Garbage Truck AI is terrible

[leaderdog]

My city is drowning in garbage. I constructed roads with main arteries and crescents coming off of them on both sides so traffic is NOT an issue in my city... currently. there are 7700 people, and I have 2 landfills and 1 incinerator.

The crescents are not getting picked hardly at all. I followed a couple garbage trucks out of curiosity as to where they go.

They generally follow the same path filling up in places they drive every day. So the houses further out never get picked.

This is painful for game play.

Either we need better AI, so trucks take separate routes or an option to lay routes like the buses. Otherwise all cities seem to need long straight lines which is rather boring and not very city like as well as end up being traffic nightmares.

Any suggestions? mods? or any general comments that can help with this? People are now starting to leave the city simply because the AI for garbage trucks is so bad.

[leaderdog]

Originally posted by K2P2:

Just a comment about the right turns on red. That's not a european thing. If you ever get over here, don't do it!! I believe there is a setting in TMPE where you can turn it on. just take a look in the settings.

Thanks for that. I had no idea Europeans couldn't turn on a red. Here come to full stop, then go if safe to do so. Unless posted otherwise.

[K2P2]

Just to let you know. I've lived in North America for 7 years and really got used to right-turn on red. So when I got back to Europe I did it twice by mistake. Never got caught but it raised an eyebrow or two with my passengers. ;-)

[AoD_lexandro]

I advise using the recycling center mods on the workshop rather than increased trucks. I always find it to be much more effective and with much less pollution.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by rpierce:

It pretty much limits your city to straight lines otherwise which is rather boring.
I'll just add to my last comment, the street layouts is the problem in the game. A small town of under 8000 people doesn't require multiple police stations or multiple fire stations to keep the city safe, however, nice street layout with proper traffic flow is important...

Adding crescents, because they're not just straight lines shows that when you place fire/police etc your coverage is grossly reduced because it calculates poorly with anything other than a straight line.

Layout is important, but so are the suggestions made by others including myself above. Namely, spread your roadbound services out and around your city. Avoid using combinations of old and new. Replace the old with the new, otherwise they will waste time and vehicles on emptying full facilities when they could be doing their jobs.

However, your theory about straight lines and crescents doesn't hold water. Sorry.
I have built many convoluted designs incorporating straight, curved, elliptical and circular layouts without any performance issues to services. For example,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648764149

[leaderdog]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Originally posted by rpierce:

It pretty much limits your city to straight lines otherwise which is rather boring.
I'll just add to my last comment, the street layouts is the problem in the game. A small town of under 8000 people doesn't require multiple police stations or multiple fire stations to keep the city safe, however, nice street layout with proper traffic flow is important...

Adding crescents, because they're not just straight lines shows that when you place fire/police etc your coverage is grossly reduced because it calculates poorly with anything other than a straight line.

Layout is important, but so are the suggestions made by others including myself above. Namely, spread your roadbound services out and around your city. Avoid using combinations of old and new. Replace the old with the new, otherwise they will waste time and vehicles on emptying full facilities when they could be doing their jobs.

However, your theory about straight lines and crescents doesn't hold water. Sorry.
I have built many convoluted designs incorporating straight, curved, elliptical and circular layouts without any performance issues to services. For example,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648764149

I see what you're saying, and you're right, within the current game rules. Spreading incinerators around the town will help.

But what I'm arguing is the mechanic is flawed entirely. It's even a simple fix (For knowledgeable programmers - not me) if you assign garbage trucks to districts etc.

A garbage truck shouldn't begin picking up garbage immediately, they should be doing specific areas rather than only a few main streets. and filling up before they get to the crescents and side streets.

The city I live in has 273,000 people. We have one garbage dump. Not 20-30 around the city.

[leaderdog]

And I'll add this just simply for perspective.

How many people have come here complaining about garbage pick up? I spent a week googling and watching videos before I came here to complain/seek a reasonable answer. And while all this is helpful it is not intuitive.

Everyone likely placed their garbage dump on the outskirts of town because logically that's what you would do. Eventually garbage problems pop up and you don't think "well, let's put one on the other side of town." You would probably put one beside the other dump, and well there you go, more trucks filling up along the same pathing before they get to the trouble areas. And depending on road layout it could become congested with more garbage trucks filling up and returning more frequently.

As you've all said it's a game, play in the rules. But the rule in this case is so flawed that it goes against what you know as right.

Thus, a suggestion to fix is
1) create routes for garbage trucks
2) assign garbage trucks to districts.
3) have trucks go to trouble areas first before picking up garbage

That way you don't need a mess of garbage incinerators or dumps around the city.

[K2P2]

1) No. Just no. You would have to draw routes along every sinlge street in your city, for every single garbage truck. You can't just draw a route and have every truck follow it, like busses do. That's exactly what you don't want.

2) The districts far away from your plants will still have garbage trouble due to trucks being on the road for so long.

3) This will result in areas close to the plant getting in trouble because all the trucks are gone to far away places.

IRL garbage collection is planned. people put their garbage on the sidewalk on a specific day of the week. Option 2 could work if something like this was implemented. But this game is simply a case of suply and demand. Put the stuff down where it's needed.

[RussianFloofer]

My strategy is to flood the streets with so many garbage trucks I cause 200 car pileups and cause the game to crash. In all seriousness though, there's always mods that can fix most problems with vanilla garbage collection as I found it lacking and inefficient.

[RabbitRidge]

I haven't observed any real problems with the vanilla game. Yes, occasionally they get behind but that is usually attributable to new construction (which can cause excess waste, extra power and water consumption during the building period especially noticeable in large areas of development).

Incinerator capacity can't be correctly gauged in straight terms, it is a balancing act based on current stored refuse and the trucks already out for pickup. If managed correctly, you can often far exceeded the Info screen capacity.

[leaderdog]

Hopefully this will work.

Here is the city that I had issues with. No traffic issues, but because of the crescents and the way the game calculates it's support for those roads is the problem.

Sorry it's foggy looking, not sure why the game makes the clouds interfere with a screenshot.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1866485868

[TLHeart]

Too long of paths to get around your city is the problem... Isolated districts. Garbage trucks have to drive to the center of the city, from an isolated starting point with only one way in, and out, then to the edge of the city, before they can even start to reach the inner parts of the city... A second connection at the bottom of the screen shot from the dumps, to your residential would solve the bottom half of the cities troubles with garbage.

[leaderdog]

interesting.

When I watched the garbage trucks, they came out of the dump, took the first right, then took the first left then the next right. Some would go a different way, but many went that route.

Again, that's a pathing issue especially since the trucks start picking up garbage the second they leave the dump. Besides it's only 8000 people and not a large area is settled yet. But you are also right, because of the limitations of the pathing that would be an added solution.

This is why I think a real solution would be to assign a specific number of trucks per district, which then would ensure each district actually got garbage service.

[TLHeart]

Originally posted by rpierce:

interesting.

When I watched the garbage trucks, they came out of the dump, took the first right, then took the first left then the next right. Some would go a different way, but many went that route.

Again, that's a pathing issue especially since the trucks start picking up garbage the second they leave the dump. Besides it's only 8000 people and not a large area is settled yet. But you are also right, because of the limitations of the pathing that would be an added solution.

This is why I think a real solution would be to assign a specific number of trucks per district, which then would ensure each district actually got garbage service.

Since that is the ONLY path you have provided them to use to reach over half your city, it is not a pathing issue, but the way the city is built issue.

Presently, the garbage trucks are FORCED to drive to the top of the screen shot, then turn right, into the center, then most will turn left, due to there is more city in that direction, then have to wander along trying to reach the inner parts of each crescent grid you have built.

The AI works on a dispatch method... a house in the crescent sends out a call for garbage pickup, the AI accepts that call, figures the route to that house, and dispatches a truck.**the truck begins picking up trash as soon as it starts the route. **This is the part you disagree with.

If it gets full, before, reaching the house it was dispatched to, it will return to the plant, garbage builds up at the house that called, and once the truck has returned to the plant to unload, a truck is dispatched to the house again.... No other truck is dispatched to that location, until the first truck has returned. Long routes, slow traffic all cause garbage to not be picked up in a timely manner...

So, you can learn to play within the game limits and rules, or be frustrated by those rules.

[TLHeart]

here is a mod that does what you request... read the description of the mod, and comments before using any mod.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927293560

[K2P2]

^^ This might actually work for what you want dude. You just need to get very creative painting districts. Every district needs a little connection to your garbage area. You will still need at least one garbage plant for every district, but you could put them all in one place with some imagination while painting the districts.