How are car speeds reconciled with simulation speed?

[nilcheck]

Hi,

I was wondering how its possible for the in-game day to be just minutes long and yet for the cars to travel so slowly. The cars should be literally rocketing down the roads if a day is just a minute long!!

But obviously that wouldn't be much of a game, so lets say that the cars deliberately run slowly. Then what does it mean for a person to drive from home to office? Does one trip to the office actually represent say, a week worth of trips?

Similarly when good arrive by truck to a commercial establishment, does it actually arrive with a week worth of goods?

But if that's the case, then what inventory for a shop, does the simulation assume for the intervening days, before stating that it's out of goods to sell? Does it simply extrapolate from the last delivery - as in if it was late then, then all deliveries in the next 7 days are assumed to be also late, perhaps due to traffic?

Similarly, if a person is not able to complete a trip to office due to traffic, is it assumed that he is late for the next 7 days as well.

Somehow the traffic sim seems to be operating at a different time speed than the main simulation. But then how are incidents in the traffic sim like jams used to affect the main simulation(shops out of goods, garbage piling up etc). Is it interpolation all the way?

Phew!

 

[Promethian]

Goods deliveries bring more than a weeks worth. However this is the only part of the traffic sim that actually matters. Where goods are needed a truck must deliver or the building will fail. Do this too much and you'll lose out on loads of taxes from the nonfunctional Commercial and Industrial zones.

Cims traveling is just empty simulation as far as I can tell. They are filler to get in the way of truck deliveries so you have to design better road layouts. If the sim determines it has enough vehicles on the road cims will just teleport to their destination.

 

[nicky9499]

Cims traveling is just empty simulation as far as I can tell. They are filler to get in the way of truck deliveries so you have to design better road layouts. If the sim determines it has enough vehicles on the road cims will just teleport to their destination.

TMPE has a "no teleport" button to enhance the simulation. It's been a blast and immensely satisfying when you finally un-gridlock an area with teleport turned off.

 

[Promethian]

TMPE has a "no teleport" button to enhance the simulation. It's been a blast and immensely satisfying when you finally un-gridlock an area with teleport turned off.

I know that means Traffic Manager Presidential Edition because I have spent some time looking at the workshop. However, assuming someone knows an acronym for something like that is bad form. I suggest against it in the future.

Does the mod also increase the agent limit of vehicles or does that option effectively cap your population at some low number?

 

[nicky9499]

Sorry about that.

If there are any limits I wouldn't know about them, but thus far I have used it in two megacities (550k and current one 600k) with "realistic speeds" and "no teleport" turned on with no apparent adverse effect on the city's traffic, growth or economy. So far so good then.

 

[MarkJohnson]

But obviously that wouldn't be much of a game, so lets say that the cars deliberately run slowly. Then what does it mean for a person to drive from home to office? Does one trip to the office actually represent say, a week worth of trips?

It's all about scaling. about 9 seconds is a day. the other numbers are a mystery. I suppose a person could monitor them and try to figure it out, but not necessary.

Similarly when good arrive by truck to a commercial establishment, does it actually arrive with a week worth of goods?

More unknowns. same with how many business can be supplied per building. I assume it is different from different sized buildings. 1x1 all the way to 4x4. It makes it next to impossible to balance freight to commerce. I tried making a city of nothing but 4x4 buildings. but I lost it in a Windows reinstall.

Similarly, if a person is not able to complete a trip to office due to traffic, is it assumed that he is late for the next 7 days as well.

If a trip is late, the vehicle despawns and aborts delivery. They you get complaints of not enough goods to sell.

This is an agent (cim) based simulator. This means you need to get cims from point A to point B in a timely manner or bad things happen.

Cims traveling is just empty simulation as far as I can tell. They are filler to get in the way of truck deliveries so you have to design better road layouts.

Road layout is rarely ever the issue. Only when it's really bad. i.e. tons of dead ends everywhere, and even then it can be balanced out.

If the sim determines it has enough vehicles on the road cims will just teleport to their destination.

Actually cims teleport to work when they are in a reasonable distance (about 1km seems optimal.) The traffic on the road is from imbalance. If cims need to travel a long distance to work (adds to agent limit) it won't teleport. It is letting you know your city is out of balance. If you try to force them longer distances, you can use mass-transit to get them they on time. I think time suspense on mass transit and highways as well. Just my guess as they can take longer on those routes, but they don't complain. It is only when they have to travel a long distance from the highway that they complain. i.e. freight imports will despawn and fail(not to be confused with teleport, which succeeds.)

This is how you keep the agent limits low. By getting traffic off the road though balancing your zones and fine tuning your mass-transit.[/quote][/quote]

 

[MarkJohnson]

I know that means Traffic Manager Presidential Edition because I have spent some time looking at the workshop. However, assuming someone knows an acronym for something like that is bad form. I suggest against it in the future.

Does the mod also increase the agent limit of vehicles or does that option effectively cap your population at some low number?

Vehicle and population limits can't be raised. It is the limitation of unity and their 16-bit arrays they use. Everything is 64k limit. i.e. citizen limit is 64k. The vehicle limit is only 16k, but the array is shared with other parts of the game, so it can't be raised without causing other issues. So we're stuck until CO change it. but not sure they will as it would be way too much work to alter that baseline of the code.

The only way to lower the agent limit is by balancing your city.

EDIT:

Remember, this game only supports 9-tiles. So you can get away with a lot within the 9-tiles. Beyond that though, and all rules fly out the window, and the agent limits get harder and harder to balance.

 

[Quaade]

Cars did run faster earlier but was modified since being able to see the cars was actually more enjoyable, a mod that slowed down car speed was actually quite popular before this... however, they did kinda drop the ball by not "slowing" speed aswell... Though that could have issues with getting money and had to be balanced then...

Basically... It´s flavour not realistic