Why is Wall-to-wall buildings a specialisation?

[Mister_Ed]

I’m simply curious why this set of buildings are a specialisation as opposed to a district style, like the CCPs.

My assumption is the specialisations are the vanilla method of modifying the game mechanics. E.g:

• Industries, Campus and Park Life all add the concept of district levels with goals.
  
• IT Cluster adds goods to offices.

While I don’t have the new DLC yet, from the videos I’ve watched I can’t make out the change in the game mechanics for the Wall-to-wall buildings. Thinking about it as I write; the same question goes for the Green Cities and After Dark specialisations.

What do they change that’s more than a district style?

[dan0812]

It's a fair question and it gets ever more challenging to find stuff in the menu now as it's not logical. This is the nature of tacking on all these DLCs to an old game.

The specialisations started out as something specific i.e. leisure or organic food but these are all generic so I don't really get why it's not a theme.

[failsafe]

W-2-W buildings are specialised in being w-2-w buildings. Most probably designer have seen these buildings in national geographic and though: hey, living like this must be so much different from living in non-w-2-w buildings, lets make a specialisation from this ;-P

By the way: I wouldn't mind if we had tool to draw residental area, industrial area and overlapping areas in one tab (but I think three separate tools would be enough - why we need separate for parks, campus ect) and on the other tab just icons with specialisation. All in one place. This game is really messy now.

[Mister_Ed]

I educated myself via the Paradox Wiki[skylines.paradoxwikis.com]

These specialisations do change game mechanics, but these are minor things to do with resources (like power) and services. They don't just change the look of the buildings. Effectively an in-game mod.

Now I've found the answer, it does make sense to me. I also agree with some of the comments above about the confusing UI. But I remind myself this game is built on an engine first developed for a first person shooter. There is allot missing from the engine to make a city builder game possible and that external code needs to interface somehow.

Separate zone painters is a tough question around UI. I'd say keeping them separate makes people consider overlapping where possible. Having one painter where you paint then set the zone type would probably make people think only one zone at a time can be used in all cases. But there are cases overlaps can happen (e.g. parks inside residential zones or vice-versa). That's just a UI theory of mine.