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Even more new things that come with winter: snow plows and heating.

When it’s snowing, snow will cover roads and affect the maximum speed vehicles can travel on them. Roads fully covered with snow make traveling slower. To keep roads clear of snow, your city needs snow plows that drive around to collect the snow and store it at snow dumps. At snow dumps, the snow melts away with time. When there’s no snow to be plowed, snow plows stay in the snow dumps to receive maintenance, but head out as soon as snow begins to fall. Roads cannot be completely blocked, even when they are covered with snow, vehicles make their way slowly but with determination to their destinations. The amount of snow plows clearing the snow is controlled with the road budget.

New policies allow you to demand elderly people to wear anti-slipping studs on their shoes to increase their health, or make sure cars can resist low snow levels' ill effects by using studded tires.

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Temperature is also a factor. The lower the temperature, the more electricity or heating is needed by your city. By default, housing uses electricity for heat. This is completely fine, but when temperatures drop, the electricity usage can soar. For a more budget-friendly option, you can supply the city with special heating service. Heat can be produced either with a Geothermal Heating Plant, or with a Boiler Station. Boiler station produces more electricity but need oil and create pollution. Geothermal Heating Plants are not as effective, but are a safe, green option.

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To distribute heat to housing, you need pipes. The pipes run alongside with water pipes. Existing pipes can be upgraded, or new water + heating pipes constructed. Upgrading can be done by clicking and dragging, so there’s no need to click every single piece of pipe separately. When a house is connected to heating pipes, it tries to use heating instead of electricity when temperature drops. Be sure to produce enough heat for the connected housing, or they will revert back to using electricity. To allow housing to use electricity again, no extra effort is needed. If they do not receive heating, they can automatically use electricity. The only downside is that you don’t get the most out of the pipes you built, and electricity for heat is a bit more expensive than using heating. You can also set policies to dictate what sort of heating can be used at certain areas.

For non-winter maps, heating is also present. Rain lowers temperatures, so housing will need heating on all maps. It’s up to you to decide what kind of options to present to your citizens. Just keep them warm!
 
Rain lowers temperatures, so housing will need heating on all maps.
Heating on tropical maps? Really?

In real life, energy consumption in many areas of the world goes down with sinking temperatures, as the energy used for air conditioning decreases. Rain may save lots of energy this way.

Also, who thinks of stuff like the "shoe stud" policy?
 
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So no combined power and heat stations? That's disappointing, though I will grant that district heating isn't something I've seen in a game before.
When you say houses switch to heat, do you mean their electricity requirements drop to zero, or just that their power usage doesn't go up (since they don't need to power a heater)?
 
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Nonsense. A bit of spirit and a blanket will do in my cities. :D

Edit: I like the heating thing.
I agree ¡¡ haha


Seriously now, more and more content in DLC: I like it. :)
 
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I like the pipes thing, as laying/maintaining piping systems is a big part of city councils work. I would have added gas pipes as an additional option. And I would suggest that garbage incineration plants also produce heat for the heating systems. That is at least what happens in Germany/Switzerland very often.
 
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Heating on tropical maps? Really?

In real life, energy consumption in many areas of the world goes down with sinking temperatures, as the energy used for air conditioning decreases. Rain may save lots of energy this way.
I think every map type should have its own temperature range. Tropical maps would maybe have an average of 30°C when sunny and 20°C when raining. Heating would only be triggered when temperatures are below a certain value, say 18°C. This would mean no heating required on Tropical maps.

For air conditioning, it could be triggered when it is above a certain value, say 26°C. And since Geothermal Heating Plants and Boiler Stations are not suited for cooling :), it would just use electricity instead.

...
And I would suggest that garbage incineration plants also produce heat for the heating systems. That is at least what happens in Germany/Switzerland very often.
I support this.
Also Nuclear and other Power Stations produce heat that is utilized to heat houses.
 
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i know in the UK you guys use celsius for temps. i think a modder is gonna need to mod in a way to switch it to fahrenheit for those of us in the US.
why cater to such an insignificant minority?
 
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To keep roads clear of snow, your city needs snow plows that drive around to collect the snow and store it at snow dumps. At snow dumps, the snow melts away with time.
I assume the snow dumps cause ground pollution in the vicinity from all the grit, oil etc left by the melting snow?

New policies allow you to demand elderly people to wear anti-slipping studs on their shoes to increase their health, or make sure cars can resist low snow levels' ill effects by using studded tires.
See the latter policy makes sense, but the anti-slip shoes just sound silly! :p Why not have a policy for communal grit-bins on street corners that the snowplough lorries have to replenish while out and about (also giving them something to do when it's not actually snowing)?

Temperature is also a factor. The lower the temperature, the more electricity or heating is needed by your city. By default, housing uses electricity for heat. This is completely fine, but when temperatures drop, the electricity usage can soar.
Is Chirpy going to get a new role as weather forecaster? You know, have a [%] chance of correctly anticipating a temperate rise/drop (or snow, rain etc) and letting us know.

For a more budget-friendly option, you can supply the city with special heating service. Heat can be produced either with a Geothermal Heating Plant, or with a Boiler Station. Boiler station produces more electricity but need oil and create pollution. Geothermal Heating Plants are not as effective, but are a safe, green option.
What about water source heat pumps which pump water and extract/concentrate the residual heat from water sources (i.e. rivers)? Those would also work for district cooling in warmer climes (presumably if heating is modelled you've also thought about air conditioning?). I also second the suggestion others have made that garbage incinerators might also produce heat; maybe they need to have a toggle either individually or collectively that says "convert energy to.. [electricity/heat]"?

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The only thing I've not seen mentioned thus far is any health impact from the temperature/weather. If it's snowing/cold will there be more ill-health in Cims/ambulance call-outs for trips to hospital? Sorry if this is something you're going to cover in another Dev Diary!
 
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I love it. Can't wait for the expansion. This dev diary does make me wonder even more though why it is so difficult to extent winter season to all maps... It seems that the entire simulation is present in all maps anyway, so why not make it snow.

Anyway I guess (hope) modders will (be able to) add snow as a seasonal effect to all maps. Seems similar and a logic extension to the fantastic rush hour mod, that makes sims aware of the time of day already.

But even so, I will be the first in line to buy snowfall
 
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Just quick comments to couple of the questions:

You can choose to show the temperature in either Celsius or Fahrenheit. Even if the math behind it was very confusing and makes little sense to us :D

The temperature and likelihood of rain depends on the map, but we can get to that in next week's dev diary.
 
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Ah well - a part of those features appear really really far fetched to me.

Yes, you need heating when its cold outside. But rain has nothing to do with cold temperatures. Or falling snow (you know it can be cold without snowing, thats called winter). really. I dont turn up the heat when it is raining in august, i open the window afterwards to let some fresh cold air in! And when its 5, -5 or -15°C outside, i turn up the heat because its cold!! So leave the heating where it belongs - in winter (snowing or not snowing). Everything else is just so unrealistic....

To power consumption - as some already said: air conditioning is the real power consumer in most parts of this world ;)

But again the idea is nice - the use of waste heat. It is not only used for heating, but also for generating warm water, and that is used all the year (!). So why all this nonsense with the new heat generating buildings and pipes only used due to rain and snow? By the way, nearly every power plant that is heating water for generating electricity can produce useable waste heat, and we have them already ingame. All you have to do is rename the water pipes to "pipe network" and connect such a pipe to a waste heat generating power plant and you are done, in summer and in winter. But i know, that does not add anything you can sell in an add-on, although it is making perfecly sense...

And to the policies - anti slip studs?!? I have no words for this. But it´s just another hint what kind of city builder we are playing...
 
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I love it. Can't wait for the expansion. This dev diary does make me wonder even more though why it is so difficult to extent winter season to all maps... It seems that the entire simulation is present in all maps anyway, so why not make it snow.

Anyway I guess (hope) modders will (be able to) add snow as a seasonal effect to all maps. Seems similar and a logic extension to the fantastic rush hour mod, that makes sims aware of the time of day already.

But even so, I will be the first in line to buy snowfall

Yeah, because both are things that modders shouldn't have to do. Why are so many people ignoring obvious faults in the development policy of this game? There are so many mods that are basically essential when you play this game. And I don't talk about assets, I mean mods that add features that CSL needs if it wants to be a fun game that has some kind of challenge.

So please, change how some fundamental things work:
Make it that services matter. I don't want to build a police station only because my cims will move out if I don't build it.
Make it so that land value means something. As things are even the highest land values won't harm one bit. Cims can pay their rents always.
Give us control over traffic, real control. Traffic++ and similar mods should show you how popular and essential these functions are for many players.
Give us real seasons, they do not need to be a gameplay element, it would be enough if they are just for show.
Give us real elevated railways with stations.
Give us more micromanagement. Let us change the budget on a per building base instead of global.
Give us an economic cycle like in SC13.
Give us a challenge and not a mandatory god mode. It is far to easy to have a positive balance and far, far to difficult to bring it below zero.

And last but not least: do not give us more cosmetics. The game is beautiful enough as it is. We do not need more features that add nothing but looks. It needs depth.
 
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I've never seen a snowplow that collects Snow instead of just putting it to the side of the street. As far as I know they need a depot with Salt, that's actually melting snow and ice after thrown on the street.

Even on the snow dump the snow wouldn't melt until the temperature is +1°C or more.

The whole thing sounds like it's just the garbage service with an other name lacking the snow incinerator ;-)
 
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I've never seen a snowplow that collects Snow instead of just putting it to the side of the street. As far as I know they need a depot with Salt, that's actually melting snow and ice after thrown on the street.

I believe that's how it's done in larger cities. Especially in areas where parking is along side the road.
 
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