Water/Sewage Network - Time to drop a feature
- Thread starter RDG
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If you like the current system, I have also a game for you: take a pen and draw a network of lines on it. Afterwards enjoy feeling smart for achieving something...
Back to topic please.
Omg you're right. Also, why do we have to bother with the laying of zones? People should just build stuff next to roads. Hell, why do we even have to build roads, they're a no brainer, you have to have them anyway. It's almost like building a city requires a tiny bit of effort. It's so stupid, why can't I just go out and when I come back I have a nice beautiful city?
I'm sure you think this statement is clever, but there is a massive difference between these things because zone placement and road layout are both things that have major effects on the working of your city based on the interaction of multiple systems. Water pipes simply flip a binary "water provided" switch.
Personally, I'm pretty much indifferent to the water system. It doesn't bother me to have to put down pipes, but I'm not going to pretend I'd be missing something deep if it was removed tomorrow. The biggest purpose it seems to serve is to provide a small budgetary hurdle in the earliest part of the game.
Before this all breaks down into insults 
I assume there's a number of camps here.
1. Those who don't like laying pipes <full stop>
2. Those who don't like laying pipes because there's no consequences/challenge
3. Those who like laying pipes even though there is no challenge
Those in Camp 1 are probably a little stuck as I don't think it will be dropped as a feature (but then again who knows)
Those in Camp 3 are quite happy already and don't need to be addressed.
How about we try and solve the issues for those in Camp 2. How do we make Water Pipes important?
* Introduce Maintenance costs for pipes.
* Introduce random pipe breaks
* A new Service Building required for Water that is required for maintenance.
Just throwing ideas around, any others?
I assume there's a number of camps here.
1. Those who don't like laying pipes <full stop>
2. Those who don't like laying pipes because there's no consequences/challenge
3. Those who like laying pipes even though there is no challenge
Those in Camp 1 are probably a little stuck as I don't think it will be dropped as a feature (but then again who knows)
Those in Camp 3 are quite happy already and don't need to be addressed.
How about we try and solve the issues for those in Camp 2. How do we make Water Pipes important?
* Introduce Maintenance costs for pipes.
* Introduce random pipe breaks
* A new Service Building required for Water that is required for maintenance.
Just throwing ideas around, any others?
Maybe you should look these up in the manual, there is also a good wiki available. All these features you mention require some sort of strategy to gain the desired effect of your decision. You have to tweak and finetune a lot with roads and zones and you later on might be forced to adapt these to the unexpected developments of your city. All this is not the case regarding the current water/sewer-network. You can simply lay a grid of pipes (costs are negligible) and never touch it again. This is way too simple for a game that aims to put up a constant challenge for the city builder.
You mean "increase maintenance"?
I think it's actually part of bigger problem: money aren't a problem at all, besides maybe very early game. Without fixing it Your suggestion, even though they are good and I like them, won't really change a thing.
Hmm, water pipes don't have maintenance now? I thought they did.
Random pipe breaks just sound annoying and too micromanagey. That's a job for the city maintenance department, not the city planner.
If the water system was going to be expanded, I think you'd have to make distance have an impact. So to build a more efficient water system, you'd have to use more of a network of pumps and water towers, instead of just bunching up pumps in one smaller corner of the map. Adding reservoirs would be a nice touch.
Random pipe breaks just sound annoying and too micromanagey. That's a job for the city maintenance department, not the city planner.
If the water system was going to be expanded, I think you'd have to make distance have an impact. So to build a more efficient water system, you'd have to use more of a network of pumps and water towers, instead of just bunching up pumps in one smaller corner of the map. Adding reservoirs would be a nice touch.
No you don't. Put down a road, put down some R, C and I and you have a "city" which you can then just leave. Or you can expand by adding another road and some more zone. The AI should just do this automatically until it can no longer solve the problem, then it should notify you that there's something interesting to do.
"Constant challenge" is not how I would describe the experience of building a city in C:SL.
A good approach. I like this pipe break idea. Although we then still face the fact that one pipe every 2 or so blocks magically serves the vicinity without all the smaller supply ducts. Not a solution to that, but those pipe breaks could also mean flooding an adjacent street tile and the necessary construction work to repair the damage would actually cause a temporary traffic inconvenience.
Yeah, I think I said in my early post that having too much money is one of the root reasons why this
and some other things in the game are a little "pointless".
In fact, I hadn't even noticed pipes actually have a maintenance cost already, which says a lot
If you reduce the amount of money swilling around pipe placement becomes more important.
But anyway, I was just trying to start an actual discussion of how to make pipe laying more important rather than just getting rid of it.
I can agree with you to some extent in it's current form, the water system is not challenging, however we don't want it to turn to micromanagement and tedious.
I would suggest that random pipe breaks might be a little too far. The only way I can see this being acceptable is if you reduce the "pipe" budget. But the water budget just decreases or increases the capacity of the water and sewage pumps and doesn't affect maintenance or lifespan.
I would also put forward a few suggestions...
- Independent budgets for facilities. So we can have segregated water supplies that are more cost effective and easily managed than the overarching 'water' budget and information screens.
- Land height have an effect on pipes combined with a limited pressure/capacity per pipe. If you want to pump up a hill from a river you need more pumps. I would suggest putting reservoirs higher up on a hill, or water towers on high altitude towns. Also non-river based pumps to send this water further but not draw more water from the ground (a kind of relay).
- Water levels change at different times of year. Summer and drought effects how much you need to pump. Tides?
- Some buildings don't require water to function. Low level housing may not require water. This means that building pipes isn't compulsory, but aides in development. No water means fire risk, health problems and sadness.
- A separation of sea water and fresh water and addition of desalinization plants (especially for island based maps). Also man-made reservoirs added.
- Water treatment on the intake of water. Improves health, or standard water always has a small % of contaminants. Which if I drank from the purest streams I'd still get some nasty parasites
- More water based policies. For example putting fluoride in the water. Will cost extra per so many m3 of water and improve health, but decrease happiness or something. Might not be worth the controversy of doing this.
This is already sounding like the possibility of a Water Services DLC for those who want to add these feature to a city.
I like the idea of Reservoirs and Desalinization plants.
How about Water Treatment plants and Land pollution affecting Water Supplies (I haven't noticed if this is already there, I don't think so)
I like the idea of Reservoirs and Desalinization plants.
How about Water Treatment plants and Land pollution affecting Water Supplies (I haven't noticed if this is already there, I don't think so)
So far:
* increase maintenance (and building) costs for pipes.
* introduce random pipe breaks
-could cause local minor floods and the need for repairs, until then blocking traffic
* a new service building required for water that is required for maintenance.
-pump stations, may serve a certain radius of area to keep the water pressure in appropriate levels, so you actually would have to consider where to place them strategically best, also considering running costs and(!) electricity consumption
*new buildings to add taste to the overall water network (all including considerable building and maintenance costs and also electricity)
- water cleaning facility (a.k.a. treatment plant), filtering dump water, then releasing it down into the ground water
- water works, conveys fresh water from the ground water
* increase maintenance (and building) costs for pipes.
* introduce random pipe breaks
-could cause local minor floods and the need for repairs, until then blocking traffic
* a new service building required for water that is required for maintenance.
-pump stations, may serve a certain radius of area to keep the water pressure in appropriate levels, so you actually would have to consider where to place them strategically best, also considering running costs and(!) electricity consumption
*new buildings to add taste to the overall water network (all including considerable building and maintenance costs and also electricity)
- water cleaning facility (a.k.a. treatment plant), filtering dump water, then releasing it down into the ground water
- water works, conveys fresh water from the ground water
- 1
I'm liking the look of that much better than just dropping the feature altogether.
The system should be changed so that you have water extraction as we do now but instead run a "major pipeline" to a "pumping station" (the pumping station will have a specific radius/catchment area). The city can then grab water freely via road network and distribute to all buildings within the catchment area of the pumping station. Pumping stations could also be noisy and power hungry.
Make the "major pipelines" very expensive as well as the "pumping stations" and this will force the player to plan strategic routes as well as remove the need to lay huge amounts of pipe to cover every building.
We also need water treatment plants.
Make the "major pipelines" very expensive as well as the "pumping stations" and this will force the player to plan strategic routes as well as remove the need to lay huge amounts of pipe to cover every building.
We also need water treatment plants.
To be honest, I feel there is a lot of room for more development with regards water supply/sewage disposal.
For example, the fact that we're basically pumping water straight from a river into people homes is pretty unrealistic (there's probably room for a quick bit of disinfectant in the water pumps, but nothiong more). Potable water goes through almost as much treatment as sewage. At the least there should be a proper water treatment plant (as opposed to waste water treament plant), that is needed at a certain point. People in a small developing town might accept barely treated water, but they'll get unhappy pretty quickly without decent treated water.
For example, the fact that we're basically pumping water straight from a river into people homes is pretty unrealistic (there's probably room for a quick bit of disinfectant in the water pumps, but nothiong more). Potable water goes through almost as much treatment as sewage. At the least there should be a proper water treatment plant (as opposed to waste water treament plant), that is needed at a certain point. People in a small developing town might accept barely treated water, but they'll get unhappy pretty quickly without decent treated water.
Don't ask me, it wasn't my complaint! Thats why I suggested a mod, which is optional, rather than a request for the devs.
This would have to be one of the dumbest posts in this thread.
Do you know why notebooks come with the lines already printed on each page? Because most people would rather spend their time writing instead of wasting it by drawing the lines themselves. Laying pipes, and indeed electrical cables, before being able to engage in the more creative act of city design is as tedious as putting lines on paper before engaging in the more creative act of writing. But then, you wouldn't know much about writing something that is worth reading would you?