The downtown for cities

[colonyan]

    The main purpose of this extention request is to
    make more variety in passenger/mail flow vector.

    The approach is following.
    1.Create new intra city building type triggered by total city population or growth.
      Among the 50% of generated passenger/mail which destination is at any citybuildings
      of the map, pak author designated X% head toward one of this new downtown
      property building. (example: Usual citybuilding destinee 30%/50% and new for 20%/50%)
    2.Pak author have choice to decide what kind of DT structure appear
      at what population and what probability.

    -They will replace existing citybuilding pushing development out ward.
    -This give more city scape control. No more sky scraper all over the city.
     Control over number of tall building. (This is little bit at hand of pak author)

   Thus, this will present more challenge as city get larger.
   More traffic jam is likely if player uses only buses, encouraging use of
   subterrain and tram with good reason.

   Also, if station capacity and maintenace can be set separately, some
   super station for downtown maybe built.

   So for each dat file, there could be...
   -buildings likelyness to group toghether with another existing DT building.
    Or unlikeliness.  Some Large mall could go edge of town.
   -relation between DT buildings. If A exist, percentage of B getting built
    increase by Y% and such.

[mobo]

There are some problems and drawbacks:

The citi-building-routine doesnt consider the population of the city yet AFAIK, so this would need to be changed by the programmers.

Pak set maintainers would need to change existing dat files. And if you really want to relate building A to building B in the dat you will have to change them over and over again whenever you have a new DT building plus the dat'S of these buildings will get large.

Triggering something with the population is a problem, because there are no real common standards, as a pak set maintainer you don't really know whether most of your users breed megacities or rather keep it country-like. this also depends on the power of their computers.

Finally, i think the current system is quite ok. You can create outskirts and more urban areas by having gaps in the levels. Tis means you have a lot of buildings with level 5 and alot with level 10,15,20,... but nothing in between.

Skyscraper can be controlled by their chance and by short lifespans - if a building is only built for one or two years the citi-building-routine simply has less time to place it and it will appear less. if there is no skyscraper available at a certain time the city-building routine is forced (not percentages of likelyness, FORCE   ) to upgrade the outskirts.

And if you want old skyscrapers that don't get replaced give them a high level in these early ages - if nothing with a bigger level comes along they won't get replaced. Of course they need low chance and short lifespan then. Ok dependig on the pak set and i'ts maximum passenger level you might need some medium buildings in between, the city building routine skips 16 levels maximum IIRC.

To finally trim the behavior there is a simuconf.tab entry that sets whether it's more likely that an existing building gets upgraded or that a new building is built on an empty tile.

[colonyan]

I think DT buildings will be completely different type than conventional city buildings. (although they should consume joblessness when built)
First one will roughly choose near city hall or if city hall is new and at edge, somewhere between physical
centre and the city hall. And second one follows the first one and they coagulate as they increase.
And most of time replacing previous citybuildings.

And if you really want to relate building A to building B in the dat you will have to change them over and over again whenever you have a new DT building plus the dat'S of these buildings will get large.

I see my initial explanation wasn't enough. Relating is only among DT and maybe that wasn't really important feature.

Triggering something with the population is a problem, because there are no real common standards, as a pak set maintainer you don't really know whether most of your users breed megacities or rather keep it country-like. this also depends on the power of their computers.

Pak author could prepare DT building for small regional city size to large metropolices. DT building doesn't really need to be skyscrapers.
Some could be the midrize with full of popular commercial tennants. Its all at sake of author.

Finally, i think the current system is quite ok. You can create outskirts and more urban areas by having gaps in the levels. Tis means you have a lot of buildings with level 5 and alot with level 10,15,20,... but nothing in between.

The thing is that the area where covered by higher level buildings are so large that it is more like a mid town rather than a DT.
I want to see a number of blocks where it really stands out from other section of the same city in term of pass/mail destination density.

Yes, there is few ways to control the spawn of tall building. (ah.., I never heard of lifespan for citybuildings. You mean appearing years?)
One is to mix not so high buildings in high level. This really works but height/size and passenger/mail density really doesn't match.

Also, my main request is to create really pass/mail dense point in a city.

  upto now

           citiy's main station <-> several main city destinations
                                         
            -Since it has several destinations, traffic density is faily easy to manage and uniform

  but with DT

           citiy's main station <==> DT(s)
                                         <--> other incity destinations

  Where traffic demande is naturally high around DT area.

Help for controlling skyscaper number comes as bonus.
Initially, I wanted to ask really top 10% level city buildings to be buit in smaller number than other levels.

[The Hood]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.  Downtown areas are already created - the highest level buildings are only created at the centre of the town, and lower levels further out.   So this naturally creates a higher generation/attraction of passengers and mail from the centres of towns...

[colonyan]

@The Hood
I see that those downtown are way too large. They are more like midtown which constitute large part of the city.
For what I see, DT is more like a number of blocks where builings of largest size/volume gather which should
distictively noticaible from majority of the lest of buildings in the same city.
But not only for the look, but also with the demande for pass/mail generation/destination.

-colo

EDIT: add phrase, typo correction

[mobo]

This is e entry i meant, but i got to correct myself it's in citirules.tab

Code Select Expand

# chance for renovation versus new building (bigger number => less sprawling)
renovation_percentage = 12


Try setting it lower, and see whether the cities get more convenient for you.

[colonyan]

Lowering of renovation sprouts the low density city buildings in uncontrollable degree from middle to later stage of the game.
My proposition was to make real DT all the way keeping the overall size of the city reasonable. Not to articifially space out the
buildings and proportionally create denser area.

I usually play at lower value around 6~9 but it still the same.
Too much sproule is not good neither. It asks too much bus route management.
Station coverage 2 is about right size for ST which degree of buildings near station is more deeply reflected.
Larger coverage  means less meaning for all number attributed related to pass/mail generation/destination.
So too low renovation percentage breaks the game balance.
-colo