Fix waterfront buildings like marinas, fishing piers etc.

[olsen]

Why can't the buildings get closer to the water? Why do they have to stay 10-100 meters above the water with their stupid looking twig legs? Marina building looks ridiculous when the boats are 10 meters below the actual pier and there's no way for the people to get to their boats or off them...

If you lower the ground to minimum, then the building entrance looks stupid, because the stairs are too high. If you put the ground higher, then the twigs below the building looks horrible. Can't you find some method of making them work and adjust to the water level?

Why not have more water buildings that float on the water? You obviously have the mechanics since that one floating cafe looks nice and works.

More floating stuff and a lot less horrible looking twigleg buildings!

And yes, I do use quays because that's the only way to make the waterfront buildings look atleast somewhat decent, but it's just so limiting to be forced to use quays... and yes I know there's workshop stuff that might help - I want these in the game without having to download countless of fan made stuff.

 

[Alias_RM13]

Always been my biggest hate about the water and shores in the game. Adding to this, I wish structures that are in the water didn’t rock about. It’s ridiculous that the offshore Oil Rig bounces about like a rubber dingy!

 

[LucusLoC]

This bugs me too. I think every "dock" style building needs three parts; an on-shore building, a gangway, and the docks themselves. The onshore building would be the part that is placed, and would function the same as now; either being placed on top of a quay, or a decent way up the shoreline so it has road/path access. The dock portion would be dynamically placed somewhere out on the water, similar to how the industry ocean oil/mining rigs work (or worst-case at a fixed distance like the floating cafe/fishing spot). The gangway portion would be a dynamic path-like object that would connect the two:

This would allow us to still place dock style buildings on uneven shores or tall quays, while still giving the actual dock portion of the structure a realistic look. It would also keep the buildings from perpetually flooding from waves (should you actually manage to get them places decently for the dock portion of the building to look good) because the floating portion can adjust to the current water surface, with the gangway dynamically adjusting to keep them connected.

I mean come on, if you can work out the math to keep buses connected to catenaries, the math to keep a fixed building connected to a floating doc with a gangway should be trivial.

Pier style buildings can stay as they are now (maybe with an option to also be three parts, so you can adjust the height of the actual pier portion). I do think this is less of an issue, because you can find many examples of very tall piers in the world, so I thinks it looks less ridiculous:

Still, piers are not docs, and docs need to be close to the water to function properly. Having them float way up in the air is an eyesore, and makes me really not like using those buildings.

 

[olsen]

Pier structures are found on oceanfronts and huge "lakes" around the world majority of the time.

How about the millions of smaller lakes and rivers where you're not going to see waves like in the ocean?

Adjustable "pier height" would be an amazing thing to have, because then you could have both! The coasts of the oceans and the small lakes and rivers.

 

[LucusLoC]

Good points. My only concern is that having the shore building and the pier at dissimilar heights, connected by a gangway, would wind up looking odd for the structure type. Also they will need to make sure the pier portion of the structure does not follow the water level like the dock structure should. This means we will need an additional control to set the pier height (but we can probably just co-opt the same controls we use to adjust road/track heights).

Honestly I would be fine either way, as tall piers are not unreasonable, and editing the shoreline to make a lower pier seems like an acceptable gameplay mechanic to me. This is in contrast to dock buildings, for which extreme height is not reasonable, and for which getting a good elevation on the water is finicky or outright impossible (like if you attach them to a quay). Piers are simply more forgiving in that regard, from an aesthetic perspective.

But really, I totally understand and support people who want the 3-part building mechanic on both types of structure. It is just not something I personally find necessary.