Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
Started playing SC4 again a couple of weeks back. A couple of hopes for the next version:
- A greater focus on effective public transportation systems. One of my main gripes with SC4 was the poor out-of-the-box implementation of bus and subway systems (remedied to a degree with mods, eg on-street bus-stops). I'd love to be able to make proper railway lines and not simply tiles connecting up to stations. Interchanges would be a great assistance as well.
- Greater building diversity; even with add-ons, cities start to become repetitive in appearance.
- Underground/sub-sea power lines.
- Greater ease to build cuttings, embankments, tunnels and bridges that don't have disjointed approaches/appearances (or require mods).
- Better interaction with 'regions'; preferably without having to exit and re-load individual 'cities'.
It's good to hear that roads won't be restricted to a grid anymore, but I remain cautious that it doesn't lead to some fudged results. Non-grid road networks in Europe typically developed along historic routes and paths; the buildings subsequently created a tightly knit urban fabric, eg the Square Mile. It will be interesting how Maxis plan to allocate buildings to lots which have non-linear faces without computers imploding across the globe.
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Glad to know I'm not the only one who has thought of numerous planner-geek improvements to this game! I was so dissapointed when "Sim City Societies" came out because it felt as though the folks at Maxis had decided that the game had already reached its realistic limit and had to be "reimagined."
I have a few more to add to your list...
-In addition to on-street bus stops, I would love to see subway stations that could be located underneath street intersections like in real life. I would also like to see Monorail systems that could be run above sidewalks and over buildings. Whats the point of building an expensive Monorail when the game requires it to have its own allignment just like a normal RR?
-It would be great to see what lies just beyond your city's border without having to back out to Regional view... this could be as simple as just showing a black-and-white or "shadowed" view of the neighboring city instead of just having an "edge of the world" sorta look to the edges of cities.
-Mixed-use buildings!! I feel that in the modern era of urban planning, this is an absolute must! I always hated having to build a "checkerboard" of Residential and Commercial in order to have an effective mixed-use district. Why not just let buildings have BOTH uses, and have the demand-meter thing determine the correct balance?
-Form-based zoning? I always hated how many large buildings come with an excess of open land on the property, so it is essentially impossible to create complete streetwalls. It would be great if you could control the "style" of urban design to create "European style" "seas of midrises."
-Freight traffic that actually GOES somewhere. Industrial zones are all too easy to just completely ignore in SC4 because there seems to be no tangible reason to actually build them. Its not like residential/commercial demand were in any way affected by not having industry in the way that the game ties residential and commercial demand together. Further, freight traffic always just tries to "escape" the city limits as quickly as possible which makes seaport connections to industrial zones pointless if the area is on the edge of a city.
I too wonder how the game will deal with non-grid roads. The game always allowed for roads at a 45 degree angle, but such roads could never support high density development because the building parcels ended up staggered along the street and couldn't be "combined" into a parcel large enough for bigger buildings. If they're going to have non-grid roads, they had better come up with a solution for building along those roads or else it will just be pointless.