High Resource Costs - Service Trade a shambles

[DanCan]

Anyone else having issues with high resource costs, I have all the mines, fields etc and excess, I have manufacturing in excess, I have airports and rail yards, highways and good access?
And the traded services, police and hospital even though I have enough police for it to be a police state, and enough hospital coverage, its costing me 28M a month!!!!

Did they just crate another bug with a "fix" Does no one test anything anymore

[john.glossop]

Originally posted by DanCan:

Does no one test anything anymore

Well, it would certainly appear that way, from the scale and scope of the bugs in this game. But, no, I don't believe that is actually the case. What is the problem is that while they might test their work, they don't do it in a structured way. Best Practices say that testing should start once the design documents have been written - to make sure that the tasks specified can even be performed - for instance (simplistically), if the code calls for A and/or B to be multiplied together, but A and/or B has no value, then the test is not going to work, because the result of the test is going to be invalid.
Then, if the code is written, the coder tests it to make sure that the basic functionality works, usually without completely checking the results, but making sure that it runs "end-to-end", and that it integrates with other modules of code that have already been written.
Then it is handed over to a Test Team, which SHOULD be fairly isolated from the development team, but which, in the case of OS, is probably not possible due to the small size of the organization. The Test Team, using the design documents, will have spent the development time in devising all the test cases needed to confirm that the app works as specified.
And here is the problem. Forget Alpha, and Beta, testing, because in a "shoestring" organization this process isn't going to be feasible, and probably the only testing carried out will be by the development team itself (hopefully using developers other than the one(s) responsible for generating the code) to confirm that, within the parameters of time and ability, it works somewhat as specified.
When they are "happy" that they've identified any major show-stoppers, they will pass it fit for distribution, and it will be put on the market for an unsuspecting audience that has been buoyed up by all the propaganda that has been flowing for months about just how wonderful the new offering is going to be.
Unhappily, many people will be disappointed.
Oh, and this dilemma isn't only suffered by small development teams. Teams up to, and including, the famed giant Microsoft, and even greater IT giant - IBM - have been caught out by faulty testing leading to disastrous results.
I'll just point out one notable problem from the past 30 or more years - code was written for NASA to control the descent of a space to ground lander where, because of a tiny misunderstanding, resulted in the lander descending in miles per hour instead of kilometers per hour, and when the lander smacked into the surface at a considerably higher speed than it was designed to do, resulting in a completely wrecked lander spreading itself across the surface of an astronomical body instead of landing safely and sending back the data that it had been designed to do. Now THAT'S an "Oops" moment.
/endrant

[DanCan]

Thank you for the reply :)

[sternenstaub70]

Originally posted by DanCan:

Anyone else having issues with high resource costs, I have all the mines, fields etc and excess, I have manufacturing in excess, I have airports and rail yards, highways and good access?
And the traded services, police and hospital even though I have enough police for it to be a police state, and enough hospital coverage, its costing me 28M a month!!!!

Since you seem to have *everything* your city must be pretty big with a high population.
But your number 28M without any context and how it's distributed, literally means nothing, it's just a number,
Is this your total "income" ? Then something is definitely off in your city.
Or are those only your monthly expenses (primarily for services) ? Then it looks OK to me.

What is your tax income ?
What are your tax settings ?
Are you exporting any services ?
How are your service expenses distributed ? Which service is the most expensive one ?

For example:
I have a town with 400k inhabitants, a total income of ~6M/month, a service upkeep of 36M, tax income of 56M,... with taxes between 3% and 7%.
My most expensive services are garbage, healthcare and education, two of them are in the deep green area regarding coverage, so I definitely exaggerated a bit in buildings those buildings.

[DanCan]

Population is 180k. Tax take is about 13M, 0% for commercial as they dont seem to be profitable no matter what I do. Income tax is about 5%. Export electricity, importing water and sewage on purpose, but nothing else

[edumacacion]

police states are expensive. but seriously breathe wrong and economy 2.0 will bite you in the ass. a city planner tried to play the game and was only able to continue by using a trick where he lowered taxes to 0 to get people to come to the city than ratchet up the taxes. but honestly exporting is a major pain. im also not sure how much exporting has to be done to become profitable. it's not possible to make any money in economy 2.0 playing the game without the extra features added in city skylines 2. they should really make exporting resources and taxis part of the tutorial so people have a handle on the game before they hemorrhage money.

[DanCan]

I found I had a policy ticked to import services, must be new, I just blindly tick all the policies, Econ 2.0 has added the import services. Still losing money but only $2M now

[edumacacion]

it must be on by default. maybe ill try playing city skylines 2 with it off. down with trade.