Mechaniton - All Game Mechanics Thread

[Sheller]

This series of posts will show the details of the city in the clip, but for now there's the matter of flying crops across disconnected zones in order to make lemonade.

The city has an industrial area of every kind, a central city with no special zones, two separate oil zones and two separated product factories both requesting. The system works perfectly beside melting my PS4 when I start flying crops around the map.

Outbound connections of every kind, and no resource conflicts at all.

I'll write the details of creating parallel (and converging) supply lines in disconnected zones around the map in the next few days.

First set out to demonstrate two separated oil zones can independently supply plastic to their own factories.
This was a total success with no surprises.
But it got me thinking to put crops on a jet and fly them across the map.


So after creating each type of industry, it was time to begin combining them via direct shipping:
6 unique factories together.
Adding the Lemonade factory and activating the airports crashed my ps4, so we'll see how many I can pile into one map on this machine.


Some stats:

 

[ristosal]

Based on the screenshots I have a suspicion about why your system works and the others don't, but I'll wait for details of your setup before making any judgement.

 

[Sheller]

Based on the screenshots I have a suspicion about why your system works and the others don't, but I'll wait for details of your setup before making any judgement.

I'm definitely interested in that, why don't you disclose it now and I'll be happy to confirm/add context to what you're thinking.

It'll be a bit before I have the pictures and stuff put together.

 

[ristosal]

It may have something to do with having zoned specialized industry mixed in, depending on whether or not the raw resource has depleted. Also depends on how various cargo ports are set up (cargo airport is certainly an outside connection).

 

[Sheller]

Those are all components, that's correct.
This is a test of the game's logic, so infinite resources was turned on for the purpose of controlling the supply variable.

Without having the screens and clips to post right away, I can describe the principles that underly the city.
I'll add the screens later today.

Intersections: 3-way six lane roads. They can be in any general shape, I like rectangles, but they have to form a branching network instead of a grid. Doing this solves 99% of traffic issues. 4-way intersections create the same nightmares in-game as in real life. Turn all traffic lights off so Cims can work with one another better.

Outside connections: Each zone connects independently to the outside world.
Usually by train and some second method, i.e. cargo plane+train for farmers, cargo hub+train for forestry, highway+import hubs for the main city center.
This setup allows the supporting R/C/I zoning to thrive while the first Industries™ buildings are being planted.

Inside connections: Each zone can connect to the main city, but not one another.
That is farmers can't freely ship to miners, or drillers in one oil zone can't ship to producers in the other.
(It's the case that players often think they've segregated their zones during some experiment, but cars or trains are still driving out of the map, turning around on a cloverleaf, and creating a delivery delay problem that cannot be overcome as long as the connection exists. The game logic fails when oil is connected to oil but is too far away, creating raw material warnings as the wait time for delivery goes way up)
Within each zone is a 'Zoned Specialty' section for whatever Industry™ is nearby.
This provides a stable buyer/processor of materials that are prone to pile up, creates products for the main city, and helps supply the nearby base R/C/I.


Stable main city: The first tile was a base game demonstration. All base zoning, basic services, and a full mix of all the zoning, LD/HD both. This was set up to create an import/export balance/demand before creating the supply lines.

This main city was set up to receive toys from the oil/forestry zone, and household plastics from the oil-only zone, and solely have the ability to export via highway. The oil/forestry zone can send ships or trains to the main city, but not receive from it. The oil-only zone can send trains to the main city, but not receive from it.

Self-contained: Each zone has everything it needs. It begins with HD res, HD comm, and base Ind to create the underlying workforce. Trains will begin importing for those, and employment will tick up when Res can get to Ind.
At the same moment, the Industry™ main building can go down, and the first extractors placed.

Flying Crops: Given the set up above, if any of the industry zones could ship to one another, as soon as I put down an airport that all of those map wide suppliers could now path-find, they would create a massive and unrestrained flow of exports to that new avenue. This would totally ruin the system.

But because no path-finding is possible from any one zone to the farming, or any one zone to the ore, a cargo airway can be established between those two zones. Crops seemed like the funniest thing to put in the air, especially for making lemonade.

So the farm zone gets an airport that it can use to ship anywhere in the game world, including to the other cargo airport.
And the ore zone gets the lemonade factory, and the other airport. But this airport importantly does not allow export traffic from the ore zone. If it did, it would start shipping who knows what to the farm zone that's otherwise supplying itself just fine. (this might not be a problem in this case, but if the farm zone had a harbor that could ship to another harbor, the long traffic chain that would form would ruin everything. And it would definitely cause delays if shipping farm to farm since a juice refiner would always be waiting on a plane instead of the local field across the street)

In Summary:

• There are 5 distinct zones covering the base game, and all types of specialized, and DLC industry.
• All forms of cargo transport are deployed
• First 6 unique factories running harmoniously across the map
• Pathfinding is strictly controlled - Order/delivery attempts simply are not made for paths that don't exist
  (If there exists a long, off-map path that will cause delays, it will still be chosen, and it will disrupt the supply line)
• Each zone is self sufficient given a cargo import connection to support the base R/C/I
• Specialized district Industry acts as surplus buyer for various refined goods
• Abundant use of one way tracks and streets (Classic Traffic Ban Tool)
• Strict control of import/export allowances at hubs
  (The main city for example can only export via highway despite having a train and cargo hub accepting deliveries from the Industry™ zones)

 

[Sheller]

With a stable supply line feeding the first six unique factories, there were a handful left to add.

Flight delivers were still making lemonade, but cars, sneakers, soft paper, ships, and more still needed produced.

The peninsula in the top right of the map had space for an Industrial™ park to place all of the remaining factories.
Carefully running trains, ships, and cars into the zone, but disallowing any departures beside back into the main city allows the supply chain to be fully realized.

The clip is 5 months of the factories producing, running out of inventory, ordering, receiving, producing.
The distant factories seem to always carry some lag in resupply, while the furniture, toy, print, bakery, and plastic factories sitting within their zones are never idle.

A total view of the transport network

 

[Sheller]

It's important to spread out exports across all avenues to prevent train jams, or traffic jams at train/shipyards.


This clip is an example of a supply line convergence that converts outbound Industry™ trains to outbound highway vehicles.

This small complex accepts trains from the external rail connections, each one of the Industry™ zones, and it has a return track from the factory zone. Trains cannot depart from this station.

Once converted to highway traffic the cars can enter the main town with their cargo, export to another city, or drive to the factory zone.
(Any cars that stay in the main city, or export along the highway can return to the train station.
This isn't necessary to move goods, but providing this internal loop made death care more effective.)

 

[Sheller]

Having established a fully realized supply chain that could reliably feed near and distant factories, it was time to begin integrating public transport internal and external. What's industry with no people?

Key points here are

• 2 of every industrial zone running entirely in parallel, totally separated and supplying the factory zone, the main city, and the game world, but unable to supply one another.
  
  
• With rail yards sending and receiving massive amounts of freight, it's important to not create very many passenger connections too. In this case a single inbound passenger station connects to the city at the Int'l passenger hub, and this allows inbound cims and tourists access to the whole city without creating too many trains.
  
  
• Additional export platforms are necessary as production ramps up in order to prevent long lines of trucks exporting and returning to facility. It's a real problem if export trucks begin resetting behind 'return to facility' trucks. (The key principle underlying this, and all traffic management is 'diffuse, disperse, distribute a main traffic flow into smaller and smaller branches)

I'll add more notes to this post detailing the international passenger hub, and the inner-city train network that feeds the metro stations.

(Interestingly, completing this public rail network and adding a few metro stations lead on its own to a +10,000 increase in population with no other variables changing. If your city is experiencing transport difficulty, it will suffer in population and work force.)

 

[Sheller]

Public transport is wonderful.

But it can have extremely negative effects on traffic when placed in such a way that leads cims to drive away from the disembarking station. If a train of 240 cims empties onto the side walk this can create a serious and recurring traffic jam.

Having too many passenger train stations can also jam rail lines with almost no explanation for their sometimes massive export of cims in a single direction.

It can also create malaise in your city when cims are stuck waiting by the 100s on train platforms that provide too popular a path to a popular destination.

There are many pitfalls to public transport placement. (Bus stations with 800 idle cims being passed over by full busses on their way to the next station, amirite?)

There are several ways to solve this which include putting public transport on cul-de-sac 1-way streets to direct cars toward a larger road, creating smaller more numerous public transport loops, more generally avoiding 4-way intersections and grids, and avoiding centralized destinations (i.e, large areas of a single zone separated by a single 'projected fastest' route between them)

Two other ways are to create a tourist transit hubs that feeds the cities local network rather than integrating to it, and to override transport station street-level front doors with underground roads and elevators. (so to speak)

The clip covers the layout and a look at how to get cims to depart a transport station into an underground tunnel.

 

[Sheller]

The game is wonderful to look at, and there's very little that's more gratifying than watching a 4-lane highway filled edge to edge with traffic flow freely out of a city full of cargo.

A city can look great on the outside, but the graphs and infoviews reveal something going wrong.

There is a deeply thoughtful series of mechanics that underlie the beautiful textures, and they can be manipulated in a reliable and repeatable fashion.

Once a player has come to understand this underlying set of mechanics, he'll realize quickly that he can make roads and cities in almost any shape and configuration that he wishes.

• 5 disconnected little farm towns in one map, possible
• Flying crops across the map to make lemonade, possible
• Totally disconnecting road connections between R/C/I and providing walk paths and transport, possible
• Setting up a distant factory island to be fed by disconnected towns from across a map, possible
• A stable 67k per tile, possible (77 to 84k per tile at peak)
• Incorporating every mode of transport and DLC sensibly into 9 tiles, possible

There are a million ways to play, and the first step to realizing this is to stop playing, and stop encouraging playing in the single most common manner: Connecting one entire road network across a whole map.
This behavior alone creates 99% of the problems experienced by players trying to scale their cities.

Building a 700k city in 9-tiles, and building an ongoing fully industrial region with every DLC balanced is like building a giant brick wall, or four to make a tower.
Not a grid, but an interlocking network distributing the force and weight of the structure evenly across itself. This is one of those bricks, and the mortar, expanded for a close look at just how it, thus the whole wall, can work.
*
*(The one way road at the cargo import station should be reversed, traffic enters from the container side of the asset)

• 6 months of cities skylines lifecycle logic
• Strictly controlled pathfinding
• Houses and Shops build, but no cims arrive until passenger train is on
• Comm will import first goods, Industrial will spring up if connected to outside cargo
• 3 zones are disconnected and residents must drive to a walk path, walk, then decide to drive or walk to work or to entertainment.
• Game eventually levels off cash flow for even indebted cities
• The city would run until WWIII
• More evidence that death waves have nothing to do with zoning
  
• Highway connections simply aren't necessary
• Milestone unlock tree hides this behavior from the early game
• Once a population is established, cims will walk over land to inhabit new houses in new disconnected blocks*
  (But an inbound passenger connection of some type is required to start the city)

The thing to do, and the reason I've shared this, would be to go build a tiny island like this in your own game and keep a save file from the point that the population graph is totally stable. Don't overwrite this save ever.

With this you'll have a test city that lets you turn off cargo imports to watch the behavior, change the mix of import stations to evaluate comm import behavior, adjust services, etc. You will be able to test game updates against what you know is a totally stable city with a defined set of variables.

 

[Sheller]

Starting the final post with an overhead of the total transport network.

I've got a few videos and many screenshots to add.

But all in all, a 150k city with nearly every unique building, every form of transport, every DLC function deployed, 3000 tourists, Fusion as only monument, every form of cargo, two of every industrial zone, a factory island, and a fully developed Trade School with every sports arena and campus building.

It all works, it all feeds itself and it's entirely stable, would run for another 100 years without another use input.