Atelier du Grand Théâtre V01.01

Hello Birk LeGlaire,
I've played XXL enough now to know what works and what doesn't work in the game. Fire satisfaction is the one area where the game just doesn't have what's needed to have good fire satisfaction with large populations. Police satisfaction is almost as bad but there are a few more booster buildings for it. That's the biggest problem for fire satisfaction, the total lack of booster buildings. Just look at the new mod you uploaded for Leisure buildings, we have more of those than we really need. What would turn that cute but basically useless mod into a real must-have mod would be to add fire satisfaction programming to all of those buildings. I do hope you figure out the problem that some players report about some of the buildings not showing up.

Oh I forgot to mention that for making a large city of 10 million you can't do farms as they take up too much room. So you would like to have a city that does lots of farming so it can trade food to the big city. Then you don't buy from Omnicorp to help trade income stay positive.

My new city of Flachlandstadt is doing great. My new traffic and mass transit systems work well at keeping my roads from going orange or red. The only problem is fire satisfaction. I'm wasting almost 2 million credits to protect 2.3 million in population for a 74% fire satisfaction level. Over 1.1 million spent for police but I have a better 91% satisfaction level. Less than 200,000 for education for a 100% level. Or under 500,000 for health with a 98% level. I also spend little to have a 100% leisure level. Why the large discrepancy between these services? It's because the ones that cost the least have plenty of booster buildings to help us not have to have so many buildings dedicated to a service. The ones that cost the most have the fewest booster buildings.

We do have the saying about a bad workman blames his tools but this is a case of a good workman not having good tools to do good work. Where I have the booster building tools to make good satisfaction levels I do. I can't overcome the poor workmanship of the game's makers who didn't think it through properly to give us enough booster buildings to allow for a proper fire satisfaction level without it costing an arm and a leg plus the shirt off our backs.

If the game's makers were so good at their work then why did they go out of business right after release of this new XXL version? You act as if they did perfect work when they made mistakes obvious for all to see. I'm 64 and have played plenty of games and all of them have flaws. I also did beta testing as well as making scenarios for war games. So I'm very good at figuring out the game system and I see the flaws of XXL clearly.

I'm just waiting for you to build up a city to a few million so you can see what a problem fire satisfaction is when population goes over a few million. I'd love to see your expression when you hit 10 million and your fire satisfaction is below 40% and you're constantly seeing the message that people are afraid of fire constantly. Plus to see you react to how much it costs to maintain fire or police satisfaction. I know you'll finally see I am correct in this and then you'll think about giving us fire satisfaction booster buildings since you'll need them for your large city.

I've opted to use the money cheat in my new instead of play the Omnicorp Trade Welfare game that we're forced to play because standard building tax income is insufficient. You treat the building income standard as if it's sacred and sacrosanct as well as perfectly correct. It isn't, it's sadly too low, hence the resource booster building cheat for trade. Did you notice how many of those resource booster buildings we have? The lack of fire satisfaction booster buildings has to be corrected by modders like you or others. Plus consider this, why did modders make so many cheat mods for XL? If the XL series was so perfect then why all the cheat mods? So sad they don't all work in XXL perfectly, like the Civic Services one. Or the Crime and Leisure and Health Enhancement mods.

So please build, build, build up your city. The sooner you get your population up in the many millions the sooner you'll be totally frustrated by the lack of fire satisfaction booster buildings. You'll also find police could use a few more booster buildings too. Plus you'll see that after a while more fire and police stations no longer improve the satisfaction levels. Then you'll understand the need for more fire and police booster buildings.

As for tax income you'll see how much you have to trade to make ends meet because building tax income is too low. Mo' money means more fun Blueprint and Landmark buildings to make your city look cool. It also cuts down on the reliance of the limited Omnicorp trade transportation points. That becomes a factor when you have multiple cities as I discovered.

Always remember games should be fun to play. Unfortunately Focus Home Interactive forgot that with the XXL release, that's why they're sadly out of business now. Mods make the game more fun as they give us more building variety in looks and performances.

 

Hello Birk LeGlaire,
More good ideas to consider. I like that we're getting into some interesting game mechanics as to how the game works. I began having fire satisfaction problems before I tried mods to help alleviate it so the problem of poor fire and police satisfaction comes from the basic game. You can easily see by comparing what each service has in the way of booster buildings. You'll see fire is the one with the least booster help and it gives us the most problems when making a big city.

That is funny that you stopped playing the game to do mods. Now you know why I don't want to mod. I'll stick to making videos showing how things work, or don't. Plus to show off mods like your beautiful farm ones. I was guessing you've been so busy modding you really haven't played as much and haven't built a massive city of 10 million like I have. I'm hoping that as you play more you'll start to see the same needs I do for mods we really need in XXL.

An interesting point you make about how large of a city did the developers plan on us making. All we have to do is look at the Accomplishments to see the 10 million population one to know the developers did intend for us to be able to make large, populous cities. Unfortunately they didn't give us the proper tools to do the job properly for satisfaction levels.

As for coverage area for service buildings it doesn't seem to really be in meters. There are Street, Block and City levels designated but it's tough to equate those with meter measurements. Now that doesn't mean they aren't done in meters with circular coverage areas the way you've depicted in your pictures.

I'm now going to answer your satisfaction questions as best I can from my playing experience.

I say that the max monthly cost and the upkeep cost are the same thing, just different labels.

I'm still not certain about satisfaction radius, nothing in the manual, in-game tutorials or any other info has explained that for us. Perhaps some modder will be able to tell us from knowing how the data is laid out in the building class file section. As I said above I only see Street, Block and City designations in the building info. I do know that booster buildings affect satisfaction levels of buildings but I'm unsure if it also increases building radius. I think it just increases satisfaction without affecting radius.

Only residences are considered for satisfaction levels like fire for the most part. Look at the grid for satisfaction levels and you see it's always broken down by worker class. That doesn't mean that businesses are exempt from service coverage but they're not as important. I have found that you want to place your services like fire, police, health and education as well as retail and leisure in residential blocks, the closer to residences the better.

A good question about traffic affecting service coverage. I haven't been able to pin this down yet but distance is important as your city grows in size and population it also makes satisfaction levels harder to maintain. Kind of like in Skylines where distance is important as fire trucks can travel from anywhere in the city to put out a fire which makes traffic congestion a factor as well.

I don't know what the exact measurements are for the different worker classes but it is logical that Elites are tougher to please than Unskilled workers. That means you want your fire stations much closer to Elites and Executives than Skilled or Unskilled workers. Same with retail. I imagine the actual factors are in some data file, sure would be nice for someone to find it and publish those factors for all to know.

I'm not sure what the level is for determining when a service gives 100% satisfaction. It looks like each service has a different level for 100% satisfaction. Leisure tends to be easy to maintain for a small town but once you go over a million you need the big city-wide effect buildings to give your city a 100% Leisure satisfaction. I got a good laugh out of one video where the guy was clueless about this and kept building a slew of small ones thinking they'd have an effect. Education is easier to maintain a 100% level and has more booster buildings to aid us when our cities get big. Health is a little tougher than Education to maintain and has less booster buildings in the standard game. Police gets much tougher and fire is the worst for maintaining satisfaction. Police has a few booster buildings in the standard game like the LA Courthouse and the Alcatraz Blueprint building but they are insufficient to keep police satisfaction high in very large cities. Fire has none and it's the one that needs the most booster help. Major developer error!

The reason there are so many mods for XL that affect service is because the basic game isn't properly balanced and calculated. Sadly developers who create games that can be modded never make a good basic game, they're too lazy to give us a really good complete product so they allow for modders to fix the shortcomings the developers never wanted to fix. I only came upon the XL game series when XXL was out so sadly I never experienced XL to be able to see how some of their mods for service actually work. They work somewhat for XXL but not good enough to really make the difference.

Yes I know I increased my service buildings costs by using the XL Civic Services mod and trying to upgrade all of my service buildings to level 4 which basically doubled their monthly costs but I didn't see any real improvement in satisfaction levels. Flachlandstadt is my first city testing it out to see what does and doesn't work. Sadly the Disaster Control Center that's supposed to give fire stations a 40% boost doesn't work as I demonstrated in my Episode 43 video - the SOS to Modders one. Someone had to test things out and show others what does or doesn't work.

I hope I'm able to help you understand gameplay better for XXL so you can make better mods. Plus I hope to show you that it's okay to do non-standard settings for buildings, like tax income. My favorite income producing building is the Walmart Supercenter mod from XL, at 54,920 C on the lowest 10% tax setting. That one building pays for a 50,000 C per month Blueprint building. I think the high density retail standard is 288 C so it would take 174 of those to pay for that BP building.

See you tomorrow! Have a Great Day!

 

Birk LeGlaire,
Here's a few tips on making a huge city of 10 million or more. Making money is easy, you just have to use resource booster buildings to boost your resource production so you can sell a lot to Omnicorp. However you should be careful about where you place your booster buildings, especially the office ones. I was nearing the 10 million mark when my office production went way too high, I had something like 1,000 excess units to sell and didn't have the passenger capacity at Omnicorp to handle that much more. I had to find and delete office booster buildings in my Paris city and then in my other two cities so I could send some office overproduction to other cities after pretty much using up all of Omnicorp's passenger capacity. I even had to delete offices in Paris and replace them with high tech to manage trade better. I suggest placing your resource booster buildings in certain areas you can easily remember to easily find them if you need to delete some.

I made my big city on the Paris map but I completely deleted the existing road system since it had too many small avenues. The existing buildings can't be deleted, you're stuck having to keep them and run roads to connect them. I'd suggest a good flat map without hills or too much water. You're going to need a lot of room to squeeze in over 10 million in population.

Have a farm city that makes a lot of extra food so you can fulfill your big city's food needs without building farms or trading with Omnicorp for it. Perhaps even that city makes extra garbage collection as well.

Don't overbuild heavy industry and manufacturing, the pollution problem will become very costly to keep under control. You want to make a good amount that helps create office demand and jobs. You can use booster buildings to increase industrial production for trade. You're going to find you'll need many, many Big Parks to combat air pollution. Also don't make one large industrial area like I did in Paris. Split them up, at least 3 or 4 areas spread around the map so travel is spread out. Don't build factories randomly, specifically build the e+ green factories for heavy industry and manufacturing only. Yes you have a limited selection but you'll be glad you don't have to regularly upgrade dirty factories to cleaner ones as you'll have a massive air pollution problem.

I suggest using the excellent solar farm mod for electricity. The wind turbines are way too noisy and you have to build way too many. The oil power plants pollute plus need fuel. The solar farms work just like farms. They cost nothing and give a little office production.

I look forward to hearing of your huge city, or perhaps seeing some pictures of it. Good Luck!

 

Birk LeGlaire,
Here's my latest video talking of the virtues of using mods to improve gameplay enjoyment. I've grown Flachlandstadt to 7.8 million and am almost finished with the city. I go through another demonstration of the Civic Service mod booster buildings, some which actually work at boosting health and police satisfaction and the one that doesn't help fire. I do show the one mod building that does help improve fire satisfaction from my low 40% to 67% as it also helps health and police go to 100% satisfaction.

I hope you'll embrace using mods to build your city of 10 million. To be honest it would be so frustrating to try to do it without mods, perhaps almost impossible. I show that there is a limit of 2,177,800 C of monthly Omnicorp trade income per city, after that changing trade doesn't affect trade income. I found that using mods increases enjoyment playing XXL as it reduces frustration as well as allowing us to have more cool buildings in our cities.

 

You two are covering some insightful point in this dialogue. It really could moved in and of itself to seperate thread. If I may add my 2 cents -
there is a flaw in fire coverage when you get into cities over several million pop. It appears to me that it has to do with how the service is delivered. Fire does not cover a geographical radius like some other services. Some programer apparently made the decision way back when that fire trucks can't travel on highways. As your city gets past, say, 4 - 6 million, your fire trucks can't travel on large portions of your transportation system. So fire coverage sucks.

It is that simple. There are other factors at play, too, of course. But how fire coverage is delivered is the problem.

 

Seems I remember seeing .class files that were written for coverage up to 5 million population.

 

Interesting! So, this would be a key in fixing the problem, yes?

 

veija2,
If fire trucks can't travel on highways then that certainly hurts coverage. I think fire protection is spread out over a whole city instead of more locally to the fire station, like Skylines. Even with a good road system fire protection doesn't seem to improve.

The solution is a booster building or more that jacks up fire satisfaction. I've shown just how effective service booster buildings are for helping improve other services, now if I can only get some modder to bite the bullet and give making a fire satisfaction booster building a try. Sadly the Disaster Control building in the Civic Services mod doesn't work. Those booster buildings won't change the poor coverage but will boost the fire satisfaction of all buildings which yields an improved satisfaction overall.

 

ronrn,
That's interesting. However fire coverage starts becoming bad at just over a million. It would be interesting if a modder changed that to say 15 million, well above what most any city would be built up to. However getting a booster building to actually work would be a certain fix as I've so aptly demonstrated with other services.

 

Birk LeGlaire,
Are you playing and having fun yet? I prefer playing XLNation because it's more fun. Are you making your big city yet?

 

As it may be, Birk LeGlaire. I also have built multiple cities over 6 million pop. I had enough fire protection to cover every square inch of the map 3 times. Still no fire satisfaction. It's the roads, and/or how fire protection is delivered. I don't need a better plan. I need a better delivery system. A booster building that fixes the problem? Sounds great. Changes to the core code? Hey, works for me.

 

Super. Please post your info again when your city gets to 7,000,000. Things. Change.

 

Birk LeGlaire,
I hate to rain on your parade but I only use the standard roads in XXL, I don't use any road mods. So my fire satisfaction problem isn't coming from road mods.

Second your small tests just don't scale up properly for large populations of 5 million plus. As with so many services once a city gets up in population over a million local service effects aren't what they used to be in a smaller city.

I'm waiting for you to go well over a million in a city. Cities of a million just don't operate like ones of 5 million plus. I'm waiting for you to build a huge city like I've done multiple times. You can see by my videos how bad fire satisfaction gets when population is around 8 million.

So please build up a city to 10 million as planned with only XXL and no mods. I'm waiting for you to see for yourself just how problematic things get as population soars.

Have a Nice Day!