Water shortages in SimCity 2000
Glen Martin
citizens and every space not occupied by a building is either a pump or a
water tower. I've got literally hundreds of pumps and towers and I still
get shortages.
WHY?
--
Glen Martin ad...@freenet.carleton.ca
"When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for
us." - Alexander Graham Bell ** Finger for PGP Key **
Jeff Williams
This should help you:
"2.4.1 Q: How effective is a water pump?
A water pump (not next to water) will service approximately 24 to 36 tiles,
depending on the weather. An additional 12
tiles (approx.) will be serviced for every water tile that the pump is
adjacent to. For example:
W W W
L P L
L L L
where W = water, L = land, P = pump The above pump is next to 3 water
tiles, therefore, it will provide 60 to 72 tiles with
water. I think that each tile requires 600 gallons of water."
// Jeff Williams
// NYU U.G. Film and Television/Cinema Studies
// jmw...@is2.nyu.edu
Jeff Williams
>Help! I can't get over the water shortages in SC2000. I've got 300,000
>citizens and every space not occupied by a building is either a pump or a
>water tower. I've got literally hundreds of pumps and towers and I still
>get shortages.
>WHY?
First, get rid of some of those pumps and water towers. Sounds like you've
got way too many just from how you describe it. Not that this will help
your water problem, but a lack of equipment is probably not responsible for
your problem and freeing up the space will let you build other things.
Check your placement of your pumps and towers. Pumps should be directly
adjacent to water (they pump 3 times more water this way), towers should be
directly adjacent to pumps. What you should really have is either one
extremely large or several smaller "water parks" along your coastline.
Depending on your terrain type, you may also need desalinization plants (if
your city is by saltwater; click on the water to see what type it is).
Make sure you've got enough of these if this is the case (in fact this
could be your whole problem). You can also build water pumps around lakes
if you like, but I like to save my lakes for residential zones (still,
sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do).
Also check your terrain. Water has a tough time going up-hill. You'll
need more pumps than usual if you've got a lot of hills.
Put watermains everywhere, too. In real life this would kill water
pressure but in SC2000 it does just the opposite, since it allows water
from several different places to come to a particular zone (ie. if you have
several water parks scattered all over, putting watermains everywhere will
allow water from everywhere to go everywhere, rather than each area being
served by only one waterpark; this gives you backup in case one waterpark
goes dry).
Well, that's really it. I used to have the same problem you have and
couldn't figure it out. But then I followed the advice I just gave you and
basically consolidated my water pumps and towers and put them all adjacent
to water, built lots of watermains, etc. and now I have zero problems. My
water level is still only reported to be about 78% in the graphs, but I
never have people complaining of water shortages, even with 9.6 million
sims sapping all my water pressure.
Michael Weburg
Martin) writes:
>
>Help! I can't get over the water shortages in SC2000. I've got 300,000
>citizens and every space not occupied by a building is either a pump
or a
>water tower. I've got literally hundreds of pumps and towers and I
still
>get shortages.
>
>WHY?
Drought, low pump efficiency, etc. For the best land usage of pumps,
nothing beats the following pattern:
PPPPPPPPPPP Where P = Pump
WWWWWWWWWWW W = Water tile
PPPPPPPPPPP
WWWWWWWWWWW
PPPPPPPPPPP
Basically, you alternate rows of pumps and water, and the rows can be
any length. This gives pumps a much higher efficiency since they are
close to a water tile. Each pump is adjacent to 6 water tiles.
If you don't like the way the above pattern looks, you could simply try
to increase pump effiency by placing water tiles near existing pumps.
Or, you could ignore the water model altogether. Water has little
effect on the game, and cities work the same without it.
Also, you don't need very many water towers, if any at all. They only
fill up when your city has a surplus of water. Limit yourself to maybe
4 or 5 towers, and replace the rest with pumps.
If you want to ridden the water shortage message, simply place one pump
down, giving it power, but NOT connecting it to your water grid. This
doesn not fuel your zones with water, it only reports to the simulation
that 100% of your water is not being used, and thus it is tricked into
think it doesn't need to display the shortage message. Again, this does
not substitute a sustained water system.
Hope this helps!
--
_____________________________________________________________________
Wren-Michael Weburg |
| This area under construction.
e-mail: WMWe...@ix.netcom.com |
Eli Awtrey
: I just took a look at the SC2000 FAQ tonight, out of my own curiosity.
Where can I find this FAQ? Oh, and one other thing. Has anyone seen those
"Official Planning Commission" books for SimCity2000? I would love more
strategy ideas, but I don't feel like wasting $20 for nothing :) Thanks in
advance!
--
Eli Awtrey
e...@sonic.net (primary)
eaw...@nermal.santarosa.edu
W.S. Peare
Bremer. An excellent book, with details on every aspect of the simulation, easter eggs,
in-depth descriptions of issues like the transportation model, economic philosophies, etc.
One of the author's used to work at Maxis, and wrote the manual for SC2K. Lots of detail, pix,
and abundantly useful.