Are shelters completly useless?

[Sasha Mason]

I've noticed that shelters seem to be pretty useless. Maybe I'm just using them wrong or overseeing this but, here's what I think why they are useless:

1. Your entire income will fall flat, meaning that depending on the amount of costs you have, you'll have a huge amount of minus "income" that you have to pay for the entirety of the disaster
2. Citizens never fill shelters completly, neither small nor big.
3. Evac busses are inefficient. By the time those 30 passenger capacity busses managed to pick up the 1000+ people waiting for evac, the disaster is already over.
4. I can't tell if searching for survivors actually does something that benefits you. Might aswell always use fast rebuild and have your city be repopulated the regular way without any disadvantages. There is absolutly no penalty for letting them die.

I'm really not sure if I'm overseeing something or if shelters really are useless. Ontop of all of the reasons why I think they are useless, they also require a fair bit of space, if you use evac busses they'll add to your traffic, you need to pay money to build shelters and radio towers AND you have to pay for the upkeep of all of that too.

[SkiRich]

Ding, You win.
You just summed up the entire ND dlc.
I agree with everything you said.

Evac shelters only really are worth it during a large tsunami to save population.

If you really want to use them and not have to pay for it, open asset editor using one of the evac shelters as a template, adjust cost, maintenance and parameters, and save as a custom asset.
It will save you a ton of money.

Also usiong IPT or AVO you can adjust the speed of the evac bus to be a lightning ball and carry a few hundred jamed CIMs at a tim.

That said, I only bought ND for the helicopters.

[Sasha Mason]

Although that sounds like cheating, I guess that's the only way to make it worth using. I mean, even if you crank down the costs, you'll still have a ruined income. I'll give your suggestion a try though.

[SkiRich]

Well if you think about it, an evac shelter, once built should cost nothing untill used. It just sits there. And during an emergency, you know real people would be jamming those busses like sardines and the driver would be pedal to metal getting his own A$$ saved into the shelter.
I can remember back in the 60's the buildin my father was a custodian in had a fallout shelter. the signs are still on it. Basically the government dropped a ton of instant food rations, med kits and water containers into the basment which was sub ground level so it would protect against a nuclear attack. I played in those rooms during the 70s and 80's and the food (instant grits type slop) was still edible.
CO got it all wrong.

[grapplehoeker]

Yup, at the end of the day the whole ND concept is an expensive sham.
The disasters themselves are no real long term threat. For fun, I threw a continuous series of every type of disaster at one city for 2 long years and my Cims not only survived and managed, they thrived, albeit at a slower rate of growth.
Surviving them was not reliant on shelters, which can only save a fraction of your population in theory, even if it were to work properly. The cost of providing shelter for 100% protection for a city of 100k would bankrupt any city.
So, If and when I decide to play with disasters, I don't use any shelters or evacuation plan. Damage control and rebuilding is quick and easy to fix. The population recovers quickly too and so none of the contingency measures are necessary. I may keep a shelter for the sake of appearances, but I turn it off.
The only thing that is useful and pretty much necessary are the fire watch towers, which are essential for safeguard against fire outbreaks.
And yes, helicopters are the only real value for getting the ND DLC in the first place. With or without disasters, they are too good to ignore.

[kristofburger]

Here's my experience on how to effectively use the evacuation system and disaster policies:
- Make use of the VIP area policy, especially with large shelters. You will want to limit as much excess private car traffic as possible, and maybe help those busses work better with well defined area of operation.
- After a disaster has passed an area, release citizens as soon as possible. Those whose homes were left standing immediately return and the rest will wait in the shelter until they have a place to live again. This will stop the tax income bleed.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by ristosal:

Here's my experience on how to effectively use the evacuation system and disaster policies:
- Make use of the VIP area policy, especially with large shelters. You will want to limit as much excess private car traffic as possible, and maybe help those busses work better with well defined area of operation.
- After a disaster has passed an area, release citizens as soon as possible. Those whose homes were left standing immediately return and the rest will wait in the shelter until they have a place to live again. This will stop the tax income bleed.

Sure, you could play it as a mini game to have an effective shelter/evacuation plan, but ultimately, as I described above, it just isn't worth the time, cost and effort and the enjoyment factor is too short lived to do so continuously.

[Sasha Mason]

Increasing the bus speed did literally nothing, but I can increase the capacity so that not only 50 per bus can fit and I'll probably modify the shelters to have no maintanence costs at all. Maybe even crank up that 500m evac range to something much larger too.

[khalrusty]

The trick is to get the shelters stock pulled then turn them off. Same goes for a lot of the disaster buildings, just turn them off. When disaster strikes turn them on. That will save a lot of money! Fire helicopters especially. I saw a post saying the VIP policy is basically necessary for shelters to work. I'm gonna only use small shelters, VIP for each one, once stock pulled turn off. Well see if that works

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by khalrusty:

The trick is to get the shelters stock pulled then turn them off. Same goes for a lot of the disaster buildings, just turn them off. When disaster strikes turn them on. That will save a lot of money! Fire helicopters especially. I saw a post saying the VIP policy is basically necessary for shelters to work. I'm gonna only use small shelters, VIP for each one, once stock pulled turn off. Well see if that works

A 100k city requires 10x large shelters at a cost of 740k and 160,000 per week upkeep, or double that for a 200k city!
It's far too expensive and it's unnecessary. The population recovers from any disaster, including tsunamis so quickly, it's pointless to spend that much. By all means build them for the sake of appearances, but they really aren't practical unless of course you really need a cash sink ;)

[Sasha Mason]

So for some reason you guys randomly decided to push this many months old thread for what reason exactly?