I've come up with a new Grid layout to try...

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

As for a question, anyone know the number of tiles in a map? Any map size should do if you know as it should be 1 - 4 - 16 ratio between them so easy to scale.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

So I was bored I guess and so decided to rewatch this video: https://youtu.be/Adq9i7A8H9U In it I noticed how it seems you can choose if you make intersections though Avenues or not, therefore I thought of having a grid of Avenues acting as one way roads by never crossing them with normal roads which should be doubly effective at getting Sims into my trains if they can't even do U-turns at Avenue x Avenue intersections, anyone seen if they can?

As for the actual layout, 35x35 Avenue, so, 31x31 inside it, railway going though the centre making 4 15x15 tiles inside, so I thought 2 11 length roads 6 tiles apart leading to a 14 length road 3 away from the railway where the station is, allowing 4 10x3 zonings along 10 of the 11 tiles length of the roads from the Avenue and like another 2 6x3s either side of station.

That leaves a 1 tile wide strip for trees along the Avenues which ideally wont be getting used a whole lot anyway, but also 1 tile is all that's needed for Buses so might as well do them there as well I guess.

Scaled up, another grid onto that 35x35 would be 68, another again 101, and then 3 more which would be another 99 onto that would be 200, beyond 299 and 398 etc, sounds like I've thought of a good mega city pattern to try so would be handy to know how far from the edges I should start the grids by knowing the size of the maps.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

(2X10=)20+(2X7(due to having two 3X3 large parks=)14)(=34)+(2X6=)12=48, divide by 3=16 and times again by 8(for 8K being the largest I remember for what I think was 3X3 residential) and we get upto 128K per 14X14 quarter, ouch, even if the POP is half of that, it still suggests 2 Large Hospitals (good for upto 75K Sims) would be needed. Two Large Elementary as well and a Large High School, all are basically 2X3X4, so 24X3 is 72 of the 48X3=144 zoning or already half, cutting POP down to 64K, maybe 3 Hospitals and Elementary every 2 quarters could work and try 1 Large High school per 2 as well, so 3X3X4=36X2=72+(2X3X4=)24=96 out of 288, a third, or 170Kish people. 3 Large Hospitals is good for 112,500 Sims, more than half of that so sounds safe, I remember Elementaries being around the same as Hospitals and Highs being at least double, of course the POP would come down further with Police and Fire etc meaning maybe just the 1 Hospital and Elementary school could be manageable.

Yeah haven't started yet, not sure if I even will this year lol! Depends partly on if any of you are even interested in seeing this get made, still in the brainstorming stage as I do the Math on this Math worked out beforehand equals hopefully first try fail proof design.

[Bfloo]

I'd recommend a subway instead of train for your idea, just to save the space. If you are going for the cosmetic look, you can just hook your subway lines to the main rail line, I think this was the version that allows it (It could be an sc 3000 thing, I haven't tried this in years and forget which I was playing).

They will do u turns at the avenue intersections, I've watched them. It doesn't seem to be an issue, compared to other intersections where cars are going flying. If you don't do any crossings, keep an eye on the commute time, if they need to go all the way around, it may force traffic to another way to get across. I never thought to force them on trains to get across, let us know how it turns out if you go that route.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Subway to rail transitions isn't possible in SC4, not without mods anyway sadly, but SC3K yes. Probably will end up having a subway in addition to the rail system as I'm hoping the rail system to get overused to the point of needing alternatives to it, likely just placing them in the tile wide strip along the Avenues like the Bus stops.

Well, that's one person who actually wants to see this apparently, perhaps that will be enough to convince me to stop being lazy and finally stop putting this game off my to do list.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

I've had pretty decent success with this layout, however, it seems the blocks are too large for the avenue trees to be as effective as I wanted and so... I think I'll make them even bigger lol! Having 4 depth rather than 3 depth zones, at least for Commercial where that's a possibility, Residential and Industry will stay 3 depth with more trees and yeah despite success getting Sims onto the trains, they still are driving to the train stations for whatever nonsense reason which is causing the high pollution in Residential areas, perhaps I should also try using those public parking garages since they still use their damn cars to go to very nearby train stations. Hopefully that kind of nonsense doesn't happen with Subway, Subway stops don't have car parking tiles unlike passenger train stations so that's a good sign they probably don't.

Turns out if you have like 2 parallel roads, Sims can walk to a bus stop on one road and ride it going along the other road, even if the stop is only diagonally connected to one of the roads, so forced bus usage is also a possibility in this game!

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

So I haven't updated here in almost half a year, but, yeah, that's because I still haven't gotten around to building the newer layout, but have recently continued playing with the old layout, which reminded me how next I'll maybe do a central Monorail network instead of ground rail, since the ground rail network got quickly overwhelmed and so going straight to subway early is probably the way to go, though I've heard rumours Monorail is the one pub transit type rich folk will use and so perhaps that's the way to go to further cut down car usage.

[Bfloo]

Assuming you go a new build:

One issue that is implied going straight to a subway early is there aren't enough people to make it worth while, and transportation guy cries that it is a dumb idea, to the point he gets annoying. It is a 'big' budget hit early, and I had to scrap the project due to early game budget issues. If you use the money cheat, this becomes a non event (I choose not to). It feels like the game is scripted for the early subway to fail.

The only time I had success 'early' was connecting a feeder city, with mostly landfills, dirty industry and low income housing to a subway system system that was already profitable on the main tile I was pawning off trash from.

I don't recall trying above ground rail early, at least in this game. Buses are good enough and cheap enough to go profitable early, then I link it to the subway during my rezoning. I go subway because it doesn't take up a lot of room. The earlier games gave me a focus on population instead of aesthetics.

Another thought, which I think applied to this game, but I may be thinking of 3000, is given the choice, the citizens are scripted to want to drive 1st then filter through other modes of transportation if driving becomes 'impossible' (traffic, etc). Walking is the last choice.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

As I said in the "Industrial Switchover?" thread, I neglected many things not part of the tests, this included reward buildings, so last night in part to reconfirm it's size, I built the University. As a 10x12 building with parking lots on all sides, suggesting the devs intended you to build it surrounded by roads, I thought it would prove a good basis to base my new block sizes on, having perhaps 4 depth zones extending from the 12 length side and 3 depth zones doing the same from the 10 length side to make 20x20 blocks. Another building I checked was the big International Airport which was 15 wide, 10 + 1 for road + 4 for the zones = 15, so that works! Though I'm still undecided, I ideally want a layout which fits seamlessly though the boarders of large and medium sized maps at a minimum, preferably also small sized maps as well.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

If I made the blocks 22x20 instead (4 depth on all outer sides), block of those with Monorail running though would be 43x43, x2=86, 3 main roads with two layer thick trees would be 18, total 104 sofar and two half blocks onto that is 22, 126 total, that may work.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

It's long overdue for me to post screenshots, isn't it? Not really sure what ones to go with or even start with, so... you know what? In part to satisfy the income obsessed Bfloos out there, especially since they're the only ones to reply so far... I'll start with that, income:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944694664
I'm making 10K a month from transport, admittedly a third of that is toll roads, so it's actually just 7K a month from public transport, but regardless, how does that compare to others? Thankfully, mid last year, a couple of fairly experienced players shared their transport income:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/24780/discussions/0/2999926461244581690/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2840762474 One of them by Brathuehnchen, makes 15K a month from a 400K pop city, though like mine, some of that, a quarter, was toll road income. Given how my city has less than a third pop size, I feel mine compares favourably. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838311686 wilfer88 was the other, making 11K a month from a near 600K pop city, though his is made entirely by public transport and not anything by toll roads unlike mine and Brathuehnchen's, but still compares worse. especially as it's still less from public transport than Brathuehnchen's despite a larger pop.

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Though this appeared success is due to an issue with my infrastructure, it's overloaded: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944702717 It didn't take too long for this, my busiest rail to reach 8K riders, which appears to basically be the limit Sims are willing to tolerate before they switch to alternatives, which makes sense! Since that's 400% capacity, I've seen it peak above 10K, but never stays there for long. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944704396 At the top you can see the same rail as the previous screenshot still getting about that same 8K despite all the growth since. Cars only make up around one fifth of vehicle usage and well... I don't know what's counted as car usage, but, I do know a lot of the city's car usage is just driving to train stations lol! To the point where you can almost tell what's res and what's com just by air pollution! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944705974 There are two main exceptions to that rule however, one at the top, we can see clearly is due to cars going into it, likely due to the overly congested rail previously mentioned. However... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944708132 The other, not so much! This corner of it has 1K sims going though, none by car. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944709675 The entry to the other side reveals only 97 cars, and the lack of a blue line despite more busses than cars going though here means only evening commute buses go though there. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944710324 The main road shows it's 70% buses going along it and while 4.3K is quite a lot of traffic, doesn't seem like enough to cause that kind of overhang, especially since the zones on the other side aren't experiencing the same pollution!

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Still next to nothing done as far as my next test layout, investigated some things though, like: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944712917 which I feel is a nice looking monorail intersection design, I think I'll use it...

I which I made more back up saves of the city at different stages, year 135 being the first. Requests for more screenshots of year 135 will be considered.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Some more screenshots on the puzzlingly polluted commercial zone: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945705661 Camera is rotated differently than the others, showing how there's a bit over 400 cars going into this neighbouring zone, not much less than the polluted one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945706260 404 V 540 cars, nor is it like the road going past this neighbouring zone is much less busy: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945706559 Still over 3,800 compared to 4,300, with a higher percentage of it being cars! Makes no sense.

Also, in case you didn't believe me on the 7K from public transport bit out of 10K total, here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945706035

This is also of the same commercial zone, most arrive by train or bus from the other side: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944685577

[Bfloo]

Traffic guy has been scamming me for years.....

Good job with your mass transit system.

[Brathuehnchen]

There are 85 saved cities in my region folder and there is only one free tile left, so it must be 86 in my region.

I especially like the screenshot from the monotrail intersection, looks nice and i could imagine trying this in one of my cities.
Also nice to see how you accomplish such a great traffic income with that population, that gives much room for buying the special buildings or to renew parts of the city (like including that monorail intersection).

What about using trees to lessen the pollution? Did you not include some because you were just testing the layout?

Unfortunately my time reserved for gaming is scarce, so i am not really into trying out and testing the game for possible solutions regarding the more technical issues the game offers.

Optimizing or maximizing my cities (and i only play my by now 20 year old region) is not the main focus when i play SC4.
But i read this forum for a very long time now and am still impressed with what is possible and that with enthusiasm, passion and determination for the game you can reach seemingly impossible things.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Originally posted by Brathuehnchen:

What about using trees to lessen the pollution? Did you not include some because you were just testing the layout?

Oh they're there, if you look carefully at the very first screenshot, the income one especially: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944694664 You'll see trees lining the first avenue, one closest to the edge, the result you probably ask? Not... great... they definitely made a noticeable change, though not to the point of satisfaction and hence why I said "main roads with two layer thick trees" as being part of the next design.

Originally posted by Brathuehnchen:

Also nice to see how you accomplish such a great traffic income with that population, that gives much room for buying the special buildings or to renew parts of the city (like including that monorail intersection).

As I keep trying to tell Bfloo, income shouldn't be the priority with transport, but pollution and congestion reduction, though since I tried taking that to logical extremes, it logically resulted in higher income, though that's before expenses, you know? Like, my city has higher transport department expenses than your city despite having lower population and transport income, though part of that is also due to how I laid down lots of grid without zoning anything on it... but the point stands still I feel, that I'm spending comparatively WAY more to make that more and so the income side of things shouldn't be seen as a main take away, since yours especially could still be seen as better in that regard making more than triple income to expenses.

Originally posted by Brathuehnchen:

There are 85 saved cities in my region folder and there is only one free tile left, so it must be 86 in my region.

Unfortunately my time reserved for gaming is scarce, so i am not really into trying out and testing the game for possible solutions regarding the more technical issues the game offers.

Optimizing or maximizing my cities (and i only play my by now 20 year old region) is not the main focus when i play SC4.
But i read this forum for a very long time now and am still impressed with what is possible and that with enthusiasm, passion and determination for the game you can reach seemingly impossible things. :Smilin:

I hope to see more updates on your cities! Working on the same region for 20 years is such an amazing story, truly beats me by a long shot.

Originally posted by Brathuehnchen:

I especially like the screenshot from the monotrail intersection, looks nice and i could imagine trying this in one of my cities.

While probably not your intent, it's pretty sad face the least relevant screenshot shared for what I was showing is the one you liked the most lol!

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Originally posted by Bfloo:

Traffic guy has been scamming me for years.....

Good job with your mass transit system. :cozybethesda:

Think you'll start your own thread trying your own version of the design then? Also, curious, what was it which most convinced you? Hopefully it wasn't the income side of things...