BSC Farming EP ... 2007 Upgrade

[sobol]

So, will ALL the old content be remade to be CAM compatible??

I love your farm lot/bat's, and I can't wait for the CAM to come out.. oh boy....  Rural owns and villages...  It will own.


Oh yea...

Something I have been compiling..

I am looking for Horse, Elephant, Rhino, Giraffe, Lion, Bear, Dear, Antelope, Moose farms...  ( for variety and Dr. Vu's guests)  any of those exist?

[jmyers2043]

Elephant, Rhino, Giraffe

None that I know of and none planned (at least from me) 

[BarbyW]

Nor me.

[sobol]

Thought I'd ask....

[Gaston]

The Tea Cat asked an interesting question in his MD I thought I'd link it here, in case someone might know the answer.   He wanted to know why farm/agriculture produces so much traffic. [ linkie ]    Maybe someone looking at this forum can answer his query.


---Gaston

[Andreas]

The Tea Cat asked an interesting question in his MD I thought I'd link it here, in case someone might know the answer.   He wanted to know why farm/agriculture produces so much traffic. [ linkie ]    Maybe someone looking at this forum can answer his query.

IIRC, Tropod wanted to change that once, but it also affected the other traffic (I can't remember if it was only the truck automata or the entire road vehicles). Maybe someone can play with the values in the NAM Automata Plugin to get some better values.

[Swamper77]

Here's what I posted to TTC in his MD:

TTC,

The amount of trucks produced by any industrial lot (Ag, ID, IM, IHT) is a percentage of the jobs at that particular lot. In the Traffic Exemplar (either the default or one of the NAM ones), there is a property called "Freight Traffic Scaling Factor" which has the description of "Percentage of industrial bldg. population that will generate freight trips" in the Reader and, I think, SC4Tool when you are modding. The default value of this property is "0.05". The game seems to round up every value to the next whole number. If it rounds some down, I haven't investigated this so I wouldn't know.
Now, your farm in your picture is adding up two numbers to get the "Building Population" value. It's adding the 10 jobs of the main building + 1 job/field tile this particular case (Jez Knight Acres = 10 jobs). So the more field tiles you have attached to the farm, the more trucks will be created by the farm.

Farley's Foundry has 9 jobs and with the calculation of 0.05*9, it should produce 0.45 trucks (mathematically). Since you can't have a partial truck, it rounds it up to 1 truck. If you add more industrial zoning for the non-agricultural industry near Farley's, you should see the number of trucks go up as the zone fills up with lots.
In regards to the number of trucks during the day and night, it is dependent on the actual game hour (0-24). The numbers of vehicles at the different times of day are controlled with the Automata Tuning file (either game default or one of the NAM files). There are several "clock" properties which control the number of vehicles that appear on the roadways at the different times of day.
The one for the trucks has 34 Reps (or 17 pairs) for the values. The first value of each pair is the time of day and the second value of each pair is the percentage (-1 to 0 to 1) of the traffic amount. The time of day has to be in 24 hour time (0-24) and decimal values are allowed (ie 9.5). A negative value for the traffic amount percentage indicates returning traffic. Don't try this with the freight traffic (trucks or trains) as the game only has the freight traffic leaving a city. It seems to be a hard-coded thing with the EXE.

I hope this information is useful....

-Jan

[jmyers2043]

Hello Swamper.

One can add custom vehicles to a lot. Does this overwrite the Maxis vehicles that the lot spawns? Or merely add custom vehciles to the already existing Maxis ones?

[Andreas]

@jmyers: The custom vehicles are added via an additional occupant group. I don't know if the default automata is also controlled by the occupant groups, but if you'd remove those (i. e. "I-R"), the lot won't work properly anymore. So you can only add custom automata, but not remove the default one (adding a museum OG to a building automatically makes it spawning school buses, for instance).

@Jan: Thanks for the insightful information. So I guess if I lower the value of the property you mentioned, I could lower the amount of trucks that is produced? I wouldn't mind if it also lowers the truck output in the industrial areas (I think it's highly unrealistic to have "truck traffic jams" there as well). Trucks in rural areas are somewhat unrealistic anyway, at least from what I am used to here in Germany. Usually, you only see tractors with trailers that transport the crops to the nearest mill or silo facility. One notable exception are trucks that transport sugar beets, since they go directly to the sugar factories.

[snorrelli]

I wouldn't mind if it also lowers the truck output in the industrial areas (I think it's highly unrealistic to have "truck traffic jams" there as well).

Agreed - I think there are waaaaay too many trucks spawned, both in industrial and farming areas.

[Ennedi]

About farms - what would be happen if I would use Traffic Control Addon by Frolius 666 ? There is a street tile with dirt sidewalks in it. How it should be placed to remove the "Too Much Trucks" effect?

About industry - I used the BRF UrbanLegend Traffic Control Pack to block freight traffic on roads and enforce it on railroads. My reason was no "too much trucks on roads", but "too little freight trains on railroads". But I think it can be a solution in this case. It is more realistic to have more freight trains instead of many trucks IMO, and I think the "Freight Traffic Scaling Factor" is different for trains. Improve me if I'm wrong.

[sobol]

About farms - what would be happen if I would use Traffic Control Addon by Frolius 666 ? There is a street tile with dirt sidewalks in it. How it should be placed to remove the "Too Much Trucks" effect?

About industry - I used the BRF UrbanLegend Traffic Control Pack to block freight traffic on roads and enforce it on railroads. My reason was no "too much trucks on roads", but "too little freight trains on railroads". But I think it can be a solution in this case. It is more realistic to have more freight trains instead of many trucks IMO, and I think the "Freight Traffic Scaling Factor" is different for trains. Improve me if I'm wrong.

oooh, interesting....  I am downloading.. is there something similar to optimize bus traffic, because normally.. just WAAAAAAy to many buses are spawned.

[TheTeaCat]

@ Gaston Thank you mate for linking my question here kudos to you on the way

@ Swamper.
Wow what a quick and very informative answer.
Thank you very much.

@ everybody else - I thank you for giving me ideas on how to solve my little problem. I didn't know there was a no freight truck mod ( I've found it got it and will try it out )

Wow generated a good little discussion there I'll put the kettle on 


TTC

[Swamper77]

@jmyers: The custom vehicles are added via an additional occupant group. I don't know if the default automata is also controlled by the occupant groups, but if you'd remove those (i. e. "I-R"), the lot won't work properly anymore. So you can only add custom automata, but not remove the default one (adding a museum OG to a building automatically makes it spawning school buses, for instance).

Not necessarily, Andreas. Some of the custom freight trucks I have created are added to the existing Occupant Groups for freight trucks. So adding additional custom vehicles won't cause the problem of excessive freight traffic. It is the automata and traffic exemplars that the game uses that affect the numbers of the trucks.

The default freight trucks use OG's 0x4204 (Freight Truck) and 0x4222 (Semi Truck). My custom trucks use the same OG's so they will appear with the default trucks. The only way to reduce the numbers of the trucks is to edit the two files that I have mentioned earlier. There is also a "density curve" property for some of the various traffic types in one of the two files that affect the automata. I have no idea how these work though.

-Jan

[Gaston]

TTC:
@ Gaston Thank you mate for linking my question here  kudos to you on the way

No problem mate.   Glad to help.    Had to take a cuppa with me over there but it was in a to go cup.   So it is all good.        I assume ya'll have to go cups over there.  You know, the styrofoam cups with the plastic lids that let all the tea dribble down the front of your shirt.    LOL

Thanks for posting in here as well Swamper.    I really appreciate it.


That is what is so great about this site.    People are always ready to help out each other.    It is very kool.   

I really didn't understand the answer but that's okay, I'm sure some one does.   


Gaston

[demoreno]

Go for it!!!   The reason I went looking for mods was for the farms.   Can't wait to see what you develop next.