A request to make Cims worse drivers

[Lord Canterbury]

I'm hoping that in time CO offer the functionality of some of the better traffic mods, like Traffic Manager as patches or DLC (to avoid the compatibility and stability issues that can come with major mods) in future.

However, were they to do so, it would lead to a problem... it would make traffic too easy, see Cims are endowed with superhuman driving powers.

Cims can happy merge into the tiniest gap at 100kph, dodge across intersections like frogger on crack, and take corners like, well, a Finn.

Given these ultra-merging talents, the easiest thing to be done in skylines is simply to delete all traffic lights in existence. It will instantly free up all but the most torturous road networks. This is all in stark contrast to the real world, where removing all traffic lights in a medium sized city would lead to carnage.

I ran a little experiment, removing a major intersection in my city, and replacing it with the worst intersection I would make - an 8 way, 24 lane, uncontrolled nexus. Its here:

Spoiler

With a bit of context:

Spoiler

And you can try it yourself here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=444810562

As you can see, traffic has no problem dealing with the intersection.

In a similar situation, traffic is happy to deal with little 2 lane road in skylines as they have no traffic lights, yet gets jammed on six lane roads as the lights hold them up.

So CO... any chance of making the Cims worse drivers? I'd suggest a larger zone of influence when they try to merge. Or alternatively getting them to slow down a little more as other cars approach from the sides. It wouldn't take much of a change to make merging far less efficient.

I would certainly like to see uncontrolled six lane intersections a lot less efficient that six lane light-controlled intersections.

 

[Elmokki]

Yeah. I cannot play with the "toggle traffic lights" mods or just by avoiding traffic lights too much just because it makes the game ridiculously easy while also being a massive immersion breaker.

I'd really like to have traffic lights toggleable, but it working more like in real life: The only places you don't want traffic lights are the places where there is very little traffic. This might not even be that hard to implement since it's essentially just adding the mod that allows toggling traffic lights and making the driving AI less efficient.

 

[mgjh]

What bugs me most about big roads is the deterministic way cars choose lanes.
Which often yields to a full lane next to two empty ones.
Sometimes it makes sense, as all of them turn right at the next intersection (in which case I wold like to allow to lanes to take the turn), but often enough they choose the right lane because they are going to turn right at some corner further down the road. This additionally makes big roads not more efficient than small roads.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

There's a city in China that has a similar layout as that. People get by fine without the traffic lights. I do see the problem, though.

 

[JimmiG]

Looks kind of like this:

 

[Lemont Elwood]

That's what I meant; I thought it was China, but that's the one I was thinking of.

 

[cRAGGLE]

I think that may be asking a bit much. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to get the traffic to work as it does currently and now you want them to simulate faulty human behaviour when driving?

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I think that may be asking a bit much. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to get the traffic to work as it does currently and now you want them to simulate faulty human behaviour when driving?

I only see this a rebalancing. Cars are clearly already effected by other cars at intersections... they interfere with each other and slow down. I'm asking for those variables to be ramped up... more interference, over a bigger area and more slow-down.

All in all I think they have done a good job with the traffic... its just that mods like traffic manager effectively expose a weakness... one that I think would be relatively easy to tune.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

Instead of redesigning the AI from the bottom up, why not just have an effect where driving gets steadily worse as the complexity of the intersection increases, unless you have traffic lights?

 

[masqcrew]

What I would really like to see (though it isn't going to happen according to the powers that be) are cars changing lanes based upon traffic back up, like in real life. It ain't happening due to the massive amount of calculation that currently takes place. Paths are decided upon spawning. Too bad alternate paths aren't loaded as well.

Why can't we all have super computers?

 

[TH1]

Why can't we all have super computers?

If we were OK with online gaming, some of the computing could probably be sent to some server farms (sorry, CLOUD).

 

[Lord Noy]

why are we still complaining about traffic lights. If you use them correctly, they are actually better than stop signs. I know it not easy to notice but, I've had intersections that start to congest heavily then, magically with lights, they manage to distribute the traffic better, even if only a little. The trick is to minimize the usage of lights, and to put them where traffic is coming in consistently from all sides; otherwise yes no lights are typically better.