Water shortage from off map? Big gaps in river water.

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I have been playing the Trains Scenario from Mass Transit, and the water coming down the river from off the map is very inconsistent. Rather annoying, as when the "gap" in the water passes my water pumps, the city is without water. I even tried using the Natural Disasters water tanks, but they won't supply the full city, even briefly. Must only be able to provide enough flow for nearby buildings.

Happens a lot.

I have no assets or mods enabled.

 

[barrygreybeard]

Yes it certainly looks like it, getting water flowing is tricky as sometimes it can take in game years to show itself. If it gets too bad I do use a mod to correct that sort of stuff

 

[ristosal]

I meant to get these shots up too, but got sidetracked adding "Concerts" stuff to the wiki, as well as real life stuff.

Anyway, they show a big distortion in the water flow upstream outside of my city limits.

Yep, there's probably an area with two water sources of different size close to each other. BonBonB addressed this in one of his map reviews a while ago.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

The annoying water problem definitely starts outside city limits.

I did a few time lapse videos of it happening.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNmjD9MJZKYH5LR3P8zb5K2Ea6AArhT1E

Gives me frequent water shortages, which drops tax income as well. Really not good.

 

[MarkJohnson]

I have been playing the Trains Scenario from Mass Transit, and the water coming down the river from off the map is very inconsistent. Rather annoying, as when the "gap" in the water passes my water pumps, the city is without water. I even tried using the Natural Disasters water tanks, but they won't supply the full city, even briefly. Must only be able to provide enough flow for nearby buildings.

Happens a lot.

I have no assets or mods enabled.

Do you have any assets or mods subscribed? If so, they may still be loading up and causing issues.

Try launching the game with --noWorkshop so nothing is loaded and see if it continues.

If it continues, can you post/link a save of your game so we can take a peek at it?

Maybe I'll look at the scenario later if I can make some time.

EDIT:

Definitely those water pumps clumped together will drain the river dry, but there is likely not enough water consumption yet. There does appear to be something fishy in the state of Denmark.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Try launching the game with --noWorkshop so nothing is loaded and see if it continues.

Still happens. Ran it quite awhile.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Still happens. Ran it quite awhile.

Can you post the output_log.txt file for the city? or maybe a save?

Maybe try spreading out the water pumps evenly. Maybe remove all water pumps and place water towers.

I loaded up the scenario and I could see the zigzags in the water. But other than that, that's all I noticed. I mean you're not pulling that much water in your city from what I can tell.

But a save game will go a long ways to see what's going on in your city.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Definitely those water pumps clumped together will drain the river dry, but there is likely not enough water consumption yet.

There are not very many. The earlier pictures showed a bunch, but the vast majority were not even turned on. I just place a bunch, turn them off, and turn them on one at a time as the demand rises. Since then, I got rid of them, mostly for clarity. I did spread a few out.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Check out the 4 pumps (3 on, 1 off) at the very start of city limits. (Water flowing left to right.)

 

[MarkJohnson]

yes, like i said, you can't clump them together. you need to space them out quite a bit. there should be water respawn points along the river so the river won't run dry. same with sewage, it can cause flooding if you clump them up as well. the respawn points will also drain excess water to prevent flooding, but only to a certain point. they help keep the river level.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Can you post the output_log.txt file for the city?

Not sure what you'd get out of that.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

yes, like i said, you can't clump them together. you need to space them out quite a bit.

I have them clumped like that in pretty much every other city, and never had issues. This river is a little narrow though.
Also, the "sucked dry spots" move through and disappear. River flow should be relatively constant, as should the water being removed by the pumps. It should be there all the time, or not at all. Not randomly appearing and disappearing.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

But a save game will go a long ways to see what's going on in your city.

A bit hesitant to post it. It has to be the worst city that I have built. Looks awful in so many ways. Even the first city I built, while not being great, is far better looking. A bit embarrassing.

I guess largely I didn't care much about it; I was just beating the scenario. Trying different things while I was at it. Lots of grid.

Not to say that there are not some nice aspects of it, as I do like some parts of it, but it is bad overall.

The city includes stuff from After Dark, Natural Disasters, Mass Transit, CCP: Art Deco, CCP: High-Tech Buildings, Pearls from the East (the odd bamboo tree I think), and Concerts.
Should not be any other assets or mods.

I didn't have unlimited oil/ore turned on, so I never built the buildings on those resources, though some streets are laid out for it.

There are no buses. It was just something I did since I figured it was supposed to be focused on trains. Every other city had buses.

First time using some of the Mass Transit stuff, so it is a bit haphazard.

Plenty of ugly roads. I doubt import/exports are balanced, never really looked at it or cared.

Concerts "Festival Area" is ready for the final upgrade.

Population peak was probably 139k, and it should be at about 136k at the moment. No infinite money, but there is plenty in the coffers.

As awful as it is, it does work for the most part. Aside from the water issues in the river. Sometimes it happens a lot, other times it is a fair bit of time between incidents. (Seems especially long if sitting there waiting for it to happen. Watched kettle never boils kind of thing.) Curious to see if it continues for you.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Well, I let it run for a while and those low spots just faded out as they went to sea. The I looked up stream and it was starting again.

I plopped down a bunch of water towers and bulldozed all of the water pumps on the river and all is well, except a few spots have flooding from the river being full to the top again.

Your city looks fine. It's not awful at all. You are definitely short on goods as they are being imported (10,000+) and very short on generic industry.

It is using an abnormal amount of water though. Maybe the ND stuff creating a large load, or the river has weak water spawn points. But it does act weird with water pumps. I have zero workshop, so I know nothing is interfering.

Maybe I'll try putting water pumps back in a little at a time and see what happens.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Maybe the ND stuff creating a large load

I think from ND there is only a medical helicopter depot and a water tank reservoir (to try to combat the water shortages, but it only covers a small part of the city, so it didn't really help significantly). Oh, and an earthquake sensor in the woods between the opera house and the festival area (looks like some utility shed or something, there to pass power over to the opera house). I don't think there is anything else from ND. Might be a fire helicopter depot, but I don't think so. Not sure without looking.

Thanks for looking at it.

 

[MarkJohnson]

I loaded the map into the map editor and it show there are only a pair of water spouts at the top of the river at the edge of the map. But the are none along the river to top it back off. My only guess is that it is drawing so much water it is pulling it from upstream. But it is definitely weird for sure.

I guess you'll need to spread them out very far apart and/or have water towers on land.

Maybe they designed them this way so water towers would get more use, or it is designed this way for natural disasters? But normally you'd have at least one respawn point per tile or so. At least that is what I noticed when creating my own map.

If you want to look at it or play around in the map editor, you can just move the maps from the steam folder to your appdata folder.

Steam maps are stored here:
D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\Files\Maps

User created maps stored here:
C:\Users\Mark\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\Maps

 

[barrygreybeard]

I still believe its down to the original flawed water design. If you watch it long enough you can see the ripples starting outside the city limits and with time they get larger and larger. It may aggravate the situation by extracting water from the "river" but the basic problem is design. The bed of the river is completely flat too so its not really a river as such.

The only way I got the water level in the channel to stabilise is by using a technique suggested in this video.

Placing small weak water spawners along the length of the channel seems to work. As he points out, they stabilise the level of the water as they not only spawn water but if it becomes too high it sucks up water too.

Whether this is a just "fudge" or not, it seems to work. Everything else I tried failed!

 

[MarkJohnson]

I just did two more test and the first try the upstream dry spell, it stopped happening. I did spread out the water pumps as well.

I also loaded it without any changes and it was fine after the upstream glitch went through. although another one tried to form, but it never did, I then noticed a third one looked like it was going to form, but it didn't do anything. It must have had a chain reaction of the many pumps clumped together. But all is fine either with this one or the one I spread them out or the one I removed all water pumps and replaced them with water towers.

Maybe it worked like a deathwave? The first fix you did actually stopped it, but it was in a cycle and took 3-4 waves to level off. But it is fine now. No issues whatsoever. Even when the dry spot hit it didn't cause any harm as water quickly came in before having any real effect other than a warning water icon. It never turned red like it does when it has used up its reserves and ready to go abandoned.

I don't think the water spawner are the issue. I think they left it that way so people don't clump them up and cause dry spell. But it seems to handle the current clump just fine, although it is probably at its limit.

I guess patience is a virtue after all. lol

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

So, what I am taking away from all this is: It is a CO map, and a CO scenario, CO should fix it.

I have beaten the scenario, so I can fiddle with it I suppose.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I think they left it that way so people don't clump them up and cause dry spell.

If they wanted limited water from the river, it should be low all the time, not huge dry spots passing through. Not realistic. Also, if it was limited water, "x" pumps spaced out should take out the same amount as "x" pumps together.

Even when the dry spot hit it didn't cause any harm as water quickly came in before having any real effect other than a warning water icon. It never turned red like it does when it has used up its reserves and ready to go abandoned.

I never had any abandoning over it, but when the low water icon comes up, the tax income goes down. A lot.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Your city looks fine. It's not awful at all.

You're either being polite or have a lower standard than me.