Unreal Farm Pollution

[mrbisonm]

I was wondering if there's a way to *mod out* the pollution that farms create in the game. It is totally unreal that farms produce that much of pollution, maybe in some poorer non-controlled lands, but certainly not in civilized regions like here in Quebec Canada, where farms are not allowed to store their menure on land other than in a tanklike construction that holds back all the liquid, plus no fertilizing of the fields is allowed without certain restrictions, etc.
In the game the farms produce more ground pollution than industrials......just totally unreal and even ridiculous!
Is there a way to reduce the farm's pollution partially or totally or something, maybe a modfile or tweaking something? (sorry not very skillful with modding files)
Thanks in advance


Fred

[xxdita]

The only way you'd be able to alter the amount of pollution created by every farm field & lot you have is to modify each of them individually. And keep doing that for any new lots & fields you should download.

I think it would be much easier to find a nice looking Water Treatment Center, and bump up the stats to suit your needs. There are plenty of these "cheat" lots available on the STEX.

Personally, I use SimGoober's Water Castle from the LEX. (Sorry, don't have the link handy)

[mrbisonm]

The only way you'd be able to alter the amount of pollution created by every farm field & lot you have is to modify each of them individually. And keep doing that for any new lots & fields you should download.

I think it would be much easier to find a nice looking Water Treatment Center, and bump up the stats to suit your needs. There are plenty of these "cheat" lots available on the STEX.

Personally, I use SimGoober's Water Castle from the LEX. (Sorry, don't have the link handy)

Forget the modification of every farmlot. I think I have about all (and more - my own) farms that are available anywhere, and modifying them would keep me busy for....well, close to eternity

Hm.....but that gave me an idea. I will make a good looking farmlot that can be plopped, looks like a farm but functions as a Water Treatment Plant. Yeah, that sounds good.
Now, the only thing I would like to know is how to bring up the stats to cover a whole Medium sized tile. Which are the numbers to delete or boost? I know more or less how to use the SC4PIM and the Reader.

Thanks for the idea, xxdita

Fred

[Silur]

I think You can look at - Farm no pollution Mod on STEX, created by Riccardo Chiesa
21/09/2006

This mod reduce water pollution for all the simcity original Farm, but it increase the garbage produced

[jmyers2043]

The Maxis Orchard Fields create a lot of pollution. I reduced the pollution of those two fields and that helped a lot. Some of the BSC farms, such as a pig farm, have more pollution than others but that makes sense. But my definition of sense    may be yours for excessive   

But like you - I didn't modify every farm lot in my game. A long time ago there was a BSC field that also caused pollution but I don't recall what it was off hand. But I think it was fixed when it was repackaged for the SC4D LEX.

An interesting subject. I'll have to take a look at some of my cities and look at water pollution with a fresh eye.

<edit> Just remembered - the other thing I did with some of the fields was to give them -1 or -2 air pollution. I did this so that fields closer to dirty industry would actually clean the air a smidgen and to help clean up pollution caused by freight traffic along the rural roads. All in an effort to help prevent field delapidation caused by traffic. Don't know if it worked but it made sense at the time.

[mrbisonm]

I think You can look at - Farm no pollution Mod on STEX, created by Riccardo Chiesa
21/09/2006

This mod reduce water pollution for all the simcity original Farm, but it increase the garbage produced

Thanks, but that mod produces way too much garbage to be realistic and then you got only garbage trucks running on the adjescent roads.
Strange that with all the mods that have been done with industrials, commercials, schools, police etc, no one actually has thought of doing a no-farm-pollution mod or a reduced-farm-pollution-mod.

I personnally live in a large agricultural region in Quebec/ Canada which has severe agricultural laws, like not allowed to spread manure on fields 24 hrs prior to rain or on frozen grounds, keeping your liquid menure in a septictanks, allowing you only to keep a certain amount of animal units with the amount of field area you got to spred their menure, fencing in creeks, ponds etc to keep animals away....etcetc. I have yet to see bigtime agricultural pollution in my area as in SC4. In Canada, the province of Quebec has the most severe laws for agriculture.  I know, I own a more or less hobby farm myself with several hundred acres and a beef herd of 100 or so, and I get visits from those environment folks every month or so, sometimes exagerating their demands.

One more thing is that the traffic is totally unreal on roads and streets touching farmlots. Geeeez, where do all those trucks come from? Delivering or picking up what in that industrial quantity? It even looks stupid if you ask me. If we see 8 to 10 trucks on our roads here in a day, it is considered as a lot. Maybe this is something else could need some modding!! Ohhh, do I wish I could mod.....lol

jmyers2043,  BSC farms and some others available on the Net are better than Maxis farms, created by the Maxis people that probably never have seen or been on a farm in their real life, but these are still producing too much pollution to be close to real. I know that pigfarms produce more pollution than others, including airpollution, but still their liquid menure is severly controlled and the field spreading is under inspection most of the time. Yes, there are still regions and nations that do actually have a serious agricultural pollution problem, but I think generally most of the civilized nations have done something already to reduce this and cannot be compared of what the SC4 farms give us.

I was wondering, I have a lot that I once uploaded and it reduces groundpollution, as I took a water treatment plant lot to create it,if I could alter or increase it's effectiveness somehow? Right now it has the same stats as the Maxis treatment plant.

On the picture below I doubled the cleaning effect on this Nexis Water Purification Pump lot, but is it the right place that I modified? Help would be appreciated, because this is a usefull lot, being so small and it can be hidden in between the farmfields without being too big as a water treatment plant and destroy the eyecandy of farmlands.



I play a lot with farms, since it is a part of civilized development from where I come from.(Germany/ Sweden and Canada). So every region I start, I begin with agriculture and slowly build cities in between. Without a mod this is terribly hard to do, Residentials won't grow near polluted gounds. So I have to alter this and that to insprire to have my residents move in. IRL, who wouldn't want to own a home out in the country beside a farm?
Let's hear some ideas of what we could do to achieve a more realistic agricultural pollution without tweaking the stats of ALL the farms available.
Thanks.

Fred

[jmyers2043]

One more thing is that the traffic is totally unreal on roads and streets touching farmlots. Geeeez, where do all those trucks come from?

I agree. I've been  working on CAM 2 Rural (beta testing) since early December. I asked the same question of RippleJet. Can truck traffic be cut back? And the answer (for now) is no.

RippleJet did mod the traffic so it takes about twice as many trucks driving down the street or road to cause field delapidation. So there is good news of a sort. Funny thing is that R$ Sims in the towns are now more likely to drive to the rural areas to work the fields. Passenger vehicle traffic is now causing some delapidation - for a short time. Eventually the residents get educated and are less likely to work in the fields.


<edit> just had this thought. You can create a 'water monitor station'. A small lot where the local authorities sink a well and then drive around collectinng water samples. At least that's the premise. The actual function of the 'well' or water monitor device is to act like a water treatment plant. My minds eye sees it as being small because the only real source of pollution in my rural areas are those darn Maxis Orchards. While I'm thinking out loud here - You could also make create some sort of microwave tower. Water is continously sampled and tested and the results transmitted to the central office. Which also acts as a treatment plant too. . . .

[RippleJet]

I was wondering, I have a lot that I once uploaded and it reduces groundpollution, as I took a water treatment plant lot to create it,if I could alter or increase it's effectiveness somehow? Right now it has the same stats as the Maxis treatment plant.

On the picture below I doubled the cleaning effect on this Nexis Water Purification Pump lot, but is it the right place that I modified? Help would be appreciated

The Water Treatment monthly capacity is in fact a property which Maxis never implemented they way they thought.
Thus, regardless what value you'd give to it, it wouldn't mean anything to the lot in the game.

Instead, Maxis implemented the water purification simply be providing negative water pollution.
You need to check the second value (that's the one for water) of these three properties:

• Pollution at center
• Pollution at outer edge of circle
• Pollution Radius

I believe these are the values applicable for the Nexis Water Treatment Plant:

• Pollution at center = 0xFFFFFED4 = -300
• Pollution at outer edge of circle = 0xFFFFFF06 = -250
• Pollution Radius = 0

The last one is the most critical in your case. The ingame Maxis Water Treatment Plant has a water pollution radius of 48 tiles.
That is the radius within which the water pollution is reduced (-300 at the center and -250 at the perimeter).

Your plant doesn't have any reach at all...

If you want a cheating plant that cleans all of a large city, you need to give it a radius of at least 362 tiles
(that's the radius of the ingame city college, and is the diagonal measure of a big city).

It's up to you to increase the cleaning efficiency (from -300 and -250 respectively).
However, those are usually more than enough to clean up all water pollution from farms and dirty industry.

[mrbisonm]

I agree. I've been  working on CAM 2 Rural (beta testing) since early December. I asked the same question of RippleJet. Can truck traffic be cut back? And the answer (for now) is no.

Glad to hear that some are working on this. There's a traffic mod somewhere on the net that increases the traffic (train and cars), is it not possible to do the same in a negative direction? Just wondering, 'cause if you can make something positive, there's always a way to make it negative also. No?

<edit> just had this thought. You can create a 'water monitor station'. A small lot where the local authorities sink a well and then drive around collectinng water samples. At least that's the premise. The actual function of the 'well' or water monitor device is to act like a water treatment plant. My minds eye sees it as being small because the only real source of pollution in my rural areas are those darn Maxis Orchards. While I'm thinking out loud here - You could also make create some sort of microwave tower. Water is continously sampled and tested and the results transmitted to the central office. Which also acts as a treatment plant too. . . .

Sounds good, we have those stations out here in the country also. I had a closer look at the fields causing waterpollution and like you said, it is the Maxis orchards that are the worst......but how can you change the stats of Maxis lots?

You need to check the second value (that's the one for water) of these three properties:

• Pollution at center
• Pollution at outer edge of circle
• Pollution Radius

I believe these are the values applicable for the Nexis Water Treatment Plant:

• Pollution at center = 0xFFFFFED4 = -300
• Pollution at outer edge of circle = 0xFFFFFF06 = -250
• Pollution Radius = 0

It's up to you to increase the cleaning efficiency (from -300 and -250 respectively).
However, those are usually more than enough to clean up all water pollution from farms and dirty industry.

Sounds interesting, but unfortunetly a little out of my reach of comprehension. What second value are you talking about and by increasing do you mean less negative like from -300 to -100? If you could show this with a picture and an example, it would help, sorry but tweaking is really not my strong.

Thanks for the interest. Much appreciated.

Fred

[ScottFTL]

I believe that Tage is saying you need to change the Pollution Radius for the Nexis Water Treatment Plant.  If you look at the image below showing the stats for the Maxis Water Purification Plant, you can see the differences between your lot and the in-game version.  You have the Pollution Radius set to 0, so it is reducing water pollution over 0 tiles.  The Maxis plant is reducing water pollution over 48 tiles.  See the problem?

To match the stats of the in-game version, the Pollution Radius should be 0,48,0,0.  If you want to make a version to cover an entire large-tile city, the Pollution Radius would be 0,362,0,0.

You can also increase the strength of the water pollution cleaning by changing the Pollution at Center and Pollution at Outer Edge of Circle properties.

I hope that makes things clearer, but I'm happy to mod the lot for you if this is still confusing.  Just let me know.

[RippleJet]

I had a closer look at the fields causing waterpollution and like you said, it is the Maxis orchards that are the worst......but how can you change the stats of Maxis lots?

You need to extract them from SimCity_1.dat.
I've done that for the Apple and Orange fields, and attach them to this post.
In that dat file I've reduced their water pollution from 6 to 1.

Place that file in your plugins, and it will override the exemplars in SimCity_1.dat.

Sounds interesting, but unfortunetly a little out of my reach of comprehension. What second value are you talking about and by increasing do you mean less negative like from -300 to -100? If you could show this with a picture and an example, it would help, sorry but tweaking is really not my strong.

Let's take a look at only one of these properties, Pollution at center.
Just like the other two properties mentioned above,
that property always has a "rep" count of 4, which means there are four values given to it.
(You can see both the Rep and Value as headings in Reader).



For instance, the building exemplars for the farm fields attached to this post both have these values for Pollution at center:
0xFFFFFFFF, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00000000.

The first value is for Air Pollution, which in this case is -1
(I assume for now that you understand how negative values are represented in a SInt32 type property).
Just like parks, farm fields have a negative air pollution, which means they lower air pollution.

The second value is for Water Polllution, which in this case is +1 (that's the one that I reduced from +6).

The third value is for Garbage Pollution and the fourth one for Radiation Pollution, both of which are 0.



Now, the ingame water treatment plant, and the Nexis treatment plant, have these values for Pollution at center:
0x00000001, 0xFFFFFED4, 0x0000000C, 0x00000000

The first value is, once again for Air Pollution, is +1, which means there is a small air pollution at the center.

The second value is for the Water Pollution, which in this case is -300.
All water pollution values from all buildings in the city are added to give the total water pollution in every tile.
Thus, adding a pollution that is negative to this sum, would of course mean that it removes or reduces the pollution from other buildings in the surrounding.
The more negative, the more it reduces pollution. -300 is 3 times more effective in cleaning water pollution than -100.
A value of 0 would mean no pollution, but also no reduction of polllution.

The third value is +12, which means there is a garbage pollution at the center.

And as always, the fourth value, the radiation pollution, is 0.



If you feel these negative pollutions are hard to understand,
I would recommend that you leave them the way Maxis left them (-300 water pollution at center).

Instead, make sure you increase the water pollution radius.
E.g, change Pollution Radius from 0,0,0,0 to 0,96,0,0.

Compared to the ingame water treatment plant,
that would give it a doubled coverage radius and a coverage area, which is quadrupled.




And thanks to Scott as well!
I believe Fred is more used to Reader than to SC4Tool though...

[mrbisonm]

Well guys, thanks a lot to both of you. You really made me understand how to handle the pollution stats and lotcoverage (radius) . I didn't know anything of it.
Now I can easily understand why my little lots didn't clean anything since the radius was 0. I put it back to 48 like the Maxis treatment plant, that should do the trick in my game.
I also had a hard problem to understand the negative and positive numbers in the Pollution at Center.
Now that I got clear I just make some new BATs with new stats....

Also thanks for the two modified Maxis farmlot stats, that will surely help.

Again, thanks for making this subject (Pollution + Radius) clear to me.

Fred