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The Exploitation of Mordant

Started by joshua43214, July 17, 2014, 07:50:21 PM

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joshua43214

Please note this is my first MD and comes with my return to SC4 after a four year hiatus. Please be free with comments, suggestions, and criticisms - I am still rebuilding my plugins folder. I am not above ripping out entire sections of a city and rebuilding it. See the notes at the end of this post for details and goals.

Welcome to
The Exploitation of Mordant
or how I learned to stop worrying and love my slope mod.

The recent discovery of valuable mineral resources in the Mordant region has led several powerful conglomerates to form The Consortium to exploit the region. The Consortium successfully lobbied the government for exclusive rights to the Mordant region resources.
Bereft of sufficient oversight by a cash strapped government, The Consortium set out to develop as much of the region as possible before they are forced to adopt higher standards for the environment and the workers.
Orisen was picked as the gateway city to the mountain areas because of its ready source of fresh water, and combination of mountainous and flat terrain.

Water pumping station in an idyllic setting


A company town hurriedly thrown up with no regard for amenities.  We can assume this will become a crime ridden desolate area as more workers and their families are crammed into this space.


In the interest of protecting the huge investment in infrastructure and industry, The Consortium puts more work into power and water generation than living conditions.


Meanwhile in the city of Teresa, one of The Consortium members was caught diverting resources into his own GLR manufacturing company. An executive decision was reached - kick out the member and destroy the city.


A more sensible city is under construction as the landscape is hurriedly re-graded and new workers quarters are erected. The workforce in Teresa is of higher caliber than that of Orisen, so a small number of public services are provided to retain valuable tradesmen. A new heavy rail line is cut headed to the South to serve major industrial sector.



Fourth Wall Break
In spite of the starting ton, this MD this is not meant to be a commentary on "the evils of capitalism." The goal is to open and exploit a region in the manner of the old time robber barons, and have it grow into a modern city. Hopefully I will end up with a city like Chicago or Pittsburg, rather than a Detroit or Akron. I want a large modern region that has deeply imbedded roots in industry.
Because of this I am committed from the outset to rail. I plan to use a great deal of heavy rail for freight, and elevated rail in urban areas and ground rail (rail, not GLR) for non-urban areas. I will do my best to keep passenger and freight on separate tracks, and I would love as much feedback as possible on my rail lines, both in improving the look and good downloads. If anyone has a good idea for making passenger and freight lines look differently, please post it. I also intend to use alot of RHW, which I normally hate because the overpasses are simply fuggly - so any suggestions for a mod for that that is NAM 32 compatible would be greatly loved.
The region I am using is the north east 8x8 large tiles from drunkapple's Salt Lake City, Utah. This map is turning out to be the most challenging map I have ever played. Making smooth road connections can take over an hour sometimes to get right, I probably should have named the region "Slope Hell." I use 4 slope mods and spend a lot of time switching between them. I chose this map because it has an amazing mix of almost perfectly flat areas, and very very rugged mountain areas.
I hope to play with the BSC park system, the new canal sets revamps, airports, and RRW. I also hope to do some re-lotting of some stuff and hopefully get a nice big hydroelectric dam going, not to mention just making stuff fit in better. In the end I hope to tell a good tale about the rise of Mordant, and hopefully we can all become better players in the process.
I also recently traveled though this particular area, the pic was taken in May less than 30 miles from where we start this MD. Most of the roads in this area are so rough I spent all my time driving under 20 mph dodging rock falls that covered the roads.


Major mods include NAM 32 with RRW, CAM, CAN-AM, CPT_MissouriBreaksTerrainMod, and AC Functional Airports
4 years ago I took what was meant to be a short break from SC4. Shortly after that, I somehow lost my game files. I just did not have the heart to download and reinstall all 7+ Gigs of mods I had installed. My Lex history alone had 24 pages in my download history. Both downloaders seem to be broken, so I just deleted my history and started over. I am back up to 2.8 Gigs in my plugins folder. Any suggestions are very welcome. I will eventually get around to a seasonal trees mod, but I just got done getting all my canal stuff together, and still have waterfront stuff to get.
Lastly, because I totally suck at coming up with city names, I have shamelessly lifted city names from Stephen R. Donaldson's "Mordant's Need."

Catalyst

Hey Josua. First of all I wish you good luck with this MD! It seems to me that, because of your experience it will go a long way, and I'm happy to be able to follow it from the very beginning  ;)
I hope you won't loose too much motivation & time to downloading more plugins, I'm playing SC4 since almost 2 years and still I find myself spending hours just downloading basic stuff like fire stations or RCI buildings...

I'm looking forward to see some CAN-AM stuff and it would be great if Mordant would become a city like Chicago (with el-rail) in a couple of years or even decennia (yes, please do take your time !)

The city doesn't look great (yet) but I suppose that's what company towns look like. I like the double elevated rail over viaduct rail in the 5th pic :thumbsup:

As you spent more time then I have with this game, I can't really give you any advice but I will search the web for some nice mods!




benedict

Great start and plan. One tip - pictures almost always look better with the grid turned off (unless they are more tutorial-type images).
Click on the banner to celebrate!

joshua43214

I have sad news. I was having serious issues with meeting regional demand (turned out I accidentally clicked the Park n Ride button in the traffic controller), and while dealing with that and organizing my SC4 folder I accidentally overwrote my map file.
The region was up to about 300k, mostly in Orisen, all zoned low/medium density, was making a very nice transition to better times.

I already have a new MD in the works using the same premise.

@ benedict and Catalyst.
Thank you both for the comments. Company towns in my vision turn into urban wastelands, and won't be "attractive" until they really sprawl.
Can't believe I forgot to turn off the grid (DOH). At least I remembered to turn off the UDI zots...

Mods please move this thread to the MD to a final resting place.


APSMS

Eep!

That is some bad news. Hopefully though we can see some more of you in the near future?

Looking forward to your new future CJ MD! Good luck.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation