The 'dead person waiting for transport' spam

[B✪✪tsy]

This is probably the most annoying balancing issue for me in CS and I still can't completely put the finger on what exactly is the cause of it, I figure it's a combination of things.

This is what I have noticed so far:

The 'dead person' spam icons is not related to city/resident health, traffic, polution or crime. It also not happens early on before you have placed the Hadron and/or international airport and/or you reached a certain pop cap. In any case, it seems to be triggered by something either you placed or reached.

The hearses send out by crematoriums don't have any priority system. A new send out hearse will not go to the building where the dead body is waiting the longest (hence why you keep seeing the skull icons). They will go to a building without a skull icon (seems like just a random building). The hearses have no range limit and no priority or limit in what range of the crematoriom they should pick up bodies. It happens a lot thus that a hearse drives from the crematorium on one end of the city all the way to the other end of the city just to pick up a dead body. Not only will it take a hearse a long time to get there and back it also adds needless extra traffic at choke point.

I have also experimented with the locations and the amount of crematoriums. I ended up in a 100k city creating large crematorium hubs with 30 crematoriums each and all creamatoriums were pushing out 2 hearses. In total there must have been 150+ hearses driving around the city (without traffic problems) yet the skull icons kept comming back.

I am beginning to suspect that the 'skull icon' spam mechanic is a fake mechanic and that the hearses are doing the same thing before the 'dead person icon' mechanic was triggered only now by design you see 'skull icons' and eventually the building abandoned by design, just to make it appear as a difficulty hurdle.

Then again, I could be completely wrong about all of this and I am sure I will read about it :)

[Excrucian]

I can't remember what it is but I know hearses have a system to pick up corpses, I read about it a long time ago. However, I don't really like how it is. I think hearses should work in a way that prioritize oldest corpse first, followed by the nearest one prioritizing the same street or a close by area.

That way I would stop seeing a hearse pick up from an uncomplaining house for then ignoring all the red skulls surrounding it and leaving for another one so far away that the building will get abandoned before it reaches it...

But that's my view on the subject.

[Abraxii]

i usually notice this happen when i have expanded the city too rapidly. moving lots of people into your city at the same time creates a batch of similar aged cims, thus them all dying at the same time and a backlog of skull icons. theres more here ...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=425513385&searchtext=deaths

[B✪✪tsy]

Originally posted by Excrucian:

I think hearses should work in a way that prioritize oldest corpse first, followed by the nearest one prioritizing the same street or a close by area.

Yup thats exactly how I think about it! The weird thing is that up to a moment there are no problems with dead bodies and the city is running great and then (after a pobable trigger) you get the icons and even with a serious spam of hearses you can't get rid of it.

[ms6615]

my hearses work wonderfully even in the most horrifying of death waves. it just takes them a long time to perform their pickups. they actually get out of the hearse, walk into the building, retrieve the body on a stretcher, and bring it back out to load it into the hearse. this might be why it appears to you that they are stopping at random buildings, unless you are following them all the way to a random building from somewhere else.. garbage trucks are much nicer in that they simply absorb garbage by osmosis as they drive past the buildings. i have no idea why devs chose to make one of these so wildly detailed, and the other simply by magic

[B✪✪tsy]

Originally posted by abraxii:

i usually notice this happen when i have expanded the city too rapidly. moving lots of people into your city at the same time creates a batch of similar aged cims, thus them all dying at the same time and a backlog of skull icons. theres more here ...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=425513385&searchtext=deaths

Yeah, but that can't be it. For one, the skull icon represents 1 dead body and not a massive influx of dead people in the same building, if a hearse picks up the 1 dead body the icon will dissapear. Also when I look at the health stats I don't see a major incline of deaths per week and the population total doesn't decrease (small fluctuations).

[B✪✪tsy]

Originally posted by transitmonkey:

my hearses work wonderfully even in the most horrifying of death waves. it just takes them a long time to perform their pickups.

In a good running city with plenty of death care you should not see a spam of skull icons and even abandoned buildings due to mechanics that takes hearses to non priority buildings at the other end of the city.

[ms6615]

Originally posted by B00tsy:

Originally posted by transitmonkey:

my hearses work wonderfully even in the most horrifying of death waves. it just takes them a long time to perform their pickups.

In a good running city with plenty of death care you should not see a spam of skull icons and even abandoned buildings due to mechanics that takes hearses to non priority buildings at the other end of the city.

i guess that depends on how well you want the game to simulate reality.

i'm going to have a look at my hearses travels tonight and see where they are going in a more long term sense. i've only ever watched them actually make the pickups, never really considered where they are coming from. i just might not be having an issue with it due to having massive amount of deathcare because i started using building themes on a city that already had 80k people because i'm an idiot. now i get 20k cim death waves on a recurring basis

[B✪✪tsy]

Originally posted by transitmonkey:

Originally posted by B00tsy:

In a good running city with plenty of death care you should not see a spam of skull icons and even abandoned buildings due to mechanics that takes hearses to non priority buildings at the other end of the city.

i guess that depends on how well you want the game to simulate reality.

i'm going to have a look at my hearses travels tonight and see where they are going in a more long term sense. i've only ever watched them actually make the pickups, never really considered where they are coming from. i just might not be having an issue with it due to having massive amount of deathcare because i started using building themes on a city that already had 80k people because i'm an idiot. now i get 20k cim death waves on a recurring basis

You don't really have to follow the hearses you can click on their destination to see where they will end up (and also where they are comming from) :) And as I said, the death icons seems to be triggered by an 'event 'and depending on the map you will see the spam less or more. I currently am playing on a map with a lot of hard to reach mountains and curly roads and some spots are littered with death icons cos it takes a long time for the hearses to arrive... while there are a dozen crematoriums closeby on the same mountain that drive down the mountain to the other side of the city.

[ms6615]

Originally posted by B00tsy:

Originally posted by transitmonkey:

i guess that depends on how well you want the game to simulate reality.

i'm going to have a look at my hearses travels tonight and see where they are going in a more long term sense. i've only ever watched them actually make the pickups, never really considered where they are coming from. i just might not be having an issue with it due to having massive amount of deathcare because i started using building themes on a city that already had 80k people because i'm an idiot. now i get 20k cim death waves on a recurring basis

You don't really have to follow the hearses you can click on their destination to see where they will end up (and also where they are comming from) :) And as I said, the death icons seems to be triggered by an 'event 'and depending on the map you will see the spam less or more. I currently am playing on a map with a lot of hard to reach mountains and curly roads and some spots are littered with death icons cos it takes a long time for the hearses to arrive... while there are a dozen crematoriums closeby on the same mountain that drive down the mountain to the other side of the city.

i can't do that becaus getting tossed across the map usually crashes my game and then everyone in the house wants to know why i'm yelling at the computer. i use the traffic report mod and alternatively just follow cars and people manually

[Excrucian]

In my opinion, what would help a lot to avoid death waves due to building too many residnetials too quick, would be to randomize more the age of the cims moving in. As it is now it seems like if you build a huge area, everyone moving in is exactly (or really close to), say, 30 years old. They all age together and die at the same time.

It also happens a lot in my commercial districts. Like everyone goes to work to die....

[Chocoloco]

Sad to hear this problem still exists. Stopped me from playing a long time ago because I couldn't stand to look at a giant city with skulls everywhere, no matter how much crematoriums built. Seemed like a major bug to me at that time.

[Stew]

Seems like its put in without links to the simulation. There seems a good few things that look just to be placed in game without the proper thought what effects it. If they want this game to last they need to nail the small things and demonstrate how systems work in game. Its almost like “ Lets have dead people and hearses that would be cool but never mind adding various effect to the simulation as that takes so much time”
I know they said they were quieter Devs with regards to news updates but the next patch? Update better be a cracker.

[BonPadre]

It's funny...
I see that now *older players* that were active in early / mid game release that were helping out peeps here got tired of always trying to repeat same things only to get yelled at with
*It's not realistic, it shouldn't be like that*, or *it's a bug, fix it... I don't care if it's how the game is coded* etc...
So now... as the link to the *seed your city* guide which is the correct way to go is already there... The *death wave mechanic* has been discussed already ten thousand times and is well repertoriated, I'll let you do your searches about it...
But yes... it's only at which pace you grow your city that makes those events happen, and how you react (or lack of reaction for that matter) just tend to amplify it at each wave...

Originally posted by B00tsy:

Yeah, but that can't be it. For one, the skull icon represents 1 dead body and not a massive influx of dead people in the same building, if a hearse picks up the 1 dead body the icon will dissapear. Also when I look at the health stats I don't see a major incline of deaths per week and the population total doesn't decrease (small fluctuations).

The fact that you buy or don't buy on it is only on your decision.

But anyway, in none of my city playing near vanilla, I had one death wave happening... so clearely you are not having them by growing slowly and in continious playthrough...

Just in case... I never speed the game and never pause to build... which I believe is why I never had those massive zones I often see other players building... I tend to build a few 4x4 blocks of houses, then a bit of industrial, then a bit of 4x4 houses, then a bit of commercial... BUT NEVER like I grid the place with roads and zone all...

Anyway have fun in your discoveries, and I hope you'll get how things works

[B✪✪tsy]

It's not a wave, it's a consitent event that lasts endlessly. And for your information, I do not rush build either and only build small residential blocks at a time. Also the amount of deaths did not really increase when the skull icons appeared. And an skull icon only represents one single dead body in a building, the problem is that the bodies are not being picked up due to the hearses that have no priority and range system. This is the flaw I tried to point out in my opening post.

[BonPadre]

Well then, up to you...
as said and I will not go again at it because I don't have the divine fire to fight over it again...

It has been discussed, your issues have reasons in your city (or maybe a bugged mod or asset btw... so maybe not your fault)

But as playing vanilla, there is no flaws with it... just players mistakes... and if done correctly, either you solve the issue, or simply do not have it at all (I emphasis VANILLA)