Service Radius

[Calbrenar]

I'm not sure I get the whole service radius. I assume it is to show you approximately where the vehicles will go and that makes sense.

Except, that's not where the vehicles go. You put in a garbage plant and 3/4 of the trucks will leave the radius to head out all over your city. What is the point of the service radius? Also, why is the algorithm unable to handle one way roads? You put in some one way roads and even with lots of connections it vastly decreases the effective radius.

I've even seen weird situations where certain buildings are RED (no services) despite sitting next to a service building on a one way road.

All these service buildings trying their best to serve other parts of the city cause a vicious circle. Too much traffic, so service can't get there. Service from all over the city goes there to help which makes the traffic worse, local areas now have no service vehicles so they flip out, the rest of the city tries to come help, more traffic, more blocked service. Etc.

I think the service trucks need to be more restrictive on how far they travel or at least have you have a way to control it. I'm sure some players have figured out a way to take advantage of it but for me I'd like a way to restrict them.

 

[IVIaarten]

It's a bit confusing. It's actually NOT showing the service radius. It's actually showing the radius in which buildings get the level up (happiness) benefit from the building.

The service radius is dictated by building reach, and your road layout. Also, people will find ways to travel to any services (like schools) from anywhere on the map if they want to (either by car, walking or public transport).

I actually prefer this method of doing things, it's a lot more realistic.

edit: it would be nice to have the option to limit some services to a smaller area (especially the hearses, and garbage trucks)

 

[Calbrenar]

Ah that makes more sense. What about where the roads turn green? That's not based on where they cover? Also, there's a big difference between teleporting to schools and poisoning your roadway with garbage trucks and fire engines

 

[IVIaarten]

I think the 'happiness' area is influenced by your road layout a bit as well (especially noticeable when you put a service building along a one-way road. So that's more of an indication of coverage. The service vehicles will still happily venture outside it though. But it shows that for instance the fire department might show up too late.

 

[Calbrenar]

I still can't figure out why i can put the 25 truck fire station next to 3 red buildings on a two way road and they stay red. I'll have to take some screen shots tonight.

 

[IVIaarten]

Maybe you're seeing the increased fire risk of abandoned buildings? For special cases you could also make a small district and and smoke detectors there (I only have the smoke detector policy in my heavy industrial zones, since it really helps them).

 

[TimFisher]

Ah that makes more sense. What about where the roads turn green? That's not based on where they cover? Also, there's a big difference between teleporting to schools and poisoning your roadway with garbage trucks and fire engines

I think the roads turning green is to give you an idea of how far the service vehicles can/will travel. It's not entirely accurate though. It's just to give you the basic idea.

For instance, my fire houses can send out trucks a lot further than where the green ends. But at some point, they will not reach the fire in time. They will still try though, and they'll often be seen trying to reach a fire that is hopelessly far beyond the green. (I have a forestry operation way out from my city but I don't really care enough about it to actually build a fire house there so buildings burn down all the time.)

 

[Potoroo]

It's a bit confusing. It's actually NOT showing the service radius. It's actually showing the radius in which buildings get the level up (happiness) benefit from the building.

The service radius is dictated by building reach, and your road layout. Also, people will find ways to travel to any services (like schools) from anywhere on the map if they want to (either by car, walking or public transport).

I actually prefer this method of doing things, it's a lot more realistic.

edit: it would be nice to have the option to limit some services to a smaller area (especially the hearses, and garbage trucks)

It's certainly not realistic for most services, especially the emergency services. The current implementation causes havoc in any large city in Skylines, as the OP noted. It's fundamentally flawed and once the devs have got the bulk of the stability bugs and what have you out of the way fixing it should be a high priority.

 

[IVIaarten]

It's certainly not realistic for most services, especially the emergency services. The current implementation causes havoc in any large city in Skylines, as the OP noted. It's fundamentally flawed and once the devs have got the bulk of the stability bugs and what have you out of the way fixing it should be a high priority.

That's why I have the added comment about liking to have the OPTION to limit service vehicles to a radius.

But on the other hand, I want to keep the current system too. I have this huge area with little hamlets and some small towns. If I had to place a fire station to be able to have coverage for all the little farms and hamlets, that would be unrealistic as well.

In this rural area, the fire trucks can cover a huge area, and still catch almost all fires.

I would love to have the option to link coverage to say districts. If you have an emergency service selected, you can go into the district mode and just click the districts you want them to cover.

 

[slornie]

Being able to limit service buildings to particular districts (and that had better be districts, plural!) would be a brilliant enhancement!

 

[MiguelBazil]

@IVIaarten What map are you doing that on? It looks freaking awsome, it kinda reminds me of the area around my hometown, I have to try to replicate that. Also, have you deleted everything on each patch until you got the desired fields?

 

[IVIaarten]

@IVIaarten What map are you doing that on? It looks freaking awsome, it kinda reminds me of the area around my hometown, I have to try to replicate that. Also, have you deleted everything on each patch until you got the desired fields?

It's a map I've made myself, I've uploaded it on the workshop since there were some requests for it from my City Journal, but I've not added pictures to it yet. You can find it here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=413802816

Most of the farms you see in that view are just eye-candy so far. I've made some custom parks in the asset editor (basically just a couple of 4x12 and 4x16 lots with dirt/field textures), really easy to do. Just don't forget to set tourism and entertainment values to 0. Add those to some dirt roads, plop some trees, and presto When filling in those areas I just zone some 4x4 farming industry spots, and bulldoze until I get a nice farm building to appear to make the illusion complete.

edit: forgot to mention that I also use loads of dirt pedestrian paths to create that sort of plowed field look.