Population development/Mod

[VacuumTube]

I am planing to create a mod about the population of cities. But first I wanted to acquire some of your experience and wishes about that topic to know more about the problems.

I already published some mods that modified the population development in TPF1: "Population Limiter" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1831611110 and "Population x4" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1842817181

Now, in TPF2 the population development and logic seems to be different. I didn't have much time to figure out all aspects, but my first impression is that Urban Games was aware of overexpanding cities which led to performance issues, so in general the development should be more controlled. Every city has an initial population and grows depending on their conditions.

So my questions are:
- Is a population limiter still needed? Do you played maps where the city growth was "too high"? Are there possibilites to limit town growth?
- Do you sometimes want towns with higher numbers of residents? Or do you just want more buildings in a town/ larger towns without more residents?
- I noticed that mod "h4e Town Buildung Capacity x0.5". Did anyone try it and what are the results/ is it working?

[SlimNasty™]

Population growth is now based off the initial size of the city and where it's a percentage limits it's growth based on the initial size.

You can also change these values if you turn on the sandbox mod (built into game) playing around with the numbers there can usually give you the results you desire.

With this you can have cities with limited growth of a few hundred up to thousands of people. I've had almost 5k in one city, probably could get higher if you're meeting the demands, which are also editable in sandbox.

[theSeb]

Population control is pretty easy to achieve these days, as per the post above. What would be amazing is if one could control the level and eras of buildings to prevent all of your connected towns looking like Canary Wharf. This has definitely changed a lot since TF 1 and it's probably because cities grow much smaller and slower in TF2, due to performance concerns, but also the developers still wanted to show off the skyscrapers. Well, not all of us want skyscrapers in towns with less than 1000 plebs

[Kniff]

my idea, on vanilla 1500 citizens in a town is a difficult target to reach
if reached as a reward add a third goods demand to the city
so you have another target to reach then
and which indirectly (if reached this new target) also gives additional city growth then
maybe to another citizen limit where a fourth good demand would be added.
that would provide some new motivation for those reaching all targets before

[phillydopey]

we need in tpf2 pleas

[moungjin_kim]

Koreans who like your mod. I used a sandbox on the TPF1 and the demographic mod was very useful. The TPF2 also keeps the sandbox all the way, and certainly the city gets bigger, so the frame drop is noticeable. Come to the workshop every day and wait for your mode. Please release it. You can have one population per building, like TPF1. (I can't speak English using Google Translator.)

[PMV]

sorry, to lazy for english right now ...


TPF2 Stadtgrößen kann nur über die Basiswerte der Städte geändert werden. Mehr oder weniger Bewohner pro Haus sorgt nur für mehr oder weniger Häuser. Da zudem der "Wachstum" als Prozentzahl mit eine große Rolle spielt und jede weiter Güterart bis +100% zusätzliche Stadtgröße ermöglicht, gibt es damit mir bekannte 2 Möglichkeiten:

Per GameScript und game.interface.setTownCapacities() die Basiszahlen absolut ändern. Und durch hinzufügen von weiterem Güterbedarf für Stadtgebäude relativ zur Basiszahl diese erhöhen. Das blöde als GameScript ist allerdings, das game.interface.getTownCapacities() nicht die Basiszahl, sondern die aktuellen Gesamtbewohner/arbeitsplätze zurück gibt. Damit ist genaues setzen der Basiszahl nur schwer möglich. Bin mir nicht mal sicher, ob wir überhaupt an alle Infos kommen, um die Grundbasiszahl damit dann zu errechnen. Ich hab mich zumindest jetzt darauf beschränkt, lediglich zum Spielneustart mit einer meiner Mods dann die Basiszahl einmalig zu verdoppeln. Das Update für meine Mod kommt aber erst noch. Vielleicht gibs aber vielleicht auch irgend eine Möglichkeit, die mir bisher nicht bekannt ist. Dann würd ich sie natürlich auch gern wissen :)

MFG PMV

[Kniff]

im Sandbox Mode kannst du die Basiszahl einfach editieren

[TheRack]

Hi. I think your mod is needed for TF2 because lowering the number of population in sandbox mode or editor will also lower the number of buildings. If we want to keep many buildings (to simulate a city) with not too much people (for better performance), we need you mod. Thank you. Kindly !

[...]

At this stage, I'd like to see a faster growth of a cities base population over time. Cities feel almost static, with unrealistic jumps when you add or remodel lines.

I don't know if this can be modded towards a behavior similar to TF1, where transport does not simply modify a base value, but is a growth modifier. E.g.: Growth per year = -0.2 + X * traveling_population / total_population * rand(0.8,1.2). Needs a bottom cap for undeveloped towns, ideally one that grows over time.

[ShadowDS83]

Originally posted by phillydopey:

we need in tpf2 pleas

ditto

[VacuumTube]

So I tested a bit with multiplying the building capacity with different factors. Buildings get the intended capacity, that works.
Since there are issues in TPF2 with getting the total world population, a concept like in Population Limiter is no longer followed.

What I expected at first, is that lower number per building leads to larger cities and higher building capacity leads to smaller cities, because I thought towns control the population goal (closed-loop) and continue building or deleting buildings until they reach the desired values.

Turns out: this is NOT the case.
It seems, towns don't care what I'm doing with the capacity. They have the same size (number of buildings), independent of the modified population. Size depends only on the base value (+growth). I assume, the town regulation of reaching the population goal is only based on the number of buildings, not the acutal current population values.

This is good news because with that, the population can be directly multiplied with any factor. I will release this mod in the next week(s) and call it Population Factor or Population Control...

The bad news is that the game often freezes or crashes while testing without error... But that is maybe because of the commonapi

[CashonWheels]

I removed all APIs from my game and I no longer suffer crashes while building.

[doug]

@VacuumTube: Would I be duplicating your efforts here if I created a mod which applied global maximum and minimum values to the R, C & I capacity values for each town (the ones we can set in Sandbox mode?)

[VacuumTube]

@doug no, that's another thing

[doug]

Originally posted by VacuumTube:

@doug no, that's another thing

OK, thanks. In the mean time, I'll look into getting the world population...