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Hello! Welcome yet again to another Cities Skylines: Sunset Harbor Dev Diary! So please, stay a while and... read!

In this Dev Diary, we'll be taking a look at the Waste Transfer System and Inland Water Treatment features coming with the Sunset Harbor DLC!

Waste Transfer System

The Garbage city service is getting expanded with a Waste Transfer System feature. Players have at times experienced difficulties with the Landfill site's reach or the fact that it creates highly polluted areas in the middle of the city. The Waste Transfer System is an upgrade to the base game's garbage service, and it focuses on solving these problems and improving the gameplay in relation to the Garbage city service. While the base game Landfill Sites and Incinerators, along with Green Cities DLC Recycling Centers, can be used alongside the new Waste Transfer System, the new system's core idea is to make handling garbage easier and more flexible without compromising the city layout as drastically.

The Waste Transfer System contains a Waste Processing Complex and a Waste Transfer Facility along with two new vehicles, the Waste Transfer Truck and the Waste Collection Truck. With the new additions, you can build a Waste Processing Complex far away from your beautiful city and extend its reach by building smaller, less polluting Waste Transfer Facilities in the city.

If you have either the Sunset Harbor or the Industries DLC enabled, you will find that the Garbage build menu has been renamed to Garbage and Industry and that's where, under the Garbage tab, all the new Waste Transfer System buildings can be found once they are unlocked at the Grand City milestone (9).

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A Waste Processing Complex in a spot perfect for processing garbage: far away from the city, in a industrial district.

When you have unlocked the Waste Transfer System buildings, you can begin using them by building Waste Transfer Facilities at essential locations around the city. When facilities and landfills are getting full, it is a good idea to build a Waste Processing Complex, which will begin sending out Waste Transfer Trucks to pick up garbage from any Landfill Site, Recycling Center, Incineration Plant or Waste Transfer Facility. It is worth noting, however, that a Waste Processing Complex can't work on it's own, as it doesn't collect garbage directly from buildings, only from other garbage-storing facilities.

WasteTransferSystem.png

Waste processing chain differences between base game garbage service and the Waste Transfer System

The Waste Transfer System will come in handy for example when the city is looking to expand, when the roads are getting filled with garbage trucks, or when landfill sites just can no longer reasonably keep up with the amounts of garbage the city produces. By having Waste Transfer Facilities scattered across the city, garbage can be collected from buildings more swiftly, while a centralized Waste Processing Complex then handles the collection of garbage from those temporary holding sites. This keeps pollution away from city and saves up space for more zoning possibilities.

Waste Transfer Plant 2.png

A Waste Transfer Facility can operate safely even in residential neighborhoods.

Inland Water Treatment

The Inland Water Treatment Plant is an expansion of the Water service, and it enables you to build cities completely inland, far away from open water sources. With the Inland Water Treatment Plant, your city can process waste water without pumping sewage into lakes, rivers or the ocean. The Inland Water Treatment Plant does create high ground pollution however, so placing it next to residential areas or bodies of water is not advisable. Advanced variants of the Inland Water Treatment can process higher quantities of sewage while creating less ground pollution. The Eco variant produces even lower ground pollution levels but also has a lower drain capacity.

The Inland Water Treatment Plant and all of its variants can be found under the Water and Sewage build menu. The Inland Water Treatment Plant and the Eco Inland Water Treatment Plant are unlocked at city milestone 0. The Advanced Inland Water Treatment Plant is unlocked at city milestone 8, and finally the Eco Advanced Inland Water Treatment Plant is unlocked at milestone 10.

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Large Water Tower compared to its smaller sibling.

The Inland Water Treatment Plant is built on land, alongside a road. It can be connected to the water network simply by building water pipes to its connector node underground, in the exact same way as every other water pump, tower and drain pipe. Once functional, the Inland Water Treatment Plant starts generating ground pollution around the building but purifying the water.

Also included in the extended Water city services is the Large Water Tower. It shares the same functionality as the base game Water Tower, but has a much higher pumping capacity! And just like the base game Water Tower, the Large Water Tower can be placed anywhere on the ground. Once placed and connected to the water pipe and electricity networks, it will start pumping water. Ground pollution affects the quality of water, and if water is pumped from an area with ground pollution, citizens will become sick.

With these additions to the Water and Sewage city services, cities can now also form skylines even in places where plenitudes of water aren't available!

Inland Water Treatment Plant 1.png

An Inland Water Treatment Plant and its Advanced version take care of the sewage but produce a lot of ground pollution! Better place these away from the city!

And that wraps it up for this Dev Diary. We look forward to seeing you again on the next one, where we will be taking a more in-depth look at the new maps, policies and the new unique building!

Best regards,
Your Colossal Order dev team
 
Ooh, these look dead useful! No more slapping down incinerators and recycling centres in the vain hope of getting my Cims to stop complaining for one minute!
 
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Im not sure I undrestand the inland purification. Do these generate water? Or you just bring in dirty water and it changes it to clean one?
Does the water have to pass throught (from dirty water source via purification and then the city?) or is it enough to connect to the network and will just clean the water all around?
 
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Im not sure I undrestand the inland purification. Do these generate water? Or you just bring in dirty water and it changes it to clean one?
Does the water have to pass throught (from dirty water source via purification and then the city?) or is it enough to connect to the network and will just clean the water all around?

It cleans the sewage your Cims create.
 
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Aha. So I understood it completelly wrong (I thought it is solution for getting poluted water by the water pumps)
Now it is clear. It basically acts as a water pump and drain pipe at a same time. At the cost of poluting the land.
 
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Will ground pollution continue to exist around these new buildings after the Eden Project is placed? If not then some of these can be really useful for added variety to the skyline

The Eden Project targets pollution in general, it doesn't matter which building is producing it.
 
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I guess I don't understand these new garbage facilities. I don't understand the purpose or reason of why you need to store it or transfer it to a place that's going to turn it to electricity. This is the same functionality as regular landfills and incinerator plants, the only difference being capacity.

The current landfills already act as a temporary storage facility until you build incinerators and recycling center. You empty a landfill into one of those builds. Do these new buildings not work the exact same way?

Why not build a truly new way to handle garbage and put a garbage barge in the game? The garbage gets collected by garbage trucks and gets taken to a dock and loaded onto barges that then gets exported off the map for money. The garbage storage facilities hold the garbage till the barge returns to load up more.

Was that the only benefit of these new garbage buildings bigger capacity?
 
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i believe the difference is that new trash storage does not generate the polution. So you can place it inside your city (to provide better coverage because the trucks ill spawn in the middle of the district instead of outside).
 
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Aha. So I understood it completelly wrong (I thought it is solution for getting poluted water by the water pumps)
Now it is clear. It basically acts as a water pump and drain pipe at a same time. At the cost of poluting the land.
just a drain pipe
 
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It sounds like it recycles it back to drinking water?
or just puts it into the ground. it doesn't much matter either way
 
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