University Attendance Rates Different for Different Lots. Why?

[woodb3kmaster]

I'm wondering why some university lots have more or less of their capacity used than others in the same city. Before I rebuilt the University of Nyhaven with the Clayhurst starter pack, the Maxis university in the quad had something like 14,000 students (i.e. it was over capacity). When I switched to one of the Clayhurst functional classroom buildings, it got far lower usage - probably no more than 25% of its capacity (which is lower than that of the Maxis university by a third). In both cases, the quad population was approximately 1.1 million.

I tried a couple of ideas to try to get my residents to use the new building more. First, I created a new lot with the same building and modded it to have a capacity of 20,000 students. The absolute number of students rose, but the percentage of its capacity used stayed about the same. I then tried making the lot larger to test the hypothesis that usage was tied to lot size (in another incarnation of the same university campus, I had swi21's University of Athens in the quad, and it quickly went far over capacity; that lot's size is 6x12, comapred to the default Fuhrmann Academic Center's 7x3), but attendance rates remained the same.

A comparison of building properties between the three university lots I used (Maxis, Fuhrmann and Athens) revealed little difference apart from capacities. I am therefore out of ideas as to what is causing the different attendance rates in these three lots. Has anyone else looked into this phenomenon and found more than I have? I would love to hear any ideas you all might have.

[Indisguise]

Only thing I can think of is the age in which sims will go to the different universities is modded different for different universities. Not sure of the exact stats of the original Maxis, but it has age requirement for simms to attend. You would need the ilive reader or the Pim-x to check the stats on it and each individual stats for any other custom lots.

Universities with lower capasities in the same city might have the age bracket in which the sims will attend may be narrower, that and maybe of a combination of the sims ages in the city changing adds to the factor, though the latter would not be a great change unless you had a lot of growth at once and just happen to place the lots at the wrong time.

Don't believe the size of the lot actually matters.

eg  sims attend university A: age bracket 18-30,  B: 18-50 age bracket. The latter university would have a lot more sims attending

[woodb3kmaster]

I can't find any property that specifies an age bracket for universities. The closest I can get to that is the "School Effectiveness vs. Average Age" property, which I don't know much about. I modded my version of the Fuhrmann Academic Center so that it had the same values for this property as the Maxis university, but that had no effect on attendance at all. In fact, besides capacity, the only major difference between the three lots I compared is their monthly cost; Fuhrmann is less expensive when fully funded than both of the other lots, while Athens is by far the most expensive (Athens costs $3000/month at full funding, compared to $1500 for the Maxis university and $1150 for my modded Fuhrmann; I didn't change this property from what JBSimio set it to). Since this difference in cost correlates nicely with my observations of attendance rates, I think it's the most likely cause of this discrepancy. I'll have to try making Fuhrmann more expensive to verify this hypothesis.

EDIT: After further testing, I have determined that monthly cost has nothing to do with university attendance. It could simply be that not enough of my quad's population is in the age range that the university serves; a plurality of its residents are in the 51-60 age range, and there are comparatively few residents in the 11-20 and 21-30 ranges. What I don't understand about that is how the game determines which age ranges attend which type of school, as it isn't apparent to me from looking at the properties in the universities' building exemplars.

[Indisguise]

This would be from my understanding the "School Effectiveness vs. Average Age" catigory. There are three 1-20, 21-50, 51-80. There could be others but I think thats it. (seems after 80 sims won't attend school and get alzheimer's  ).

In each of these value ranges you can assign the % of the population that will be students that the EQ boost will affect in the give radius of the school in question. The university as a reward has a radius of effect of 5800 meters, effectively covering the entire area of a large map so this would be the entire city population in each catigory.

The % assigned in each area is the % of the population that will attend the school and recieve the assign eq boost to the sims population. The Maxis university has the following assigned to it 1-20: 2.5%, 21-50: 5% 51-80: .5% with and EQ boost of 30 as long as current funding cover the # of sims attending the school, if underfunded the EQ boost will be less, might even be zero, as this will cause the school to go onstrike. Not 100% of the effect of an onstrike school myself.

So whatever the population of the city in each of the age groups would be the # of students attending the school at any given time. So for easy numbers say your city has in each catigory 1,000 sims. You would have 25+50+5= 80 sims attending  the university. Every month the #'s actually change as sims move in and out of the city or the populations gets older.

 

[woodb3kmaster]

This would be from my understanding the "School Effectiveness vs. Average Age" catigory. There are three 1-20, 21-50, 51-80. There could be others but I think thats it. (seems after 80 sims won't attend school and get alzheimer's  ).

That's not what the Reader shows when I look at the reps for that property. There are actually seven pairs of reps, with the first rep in each pair being a multiple of 10 (starting with 20 and going up to 80).

In each of these value ranges you can assign the % of the population that will be students that the EQ boost will affect in the give radius of the school in question. The university as a reward has a radius of effect of 5800 meters, effectively covering the entire area of a large map so this would be the entire city population in each catigory.

The % assigned in each area is the % of the population that will attend the school and recieve the assign eq boost to the sims population. The Maxis university has the following assigned to it 1-20: 2.5%, 21-50: 5% 51-80: .5% with and EQ boost of 30 as long as current funding cover the # of sims attending the school, if underfunded the EQ boost will be less, might even be zero, as this will cause the school to go onstrike. Not 100% of the effect of an onstrike school myself.

So whatever the population of the city in each of the age groups would be the # of students attending the school at any given time. So for easy numbers say your city has in each catigory 1,000 sims. You would have 25+50+5= 80 sims attending  the university. Every month the #'s actually change as sims move in and out of the city or the populations gets older.

Again, a look at what the Reader actually says contradicts your analysis. The Reader's description of this property says (quoting), "Maps Average age of a tract to the % EQ boost the school gives the tract". It's clear to me from this description that the second rep in each pair is how much of the EQ boost each tract of a particular age receives, not how much of the population that is a given age attends the school. I'm curious as to where you got your information, as it apparently is inaccurate.

At any rate, given what the property in question does, why student populations are a given size remains uncertain. It's possible, I think, that the age range of a school's students is determined by the school's occupant group(s), since I can't find any other property that says what kind of school a given educational building is.

[Indisguise]

Well could be the school is only university is moded to affect the listed age catigories, only the 3 mentioned were listed in the tool program.

As for there being diferent or other factors that determine the # of student, could be. Just unless your able to read the programing inside the game and find some code line that actually say how the numbers are caculated. I'm at a loss to know how to figure it out in game. The population of a city is always changing, the  ages too. Just always went on the idea the school affects only the ones attending it. Sort of made scence and with so many variables in the game I'm not sure how you could test this out in a city.

maybe you might find out good luck, let me know if you find out 

[jmyers2043]

that the age range of a school's students is determined by the school's occupant group(s),

Nope - It's determined by those 14 reps you mentioned above. 20,0,30,0.5,40,5  etc etc etc. Also look at the education by age graph the next time you play. You'll see it is by 20, 30, 40, etc etc age groups.

The numbers in my abreivated example mean? This particular school has a 0 (zero) affect on the 20 age backet, a .5 affect on the 30 age bracket, and a nice big 5 on the 40 age bracket. etc. . . . So this would be a High School or higher education. You'll see a pattern develop after you stare at the numbers and compare high schools, grade schools, and the community colleges for a while.

As far as overall student numbers ... School Student Capacity is the one you need to tweek.

As far as why your ujniversity always never goes above 25% ... I just know my 'un-modded' JBSimio Clayhurst University is full to overflowing with students ... and I sometimes have to plop a community college to help with the Universities overcrowding.

You might also look at the Schools Population vs Distance. The Maxis high school should be 0,100,100,100. Not sure off the top of my head for a university. It may be your 25% school does not service the coverage area properly?? Grasping at straws here ...

Hope this helps.

[woodb3kmaster]

Nope - It's determined by those 14 reps you mentioned above. 20,0,30,0.5,40,5  etc etc etc. Also look at the education by age graph the next time you play. You'll see it is by 20, 30, 40, etc etc age groups.

The numbers in my abreivated example mean? This particular school has a 0 (zero) affect on the 20 age backet, a .5 affect on the 30 age bracket, and a nice big 5 on the 40 age bracket. etc. . . . So this would be a High School or higher education. You'll see a pattern develop after you stare at the numbers and compare high schools, grade schools, and the community colleges for a while.

Thanks for the clarification. I do seem to recall seeing those same age brackets in the Education by Age graph. Your explanation of the reps seems to say that the numbers that are paired with the different age brackets are essentially multipliers that apply to the EQ boost property. So, if the school in your example had an EQ boost of 30, the 30 age bracket would receive an actual EQ boost of 15, while the 40 age bracket would receive a whopping 150-point EQ boost. Am I interpreting you correctly?

As far as overall student numbers ... School Student Capacity is the one you need to tweek.

I've done that, yes.

As far as why your ujniversity always never goes above 25% ... I just know my 'un-modded' JBSimio Clayhurst University is full to overflowing with students ... and I sometimes have to plop a community college to help with the Universities overcrowding.

Interesting. I wonder why there's such a disparity between our cities' use of the Clayhurst buildings...

You might also look at the Schools Population vs Distance. The Maxis high school should be 0,100,100,100. Not sure off the top of my head for a university. It may be your 25% school does not service the coverage area properly?? Grasping at straws here ...

Hope this helps.

It's the same for the three universities I compared in my OP - the reps are 0,100,100,100 for all of them, which seems to mean that 100% of the population within all of the coverage radius attends the school. But that doesn't square with what I've found, since, as I said in an earlier post, the residential population of the quad these university lots are/were in was about 1.1 million when I did my tests, and the coverage radii for all three schools covered the entire large quad. Curiouser and curiouser...

[Indisguise]

lets try this agian as the way I understand it

there are 7 age groups a EQ building can affect each coresponding to the 10 years life span of the sims, 1-10, 11-20 up to 80 years old this will be the first #, the second number tell the game the % of sims the EQ boost will affect in the EQ buildings radius, third number is the % of the sims that will attend the school of the pool of sims determined by the second number.

so for easy # lets say in a city with population of 1000 sims i all catogories that are all in the radius of the school.


make up a EQ building that states the building will give and EQ boost to  0, 10, 100   1,10,100

which is 1-10 yr old sims and 11-20 yrs are affected, 10% will be affected of the poulation, 100% of the students will attend in the school radius, so 200 students will attend the school and get the EQ bonus, 100 1-10 yr olds plus 100 11-20 yr olds (whatever it is set at).

change the stats of the building to 0,10,50   1,10,50

only 100 students would attend the school as the third number tell the game only to allow 50% of the pool of students to attend the school  50 1-10yr olds, plus 50 11-20 yr olds

change the building to 0,50, 100 1,50,100

this would change the # of students to 50% of the pool making 1000 students attend the school and recieve the eq boost from the building. 500 1-10yr olds plus 500 11-20 yr olds

Edit:
now I could be mistaken and the 3rd number might not have anything to do with the number of simms attending the school but could also mean the % of the EQ bonus is the % the sims get of the EQ bonus, or and building with an EQ bonus of 50, and the 3rd number is set to 50% the sims attending the school only get 25 bonus not 50.

Now inside of a city the ages of the sims are always changing and new sims moving in and out getting older different EQ buildng affect diffent age groups differntly. When it comes to over lapping EQ building that affect the same age bracket I'm not sure if they both use the same pool of students and split them up sims going to closest EQ building first or one with a large radius, not sure. Could also be the each school does it own caculation individually, so schools with a smaller radius have a smaller pool of sims to draw from cause the other school have grabbed up students before hand. Think it's former over tha latter but that just a guess.

Also when it comes to a sims population 50 or 60% of the sims are works, they fill the jobs in Com IND and civic jobs, so the pool of sims able to go to work in a given city might be takes away from the % of sims able to be students. Sims don't multi-task they only do 1 thing, so no having a job and going to school, or at least from my understanding it's that way it is.

Testing in this area has been limited cause of a few factoers,, a: can't keep a city same for testing so the # are always changing in a city so it hard to good data on this, B: changing the stats to an existing civic building causes issues like sliding funding bar to zero or CTD problems.
now there could be other factors tha add or subtract from the pool of sims able to be students, I'm not sure. Now there could be a formula inside the games code that has caculation for determining the # students in a city at any given time, but far as I know there no way to see these #'s inside the game.

hope your testing goes well. let me know if you find out anything new, or let me know if I'm incorrect on anything 

[jmyers2043]

Interesting. I wonder why there's such a disparity between our cities' use of the Clayhurst buildings...

It may get down to the type of city. My city has nearly 900,000 population and it's been around for 1056 game years. Earlier on the school had 1,000 of a possible 8,000 students and I do not usually plop universities at the earliest possible moment either.

BTW - The Olson Acedemic Building has the same age vs effectiveness curve as the Maxis University.

20.000000,2.500000
30.000000,0.500000
40.000000,0.500000
50.000000,5.000000
60.000000,5.000000
70.000000,1.500000
80.000000,0.500000

I don't pretent to know what the multiplier means. I just know it's there and it's probably a single interger in a larger calculation. I think the highest multiplier is 6.5 and can be found in the Maxis Private School. Libraires have very small multipliers but service a wide age group - so they actually do something (IIRC that is)

You wish to experiment?  Make some notes. Things like EQ, city population, university student number vs the highest possible number of students, any other college in the city, etc. . . Run the game for a year or maybe even five years. Take a second set of notes. Exit without saving. Start the game again and demolish the Clayhust University and plop the Maxis university and look at the data. Exit without saving again.

The point is to compare your university against the Maxis university before making a decision that something is wrong. . . .