Suggested Feature: Buttons to lock or snap length and angle

[Platibyte]

While Building roads, tracks and pipes I would love to have a feature to snap the length and angle of the structure. While i like not having a grid, i also like repeating features (like most ppl do). I imagine something like: you press e.g. "L" and the last used length is repeated. You press "K" and the angle snaps into a small increment of the last structure (preferably the angles correspond to the rotation angles of buildings). this would be super nice especially for pipes, since those are usually planned by engineers :)

[Beveled Square]

I'd like to second this.
There doesn't need to be a map-wide grid, but snaps would allow us to have our own relatively ordered grids on the local level.
Cities: Skylines generates a grid from certain types of roads that other things can snap to, while Transport Fever 2 allows parallel snapping for things like railroads. Both are nice things to have.
My only addition would be some kind of road planner, to tweak the curve of roads before they're built. The tool would work like the current road tool, but with an added step before construction to pull at pieces of the road to adjust its shape.

[potski]

Originally posted by Beveled Square:

I'd like to second this.
My only addition would be some kind of road planner, to tweak the curve of roads before they're built. The tool would work like the current road tool, but with an added step before construction to pull at pieces of the road to adjust its shape.

Turn off Auto Build Using Rubles/Dollars and use the mud road, or the mud footpath. These are free to use, so you can layout a road or path exactly as you want, and delete it and try again as you require. This even works without pause.

Some objects like pipes, you have to select when you are ready for them to be built anyway, so again you can plan exactly how they will appear, deleting and trying again as many times as you like.

Also, buildings won't start construction if they have no connection to roads/paths. So hold CTRL when placing them, so they don't connect up. Again you can place, delete, place again without cost. When happy then connect with a road or path, and instead of the autoconnect of the roads/paths giving you the type it thinks you want, you get to choose and can again use the mud road/paths to get them laid as you want, before upgrading. That also has the advantage that a building connected by mud road would start construction straightaway, rather than the COs having to first build the road to get there. You don't have to accept the default of asphalt road with street lights when you connect something like an electric substation to a main road. You can leave it with the free mud in case of fire, or gravel it. It's surprising how much these sort of small roads can cost, and the snow ploughs will treat them the same as the main roads, and annoying that when being built with CO they will have to go and get electrical components and steel (for the lights) that will delay road, and therefore delay the building powering up your new district.

The only roads you can't use free mud versions for is when you need a bridge. It can be hard to see exactly how these will turn out in the semi-transparent planned mode, and you might not notice problems until they are constructed. So there is a (significant) cost to do over a bridge. But I found that I can now extensively plan a whole district, layout everything, and then start it constructing when I am happy. That also allows me to control the order of construction. I will construct additional mud roads that I will delete once the construction crews are complete, just to allow them efficient access to the sites while waiting for the proper roads to be built.

This is an unbelievable level of realism - I watched for months some major construction works on my way to work. One to build new high voltage power lines, and noticed that they actually built temporary roads through farmers fields to get to the sites where they built the pylons, roads that they then removed afterwards, and on motorways they often have three roads: one for the existing traffic when they can't send it another route, one temporary road for the construction vehicles to move around and one they are building. And on the estate where I live where I moved into a new home one of the first to do so, they didn't asphalt the roads until after all of the houses were built, they had temporary road surfaces while all the construction traffic was coming and going, I was living on a big building site for a year. I am happy to do the same to my citizens whenever appropriate. Or the opposite, make sure all of the supporting buildings are at least under construction before the residences start building, so there are kindergartens etc ready for citizens moving in. But they might not get nice roads straightaway :)

My only frustration is with building railways where these are additions/changes to the existing network. The CO track builders snarl up the existing rail traffic and often get confused returning to their base because of the signals being against them, or get in each others way, so they need alot of babysitting to get new tracks constructed. And even small lengths of track are very expensive if you pay for them with Rubles/Dollars then decide to redo them. IRL they will do the work at night or weekends when they can stop the live trains, this is not possible in the game unfortunately. And skilled engineers don't have to use trial and error in building things :)

While I think you may be getting at some sort of "Move It" type function, the actual ability to plan a complex layout is second to none in this game. Done properly there is never a reason to delete things you have "paid for" (either in cash or by CO's using your own resources). You can even do terrain editting for free by placing a spare excavator in a depot, raising/lowering ground until you get it how you want.

Lastly, I actually LOVE the lack of a grid with snapping. Since I am European with cities developed over many hundreds of years with roads following terrain and not laid out in rigid grids, I hate the city builders that largely force this on you. The 20th century development of cities in the Soviet Union on green field sites, might use more grid-like road layouts, and I have no problems with doing that in the game, but only when I want to, not because that is the way the game drives you. I really liked the authentic feel of Ostriv exactly because it allowed placement of buildings without a grid, and would give you pathways following the not always orderly routes citizens took most often that were definitely not nice straight/parallel lines, like you got in Banished or the Anno series. I had to work at Cities Skylines to avoid grids, and hated those old tutorials of counting squares to get the most efficient city blocks. In Transport Fever I used to deliberately draw in some curved streets rather than allow the AI to build all straight roads when it was expanding cities. I never once turned on the Soviet Republic grid overlay on the map, I don't know how to do it and don't want to know.

[MG83]

Need more tools for more organised fast designing.

[Platibyte]

potski, I fully agree an forcing grids upon us.
While writing the entry post, i was mostly thinking of pipes, that i want to design properly (same inclination on every pipe of the network). Since height is already snapping, I figured the only thing missing was the length. But then again if you go from two sides into one building, you would also want some help with angles.