Daytime only services

[Daveyboy]

Just wondering if many people use features such as day/night only buses, reduced education funding at night, that kind of thing in After Dark. Or are most people doing what I tend to do which is leave all transit lines as 24-hour and have pretty similar day/night budget sliders?

I've thought about day/night only buses but what bothers me is at the end of the day all the buses suddenly head back to the depot with a full load of passengers. There's also the issue of the considerable queue outside the depot as they all try to enter at the same time (though I could deal with that by having more depots), but I wonder what happens to the hundreds of passengers who suddenly get taken off to the depot? I also worry that when the services start again I'll end up with them all bunched together more than they were before.

Regarding education, I can of course lower my education budget at night so less people are in school so it's a bit more realistic, but they're all still open. I tend to keep the slider at the same level though as I worry about side effects like it basically having the effect of kicking all those people out of school due to the reduced capacity so they have to re-enlist at a different one, etc. I'm probably thinking too much about it tbh, I just wondered what other people's thoughts on this were.

[magicd1]

Your thinking to much about it.

[Sanctioner]

I have not found a single usefulness or purpose to the day-night cycle other than aesthetics. The game is made such that a person travelling to work can take half a day, so it's sort of a big waste the way it was implemented. the day-night cycle needs to be 24 hour cycle for it to be useful, not 10 minutes. I have not noticed 1 single thing change from day to night in any of my cities to warrant me to take any different action than before After Dark update.

I would have rather them spent all that time and effort finding out why no one ever goes to work in my office zones, despite it showing full employment. Not 1 car or person ever goes to them despite giant parks of ~10k squares of office. downtown is completely free of traffic, but they implemented day night cycle such that 3 minutes of 10 is too dark to build anything.

[Daveyboy]

I just tested it using favorite cims. After the bus takes the full load of passengers to the depot, the passengers appear to get teleported to a random location (presumably near where they boarded the bus in the first place), become confused (understandably), and after a short while teleport to their original destination.
Not sure if there are any side effects to this, but guessing there's probably nothing major.
Incidently, just noticed passengers wait all night as bus stops for day-only services as well, so I think reducing the night budget might be preferable to stopping some services altogether during the night.

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, nerd in leather]

well when i have solar power this affects how much i generate during day as opposed to night time. so i have to have it different between day and night to help balance it out right.

[dbkoob / rctnextgeneration]

no this creates a traffic jam as busses head out from the depot all it once some busses never get to there destination.

Summery: Good idea Bad in practice

[Amonhoteph]

Unfortunatelt you have far too little control over your economics. It's almost impossible knowing what buslines are operatingh at plus, which bussines etc etc. I have some lines operating only at day ... but it's hard knowing what effect it really has except creating traffic jams in the morning.

I know that my budget dives the first hours at night, but somewhere after midnight it goes back up. Think there could have been a heck of al lot better implementation of these things in the game.

[Lord Ocean]

Originally posted by Sanctioner:

they implemented day night cycle such that 3 minutes of 10 is too dark to build anything.

I just go afk when that happens

[Niksukoo]

This just confirms my thoughts on after dark, nice visual add, but not that much difference in a gameplay :/

[Juvelio]

what if you use the day/night mod where and change the cycle, for slower days and nights, that must have some kind of effect, And you should probably see a more effective morning and afternoonrush and the midnight rush to leisure areas more clearly.

[Sanctioner]

Originally posted by |MW| Lord Ocean:

Originally posted by Sanctioner:

they implemented day night cycle such that 3 minutes of 10 is too dark to build anything.

I just go afk when that happens

problem solved! :p

[Sanctioner]

Originally posted by Niksukoo:

This just confirms my thoughts on after dark, nice visual add, but not that much difference in a gameplay :/

I think it only has an effect on gameplay if you mess with the day/night sliders. It's causal rather than reactionary. I would prefer to have to solve municipal problems rather than create my own fun with it.

[Daveyboy]

Even if you don't mess with the sliders, you still end up with a bouncing budget in which you're losing money at night despite making lots during the day. Even leisure/tourism seems to generate more tax revenue in the day than at night for some reason.

Regarding buses, for now I've tried reducing the night bus slider a little bit and linked most of my services up to the budget (was overriding a lot before using IPT but I can always handle the varying popularity of services by using different size vehicles for different lines instead).

The confused cims arriving at depot and teleporting around doesn't seem to have any major effect on gameplay that I've observed. The issue with queues at depots can be resolved by just having more depots or moving lines that use busier depots to quieter ones so I'm not too bothered about that. Currently in my city of around 65,000 I have 5 depots. The busiest of these serves around 70 buses and seems to cope with my current day/night bus difference at the moment.

[Sanctioner]

My cims tend to have to spend 5 minutes getting to where they need to go, so by the time the reach the park on the other side of the map (instead of using the one next door), it's already night time. Even regarding jobs, there are job openings just around the block but they prefer to jump on the bus to take them to the subway which connects them to the commuter rail which sends them to another subway to take another bus to get to their job on the other side of the map. I click on the tack and follow them all around the city it makes no sense. Same goes for school. there are openings in the same neighborhood but they go to school on the other side of the map and it takes all day to get there. By the time they get to their night-time destination, it's already day, and vise versa. I really don't see the point in the day/night cycle if daytime activities like school and a job take place overnight.

[Daveyboy]

Hmm, actually in mine, the majority seem to go to school locally, as long as the local one isn't full. They'll travel big distances for other things like parks though.