Suggestion: Water Management

[DocDesastro]

Hi there,

just wanted to suggest a more realistic treatment of water in the game. In game water is drawn from a river or lake and waste water is flooded back into it. I wonder in what countries besides 3rd world countries this is true.
Now for my own localization: I am from Germany and we do those things like this:
There are roughly 3-4 sources of fresh water for our taps.

1. spring water. This is possible, but only there, where a spring sits and surely not able to provide for a big city.
2. river shore filtrate. Not tapping the river (remember: fish fornicate in it, so it is eeek), but the water approx. 100m under the river after it was filtered by the earth itself. This water is of fine quality and only has to be treated for microorganisms with chlorine. Sometimes we pump water out of the river or a water treatment plant onto specified places to have it seep into the earth to get filtered.
3. ground water. Basically the same as with 2. but no river required
4. sea-salt removal. Possible, but we do not need it here. Too expensive.

So we mostly need pumps to get it out of the earth while not tapping the river. I would like to suggest the game using the following model:

Water has a kind of pollution value and when the polution value is high enough, citizens will become ill if that water is used for fresh water.

There should be a ground water layer. Water is pumped from the earth, instead from a lake or river. So first of all, we need water pumps and water treatment plants to treat the water. It can be stored in water tanks to help over a period of draught.

Ground water can be polluted or affected by certain industries and zones. E.g.: farming will pollute ground water periodically as the farmers will put chemicals and manure onto the fields. It is a bad idea to pump water from there. A badly maintenanced landfill will seep out toxic waste into the earth. Mining industry will pump away ground water in a certain radius so you won't get any from there. Even populated zones create pollution to the ground water if the waste water is not taken away for treatment.

You should be able to draw "water protection zones" which prevent certain industries to take foot there. E.g: farming would be forbidden in such an area. (And farming should be zoneable like it was in Sim City 4 - without the flaw that once population was educated enough nobody worked there). You may not place highways through there and trucks may not drive through there which might cause you to rethink traffic for exchange of water safety.

Waste water can and must be treated by a treatment plant. After treatment it is still unsuitable as drinking water but clean enough to pipe it into a river without polluting it. Some industries produce gazillions of waste water - think about car manufacturing and likes. Industries also need water...badly. From the farmer watering his fields to the power plants - they all need it. The only thing is: they do not need it as clean as the citizens need it. So you could build a pump nearby and supply those industries with their own water circuit.

I see only another problem: Piping. This will lead to a bit of micromanagement but OTOH many players state that the game is too easy or gets boring quickly. We would need two types:
Fresh water pipes delivering water to zones and drains taking the waste water with them. Without fresh water pipes at least farmers and low density residentals will tap the ground water with all consequences. Without drains they will pollute ground water. Those pipes could have a range of lets say 5 blocks around them and cost maintenance - of course. So spreading your city uncontrolled will put the clamps on your budget. You could also combine those pipes with streets but then you will get piping where you do not want it.

 

[slornie]

Hate to say it, but I'm not convinced there's anything here that adds to the game as is.

TL;DR: Most of your suggestions seem to be minor variations on functionality already in game.

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Detailed comments:

There are roughly 3-4 sources of fresh water for our taps.

1. spring water. This is possible, but only there, where a spring sits and surely not able to provide for a big city.
2. river shore filtrate. Not tapping the river (remember: fish fornicate in it, so it is eeek), but the water approx. 100m under the river after it was filtered by the earth itself. This water is of fine quality and only has to be treated for microorganisms with chlorine. Sometimes we pump water out of the river or a water treatment plant onto specified places to have it seep into the earth to get filtered.
3. ground water. Basically the same as with 2. but no river required
4. sea-salt removal. Possible, but we do not need it here. Too expensive.

I think the game already handles these in a slightly more abstract form. Spring water, river shore filtrate and sea-salt removal are all arguably covered by the water pumping station while the water tower covers ground water abstraction.

Water has a kind of pollution value and when the polution value is high enough, citizens will become ill if that water is used for fresh water.

That's how the game already works.

There should be a ground water layer. Water is pumped from the earth, instead from a lake or river. So first of all, we need water pumps and water treatment plants to treat the water. It can be stored in water tanks to help over a period of draught.

Ground water can be polluted or affected by certain industries and zones. E.g.: farming will pollute ground water periodically as the farmers will put chemicals and manure onto the fields. It is a bad idea to pump water from there. A badly maintenanced landfill will seep out toxic waste into the earth. Mining industry will pump away ground water in a certain radius so you won't get any from there. Even populated zones create pollution to the ground water if the waste water is not taken away for treatment.

Ground pollution is already in game and if your water tower (ground water abstraction) is on top of polluted land it pumps polluted water. Farming doesn't produce ground pollution but other resource and general industries do, as well as landfill sites etc. The only thing missing vs your water management proposal is a cleansing function after abstraction but before use (CSL just has treatment before sewage is returned to a water source).

You should be able to draw "water protection zones" which prevent certain industries to take foot there. E.g: farming would be forbidden in such an area. (And farming should be zoneable like it was in Sim City 4 - without the flaw that once population was educated enough nobody worked there). You may not place highways through there and trucks may not drive through there which might cause you to rethink traffic for exchange of water safety.

So you want players to be able to designate a district which can't have industry and can't have highways and can't have trucks? Isn't that just over complicating something players can already do? 1) create district and enact Heavy Traffic Ban policy; 2) don't zone industry within district; 3) don't build highways within district.

Waste water can and must be treated by a treatment plant. After treatment it is still unsuitable as drinking water but clean enough to pipe it into a river without polluting it. Some industries produce gazillions of waste water - think about car manufacturing and likes. Industries also need water...badly. From the farmer watering his fields to the power plants - they all need it. The only thing is: they do not need it as clean as the citizens need it. So you could build a pump nearby and supply those industries with their own water circuit.

As mentioned above, this is already in-game for sewage after you reach a particular milestone. Most pollutants are removed by the water treatment plant before it discharges back into the water source.

I see only another problem: Piping. This will lead to a bit of micromanagement but OTOH many players state that the game is too easy or gets boring quickly. We would need two types:
Fresh water pipes delivering water to zones and drains taking the waste water with them. Without fresh water pipes at least farmers and low density residentals will tap the ground water with all consequences. Without drains they will pollute ground water. Those pipes could have a range of lets say 5 blocks around them and cost maintenance - of course. So spreading your city uncontrolled will put the clamps on your budget. You could also combine those pipes with streets but then you will get piping where you do not want it.

Also already in game. When you build a pipe section you'll notice it has two pipes - one which turns blue on connection to a water source (fresh water) and one that turns green on connection to a drain (sewage). No need for two entirely separate pipe systems.

 

[Zigster]

I think DocDesastro makes some good points. The main problem I have with water in the game is that it is static and infinite. I also have some suggestions on how to make water a more interesting feature of the game. Tried to keep in mind the current game mechanics as much as possible.

Water treatment:

Should be a stage in between water extraction and water use, water treatment.

• Water towers don't need treatment as default (if they're unaffected by man made pollution). Makes water towers more useful as a remote water source and in early game.
• Water pumps output polluted water as default. If the water is also polluted by industry it should be much more expensive to treat.
• Water pipes and other infrastructure should be more expensive to lay and maintain, to make placement of infrastructure more strategic.
• Water treatment plant building: converts polluted water to potable water. Input and output connections. So you pipe your water pumps, and your dams, to your water treatment plant input connection. Then your water distribution network starts from the "output" connection.
• Pumps should require more treatment than dams as default.
• Water recycling. Higher cost version of waste water/sewage treatment that also has an input/output. However should create very high levels of garbage (sludge), and should be expensive. Will help to manage water supplies.

Groundwater:

I find the ingame "abstraction" with water towers to be unsatisfying.

• Groundwater should be a "resource" like coal, ore, etc.
• It should be "consumed" by water towers.
• It could be directly "recharged" by a water treatment output building, such as a wetland.
• It could have a global volume modifier based on map water height (described below, essentially an abstraction of seasonal and climatic variations.)
• It would also be good if it had flow direction, based on the terrain height map. So groundwater pollution could behave the same way as water pollution.
• Could also have a rough hydrogeological map rather than just randomly placed groundwater resources. This might be getting too complicated though.

Map water height:

Referring to the mechanic that you see in action when you install a hydro dam.

• Water height changes based on in game "season". What I imagine is that every 3 months the maps rivers will be effectively "dammed" at their source (ie. the dam won't be visible to players, only the effects).
• Also there could be a longer term drought/flood cycle modifier on the seasonal heights. So for instance, you have seasons as values 1,2,3,4, and el nino/la nina as 1,2,3,4,5. WIth the sum of the 2 numbers representing water height. So 1,1 = 2 is summer in the worst drought year, and 4,5 = 9 is the "rainy" season of the flood year. You could have random flood events of different values. So if you have a high intensity flood when the level is 4,5 a big flood occurs.
• Also water pumped from the river when the level is low should be more polluted.

Dams:

• Pipe connection to dam.
• Slider to control % volume of water that goes to hydro power, water network and environmental flows, and how much is stored.
• Dam storage capacity information.
• Also might be nice to be able to pump water back up into the dam, for storage, after it has been used for hydro. Might be getting too complicated.

Flooding:

Could also be nice to have some flood management measures. The "floods" being the raising of the water height.

• Parks, for instance, could double as flood mitigation buildings.
• Could have policies like rooftop gardens to lessen flooding effect.
• Would require some thought/management in placement of dams and when to release water from your dams to try and prevent flooding.

They're just a few thoughts, lots of possibilities. I would really like to see some more depth in water and energy management in the game in general.