Service ranges and meaning of colors

[Redneck Philosopher]

A few questions I couldn't find any info on. Any input would be appreciated.

1) When I place services, would does the darkening color of green on the roads indicate? I assume it represents longer response time for fire trucks, police, etc but what is the practical application of that? IE: If a building or office needs say fire service coverage, does it matter if the color of the green on the road is bright or dim or does any shade of green count the same?
2) For school attendance numbers, is the load of students split across all schools or do dense zoned areas need more schools than lightly populated areas?
3) Does a hospital and clinic count as the same in terms of satisying service needs or do you need both? IE: do they count as two different services or just a single service?

[Useless Noodle]

1) green color indicates the effectiveness of the service itself, also it helps you to layout the service, so they fully covered the city and less overlaps each other. The darker it becomes, the less effective it is. It DOES NOT mean they wont help out the zone that isn't covered (gray), but it isn't in their piority list, thus making them longer to answer the call.

2) both, sometime you can see, after plopping down a school, it immediately get filled, even in middle of nowhere. The caculation for student is same with resident, part of them actually go to school/work, other are just number caculated by the game, to lesser the intense of simulation.

3. hospital is bigger version of clinic, if your city is good at health, you may just need 1 hospital. Biggest version is Medical Center, if you get that, you may want to bulldoze all other clinic / hospital you have, for it 100% covered whole city (magic !)

[Redneck Philosopher]

Thanks for the answers.

In regards to #1 though, I know that fire truck for example will respond in the grey areas even though it will take longer. The point of confusion for me is the shade of green on the roads and satisfaction of the "more services needed" situation. It feels like I have had industrial areas that are on say a dark green road that when I move the hospital closer (so that the road becomes bright green) they will all of sudden trigger to upgrade.

That behavior implies there is a certain threshold within the covered area that counts and a certain point at which it does not. It is infuriating that there is not a reliable way to determine what services are missing by looking at a building.

In regards to #2, so yes the numbers are distributed? IE: I could build a single elementary school in a super densely populated area and then build a bunch of additional schools in the middle of nowhere that would be populated with the excess students covered by the original school? That is what it sounds like from what you describe.

[Useless Noodle]

1) aye, every services count toward the upgrade point, or you could say "happiness", but they are not count as the same. For instant, hospital and school have more affect to resident, office zone than industry (obvious), and in return, cargo bay affect industry and commercial more than resident. The only wise-affect one are firepartment and police.

For upgrading resident: fire department, police, school, health care, deathcare, land value (park), public transport.

For upgrading commercial: fire department, police, health care, deathcare, land value (park) , public transport, cargo station.

For upgrading office: fire department, police, school, land value (park) , public transport.

For upgrading industry: fire department, police, cargo station.

2) yuh, as long as there is a "path" to connect them, ether road or public transport. Also, like with hospital, best school in the world is Hadron Collider, people will now get information right into their brain without going to school, Matrix style !


EDIT: with Eden Project (land value), Medical Center (health care), and Hadron Collier (education) you can mostly get max lvl in most type of buildings, except industry requires cargo station.

[Redneck Philosopher]

Regarding #1:

Sorry, the question isn't about what service are needed to upgrade - it's about how close a building needs to be in order for it to think it has service coverage for the purpose of upgrading.

For example. You place a fire station on a long straight road. The road is lined with houses and the further away those houses are on the road, the green color on the road for the service goes from bright green to dark green to gray. Do the houses touching the dark green road count the fire station service coverage same as the houses that are right next to the fire station and touch a bright green road.

At a certain point, those house don't think they have service coverage - what is that point? When the road they touch is gray? When the road is dark green? When the road is anything less than bright green?

[Useless Noodle]

100% covered is unnecessary, if you want to total max out, aim for Monument I listed in there. The rest of service can be spread out depends on zone.

[Saber Kitsune]

Originally posted by TheRealDonThorp:

Regarding #1:

Sorry, the question isn't about what service are needed to upgrade - it's about how close a building needs to be in order for it to think it has service coverage for the purpose of upgrading.

For example. You place a fire station on a long straight road. The road is lined with houses and the further away those houses are on the road, the green color on the road for the service goes from bright green to dark green to gray. Do the houses touching the dark green road count the fire station service coverage same as the houses that are right next to the fire station and touch a bright green road.

At a certain point, those house don't think they have service coverage - what is that point? When the road they touch is gray? When the road is dark green? When the road is anything less than bright green?

Techinically, all houses have service coverage; it's the service score you're looking for. Service score is pretty much how effective the service is. So roughly, gray areas will have a score of 0%, dark green would be 50%, and bright green 100%. These aren't absolute values though; they scale with the distance between the buildings. In general, brighter green is better.

[Redneck Philosopher]

Originally posted by Saber Kitsune:

Techinically, all houses have service coverage; it's the service score you're looking for. Service score is pretty much how effective the service is. So roughly, gray areas will have a score of 0%, dark green would be 50%, and bright green 100%. These aren't absolute values though; they scale with the distance between the buildings. In general, brighter green is better.

Right, but what does that mean in the context of upgrading buildings? For example, if someone asks me "How much gas does it take to get to point B from point A?", telling them "more gas in the tank is better than less gas" doesn't tell them how much fuel to put in the vehicle in order to get to the destination. Let's say a building has 50% service score - why does that matter in terms of upgrading? Does it matter at all?

Ok, so service score is the thing that matters? If so, how do you tell what the service score is? At what score will a building consider itself to have a service so that it can upgrade to the next level? If you are trying to place a fire station in an area so that it covers all of a certain populated area how would know whether all the desired buildings actually considered themselves to be covered for the purpose of upgrading?

If this information doesn't exist I guess fair point but so far it sounds like all guess work or just trial and error (which is a cluster since a building doesn't tell you what services are missing - which is absurd). I know there are magic "win all the things" kinds of buildings that pretty much cover everything but I am trying to understand the mechanism for normal layout planning.

Can the devs please provide some feedback on this behavior?

[Saber Kitsune]

Doh, I should've added more info. Each service has a given weight, as seen below, which factors into the total overall service score for industry/offices. If it's high enough, it'll level up. So for example, an industry building next to a cargo terminal will have a cargo score of 1, .5 for the 50%/dark green area, and 0 for gray areas. Fire would be .5/.25/0. If an industry building was right next to both, the total score would be 1.5, minus however much from pollution, which should still be enough to get it to level 2. If it was right next to a police station and hospital, it would need more services to level up. I'm horrible at explaining these things XD.

Service Name Industrial Factor Office Factor
Cargo Transport +1 0
Fire Department +0.5 +0.2
Public Transport +0.33 +0.33
Police Department +0.2 +0.2
Health Care +0.2 +0.2
Death Care +0.2 +0.2
Entertainment +0.125 +0.167
Elementary School +0.125 +0.143
High School +0.125 +0.143
University +0.125 +0.143
Noise Pollution -0.143 -0.25
Abandonment -0.143 -0.25
Ground Pollution -0.167 -0.33

(source: http://www.skylineswiki.com/Zoning#Building_level )

[Redneck Philosopher]

Originally posted by Saber Kitsune:

Doh, I should've added more info. Each service has a given weight, as seen below, which factors into the total overall service score for industry/offices. If it's high enough, it'll level up. So for example, an industry building next to a cargo terminal will have a cargo score of 1, .5 for the 50%/dark green area, and 0 for gray areas. Fire would be .5/.25/0. If an industry building was right next to both, the total score would be 1.5, minus however much from pollution, which should still be enough to get it to level 2. If it was right next to a police station and hospital, it would need more services to level up. I'm horrible at explaining these things XD.

Service Name Industrial Factor Office Factor
Cargo Transport +1 0
Fire Department +0.5 +0.2
Public Transport +0.33 +0.33
Police Department +0.2 +0.2
Health Care +0.2 +0.2
Death Care +0.2 +0.2
Entertainment +0.125 +0.167
Elementary School +0.125 +0.143
High School +0.125 +0.143
University +0.125 +0.143
Noise Pollution -0.143 -0.25
Abandonment -0.143 -0.25
Ground Pollution -0.167 -0.33

(source: http://www.skylineswiki.com/Zoning#Building_level )

Super useful! Thanks, I never saw that page on the wiki. That info is great.

Just one follow up question - is there any documented info on what the threshold values are for the the individual levels? IE: the required service score needed for say industrial to hit level 3?

Thanks again for the info, clears up alot of the strange behavior I have seen.