Latest state of postal services

[purrcat33a]

I hadn't noticed issues before, well, compared to all of the other game issues... but since the latest patch my postal services have gone really bad. Before the patch the happiness rating was somewhere between +5 and +10. Since the patch it's gone to -10 to -15.

Looking at the mail rates vs the processing rates, and this is on just a 30K city, the mail processing rate was about a quarter of the mail posting rate - how cims love sending letters! (stamps must be a lot cheaper in the simulation than they are in real life). So I put in a load of extra mail boxes, then had to put in post offices and decided to stick in a sorting office close to the highway to encourage trucks to take the mail away. Happy days - I thought.

Gradually the mail rate and processing rates balanced and the post offices started to fill and the happiness improved. Then, when the post offices got full, nothing else would get picked up and the sorting office workers must have been on a long coffee break as they couldn't be bothered to go to the post offices to collect the mail.

So, having seen other posts about removing cargo and train hubs, I turned them off one by one and I started to see a mail drain (how it was being drained wasn't clear - I suspect that the lazy sods in the postal sorting office were burning the mail or the rampant wild dogs were being encouraged in to the post offices and chewing it to bits).

However, I needed my cargo and train hubs and the second I turned these back on, the processing of mail went to almost zero and the mail started piling up again. (Maybe all of the rampant dogs were sent to a different city by train or the postal workers were being executed in the sorting office car parks - the postal service doesn't get a good press here in the UK at the moment).

Mail was broken but I thought it was fixed. Is it still broken and is it reasonable to assume that a really poor happiness rating for postal will stunt city growth or does the game mechanics over look that issue (as well as many other things)?

thanks

[Major Kudos™]

Did you try deleting and rebuilding the facilities? CO did say it may require such.

Fact is though nothing works as advertised in this game and not any better after this very tiny code patch.

Again, everything simply gets worse as we get bigger. It's just one bigger mess of silly workarounds.

[purrcat33a]

Originally posted by Major Kudos™:

Did you try deleting and rebuilding the facilities? CO did say it may require such.

I removed all post boxes, sorting offices and post offices and rebuilt these, plentifully more than before and saw what I saw. I didn't, as yet, delete and rebuild either the train yard or the train cargo station. I'd thought, possibly incorrectly, that this bug had been fixed with the trains and cargo . ... but we are operating in a parallel illogical universe to CO/PDX and this may have been wishful thinking on my part , or a twinkle of an idea after a beer too many.

[Major Kudos™]

Originally posted by purrcat33a:

Originally posted by Major Kudos™:

Did you try deleting and rebuilding the facilities? CO did say it may require such.

I removed all post boxes, sorting offices and post offices and rebuilt these, plentifully more than before and saw what I saw. I didn't, as yet, delete and rebuild either the train yard or the train cargo station. I'd thought, possibly incorrectly, that this bug had been fixed with the trains and cargo . ... but we are operating in a parallel illogical universe to CO/PDX and this may have been wishful thinking on my part , or a twinkle of an idea after a beer too many.

Well then. The only thing left is to let it run longer and warm up that cottage!

[Major Kudos™]

Mail in my city only got marginally worse which I think will be corrected with another sorting thingy.

[purrcat33a]

Originally posted by Major Kudos™:

Originally posted by purrcat33a:

I removed all post boxes, sorting offices and post offices and rebuilt these, plentifully more than before and saw what I saw. I didn't, as yet, delete and rebuild either the train yard or the train cargo station. I'd thought, possibly incorrectly, that this bug had been fixed with the trains and cargo . ... but we are operating in a parallel illogical universe to CO/PDX and this may have been wishful thinking on my part , or a twinkle of an idea after a beer too many.

Well then. The only thing left is to let it run longer and warm up that cottage!

Toasty!

[Potat al Gaib]

The fact that paying customers need to deep dive and waste their time into figuring out how a basic game mechanic works, because it is fundamentally broken is appalling and disgraceful, the developer CO and publisher Paradox should be ashamed for publishing a beta that should have been an early access title... for the price of a full release and forcing paying customers to figure out the bugs and find workarounds and better yet, report the bugs and do the job of the QA team from Poland who failed, along CO to deliver a good product, what a disgusting and insulting product, along with the teams who worked on it, not to mention that they have the nerve to call us toxic for critiquing their broken and mediocre coding skills that constructed this mess of a game!

[Major Kudos™]

Originally posted by Potat:

The fact that paying customers need to deep dive and waste their time into figuring out how a basic game mechanic works, because it is fundamentally broken is appalling and disgraceful, the developer CO and publisher Paradox should be ashamed for publishing a beta that should have been an early access title for the price of a full release and forcing paying customers to figure out the bugs and find workarounds and better yet, report the bugs and do the job of the QA team from Poland who failed, along CO to deliver a good product, what a disgusting and insulting product, along with the teams who worked on it!

Cities:Skylines will be great again. In fact right now it's a fantastic parody of CS1.

[Septumplastik]

I have two post sorting facilities in my city of 120k people and about 8 post offices. Both sorting facilities are close to cargo train stations.

I periodically check on them and sometimes they have mail stored, sometimes they don't, sometimes they have a couple of vehicles being used. The train stations are also filling up with local mail every now and then. So something seems to be working. I will take a closer look

[purrcat33a]

Right, so happy days .... well, happier, anyway:

Based upon the fact that it works in Major Kudos's city I decided to do the obvious and very logical thing - I bull dozed the cargo train station and the rail yard and rebuilt them.

Suddenly, the postal system sprang to life and the postal vans started burnouts throughout the city picking up mail. I now have four times the processing capability than the amount of mail that is being collected.

The post sorting facility seems to fill up by telepathy but, every now and again a postal lorry leaves the depot with 25 tonnes of mail (probably all CO/PDX fan mail) and deposits this at the rail cargo station.

So, it seems like it's necessary to destroy the rail yard and cargo station in order to get the postal system running again - tank goodness this city only has one of each.

I had to laugh a bit though : I now have garbage piling up at the postal sorting office. Perhaps that's how the postal company defines customer mail !

[QueenPixxa]

I love this thread!
I never build mail or garbage facilities in my cities, and I see no request for either services. I still have garbage trucks in my cities, which I suppose come from a neighbouring city, and they create an insane amount of traffic stopping everywhere.
But my cities are quite small: does the need for these services come after ¬20k residents?

[Major Kudos™]

Originally posted by QueenPixxa:

I love this thread!
I never build mail or garbage facilities in my cities, and I see no request for either services. I still have garbage trucks in my cities, which I suppose come from a neighbouring city, and they create an insane amount of traffic stopping everywhere.
But my cities are quite small: does the need for these services come after ¬20k residents?

The game is fantastic under 20k pop.

[purrcat33a]

Originally posted by QueenPixxa:

I love this thread!
I never build mail or garbage facilities in my cities, and I see no request for either services. I still have garbage trucks in my cities, which I suppose come from a neighbouring city, and they create an insane amount of traffic stopping everywhere.
But my cities are quite small: does the need for these services come after ¬20k residents?

I'm glad you like it. It's a bit tongue in cheek, ironic, sarcastic and all the other stuff that we British are (in)famous for.

I've been around the block with the various versions of city simulators. I think I was around when the Egyptians built the first tourist attractions and gave them pointy tops. What I would say with this simulator is that it doesn't behave in the same way as CS:1. Actually, it really misbehaves in so many ways but, and here's the big but, if you want your city to grow and get big, it's best to implement the city services early on, especially education and to ensure that the happiness ratings are all green , or very close to green as you SLOWLY build. It's actually relatively easy to do that as "cim universe" seems to throw money at the city for free like they have stolen it from the mafia and don't want to get caught with the cash in their hands.

[Haystack]

Have no way of knowing about the game (CS2) but real life USA SUCKs !

[hannebambel002]

It helps to delete and rebuilt the rail cargo and ship hubs, but only for a short time. As soon as the mail accumulates there again over time, mail delivery becomes worse again and more building turn "red". The game always has a bug

[kenh]

Mail works fine! Even works correctly for cargo depots. 210k population and three post offices, lots of post boxes and a sorting office.