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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?
 
Ugh, the unsightly blimps! Time to "accidentally" deflate them. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
 
I think they are designed to match the 3s style with many cabins moving along instead of two moving backwards and forwards:
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That wasn't what I was referring to. If you look at your picture, you can see that the cabin hangs straight down because the joint at the cable is not fixed. In the videos that I have seen so far, the cabin actually tilts and the angle to the cable stays always the same, which it should not do.
 
Um sorry for asking unrelated to the Mass Transit DLC. Can you remove the restriction for in-game tree so all of the tree from every theme can be used for all of the map themes or all maps? i hate when subscribing to all mods or assets that the in-game actually had provided but there are still restriction, one of them is trees. If you can do that, that would mean so much. I am one of the people who really doesn't like much to get many mods and assets. Please can you do this?
 
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.
Is that just houses, or any zoned land/structure? How about having cables across a park or plaza, or farms?
 
There seems to be a little bit of negativity around blimps, but don't worry Colossal Order, not everyone is unenthused by the prospect of airships. I for one welcome our new blimp overlords.
 
Me also thinks that 70 people are way too much for one single blimp.

The Zeppelin NT can transport 14 people max (Goodyear Version) and is the largest lighter-than-air aircraft nowadays.
The LZ 129 "Hindenburg" was able to carry 72 passengers (so around 100 people including crew) - as you might know that this was a giant thing (245m long, 41,2m wide).

Anyway we could still mod that value and increase ticket cost - so only rich people will use those things ;)
 
I would have prefered having multi-track metro stations way way more than having blimps. This is disappointing.
Yes, but you already have them through the workshop, blimps are unexpected which is good too !
Don't forget This is just one extension to the game, many more will follow, it's only the beginning of the renewal of city building games, maybe we should just appreciate that we don't have everything yet and more is to be implemented !
 
I will join the skeptical crowd regarding the blimps. They are simply not a thing anywhere in the world as far as I know. There are so many other orgininal forms of transportations that would make more sense.
It's a fun idea but not something I will use hardly all in my cities.

I think that the price of bridges, tunnel and "cliff hanging" roads need to be dramatically increased in order to make it harder to build around mountains so that these new forms of transportations make sense. I also often use under the cities freeways which even though helpful are totally unrealistic. Building a 6 lanes under a cities is a huge challenge that costs Billions (see current Seattle tunnel project).

Regarding people that complain about car ferries, I'm not sure it's possible since it's my understanding that any individual can "pop" a car whenever it needs it. For car ferries to be relevant, cars would need to be persistent. That would create a set of new problems regarding parking (specially in downtown).
For that reason I would love to see pedestrian streets so that you can build ultra dense city centers where car are not allowed and public transportation must be used by people and freight (freight trams maybe?).

I'm still excited for that new DLC and look forward to use :)
 
Yes, but you already have them through the workshop, blimps are unexpected which is good too !
Don't forget This is just one extension to the game, many more will follow, it's only the beginning of the renewal of city building games, maybe we should just appreciate that we don't have everything yet and more is to be implemented !

The thing is that if this station doesn't come with the mass transit DLC, I fear it will never come (I won't mention the "it exists in the workshop, so it doesn't need to be in the game" argument).

Of course we didn't expect blimps, as this transportation option is used as much as submarines and teleportation portals by commuters.
 
Temperature swings were added to all maps with the free patch that came with snowfall. On a temperate or boreal map the swings can be large and electricity usage increases greatly. You don't have to use heating, but you will have to have greater production of electricity than you city normally needs. I suppose you could have extra generating capacity and turn it on and off as required, but I find that having a heating system is much easier.

That was one thing I found annoying recently, as I was trying to be as efficient with the budget as possible to allow me to build faster, but I was constantly going back and forth adjusting the power production when the temps went up and down. I did use heating plants a bit, but they cost too, and are not needed when the temps went up. Eventually I said the heck with it, and built a fusion plant and turned the budget way down and demolished the heating plants.
 
Blimps are another way of doing that, but work better for larger settlements, as they have a higher passenger capacity than Ferries.

Would any of the staff be willing to explain this? I'm thrilled we have blimps, but their having more capacity than ferries is really strange. The LZ 129 Hindenburg had a passenger capacity of 72, or total capacity of about 110 to 120 including crew, with a length of 245 meters. The blimp in the pictures looks to be about 1/4 that length, with a passenger gondola that looks to be no more than 15-20 meters, or about the size of a city bus. Even if we assume that the blimp can be made to seat 50 people (not totally outlandish, especially given that my yardstick for this, the Hindenburg, was fully outfitted for multi-day luxury transatlantic flights), most ferries should be more than able to double that, and the one shown in the last dev diary should certainly be able to do at least that.

And if it's a matter of balance or progression, I don't think it makes sense. If blimps wind up being a vanity project for rich cities... well, they would be.
 
That was one thing I found annoying recently, as I was trying to be as efficient with the budget as possible to allow me to build faster, but I was constantly going back and forth adjusting the power production when the temps went up and down. I did use heating plants a bit, but they cost too, and are not needed when the temps went up. Eventually I said the heck with it, and built a fusion plant and turned the budget way down and demolished the heating plants.
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. I'd rather spend that time on transit or tourism (cough cough DLC), or industry (needs rethinking - either the whole concept and the truck number it generates).

Also if you could add one more option to the DLC it would be really nice. "Allow heavy traffic" button to a road. It would fit next to the "Priority road" button. So if I have a district where from heavy traffic is banned I could allow them on this one road and they shouldn't go a km long road around. So it would overwrite the heavy traffic ban like it exists in real cities. An assigned road for trucks through the city. Thank you and keep up the good work!
 
I know, most of people here will definitely disagree with my comment, but i have to write it.

I have been thinking this for a long time and now it was confirmed to me when i saw the video with co-martsu playing Mass Transit : I think developers don't exactly know what the community wants! I would like to explain why i think this. When Paradox announced Mass Transit i was extremely happy, i thought it will be the best DLC after not very good Snowfall and Natural Disasters (it really wasn't my cup of tea). But as we receive more and more information about Mass Transit it still looks worse and worse to me. 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. I was shocked when co-marstu said in that video while she was talking about stop signs and traffic lights that they didn't want to add too much micromanagement. No priority signs, no lane connections...

I think developers don't understand that there are two groups of players. One group is just building city and doesn't care about some traffic lights (= they don't use Traffic Manager) and the other group of players loves spending time by manually switching traffic light, adding props etc. 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! Most casual players don't control divisions manually in Hearts of Iron IV. Should it be removed because for some players it is too complicated? No! 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. Why should we spend money for DLC with few new roads when Network Extensions Project adds much more of them? And i could continue...

Don't get me wrong. I love Cities Skylines, 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, not just a part from that mod (which is now Paradox doing). 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. Yes, transport hubs look awesome, monorail too, but that's all. The worst it this isn't the first time Paradox disappointed me and did only half work (first time it was patch 1.1 and European buildings, secondly it was Snowfall).

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.
 
I like how they just didn't give a shit about helicopters and went for blimps, which no one requested

While I for one would love to see more choppers (it's my favorite part of ND), but they can buzz around a lot and hardly be noticed. A blimp is noticeable. I think that makes them a much better choice for the casual crowd. For the rest of us, well, I would still like some more choppers.
 
One group is just building city and doesn't care about some traffic lights (= they don't use Traffic Manager) and the other group of players loves spending time by manually switching traffic light, adding props etc.

I fit both. I generally prefer to "paint" a city, and not micromanage too much. I don't want to use TM (don't want to bog things down). However, I would like more control over traffic. Changing arrows on roads, and so on. So I would like to see more in MT.