from remote living districts unto trams and metro. But, in any case, this is no problem for enjoying. :D
 
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Just one question. Are there any plans in this DLC to offer an alternative to those "double bridges"? This is still one thing, that makes the game look a mit unrealistic. I really would appreciate an highway that works with "one road".

aye, but you can always make a 6lane road bridge and connect it to a highway. it will buffer slightly, but in general it doesn't matter.
 
So, "Snow international"-maps and "snow european"-maps or "mixed snow maps" ?
Will we get pictures of the standalone tracks? <3
Do we get zoneable "pedestrian&tram-streets" like in Cities in Motion2? This would be damn awesome for inner city use!

Are these green markings on the street tram-only-markings or is this "grass"? If it's gras (would be awesome) it should be greener! And if it's a -tram only marking- it should be covered in snow on winter-maps.

Like here. :D
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And I agree, trams are for long distance transport through a city while busses have the role of a feeder for the rail-lines. Exceptions prove the rule.
 
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Only 30 passengers on the trams? That actually seems a bit disappointing.
I'm used to seeing trams (called light rail around here) that carry a few times what a bus can since a single trainset holds a bit more than a double long bus, and multiple trainsets are usually linked.

other than that, it sounds pretty cool.
Are trams available on all road sizes, and do we get the option of bike/bus lanes or trees on the side of any of them?
 
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Thank you! I'm sold already, as some others have said I was worried there wouldn't be stand alone tracks. Due to the fact it snows do we need to be more careful in planning? For example building steep or mountainous roads are they more likely to get snowed in as they are higher up? Just wondered.
 
Only 30 passengers on the trams? That actually seems a bit disappointing.
I'm used to seeing trams (called light rail around here) that carry a few times what a bus can since a single trainset holds a bit more than a double long bus, and multiple trainsets are usually linked.

other than that, it sounds pretty cool.
Are trams available on all road sizes, and do we get the option of bike/bus lanes or trees on the side of any of them?

Yeah that sounds a bit low and I think it won't be enough considering how crowded the buses can get (in real life and in the game). However it can easily be modded of course.
Being able to place stops on pedestrian walkways sounds awesome.
 
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