Telecom networks

[BSC VIP girafe]

pack of ideas to enhance the game

I will put here my ideas about how IMHO the city builder could be enhanced. Maybe brillant or poor ideas, let me know your comments

Telecom networks

Telecom networks have always been forgotten from city builders, it would be nice to have this network like water or electricity.

It could be a building, like antenna which covers a number of tiles and could represent TV, radio, internet and mobile communications. It could help to have a higher density and please the citizens.

 

[Sir Leningrad]

Yes, but the option for everybody to have high velocity access to the internet should be there. Spain for example doesn't have the living standards of Sweden, but companies are starting pilot programs to expand optic fiber to whole cities for free (installation, not service). In fact, they have started just now in my homecity, wich is practically all lower and middle class and reaches 200.000 inhabitants. The thing is, although setting up the infrastructure is pricier than traditional broadband, maintenance is much cheaper, so in a mid-long term it's more economical.

 

[Darkath]

Well, living in Sweden I know this. But taking the rest of the world into consideration you realize that 1) almost every swede lives a luxury life by comparison and 2) our infrastructure is insanely good.

Ideally you should be able to subsidize any private service in your city (or even make it public). Public DSL is something that sounds very scary for various reasons in real life, but would still be fun to have that option in my toy city. Same with public water service, public electricity etc.

But imo if you manage to somehow add Landlines/GSM/4G/DSL/Optic Fibers as a service infrastructures in the game that would be a great step forward.

I think if you want to build a great city builder, you need to look no further that challenge faced by cities everywhere in the world, rather than looking at the old city builder recipe created in 1989.

 

[Goldiva]

Telecom Network: the genre is ready for a new Infrastructure Category

Upgrade-able Telecom Network in C:SL Infrastructure menu? Yum. And soon to become obvious, I've been thinking about this quite a bit...

Traditionally city games' highest infrastructure achievement is the space port or super arcology. No issue with that. But between airport and space port there is a HUGE gap. For most 30yo+ the world is literally divided between pre/post NASDAQ/ MMO/ Netflix era.

Quite obviously telecom network is as (or more) crucial as Maglev in civilisation building scheme of things. Expensive, sure. But from the smallest rural home to the tallest bank, no-one is going back once they had a taste. Modern cities without modern telco network is a stagnated system with monopoly or autocrat rule. Ask any Ozzies.

For RL or a city game, telco network would logically boost all RCI, not just the top 1% with gaming and vbloging time budget. Worker demand for mid-high edu, small and big businesses productivity AND profit increase, more efficient taxes collection...etc. Most importantly - cims education quotient will increase. Arts and media culture will flourish. Even farming method and food production will quickly become modernised and more efficient.

And of course everyone will be happier, now that they get to ignore their family members and spend more time killing virtual monsters instead of each other.

CO has already broken new grounds with the very-sexy Policies by District, edutaining water management, why not go another progressive km EA-Maxis neglected to go? this is a very brag-able thing to add to the genre...

But please, not another pipe dragging, under or above ground. SC3000's water pipe laying (and if I recall correctly power line as well) was banished in SC4 for a good reason - people hate them, visually, and fun-ly (new word yes). The city I live in has all the spaghettis under the roads for too many good reasons. The only down side, every time they need to upgrade cables the neighborhood get jackhammered.

But yes I am 300% for visual representation of everything possible in games. Game cities have footprint limitations so 100% "reflection of reality as we know it" isn't necessary. Perhaps starter "WiMAx" style local-circular-radius telco towers. Followed by upgrades to bigger towers and mid-scale satelite parks with greater coverage and industry-boosting benefits.

Achievement or reward, perhaps Satellite Launch Ports, and CERN. (After that C:SL mayors graduate to weather modication level but that's another topic)

Telco towers with radius as an asset is also far cheaper to make, low on render resource, and for gamers, intuitive and easy to plop. It could be plopped on the ground, say 2x2 grid, or have zero footprint cost - smaller and to be plopped right on top of flat bits of building rooftops. It will give "roof things" - a city gamer fetish, some meaning. Either type, ground tower or rooftop mini tower-antennas will create an inter-connected citywide WiMax web.

As to element of challenge, WiMax type ground/rooftop towers are still subjected to line of sight requirement. So players still need to think C:SL buildings height and relationships, not just blindy grow towers. May help encourage "city corridors" aspect of city layout which ensures light and breathing space for skyscraper zones.

 

[Sinbuster]

Fiber optic and the like would be a pretty key component for a 21st century city in my mind. To use a SC4 comparison if I may, I see it as a huge cap buster for commercial and industrial, as well as $$R and $$$R. It would be more realistic to have to pay for each section or tower built, and to have infrastructure costs afterwards just like roads and water, but if that's too much micromanagement, I'd be ok with an expensive ordinance (policy) that one can enact after reaching a certain education/tech level.

 

[Darkath]

SC3000's water pipe laying (and if I recall correctly power line as well) was banished in SC4 for a good reason - people hate them, visually, and fun-ly (new word yes). The city I live in has all the spaghettis under the roads for too many good reasons. The only down side, every time they need to upgrade cables the neighborhood get jackhammered.

SC4 still had pipes and powerlines

 

[WilfriedWebber]

SC3000's water pipe laying (and if I recall correctly power line as well) was banished in SC4 for a good reason - people hate them, visually, and fun-ly (new word yes).

Certainly not. Did you even play that game?
I thought you were the Goldiva who created so much custom content for SC4, but I'm not so sure anymore.

 

[Raph]

Well, living in Sweden I know this. But taking the rest of the world into consideration you realize that 1) almost every swede lives a luxury life by comparison and 2) our infrastructure is insanely good.

And we live that life because of consistent conscious decisions taking us in that direction for most of the past century. What I want is just to be able to build different kinds of cities reflecting different systems/parts of the world. I hate that in the Sim City games, raising local taxes above 10% pretty much scares everyone away, it's not even possible to raise it above 20% in SC4.

I pay something like 30% and so do most Swedes... but apparently that's impossible and we should all be fleeing our high-tax hell, according to some city-sim developers

Ideally you should be able to subsidize any private service in your city (or even make it public). Public DSL is something that sounds very scary for various reasons in real life, but would still be fun to have that option in my toy city. Same with public water service, public electricity etc.

But imo if you manage to somehow add Landlines/GSM/4G/DSL/Optic Fibers as a service infrastructures in the game that would be a great step forward.

I think if you want to build a great city builder, you need to look no further that challenge faced by cities everywhere in the world, rather than looking at the old city builder recipe created in 1989.

This is more like what I'd like to see. Possibility to choose between private, subsidised, or public, or mixes between them, services of all kinds.

 

[Goldiva]

Certainly not. Did you even play that game?
I thought you were the Goldiva who created so much custom content for SC4, but I'm not so sure anymore.

Fret not of course I am that Goldiva. Mmm are there other goldivas that get so involved with city sim? Am I being plagiarised? But enough about me and my seeming sign of disloyalty to SC4, this topic is about upcoming game feature, kay sweetie?

One of the first SC4 mods I installed was no power-line and water grid laying tedium. Some of us may enjoy laying water network. Hey I've witnessed real world network engineer geeks used SC3000 to simulate water pressure and flow. But in SC4 that exercise became redundant. Many people hated the laying of water pipes and power lines so much that it warranted multiple water-pipe-laying banishing mods and plenty "I hate laying pipes and lines" discussions - even 10 years into the game!

A typical statement from SC4 core players, from SC4devotion: I don't like the idea of laying water and power lines in SC4, because I always need them everywhere. So it's not really a choice that is to be made and hence the result is that I have to do extra things that consume time, but give me no useful game fun.

Oh, and Maxis heard that frequent community complaint too... They are not always deaf...

Post SC2013, core fan on Reddit discussion: The one thing I like the look of in the new Sim City is how roads are used for connecting power, water and sewage. I prefer the simplicity of that since I would spend way too long trying to sort out electric lines and pipes and so on.

I totally relate. And this is before addressing the obvious realism issue: the NIMBY-ness of the electrical power poles. No no about the looks. WiMax towers are not exactly pretty either. But I'd rather host a WiMax tower on my building roof than live 50 meters from a power pole.

 

[WilfriedWebber]

I agree that the original Maxis power poles were ugly. However, by using a special zoning trick (invisible zoning), you could get rid of the power poles for free while not having zoned any land for growables. You also got the dirt shoulders, or the white pavements, around the road, depending on the zone type used.

 

[TotalyMoo]

Maybe upgradable roads to sustain fiber? A lot more expensive and requires higher running costs, but supplies high speed internets to the people living by that specific road. Pretty realistic and would not require an additional layer of pipe networks underground.

Could be both an option to build just like a normal road / road with trees / road with telecom but also as an upgrade. If you chose to upgrade this it could, for example, take a while and decrease that roads traffic speed to simulate the road works required to dig down cables.

Just thinking out loud here. I like it.

 

[Sinbuster]

Yeah, that makes sense Moo. If streets include infrastructure anyways, a slight difference in textures is all you'd need. Cell towers are a different beast though, at least in my part of the world. Towers can be four or five stories high, though they do have a small footprint (in game terms, maybe a square). In the suburbs they tend to be built within commercial zones (strip malls and the like) because they are a bit of an eye-sore.

 

[Sir Leningrad]

The thing is, if you use streets for optic fiber connection, why not also for water, sewage and electricity? Why this different treatment?

 

[charlesnew]

Yeah, I like the idea of having to upgrade your roads to make them have pipes and cables underneath.

 

[BigGiantBear]

well it does not have to be too fancy, maybe a symbolic policy that will cut down internet access/communication in a smaller district and improve happiness if citizens in other districts are unhappy due to low health/crime...
a building would not be bad too: The Ministry of Telecommienication, that will get a small protest animation from time to time.
of course, this could come as a free dlc for all the brave hard working people that will preorder the game and will contribute to it's prosperity.

 

[eaglechopper]

you need to have an internet company building, else how else are the citizens meant to chirp

 

[westy159]

In the UK, businesses can now apply for government grants up to £3000 to install fast internet services. This could make for a nice policy in CSL. Would be a large cost to you as mayor at first to give commercial and industrial zones money for the upgrades but in the long run would make these zones more productive giving you more in taxes.

I don't think we should be laying infrastructure ourselves. In real life this is down to the ISPs, not local government. And it won't add any fun, laying power and water networks is sufficient.

 

[Woody Red]

I think a telecoms network would be a good idea .. maybe. I guess if we're gonna have an electricity grid and water network - then why not go the whole hog and have telecoms infrastructure (how about gas too - lets go crazy)

a possible telecoms infracture could comprise of a head office building, telephone exchanges - and then the network itself connecting areas. Perhaps different types of connections could have different capacities/bandwidths - analogue copper wire, ISDN lines - up to high capacity fibre.

Even the telephone exchanges could come in different flavours - so you could have basic voice only exchanges, these could then be upgraded to ADSL capable - and then even higher bandwidths for business use - like private MPLS or SDSL or something.

you could even go into mobile masts and 3G, 4G.. blah blah

If we did have telecoms infrastructure, we could have telephone poles in our city.

 

[CaffeinatedNoms]

I think a telecoms network would be a good idea .. maybe. I guess if we're gonna have an electricity grid and water network - then why not go the whole hog and have telecoms infrastructure (how about gas too - lets go crazy)

Oh man... gas networks... one slip up in the maintenance funding and you explode something... I like that idea!

 

[nitram78]

I think a telecoms network would be a good idea .. maybe. I guess if we're gonna have an electricity grid and water network - then why not go the whole hog and have telecoms infrastructure (how about gas too - lets go crazy)

a possible telecoms infracture could comprise of a head office building, telephone exchanges - and then the network itself connecting areas. Perhaps different types of connections could have different capacities/bandwidths - analogue copper wire, ISDN lines - up to high capacity fibre.

Even the telephone exchanges could come in different flavours - so you could have basic voice only exchanges, these could then be upgraded to ADSL capable - and then even higher bandwidths for business use - like private MPLS or SDSL or something.

you could even go into mobile masts and 3G, 4G.. blah blah

If we did have telecoms infrastructure, we could have telephone poles in our city.

I totally support some of these ideas, especially the mobile masts concept. You get a combination of citizens demanding coverage, so they will move to areas with better coverage, but also you have to balance this with citizens moaning or becoming unhappy if a mast appears nearby their properties.

But as Woody says, you can build out the full network, buildings, exchanges, datacentres etc; maybe in a not too dissimilar way to placing power lines or bus routes....ie: the mechanics appear already in the game.

The more I type....the more I'm getting excited about an idea that don't exist...lol

 

[BigGiantBear]

The more I type....the more I'm getting excited about an idea that don't exist...lol

hehe, aliens would visit if you have an exceptional network coverage and anonymous would steal money from your budget if citizens become too unhappy.