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Mass Transit attributes - capacity and pollution

Started by Zitchas, April 04, 2012, 10:53:17 AM

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Zitchas

Good day, all,

I've been using the NAM and building a mass transit focuses city, and I've noticed a couple things that I am curious about.For the record, this is on a city of about 450k, and primarily relies on monorail, buses, and roads.

1) My monorail lines seem to be producing moderate amounts of pollution, particularly on highly used routes. Should they be doing this? I was under the impression that monorail was a "clean" transit type (aka the pollution cost is shifted to the power plant instead of the system itself). Well, it's moderate to high compared to the rest of my city, which is verging on pristine, anyway.

2) I've also noticed that a lot of my transit stations are handling between 6k and 10k a day (compared to the listed max capacity of 2k) with a corresponding drop in the service rating down to almost nothing. I've tried boosting mass transit funding, so is there anything else that could help improve the service rating? Or just build more monorail? Likewise, does having it so overused negatively effect the system?

3) Given my interest in getting into modding, how could I see/edit the capacity and/or pollution produced attributes myself?

Thanks,

Zitchas

jondor

The answers to most of your questions can be found here: NAM Unified Traffic Simulator and Data View Help

The monorail pollution is caused by a limitation in SC4, namely if a transit type contributes to congestion, it creates pollution.  The congestion setting can be turned off, but this unbalances the simulator and does not allow certain capacity tricks to work.  The current NAM Unified Traffic Simulator does include a modified version of the Clean Air Ordinance.  Turning it on will greatly reduce the pollution generated by traffic.

As for the stations, testing has shown that they don't actually decrease in service (despite the little icons) until they reach some astronomical figure greater than the listed capacity.  I can't recall the exact percentage, but it's more than that.

Editing capacities requires ILive's Reader.  I would recommend against trying to change anything in the traffic simulator (it's very complicated and almost all the attributes are interwoven in strange and unpredictable ways), but station capacities are a lot easier.  You just need to find the lot exemplar and change the capacity property (but make a backup first  ;))
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Zitchas

Thanks for the explanation for it. I've pretty much always had the "Clean air ordinance" turned on. Is NAM's modification of it always included, or an option to be installed? I don't recall seeing it mentioned in the installer.

I've got the reader, although I've been hesitant to touch anything with it as of yet. Is there an index anywhere of where things are?

jondor

If you have the latest NAM and are using the NAM Unified Traffic Simulator, then you should have the modified Clean Air Ordinance.

There really is no index, most people have just had to figure out where to find things.  For the Maxis station capacities, open SimCity_1.dat and open the Exemplar Analyzer, using the filter option to display only Lot Configurations (0x10).  That will narrow down the list quite a bit, then poke around until you find the stations you want to modify and copy the exemplars to a new file before changing them.

For non-Maxis stuff, open the dat (or SC4Lot) it came in and there will probably be a lot less files to sift through.
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Mostly writing pony stories on FimFiction.net, but Cities: Skylines is my new best friend.  Anything and everything I made for SimCity 4 is fair game for use and distribution.

ScottFTL

Quote from: jondor on April 04, 2012, 11:51:45 AM
As for the stations, testing has shown that they don't actually decrease in service (despite the little icons) until they reach some astronomical figure greater than the listed capacity.  I can't recall the exact percentage, but it's more than that.

There is no effect until they reach 400% of capacity, but then the stations fail completely and will allow no more traffic to pass for the rest of the sim day.  You can read all the details in this thread.

Zitchas

Thanks for the info (both for locating the monorail station and the link to the discussion on station capacity and throughput). They answered quite a few questions I had on the subject. Now just to get Reader working properly... But that's a subject for another thread, after I've done some more reading on Reader tutorials and stuff.