• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

ETA on the RHW 12S -- and an inquiry

Started by Pythias900KMB, March 02, 2018, 11:14:39 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Pythias900KMB

Many salutations!!!  The Network Amendment Module continues to amaze me every day as I set to work replacing the Maxis highway and revise my earlier handiwork with the RHW.  There are a couple of things bugging me; if I may, I would like to get those things off my chest.  The first inquiry has to do with an ETA on when I am going to see the RHW-12S -- the unidirectional carriageway that has six lanes. I probably imagine that it will be three tiles wide and could handle a lot more motor traffic than the RHW 8S.  I ask this because I have had to use an A2 ramp and an E2 ramp in order to bust an RHW 10S back down to an RHW 4S in order to begin and conclude two T-interchanges.  The interchange of IH-10 @ Loop 410 in Balcones Heights is built to where the inner four lanes on both highways bypass the interchange; I would love to successfully emulate that in SimCity 4.

The second inquiry has to do with the D2 ramp.  Is it possible to avail it with the RHW 10S?  If so, where do I need to begin my search to that end?

Tarkus

#1
First off, Pythias900KMB, glad to hear you're enjoying the NAM and RHW! :thumbsup:

To answer your main question, the RHW-12S, width-wise, ends up fitting on two tiles per carriageway (four tiles for a full dual carriageway), with a slight overhang, less than the one on the RHW-6S.  That's part of the reason it's never gone beyond an initial prototype--there's no ability to boost its capacity beyond that of the 8S and 10S, so it doesn't really fill much of a need on the functionality front. 

There were originally plans to include the 12S and an RHW-10C (same tile width as the 6C and 8C) in NAM 31, with L1 and L2 elevated variants in addition to a ground version, but those were first shelved before that release, due to the amount of work that would be needed to make a full set of ramps for them.  They were then indefinitely shelved after NAM 31's release, due to the initial controller size panic (resolved by mandating the 4GB Patch), and then because our plan was to instead focus on building out the existing 34 RHW networks.  The NWM's TLA-9 and AVE-8 also were caught up in this "network freeze".

The NAM Team doesn't do release dates (save for the one time we did with NAM 31, which was a disaster--and part of the reason the 12S and 10C got cut, I might add), but even going with a more time-agnostic response of approximately what NAM version one might see them arrive, it's a huge unknown at this point.  There are plans to eventually end the moratorium on new RHW networks, but the higher priority is on adding networks that offer new capacity variants--i.e. "ultra-wides" such as the 12C and 14S, as well as the long-proposed DDRHW-8.

As far as an RHW-10S Type D2 ramp, it doesn't exist in the newer FLEXRamp/DRI system, but there is an older puzzle piece version of both it and an E2, under the old "Ramps" button.  Technically, the puzzle piece would be termed a "Type D2 Wide" in the current nomenclature, since there's a tile gap between the mainline and the ramp, as the RHW-6S overhang would look rather nasty being directly adjacent to a two-lane (RHW-4) ramp.  There are plans to fill that gap in the new FLEXRamp/DRI implementation, but those features are not in active development at the moment, and won't be ready for NAM 37.

Hope that helps!

-Alex