Game Play SOS to Modders, What XXL Really Needs

After playing XXL quite a bit I've decided to make a video to send an SOS to Modders via video as to what we really need in XXL. There are some deficiencies in satisfaction levels in XXL that have little modding help. Other satisfaction levels have too many basically, with more being done for them.

Fire satisfaction is the most problematic satisfaction level when you build large cities with populations in the millions. I've even tried some of the old XL mods like the Civic Services mod but unfortunately the Disaster Control Center booster building that should give a 40% citywide satisfaction level doesn't work in XXL, as I demonstrate in the video. There is nothing done for Jobs satisfaction as well as Travel satisfaction to jobs. Police satisfaction is a little better off but could use some more modding help. Leisure has been overdone, please no more Leisure booster buildings until other satisfaction areas have been taken care of.

Tax income is woefully inadequate to allow us to afford so many fire or police stations in our large cities, as well as those nice Blueprint buildings or landmarks that cost a lot. I show some very nice buildings that generate generous tax income, as well as some that are truly a joke at how low they are. I point out how inadequate the standard income settings are in XXL hoping that modders will stop using them and start giving us ones with increased income levels.

I also talk of the overabundance of Office buildings while there's a serious lack of High Tech buildings. I show some from XL that work in XXL. I point out how poorly served Heavy Industry and Manufacturing are with Eco-friendly factories that don't pollute so much. Only 4 for Heavy Industry and about 6 for Manufacturing. I show off one of my favorite Office buildings, Plaza Indonesia, that also produces Retail as well as Hotels plus houses some Elites, a multifunction production building we need more of plus it produces very nice income.

I hope that modders will take my SOS to heart and start making booster and other buildings that we really need instead of more of the same old stuff we already have too much of.

 

Birk LeGlaire,
Some interesting testing but on too small a scale. While distance reduces service effectiveness population also does it so that even residences right next door to a fire station can end up going orange as dissatisfied. The only true test comes when you make a large city with millions in population. I saw that in my Paris city of 11 million. I tried building more fire stations in residential blocks but they didn't help improve the satisfaction problem.

I found it best to make residential blocks and business blocks. I place my service buildings in the residential blocks so they're closer to the residences which grade satisfaction.

You definitely have to be careful about laying out your road network. You want to avoid short distances between intersections, that's what causes traffic problems the most. However you need to place enough intersections for traffic to flow smoothly and the shortest distance possible. I really like my new Klick Square Parquet Floor Dos Equis road layout as it handles traffic very efficiently. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to matter for satisfaction purposes.

The only way to improve fire satisfaction is for a modder to get smart making some booster buildings for XXL. We don't need any more for leisure, there are so many already. I just hope some modder will make some fire satisfaction booster buildings which XXL totally lacks. That's the problem and solution in a nutshell.

Making money isn't difficult if you use resource booster buildings to boost your resource production up so you can trade a lot to Omnicorp. I think of it as a bit of a cheat, the Omnicorp Trade Welfare Program. Since base tax income is wholly inadequate we're forced to do the trade farce to make up for that lack of tax income. I'm using a nice Omnicorp mod called the Ultimate Omnicorp mod that changes the pricing structure of items and makes buy and sell the same price. Definitely gives a different feel to Omnicorp trading but best of all it massively increases Omnicorp trade transportation points to allow many more cities to trade with Omnicorp beyond what the basic game allows.

 

Hello Birk LeGlaire,
That's an interesting test with the traffic but it's not the only influence on satisfaction. Your small scale test won't show the problem with a large city's effects on satisfaction. I agree traffic is crucial to having a well functioning city and for satisfaction. However when you get to large cities with millions of population then there's some other factor that's reducing service satisfaction. Plus I'm glad you're seeing how important proper placement of service buildings is, especially in relation to residential areas.

Even streets or avenues that don't have a lot of traffic congestion will have problems with residences being next to fire stations being dissatisfied. It becomes very obvious when you have millions in population. Then even placing more fire stations around won't help.

While it looks like there is a service radius I'm also thinking that intersections have some effect. Perhaps intersections reduce the effect radius. It's hard to relate street, block and city to a definite radius measure. Plus you have effects that range from little to a lot, sorry I forgot the exact terms used in the game.

I'm waiting for you to understand the importance of service satisfaction booster buildings, something you'll never understand with small tests. You might want to see how those work by plopping down a service booster building in your test where the area goes red. Leisure and Education are the two services best served by booster buildings so those would be the easiest to see the impact of service booster buildings.

However you're still too focused on local conditions on the map, street or housing colors. You need to be also looking at overall city levels in the Service Satisfaction page of the statistics box at the top of the screen which also shows population unemployment percentages. In that screen you see each worker class's satisfaction percentage as well as the overall one. That's where you'll really see the problem as you make a large city. No matter how good your traffic layout is the satisfaction levels of services will drop unless you build booster buildings.

I do videos as I upload them to YouTube. I don't upload pictures so can't use them here in my posts. I think videos are much better for explaining stuff more fully, pictures just don't tell the story although they are quicker to understand. Perhaps I'll figure out uploading pictures somewhere in the near future but I need to get back to my game and get to building the second half of Flachlandstadt. I'm aiming at 4.5 million for that city and it'll be good for showing how the fire satisfaction is so much lower than any other service because there are no booster buildings.

I don't know exactly what the coding is for making a fire satisfaction building but I imagine it's probably fairly simple for an experienced modder. Perhaps taking a police satisfaction building and replacing the police with fire in the line for giving the satisfaction boost percentage will do the trick quickly. You should make one to test it's effects in your test city.

Have a Happy Day Birk!

 

secpol,
Help I'm drowning in XXL details!

 

Here's my latest video showing off more cheats and mods. I show that the XL Civic Services mod is useful in XXL even though it doesn't function properly in all cases. I do show several health and education satisfaction booster buildings that work yet the one fire satisfaction booster building doesn't. I do show how effective the Kiwi Money Bank Lite mod is giving us 1 million credits in monthly income per building.

I also show how poorly fire satisfaction is in my 7.8 million population Flachlandstadt city. I show how it's down to 40% and how I see a people are afraid of fire message too often. I once again show how effective the paradigm Building is from the Sandbox Ploppables v4.72 mod is at bringing that 40% up to 67%. It also helped health and police increase to 100%.

Not only did I record the episode in 4K I produced in 4K and uploaded that gigantic 14 Gb file to YouTube. It does allow for 2160 4K playback and it indeed looks awesome. For those with Mac monitors or 4K ones try this out and see if you can see an improvement in picture quality.

 

Monty,
The Wiki info for most any game is seriously deficient, just very basic copy of basic rules. Sure would be cool to see a modder figure out how to change a satisfaction building from something else to fire. It's the biggest problem of the game, especially when population is very large. Or if someone could get that disaster control building to actually work.

 

Monty,
YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry I didn't see this sooner but I have family visiting and have to spend time with my great grandson, the TERROR TOT. I just tested this out in my 8.1 million Flachlandstadt city and am totally impressed. I built your Emergency Center and watched my satisfaction levels. Indeed fire went up after a delay for it to kick in. I deleted my Paradigm cheat building and saw fire satisfaction go up from less than 50% to 100%! It also works with the Paradigm cheat building. It also raised up my police satisfaction from 99% to 100%. I now have all of my services at 100% satisfaction because I can have both buildings working together.

Just when I thought I had Flachlandstadt finished I now have to add the Emergency Center and some population to make sure I have enough workers. However that's a new job that's most welcome as now Flachlandstadt has AWESOME fire protection thanks to you. I like the building, one I've never seen before. I love the sign you added too, really nice detail work. I like the big footprint too, nice to not have another square building.

I also downloaded your other two new mods, the ice rink and retail store. I'm going to save them for my next city, Monterey. Perfect timing as I am going to do a new video on Flachlandstadt and am going to be raving about how awesome your new mod is as well as how useful it is.

Thanks so much Monty, this was just what the doctor ordered! I'm glad you were able to figure out your syntax error, I was going to suggest just calling it "fire" the way "security" was done but thankfully you found your error before I could make my dumb suggestion.