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).

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

 

[qdli]

So more truck traffic for garbage. How many garbage truck full of trash requires transport I wonder.

 

[Lord_Beelzebub]

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 should work like it does in real life. The sewage goes to a water treatment facility to clean the water so it's clean again.

The bigger question is, since these buildings are putting clean water back into the system, does it also lesson the need for water pumps and water towers?

If the devs did it right, then the answer should be yes. If you had a population of 10,000 Cims in your city and it required 3 water pumps to handle the demand of that many people/buildings, now it should require 1 or 2 less pumps because the water filtration building is also acting like a water pump feeding clean water back into the system.

I guess we'll see if the devs made it work like it's supposed to.

 

[BadPeanut]

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?

the new buildings offer less sickness from pollution so that you can have the collectors dotted around your city (unlike the landfill or incinerators that were very big on pollution and needed to be kept away from residential)
So i think they offer a solution to big pollution

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIXsxCO-lGQ

Can't help but notice the trucks come in/out through the fence. Instead of at the gate.

 

[Pbhuh]

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?

Less Traffic from Garbage Trucks, by placing smaller Garbage collection places and then moving garbage from there.

It moves the pollution away from the people

 

[kuzyn]

Can't help but notice the trucks come in/out through the fence. Instead of at the gate.

Seems like they're too lazy to make proper model or set in/out point for trucks...

Again, I will wait few months to buy some after-beta unused key, because 12-15eur for this is too much. Useless helicopter, intercity buses and trolleys (there is no air pollution so w/e if u put bus or trolley), new buildings for moving waste...

So for now I'm paying only for fishing industry, big water tower and transportations hubs. Nice joke Paradox, let that people from CO work! Give them bigger budget for decent new features to make it worth to buy at full price directly from you...

And yes, I know that there will be also new maps, policies and one... ONE unique building. Policies may be fun but this is just a stupid button with one or two modifiers. Probably this DLC will have like 3 or 4 maps... in the meantime we can download over 40 000 maps for free from Workshop).

 

[Norppis]

How does the recycling centre fit in this?

That's what I'd like to know as well. Can the Waste transfer trucks fees recycling centers, or is all the garbage from Transfer facilities going only to processing complex?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

That's what I'd like to know as well. Can the Waste transfer trucks fees recycling centers, or is all the garbage from Transfer facilities going only to processing complex?

i think it's the latter.

 

[qdli]

I wonder how this will work with the ultimate recycling plant.

 

[metatoaster]

there is no air pollution so w/e if u put bus or trolley

I don't necessarily agree with your whole post, but you have a point with the section I quote. I must say that an air pollution system would add a lot to Cities Skylines. Now there'd be a tradeoff between putting garbage dumps close to the source of the garbage or carrying the garbage further away to avoid happiness-affecting smells and contaminated soils near citizens, but at the cost of more air pollution which can cause its own health problems.
Noise pollution is only ever a local problem, air pollution would have a cumulative effect on the air quality of your whole city, so measures like electric cars would have a more profound impact.

I miss the simulated plume of smoke from the coal power plant in SimCity 2000 that you could clearly see on the pollution map. I think that if such an old game could do it so well, so can C:S .

 

[Avanya]

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?

One big benefit I see here is that you don't have to do the whole "empty landfill" with the Waste Processing Complex. It will pick up garbage from your landfills all on its own, which the incinerators don't.

 

[Lord_Beelzebub]

Several people replied to me above saying these buildings help with sickness and it provides a way to remove pollution away from Cims.

My question is, where are you people placing the current garbage facilities in the game, the center of town? I place mine at the edge of my cities so the
pollution affects no one.

I start a city using landfills because they are obviously cheap, but as my city grows I start putting in incinerators and recycling plants. This is when I empty my landfills into them. So, up until the time I start putting in recycling center and incinerators, my landfills are acting as temporary garbage storage. Once they are empty I never use landfills again, strickly the other two. Or i may only use recycling centers. I bet most people do the same.

These new garbage buildings do the same as what's already possible. The only benefit is not having to wait for the landfill to be emptied before moving or demolishing it.

But technically the recycling center becomes available the same time as the landfill, so right from the start you have a solution that produces little to no pollution. As far as the amount of gargabe trucks on the road, simply adjust the funding for garbage services to adjust the amount of trucks that go out. Once you have multiple recycling centers strategically placed around your city along with the budget set properly, recycling centers are plenty adequate to handle garbage with few trucks on the road and no pollution.

So again, I don't see how these new builds provide me the ability to do anything or solve a problem that I can't do with the garbage facilities already in the game.

A true solution is to export if off the map for profit. Does anyone think the city of New York or Manhattan has landfills, recycling centers, or incinerators anywhere close by? No, they get rid of their garbage by loading it on to barges or semi trucks and send it off to some place far away. When you have a huge metropolitan city like that, that's your go to solution.

Something like that is what this game should have, completely remove it from the city. The one building I do like is the temporary holding facility, but ultimately it's going to a building that works just like the recycling center works, only bigger capacity. Instead, the garbage gets collected, goes to the holding facility, then you get to decide where it goes from there based on other garbage facilities you have on the map. You choose that 40% goes to the recycling center, 60% of it gets loaded on a barge or semi truck and is completely taken out of the city.

Now that's a new way to handle garbage. What we got isn't IMO.

 

[Beer Fiend]

Does anyone think the city of New York or Manhattan has landfills, recycling centers, or incinerators anywhere close by?

Isn't that what New Jersey's for?

 

[OnTheMap]

I love how buildings in Sunset Harbour allows for cities without even a river connection.

 

[YertyL]

Isn't that what New Jersey's for?

 

[Lord_Beelzebub]

What's the difference between the regular inland water treatment buildings and the Eco buildings again?? Both types have the same description. I thought the Eco ones didn't pollute the ground?

 

[Beer Fiend]

What's the difference between the regular inland water treatment buildings and the Eco buildings again?? Both types have the same description. I thought the Eco ones didn't pollute the ground?

They pollute less at the cost of running more expensively IIRC

 

[jcitron]

They pollute less at the cost of running more expensively IIRC

That and you need a gazillion of them instead of one large facility.

 

[Datman916]

What if the complex garbage trucks are not coming out and you have to empty every time they fill up? Is that suppose to happen....cause that's really defeats the purpose. I haven't seen 1 truck come out