Ridonculous Building Attributes (e.g. number of workers, upkeep)

[YertyL]

The "Customize it Extended" Mod allows you to check building attributes like upkeep and number of workers. I wanted to use this thread to collect some examples that seem extremely off.

Worker numbers: (listed as uneducated/educated/well educated/highly educated)

• The Monorail station worker numbers are 12/12/26/20 for a total of 70 employees. For comparison: A metro station employs 8/13/3/0 (24 total) people. The university employs 0/26/80/20 people, meaning that apparently every single monorail station employs as many academics as a university. And the much larger metro-monorail-train-hub employs 12/18/24/6 (60) people.
  
• Unique factories employ very few people for their size. A car factory is 30x36=1080 cells large and employs 86 people. Level 1 industry provides about 1 job/cell, meaning the same area would provide more than 10 times the jobs. Similarly, a fish industry is of size 15x10=150, but only employs 53 people. Production rates also seem low compared to zoned industry of the same size, although I do not have hard numbers on that
• A bus station employs 12/27/27/6 (72) people. A monorail-bus-hub employs 22/28/24/6 (80) people. The bus-intercity-bus hub employs 10/12/10/2 (34) people, despite being much larger and combining a bus station with another service. A ferry-and-bus-exchange stop employs only 3/3/2/2 (10) people, despite also combining a bus station with something else. These numbers seem extremely unbalanced. Similarly, the bus-metro-hub offers the exact same functionality as a bus station, plus two metro stops, but employs far fewer people: 8/16/20/8 (52).
  
• It also seems weird that a university employs mostly well educated workers, and comparatively few highly educated workers (0/26/80/20). For example, a hospital employs twice as many highly educated workers as a university (6/24/48/42).
• Zoned IT offices have an extremely low number of workers compared to their size. Since they are much larger than regular offices, and visually best fit into the city center, I don't understand why they employ fewer people. As it is, we have 20 story buildings employing 4 people, which just seems a bit weird.

Upkeep: (numbers from hard mode, so deduct 20% for normal)

• Unique buildings' upkeep appears extremely random. For example, an aquarium's upkeep is 400/week, while the luxury hotel's upkeep is 4000/week -- but the aquarium actually has a higher attraction value (16 vs 12) and the same numbers of tourist visitors, making it better in every way.
• The Bus station's upkeep is 1500/week, which makes it one of the most expensive buildings in public transportation, despite also being one of the most unnecessary (replaceable with some roads). In addition, hubs that combine a bus station with something else are all significantly cheaper to maintain: E.g. 640/week for the bus-monorail-hub or 1100/week for the bus - intercity bus - hub. The bus-metro-hub has the same size offers the same functionality as the bus station, plus two metros, for the same upkeep.

 

[want_to_know]

Maybe you could write it a little easier. Too many words in the numbers! Can't remember which one I want to compare.

But I think I know what you're getting at. - Couldn't it be easy that the mono-rail station is for educated people? But you are concerned with the relation.

 

[LucusLoC]

Yeah, attention to detail is not CO's thing. . . Keep looking and you will find a billion other things exactly like this. The only one that seems intentional is the IT offices, they seem t obe molded more after a data-center, not a call center, so most of that space is presumably for server racks, not phone jockeys. When I worked in a datacenter in the middle of a big city, we had an entire floor to just 5 people, the rest was all server space. One floor above us we had regular office space for the company, and they crammed over 150 people into the same floor space.

Now I am not sure why they have an entire district that has datacenter densities, as "IT definitely still needs densely packed call centeres as well as the very sparse areas as well, but they probably just figures that would either be too hard to model or would make things too random (one building employs 24-30 in a high density call center, the next 4 or 5 in a data-center building). And if you average it out you honestly just get regular office densities, but with higher energy usage, so there is no drawback to use them. . .

But yeah, all the rest need to be re-balanced. Does anyone know a good way to pull the data straight from the game files and put them in a spreadsheet? I would be wiling to annotate it and send it in. If we did that it would be a simple data entry job to adjust for the next patch, and maybe we could talk them into it.

 

[want_to_know]

30x36=1080 cells large and employs 86 people. Level 1 industry provides about 1 job/cell,

About 12,56 Cells / Job

Production rates also seem low compared to zoned industry of the same size, although I do not have hard numbers on that

Such Numbers we need! Are they accessible?

 

[YertyL]

Yeah, attention to detail is not CO's thing. . . Keep looking and you will find a billion other things exactly like this. The only one that seems intentional is the IT offices, they seem t obe molded more after a data-center, not a call center, so most of that space is presumably for server racks, not phone jockeys. When I worked in a datacenter in the middle of a big city, we had an entire floor to just 5 people, the rest was all server space. One floor above us we had regular office space for the company, and they crammed over 150 people into the same floor space.

Now I am not sure why they have an entire district that has datacenter densities, as "IT definitely still needs densely packed call centeres as well as the very sparse areas as well, but they probably just figures that would either be too hard to model or would make things too random (one building employs 24-30 in a high density call center, the next 4 or 5 in a data-center building). And if you average it out you honestly just get regular office densities, but with higher energy usage, so there is no drawback to use them. . .

But yeah, all the rest need to be re-balanced. Does anyone know a good way to pull the data straight from the game files and put them in a spreadsheet? I would be wiling to annotate it and send it in. If we did that it would be a simple data entry job to adjust for the next patch, and maybe we could talk them into it.

I think this goes beyond "details". For example, I noticed that small cities will usually have about as much commercial as industry, and will be net exporters. Larger cities will relatively have less and less industry/offices, and will almost inevitably become net importers, even with policies that improve production/worker significantly, like Industry 4.0 and industrial space planning.

This is may be no surprise if every single monorail stop employs almost as many workers as a car factory. But I personally usually find placing industry more interesting than commercial and residential. And it is simply weird if having better infrastructure lowers the productivity of your population.

About 12,56 Cells / Job

Such Numbers we need! Are they accessible?

I meant the "1.0." in that tabular. It's weird, I thought "tile" referred to a large map section (25 tiles mod etc.), and "cell" to the smallest unit for zoning -- but apparently the expressions are occasionally interchanged.

I am sure productivity numbers of zoned industry are accessible for someone, but so far, I have had no luck.

 

[want_to_know]

but apparently the expressions are occasionally interchanged.

Habe es geändert.

Do I understand that correctly? If you have many monorail stations, do you need a lot more residents than with one without?

 

[YertyL]

Apparently, a taxi depot also employs almost as many academics as a university.
Worker numbers are 3/18/21/18.
Maybe this is an inside joke on the prospects of your liberal arts graduates, but otherwise something like
3/25/4/2 (25 taxi drivers, some maintenance & administration) might be more realistic -- and practical, considering you really have to spam these depots if you want to satisfy taxi demand.

Habe es geändert.

Do I understand that correctly? If you have many monorail stations, do you need a lot more residents than with one without?

Yes, infrastructure and unique buildings employ workers, sometimes a significant number. Both realistically and from a gameplay perspective, it makes sense that something like a hospital or a university would employ the same number of workers as a street block filled with offices -- but significantly less so for something like a monorail station or taxi depot.

 

[YertyL]

Some more interesting unique building attributes: The "Fountain of life and Death" apparently employs 60 people (24/24/12/0) -- and it is the same for the "Friendly Neighborhood Park", the "Statue of Industry", the "Lazaret Plaza", the "Statue of Shopping", the "Plaza of the Dead" and the "Official Park". I guess they are keeping these plazas really, really clean.

The "Statue of Wealth" on the other hand only employs 5 (uneducated) people. So I guess that plaza is really filthy.

 

[want_to_know]

employs 60 people

WHAT?

 

[YertyL]

WHAT?

Well, maintaining a small plaza obviously requires about the same workforce as running a huge car factory (60 and 84, respectively).

On the other hand, if you want to do office work in a 20+ story highrise, every employee requires about 4 floors of personal space, so you can only employ 6 people -- see the 3x4 IT cluster. That's just common sense.