CARS AND JOBS

[Dio_gênesis]

So I've been starting to use cars for more specific jobs, (like electricity and heat usage) but I'm having a problem where no matter how many cars my citizens have they don't work in these critically important places so I was wondering if there's a more detailed tutorial about using cars, any tips, something like that. Tanks

[Topher]

You can´t set cars to be for specific workers only worker education and loyaltiy levels.

You can tell workerrs where they should go to work though from a residence so if you have the car park only accesible from that residence then you can game the system that way a little bit.

[Silent_Shadow]

They changed how car owners decide to use their car or not to get to work and needs (in a bad way imo). They will often not use their car if they can find a job or service building they can walk to, which can make depending on cars difficult. The best way I have found to force car owners to use their car is to limit the jobs they can reach, so they are more inclined to drive to work. Ironically, a suburb setup works best at this because they have to drive everywhere.

There are also some other issues with using cars to staff places due to their requirement to reserve both a parking spot and a job slot prior to driving, as this will result in workplace's average staffing level to be under 100%, especially as driving distance increases. There are a couple options to fix this, or you can ignore it for some buildings.

You can read more in my exhaustive guide here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2840936507

[longshots444]

In your guide - which, by the way, is excellent - there is a line that says
"Car owners do not automatically teleport home after work, but instead walk to their car and drive from there."

This is off topic - but, nevertheless - does this not defeat the argument that workers must teleport home and can't use a bus because of the various reasons usually put forward.

[Zentra]

It depends on what you mean by using cars. If you mean using them as personal vehicles and depending upon them for a consistent workforce? Good luck. But, with that being said, if they can only drive it to work then they will use it ;) if you have a bunch of parking lots everywhere..... good luck again!
When it comes to a critical force workforce like power and heat I tend to use cableways.
That's my preference but it works well for me.
I dedicate them so there is no confusion where the workers are coming from or going. It's too critical.
Yes, they can be subject to an issue with power loss on a cableway.
I also use cars or microbuses as backup gas powered transport. I use them Like I would a regular bus by by assigning a route. I do this not as the main workforce, but purely to augment the cableway in the even of a blackout. So I don;t have too many I am using since they are just used as backups. That way I will always have at least a couple of folks keeping the lights on.

[dazkaz]

Set up your critical infrastructure (heating, water, food factory) so it is within walking range of a building with enough workers to staff it.
They might get a little pollution, but not everyone in life gets to live in luxury.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by longshots444:

In your guide - which, by the way, is excellent

Thanks! I always appreciate hearing that.
If you have any criticisms, I would like to hear them too.

Originally posted by longshots444:

- there is a line that says
"Car owners do not automatically teleport home after work, but instead walk to their car and drive from there."

This is off topic - but, nevertheless - does this not defeat the argument that workers must teleport home and can't use a bus because of the various reasons usually put forward.

Sorry for the essay, but there are some relatively abstracted mechanics at play that need some explaining to justify my position.

I assume you are talking about the claim some people make about universal return trips; that since car owners already make return trips home, that other citizens should also be able to as well.

I disagree because there are a lot of differences between car owners and other citizens; I actually think personal cars show a lot reasons why return trips are generally a bad idea.

If you wanted citizens using public transportation to make return trips, they would have to either remember the path they took and retrace it or they would need a path home calculated; either way would require more processing power or memory than just having them teleport home, which would then lower the maximum number of citizens a given computer could support before the game becomes too slow or starts experiencing issues. There are also some other issues that would arise, such as worker/job ratios and feature disruptions.


Personal cars are kind of a glimpse into issues that would be caused by requiring all citizens to take return trips.

• You can see a noticeable frame drop with personal cars:
  • Instead of citizens only having to check if a line has a stop that interests them (access to a job/need/whatever or an applicable transfer point) and only needing the public transportation vehicle calculate a path, each car owner has to calculate a path to get to whatever interests them.
    
  • With more path calculations being made for car owners, you can see a lower drop in frames and stability with car owners compared to the same number of non-car owners.
    
  • With more car owners, you'll reach the lower maximum population your PC can support sooner than if you did not have personal cars.
  
  
• Compare the planned paths of a car owner compared to calculating a trip home through public transportation:
  • For a car owner, they really only need to calculate a one-way path to a parking lot that is near something they can walk to that interests them.
    
    I think the developers implemented it so that car owners just look at all parking lots within range for walking access to what they want and then finds a path for the car to drive them there. A return trip home is calculated the same way or they just teleport home if they can't find a path.
    
    
  • For public transportation, calculating a return path would require looking through all the stops of all the lines at a station to get to their specific home, which is far more processing than a car owner has to do. Transfer points just exacerbate this because every line the transfer station has now also may need looking though to find the right connections home.
    
    
  • Considering the performance hit that car owners inflict compared to the current non-car owners, I can only conclude that calculating return paths through public transportation for every citizen would tank frame rates far faster and limit the maximum population to much smaller numbers rather than just teleporting citizens home.
  
  
• Car owners have much looser citizen to job ratios than non-car owners do:
  • For non-car owners, the ratio is typically 3 to 4 citizens per job slot to maintain constant 100% production/service, but car owners' ratios are less resilient; their ratios can swing as low as 1.33 workers per job slot to 5, 6, or more workers per job slot.
    
    
  • There are two main reasons car owners have more variance in their worker/job ratios:
    Return trips are not compensated, and driving does not take up free time. Both lengthen the time of a car owner's day, but they do not lengthen the time they work for, which lowers the percentage of their time spent working, and thus increases the number of car owners needed to maintain a job filled. With tricks like range extensions, or just long commutes to work, you can accidentally drive up worker to job ratios to absurd levels where people are hardly working at all.
    
    The ratio can be reduced though by having higher productivity (over 150% is possible) thanks to the loyalty boost. Unlike other citizens, car owners also do not experience a "spread delay timer" if they drove to work, which helps shorten their day if their commute is on average less than ~45 seconds (the average spread delay time). If the commute to work is very short, then you can shorten the day a lot while preserving work time. Both of these effects can theoretically get the ratio as low as 1.333.
    
    
  • Allowing return trips for most citizens would more of less make the number of citizens required per job slot very difficult to predict, and since the consequences for having too many or too few workers are rather severe, this would make the game a lot more difficult to manage and plan for.
    
    I doubt that most players would see that as an enjoyable experience, especially considering that many of them already ask for more control over staffing in the game.

With remembering a path home, you would also run into issues with certain features of the the game, like non-station stops (such as dropping workers off into workplaces; where are they going to wait?) or chain visits (there may not be a path back to a station they came from). I am not sure all of these would be fixable without a reduction in utility.

You could argue that return trips would be worth a much lower maximum population and less stable worker to job ratios, but I think that would be a less enjoyable experience.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by dazkaz:

Set up your critical infrastructure (heating, water, food factory) so it is within walking range of a building with enough workers to staff it.
They might get a little pollution, but not everyone in life gets to live in luxury.

Skill issue; it is more than possible to ensure everyone lives free of pollution.

[StoneFire!☭]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Originally posted by dazkaz:

Set up your critical infrastructure (heating, water, food factory) so it is within walking range of a building with enough workers to staff it.
They might get a little pollution, but not everyone in life gets to live in luxury.

Skill issue; it is more than possible to ensure everyone lives free of pollution.

I agree, while his suggestion is a valid solution to constantly feed the building workers it's definitely possible to keep everyone outside of the all killing smog.

[FirestormMk3]

Originally posted by dazkaz:

Set up your critical infrastructure (heating, water, food factory) so it is within walking range of a building with enough workers to staff it.
They might get a little pollution, but not everyone in life gets to live in luxury.

You can actually do this with dedicated public transit if you're okay using the means of a residence dedicated only to these buildings. You can build a bus station (or whichever transit works best for the scale of operation you're dealing with) that only has a line to the building(s) you want staffed in this way and then assign that station to the residence as its only choice for work. Now as long as there are both sufficient workers and transport throughput this will work the same as building in walking distance to guarantee staffing with the benefit of not needing to build auxiliary services out by the coal plant since they can just use the services of the city plus don't have to sacrifice themselves so their comrades can have power and heat.

[Eilif]

If you cant get anyone to drive to work, i would look in to your size of workforce compared to number of available jobs. Too low population will give people many choices on where to go for work. And in that case, they will mostly choose jobs right next to where they live and in that case have no need for driving the car.
Its just like real life. If it where up to me, i rather have a job across the street where i live than struggle trough traffic for two hours every day.

[longshots444]

Originally posted by Eilif:

i rather have a job across the street

but then you lose the opportunity for all those fake sick days...