Ferry traffic and other questions about watercraft automata

[Ennedi]

I have a couple of questions about the water traffic. only a part of them is connected with traffic (so maybe I should place this meesage in another place ?), others are about watercraft automata.

1. Sometimes seaports and ferry ports don't work because the water in the front of them is too shallow. Does anybody know which is the minimum water depth to allow ferries and ships to appear? Is it necessary to have this minimum depth only in the front of ferry port/seaport, or everywhere where we want to see moving ferries/ships? Is this depth equal for ferry ports and seaports or is it different?

2. Which are necessary conditions to allow the ferry port to work? I understand that we must have at least two of them in the city to create a ferry line, and we should have a demand for this kind of traffic. But what about the visual aspect? Is it necessary to have a functioning ferry line to see ferries? Does the amount of ferries depend on the usage of the ferry line?
The same about seaports - do we see more ships if the port usage is higher, or it doesn't matter?

3. Concerning 1 and 2 does anybody know about exemplar files managing these things? I looked at simcity1.dat and I wasn't able to find anything.

4. Generating boats: The default ingame marina generates boats, motorboats, hang gliders etc. I foud that the minimum water depth is 5 m (ie. the altitude of the sea bottom shouldn't be higher than 245 m). Props are generated also if the marina hasn't road access, power etc.
a) however, watercraft automata seem to move rather on deep water and avoid shallow areas - is it true or it's only my feeling?
b) PEG's Marina placed in the same conditions as the default one doesn't generate automata. What can be wrong?

Adam

[Swamper77]

1. There isn't a listed minimum depth for the ports and ferry terminals. The auto ferry automata model hull extends 2 meters underwater and the cargo ship automata hulls extend 6 meters underwater. I would say the recommended depth for the water near ports and ferry terminals should be about 20 meters or until the seafloor is not visible where you intend to place the port or terminal. The water near ferry terminals can be a little shallower than the ports, but not too much. If you end up with underwater cliffs on the edge of the land where you plan to build a port or ferry terminal, you should be fine.

2. For a ferry terminal to work, you need a pair of the particular type. Also, a passenger ferry cannot dock with a car ferry terminal, despite the menu tooltip saying that the car terminal takes both cars and people. You most likely will not see cars "queue up" on the car ferry terminal Lots. Maxis has an effect for that, but they didn't use it because the roadway on the dock is a 2-way road.

If they are working properly, you should see a purple line running across the water to the next terminal. For the ferries, you will see many boats and they will queue to dock with the terminal if you have a lot of traffic on that route. At minimum, you will see 1 ferry on any particular route. It just may be a little while before you see them, like looking for passenger trains on a low traffic route.

Ports are different. They use a "Tag" prop that spawns the cargo ships, but the ships show up at a constant rate regardless of the amount of cargo being dropped off. These ships usually don't display cargo on them either. The ships that are showing cargo are controlled by the EffectsDirectory and appear only when one of the "Effect_Dock..." props are placed on the Lot. These Effects also have an animation of the ship arriving and docking with the port as well as the loaded ship leaving.

3. There are exemplars for all vehicles, buildings, and Lots. Ferry terminals have a special set of props on the Lots and properties in their building exemplars to control how traffic is converted to ferries and back within the terminal lots. I'm not going to go into detail about all of that here. Ports are setup similar to the airports in terms of functioning. They use a set of Developer exemplars (1 for the buildings, 1 for the Lots) and have exemplars for each building and Lot (1 each for every functioning port Lot). The game handles the transfer of the freight from trucks to the port. The game basically views the ports as neighbor connections, a way out of town for the cargo.

4. The automata generated by the marina are created through several props on the Lot. The "Effect_Hangglider" prop makes hang gliders appear in your city. They are controlled by the EffectsDirectory and the prop just provides a location for them to start near. The boats on the water at the marina are a bunch of "Tag" props with "Marinafront" in their exemplar names. They are spawn points for the smaller UDI boats. There is also a "MarinaUDISpawn" "Tag" prop at the end of the dock for the bigger boats to spawn when you do UDI (ie the tug boat). These tag props don't require power or road access to work. The Lot just has to be there.

A. As soon as you place the marina lot, a bunch of boats will appear on the water. Some of them will be moving and some will just be idling. They do tend to avoid the shallows because they tend to vanish once they get close to shore. As for what is controlling them, it is probably the "Tag" props that are along the dock.

B. He probably didn't place the "Tag" props that the game's marina has on it's Lot. PEG probably thought they were for UDI only and didn't place the "Tag" props for that reason. While many people avoid the UDI stuff as much as they can, the "Tag" props that have UDI in their exemplar names may control a lot the automata appearances in the game, such as boats on the water or aircraft in the air.

-Jan

[Ennedi]

Thank you very much Jan! This is really detailed reply and it gives me much to think 

Never have I look at effects and it seems to be very interesting theme. As for PEG's Marina - I checked everything several times and I supposed something similar as you explained.
As I said, I must think a lot and it will take some time. I hope you will not be very angry if I will have a question or two in future 

Adam

[Swamper77]

I won't be angry provided you are polite as you were with your questions in the first place. Politeness goes a long ways, which is a lesson that a few "demanding" members haven't learned yet

-Jan