Residents are "Social Distancing" for No Apparent Reason (Staying at Home)

[timstim_x]

I've had this game since the beginning of this summer (northern hemisphere). My first city seems to have a bug that's keeping residents from leaving their homes. I noticed this issue because it directly affects public transport usage.

I used to have about ~11,000 residents using public transport at any given time, and a varying number of tourists, usually around 4k. Gradually, residential has gone down to 5k and is still dropping. And yet, the tourism count sometimes breaches 5k.

I started this city with no mods. Kept it this way until I had 8 tiles. Then I started using 81 tiles and Achieve It! Only recently did I start using more mods. But I didn't seem to have problems at first.
The mods I have used on this first city (Las Rico) are the same as the ones I used on my second city (Frostburn). Frostburn has had no noticeable issues whatsoever with transport usage.

I've scoured the lines of Las Rico but I haven't found anything. It seems no one is leaving their homes--if I look at parks and unique buildings, nearly all of the visitors are tourists.

If anyone is interested in looking into this, I have saves of this city before and after (I'm not sure when the bug started exactly, but I have 6 saves of varying progress, so one of them should be a before). Just respond here.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that I seem to be at ~92% when it comes to the vehicle limit, according to Watch It! But Frostburn also has ~120k population, and it has 4 external road connections whereas Las Rico only has 2.

I've tried with most mods removed to see if it fixes anything to no avail. I feel this is either a developer issue or an 81 tile issue. All I know is that it ruins my experience with the game.

[kristofburger]

This is actually normal, because the game simply cannot simulate as many agents when the city gets large. The 81 tiles mod can cause this to start earlier if you're making use of the entire map, the game wasn't really designed for that. Citizens aren't actually staying home, they're teleported to shops and workplaces.

[timstim_x]

I know it has trouble simulating things. But it was working just fine at this size before. Also, its only the vehicle limit that's at 92%, nothing else. I made it so most Cims have access to public transport right outside their door. Their are even buses and trolley buses that will take them directly to a stop if they can't reach it. But they won't even use those.

[timstim_x]

Here's the city:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/2251182852562935360/

[Avanya]

Being so close to the vehicle limit, that does seem like it might at least play a role here. How is your industrial traffic? Reducing trucks might be one way to clear up some vehicles, which can be done by providing cargo ships/trains/planes to import/export as well as distribute raw materials and goods around your city.

[timstim_x]

I don't think that's it.

I have a total of 8 cargo train terminals, as well as one cargo hub and one cargo airport hub. I also have a cargo airport and cargo harbor. The airports and harbors, as well as three train terminals, are all located in the industrial district. I did not use specialized zoned industry; natural resources are only collected via import and industries DLC content.

Generic zoned industry is all confined to one district (with nice big roads), with oil nearby and fishing found on the shore lines. Also in this district is the cargo airport (and hub), cargo harbor (and hub), and three cargo train terminals.

The forestry area has its own cargo train terminal. The main farming district has two, and the auxiliary farming district also has two.

Post sorting centers are all in the industrial area, along with the few remaining incinerators, most recycling plants, all 4 waste processing centers, and all 4 waste processing units.

Oil and ore rely on import for raw materials because I've exhausted the resources in their industrial areas. Both still make profits, and somehow oil still makes more money than forestry, though farming makes the most. I have all of the unique factories in the industrial district with warehouses holding all that they need. I have the rebalanced industries mod enabled because I know the game doesn't factor distance when fulfilling requests for goods.


Oh, and I built the Subterranean Beltway along with two other underground highways so that industrial traffic can travel quickly through the city without clogging the streets.

Traffic stays around 76-80% with despawning on.


Edit: I looked at the city again and the vehicle limit seems to stay around 89% usually, and I never saw it higher than 92%. So I'm not really sure it has much to do with it.

[me22ca]

Originally posted by timstim_x:

Here's the city:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/2251182852562935360/

That's a discussion; did you mean to link a savegame?

[timstim_x]

Woops! That was an older discussion I found that seems to describe the same issue.


Here is the link:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2195243488

[timstim_x]

Thank you for catching that ;)

[Avanya]

I ran your city for a bit and messed around with a few things. I think your city might just have more efficient options compared to the public transport. Ofc I have no sense of how your city evolved over time and can't really compare to how it was when you had a lot higher public transport use.

Murdering your underground highway system gave a significant increase in public transport use (and ofc messed with traffic flow), which tells me that at least in some cases, it's just way more efficient than your public transport. The AI prioritises public transport, but only to a degree, so if alternate routes become much faster, then they will drive instead.

If I was moving forward with your city, I'd probably spend some time trying to improve the public transport setup, so it becomes a better option again. Alternately would be the option to work towards removing the underground highways and adjusting public transport and internal cargo rail to handle most of that traffic instead.

[timstim_x]

Okay, so I tried restricting the subterranean highway network to non-personal vehicles but that didn't help.

Shortly before this happened I redid my metro system for the second time and also updated some bus lines accordingly. Metro v3, that was in the latest save, was designed to keep lines from being entangled on the same tracks (they never share). Metro v2, on the other hand, did share stations and tracks and had 11 lines rather than 7. Also during this time the multi-platform train station didn't exist and local lines shared with freight and intercity passenger.

Unfortunately, I did not save the game immediately after created Metro v3, as that was when I had the most passengers (I'm aware of the influx that would have occurred due to the temporary lack of service, the numbers stayed solid for years in-game after I updated). The thing is, a lot of other edits were also made to public transport during that time: bus lines updated to fit the new metro layout and stay off the main roads (they never had stops on those roads, they just used them to get through), local passenger lines were completely separated from other trains, the freight rail network got optimized, the forestry industrial area got a makeover, and an entire residential district (Ivy Heights, nearest to the edge of the map) was added.

But all things considered: the most recent rendition of Metro v2 provides no service whatsoever to the general industrial district, lots of people were waiting at stops for public transport, more residents and less tourists were using public transport. This is not, however, when it was at its best: that in Metro v3, where transport was optimized to handle all of those waiting passengers.

There are a lot more "citizen instances" in this older version of the city (which I presume means pedestrians, or citizens and tourists currently rendered in the city and not inside a building). Around 53% capacity. What's even more interesting is the fact that I had almost no freight stations open, yet I had only ~50% vehicle capacity. And yet, traffic jams can be found throughout the city and it was only around 70% efficiency! (Note: neither industrial highway existed.)

Here is the save with Metro v2:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2197558051

[timstim_x]

Update:

I found a mod while browsing called "more vehicles," that increases the vehicle capacity of the game. Loaded up the current save. Transport immediately began rising up to 11k resident users and remained around 4-5k in regards to tourists. Vehicles in use also climbed to slightly above vanilla capacity.

Thank you for everyone for your help and time!

I have 16GB of RAM at my disposal, so the added weight shouldn't be an issue for me. I'm now just wondering if it should be reported to Paradox anyway since it will affect vanilla players as well as players with only 8 GB of RAM or so.

On another note, cargo train traffic increased significantly. I had never noticed long back-ups before, and some of the trains appear less full. I wonder if the game is taking advantage of the new space available?

[snowflitzer]

I have 16GB as well and all DLC's. Plus about 103 mods and about 3700 assets.
That said I need my pagefille of 32GB on my SSD, works a beauty