City Services Are Inefficient

[Trekker4747]

Since upgrading to "Mass Transit" I've started a new city and have had difficulties with various city service (notably police, fire and garbage service) seemingly not completely working.

I play on "Sandbox" mode with unlimited money, I like building/designing cities without having to worry about finance management. So with Unlimited Funds I over-compensate on city services to make sure everything is very well covered to keep the rates low/high as is appropriate to the service.

Since the update/expansion it seems the city services are no longer completely working, over the course of a couple in-game days the red zots for police and garbage start appearing, along with the white zots for incidents of crime (the masked criminal) and trash piling up (garbage can on white zot.)

But there's honestly more than enough. So, I further over-compensate, landfill capacity is at 74-million, 1.9 million in use, 1.1 million incinerator capacity, production 115K. Many of facilities seem to be at "max use" for their vehicles, some are only using half their fleet. some buildings are "black" on the overlay saying they're "not operating" though they have dispatched vehicles.

Police coverage is 100% through all of the streets, high jail capacity but the crime-rate steadily increases.

Saving the game, quitting, and then coming back in seems to "correct" the problem but it quickly declines after the game plays for a few in-game days.

So what's the deal? The mods I'm subscribed to from Steam don't seem to be ones that cause a problem along these lines but who knows? Anyone know of which Mod(s) could cause this problem? (I'm subscribed to a number of them as well as assets, seems easier to have suggestions offered on what could be causing problems than listing all of the ones I have.)

I suspect if it's a mod or game issue some up-coming patch will correct it (whether the game devs. or the mod creator(s.) But any thoughts right now? It's sort of frustrating to have so much put into city services somewhat ruining the "design" of the city and having them not work. Particularly having to place garbage collection services close to "clean" areas like residential ones. (At one point a distant garbage collection building kept flashing 0/1 on vehicles dispatched, the vehicle would seem to travel a couple blocks, make a minor collection, go back to the origin place with a partially filled truck.) Placing services elsewhere seemed to cause the newer buildings to "work." But still seems odd that the initial buildings were having issues.

In short: The city services seems to be somewhat "broken" in how vehicles are working and are being allocated.

Any thoughts?

 

[FindFloppies]

Well, you really can't blame it on the base game if you have mods loaded, and you're not sure what exactly they might do, especially Traffic++V2, or unupdated Traffic Manager. I believe the ARIS stuff doesn't work with 1.7 either.

Anyway, if you're modding stuff you can't really blame the base game, can you?

 

[Promethian]

If mods = yes, then disable mods before other methods of debugging.

 

[Silvern]

Do you have traffic congestion? if they have trouble reaching their destinations you will have problems.

also. crime is probably increasing because your sims are bored because of all that money

 

[MarkJohnson]

If mods = yes, then disable mods before other methods of debugging.

Sometimes disabling mods will still cause issues. Try temporarily launching the game using the --disasbleMods and the game won't load any mods. Then you can quickly see if mods are causing issues. If the game won't load at all, then you have a mod that is tied to the game, then you can remove the flag and just try what Promethian said and hopefully it will work. Otherwise, your only option is unsubscribing each mod one at a time to try to figure out the offending mod.

Also, if you are using custom service assets, they may be causing an issue as well. Some of them have improvements on services that the game doesn't like.

 

[panda_Express12]

As others have stated, this is clearly a mod issue.

Even if a mod doesn't seem like it would cause an issue, it still can. These are the risks we accept when downloading and playing with mods.

 

[Skuz]

I have had the same issues without running any mods especially with the garbage. The garbage system has many issues that have been discussed in several forums over the last two years. Personally I get to a certain point in the game and the garbage facilities only dispatch 1 or 2 trucks despite the entire city being in the red with garbage and obviously the entire city falls apart. Even before that happens garbage disposal is over 30% of the city budget which is ridiculous. And yes the road system is well laid out and even overdone so traffic jams are not the issue and the facilities are spaced out throughout. There is definitely some issues the dev's need to address.
If you really study the garbage system the following is apparent.
-The amount of garbage produced by the housing areas is way too much. A truck is full after doing a handful of houses. Houses produce almost as much as factories.
-The AI for the trucks is terrible, where they go to pickup and the routes they take make no sense whatsoever. There's also no prioritization as in which buildings are past full vs almost empty.
-The maximum amount of trucks is never dispatched no matter how bad of shape the city is in. 10 seems to be the cap and it doesn't even hit that very often.
-As stated above at a certain point in the game the dispatching gets even worse and only 1 or 2 trucks are sent out completely collapsing the city.

After struggling with this for quite some time including reloading previous saved games nothing worked so then I tried some mods to see if that would fix the issue, however it did not. (It should be noted that the sheer number of garbage mods is a sign of the issues people are having.

If there is any actual fixes please someone let us know.

I have also registered an issue with the dev's, so we'll see if that goes anywhere.

 

[28rommel]

I currently have about 38k cims in my city.
I own the base game, that's it.
No mods, no outside assets, never have.
I have no "extraordinary" issues with garbage in my city. They seem to be collecting garbage fine. Every now and then I see a warning on a structure needing pickup, but they will eventually make their way there, and the warning never goes to a higher (level 2) alert status.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I'm not 100% sure on this, as I have not studied it closely, but it seems like when there is only a small amount of garbage at the facility, it processes it at a slow rate. This allows it to build up, and as it gets to capacity it does process faster, but because it is near full, it sends out fewer trucks.

 

[Steve B.]

Do you have traffic congestion? if they have trouble reaching their destinations you will have problems.

also. crime is probably increasing because your sims are bored because of all that money

They're cims not sims.

 

[28rommel]

I'm not 100% sure on this, as I have not studied it closely, but it seems like when there is only a small amount of garbage at the facility, it processes it at a slow rate. This allows it to build up, and as it gets to capacity it does process faster, but because it is near full, it sends out fewer trucks.

Very true.
I have noticed the same thing. If you click on the Incinerator, and it is at or near its max capacity to burn, it will not send out more trucks. Look at the line labeled as "Garbage Reserve" or "Garbage Capacity" in the info window.
To those who are having problems, you may want to check this in your city. If you see that your Incinerator(s) are burning at/near its full capability, then you need to build more facilities.

 

[Promethian]

Very true.
I have noticed the same thing. If you click on the Incinerator, and it is at or near its max capacity to burn, it will not send out more trucks. Look at the line labeled as "Garbage Reserve" or "Garbage Capacity" in the info window.
To those who are having problems, you may want to check this in your city. If you see that your Incinerator(s) are burning at/near its full capability, then you need to build more facilities.

The mod City Vitals Watch is pretty much mandatory for me. Puts everything really important in a single easy reference window. Including garbage reserve and garbage production vs incinerator processing rate.