Image of the conversation:
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Redditropolis/comments/174j3e/have_questions_regarding_regional_multicity/
[–]MaxisScott 9 points 1 day ago (9|0)
ooh, yeah i see what your saying. So, i forgot a couple of details. You have to have a city hall before you can gift and the receiving city has to accept the gift before you can send another. So that make it a bigger pain if your trying to use it to cheat the leaderboards. I guess its still doable, but probably not very profitable.
1 & 2 There are trade depots which allow you to add storage lots for each resource or manufactured good. When you have an excess of a resource it will go automatically to the trade depot if your city has one. If you don't have a trade depot, most toys have its own local storage too. If all the storage fills then whatever factory/mine was providing that resource closes and puts sims out of work.
3 & 4 trades on the global market happen from the trade depots. There is UI for the depots which allow you to import, export, or just use the resource locally. Setting up a trade with another player is a bit more challenging. You can gift resources and money to other players but there isnt UI to setup a specific trade deal. It will be up to players to work out how they want to manage resources transactions between eachother.
thx =)
I'm a little disappointed to hear that there isn't UI to setup a specific trade deal with neighbors. I would think that would have been a major part of interacting with your neighboring cities.
We spent a LONG time trying to make resource trading between players happen the way you describe because we knew that's what people would be expecting. It turned out to be a surprisingly complicated problem to solve within the confines of Glassbox. Glassbox is really powerful simulation engine however its not really equipped to facilitate 2-way communication between humans when one of the two humans may not even be online. Since we are trading simulated resources we cant just bypass glassbox either because then your game may get out of sync with everyone else. We like to call the problem being 'synchronously asynchronous' and its a difficult problem to solve.
With that said, the trading system we are shipping with is still really fun and can really help gameplay even if you are playing in a region by yourself. It is still possible to give eachother resources and money, so person to person trade is possible, you just gotta use the honor system instead of a slick UI.
We also plan to continue growing and changing the game after launch and player to player resource trading is certainly on my list of things i would like to revisit (if they ask me) once we get feedback on how the players actually use the systems we built.Thanks for doing this teknickal - great job!
MaxisScott - you rock thank you! I'm not sure if you're just a redditor who works at Maxis or a community manager but it's awesome that you're doing things like this - it's making me shrill in anticipation... and I'm apparently not supposed to squeal as a 33 year old male.
[–]Venakulator 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
but we squeal in the most awesome way =)
Just as long as it's not like this...
Thanks! I'm am just a dev at maxis. The guy who originally started Simtropolis.com is our community manager.
and yeah, i know that squeal. I think i squealed for about a week back when i first got my job at Maxis. I grew up playing simcity since the 80s so it was hugely exciting just to get interviewed, much less the opportunity to actually work on the game.Hello, thanks for coming here and doing this for us. I have a couple of questions:
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Redditropolis/comments/174j3e/have_questions_regarding_regional_multicity/
- What level of permissions can users be assigned? Can I designate more than one person to have total control of the region in case something happens to the first person?
- What ways besides the chat box can mayors collaborate and work with each other in-game? I'm not talking about sharing simulation resources or utilities, I mean the actual ways we interact as people.
- Are there any built-in ways to implement a "tax" system so I can make sure all the mayors in my region are contributing evenly to the great works? Another idea we had is to set up a general fund that we could pool together for major things other than great works (like big oil HQ for our mining town, event center for our entertainment town, etc.)
- What are some of the other great works we will be able to collaborate on? So far I've only seen the Airport, and hints of Archologies and a space station. Anything else we can expect or will that be a surprise?
- How will future DLC affect the way we run our region? To clarify, say in a year a new expansion pack comes out, and not everyone buys it. Will we still be able to play together? Will people be locked out of a city that contains DLC they don't have? The best method IMO is to allow viewing of DLC, but you just can't build it in your own city. If we let people see it in action in a friend's city they might just be inclined to buy it!
- What happens when a player abandons a city? Say someone in the region loses interest; can we blow that city away like nothing was ever there and have someone new move in, or do they have to inherit someone else's abandoned city?
- Last question. Going back to my first question and expanding on the previous question, could someone have full access to a region and not have a city there? I'd like to maintain control of all the regions, even the ones I am not playing on, in case we have a "rogue" governor or they vanish and no one else has access.
[–]MaxisScott 9 points 1 day ago (9|0)
- At launch, the permission level is very flat. Basically there is a region owner and then everyone else. When creating a region you can choose for it to be public or private. 'Public' means anyone at all can jump in and claim a city in that region. 'Private' means only people who are invited by the region owner can claim a city.
- We have in-game chat we call the Region Wall. Chat messages sent on the region wall is visible to all players in the region. Message history is also maintained so people don't miss any regional conversations while they are offline. The region wall and the Ticker will also notify you of what other players in the region are doing. We also have what we call the 'Boundary UI' which is persistent in city and region view and shows the status of the neighbors your city is connected to.
- Not at present. You can gift money so people could all contribute money to one city who them starts the great work.
- Space station is actually Space Center. Then there is the arcology, international airport, and solar farm. Each one requires different resources to build and operate and in return provide different benefits to the cities connected to it.
- I don't know the full answer to that, but (in an ideal world) we certainly don't want to create a situation where people cant play together because of DLCs.
- an abandoned city can be reclaimed or restarted.
- At the present, you cant create a region without also creating a city in it. With that said, i don't know what would happen if you turned around and abandoned that city so someone else could claim it. (mental note: look into that)
As mayor of a city, what kind of reset options will I have? there is obviously going to be a big learning curve here. I anticipate that I will go through a few horrible mistakes before I get things right. I don't want to hurt my region due to the learning curve.
[–]MaxisScott 3 points 1 day ago (3|0)
you can abandon the city and restart it. This will affect any neighbor deals that city has going, so be careful if you go that route.
[–]ElysiumUS 1 point 1 day ago (1|0)
Just going to prevent an exploit here, if we were to restart a city, does the starting money reset too. IE, could I hypothetically start a city, send money to neighbor, then restart city with a new money set?
[–]MaxisScott 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
yeah, you can do that. Its not really any different then if you started a city and a friend gave you a big chunk of money to get rolling.
[–]teknickal Redditropolis[S] 1 point 1 day ago (1|0)
I think what he's saying is you could exploit this by continually restarting your city and sending the startup cash to a neighbor each time, thus creating a never ending cash supply.
If you're sandboxing by yourself, no big deal, you can use whatever cheats you want. By allowing this in normal play, it gives an unfair advantage against others on the leaderboards if you just have an endless cash supply. People will definitely abuse this to take advantage.
ooh, yeah i see what your saying. So, i forgot a couple of details. You have to have a city hall before you can gift and the receiving city has to accept the gift before you can send another. So that make it a bigger pain if your trying to use it to cheat the leaderboards. I guess its still doable, but probably not very profitable.
- how does the trading of the "manufactured" things work?
- do i have an storageplace where i can put them?
- How do i trade stuff i made on the Global Market / another player in region?
- What options do the "Traders" out there have, to get the best price?
[–]MaxisScott 3 points 1 day ago* (3|0)1 & 2 There are trade depots which allow you to add storage lots for each resource or manufactured good. When you have an excess of a resource it will go automatically to the trade depot if your city has one. If you don't have a trade depot, most toys have its own local storage too. If all the storage fills then whatever factory/mine was providing that resource closes and puts sims out of work.
3 & 4 trades on the global market happen from the trade depots. There is UI for the depots which allow you to import, export, or just use the resource locally. Setting up a trade with another player is a bit more challenging. You can gift resources and money to other players but there isnt UI to setup a specific trade deal. It will be up to players to work out how they want to manage resources transactions between eachother.
[–]Venakulator 1 point 1 day ago (1|0)thx =)
[–]jimmcq 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)I'm a little disappointed to hear that there isn't UI to setup a specific trade deal with neighbors. I would think that would have been a major part of interacting with your neighboring cities.
[–]MaxisScott 4 points 1 day ago (4|0)We spent a LONG time trying to make resource trading between players happen the way you describe because we knew that's what people would be expecting. It turned out to be a surprisingly complicated problem to solve within the confines of Glassbox. Glassbox is really powerful simulation engine however its not really equipped to facilitate 2-way communication between humans when one of the two humans may not even be online. Since we are trading simulated resources we cant just bypass glassbox either because then your game may get out of sync with everyone else. We like to call the problem being 'synchronously asynchronous' and its a difficult problem to solve.
With that said, the trading system we are shipping with is still really fun and can really help gameplay even if you are playing in a region by yourself. It is still possible to give eachother resources and money, so person to person trade is possible, you just gotta use the honor system instead of a slick UI.
We also plan to continue growing and changing the game after launch and player to player resource trading is certainly on my list of things i would like to revisit (if they ask me) once we get feedback on how the players actually use the systems we built.Thanks for doing this teknickal - great job!- When setting up a multi-player region how are invites handled? Do I send invites out for my region or do friends request to join? Is this via email or Origin?
- When playing multi-player, can I invite you to my region but only allow you access to a certain site? Or are players allowed to choose whichever reason they please?
- Are resources limited? If I go for oil/coal/metal to dig out of the ground do I eventually run out? There have been hints to this but no direct explanation of the mechanics. As a dynamic of this in the game, won't this cripple a multi-player economy if a resource is unavailable? I'd hate to build an industrial town only to lose out later when the resources run dry.
- Can we name the overall "regional map" that has each of the sites? So instead of "Sunny Valley" or whatever the default name would be, can the owner name it Reddittropolis?
- Is there any sort of interaction available for players at a regional level outside of chat? Is there any bonus or special note to having all 16 players on at the same time for a region?
[–]MaxisScott 4 points 1 day ago (4|0)- there is UI in game for sending out invites to friends on your friends list. It will go to their email.
- at present, players are allow to choose any city they want once they are invited.
- yes, resources are limited and you can run out. You can continue to import that resource from the global market or re-specialize your city. Also, rain and meteors are known to add resources back into the ground
- yes, you can create a custom region name when creating the region
- players are notified of what other players are doing via several methods, region wall (chat), the Ticker, Boundary ui and regional alerts. In region view you can also move around the region can see from a high level what other cities look like and their status. If you want to see more, you can load up a friend's city in 'spectator mode' and check out their city first hand. No bonus for having 16 people in a region (that i know of) other then just being awesome.
[–]Limiate Redditropolis Citizen 4 points 1 day ago (4|0)MaxisScott - you rock thank you! I'm not sure if you're just a redditor who works at Maxis or a community manager but it's awesome that you're doing things like this - it's making me shrill in anticipation... and I'm apparently not supposed to squeal as a 33 year old male.
[–]Venakulator 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
but we squeal in the most awesome way =)
[–]Limiate Redditropolis Citizen 1 point 1 day ago (1|0)Just as long as it's not like this...
[–]MaxisScott 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)Thanks! I'm am just a dev at maxis. The guy who originally started Simtropolis.com is our community manager.
and yeah, i know that squeal. I think i squealed for about a week back when i first got my job at Maxis. I grew up playing simcity since the 80s so it was hugely exciting just to get interviewed, much less the opportunity to actually work on the game.Hello, thanks for coming here and doing this for us. I have a couple of questions:
- 1) Regarding Great Works, will they provide a benefit (bonus) to every city in the region, or just the cities that are directly connected to them? Mr. Quigley sort of answered this for me on his blogspot, but didn't really make it clear if every city could potentially have access to each other for trade. If not every city has a way to trade/share resources with each other, I sort of don't see the point in having a 16 player region if all of the cities are in a tight little clusters.
"Different regions are laid out differently, but generally speaking, cities are organized into fairly tightly connected clusters, connected by networks (like rail, road, highway, waterway, etc).
There might be as many as 4 or 5 clusters in a region.
Different clusters are more sparsely connected to each other, usually with a city or two acting as the interconnect between them.
So not every city is directly connected to every other city - and its particular connections are one of the things that makes a given city different from another city." - Ocean Quigley
There might be as many as 4 or 5 clusters in a region.
Different clusters are more sparsely connected to each other, usually with a city or two acting as the interconnect between them.
So not every city is directly connected to every other city - and its particular connections are one of the things that makes a given city different from another city." - Ocean Quigley
- 2) Would it be possible for one city to provide power to the entire region? I was thinking about a region where I could just have one receive money from the other cities and then build up different plants to sent power out to the other 15.
[–]MaxisScott 3 points 1 day ago (3|0)- Each city has a limited number of connections (4-5) and is only connected to one other great work. Great works provide a benefit only to the cities it is connected to.
- a city can only provide power to the neighbors in its cluster and only over a road connection. Some cities are connected just by rail, for those cities services like power and water can not be traded but workers and freight does get traded.
- How does the friends list / region invite system work? Is it tied to Origin accounts or is it a SimCity specific separate system? i.e. what info do I need from someone to be able to invite them?
- Will multiplayer regions be available in this weekend's beta?
[–]MaxisScott 3 points 1 day ago (3|0)- it is tied to your origin friend list.
- sadly no. I have another question Mr. Scott.
- 1) When creating a region, will we have the option to to set how many cities we want? ie, 2,5,11,16? Or just a predefined number?
- 2) When creating a region, will the terrain be randomly generated everytime, or again, are they predefined regions?
[–]MaxisScott 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
The region terrain and number of cities are predefined. Currently a region can range from 2 to 16 cities and there always be at least one great work.
[–]Cronus3166 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
Awesome and thanks again for responding. I think I have one final question that I can think of (for now!)
I know I asked previously about resources being shared between cities and you said that they need to be connected. So my final question is, what about the Sims themselves?
I know in SC4 they wouldn't, but I didn't know if a Sim might travel through a city to another city. Or only to neighboring cities. This honestly doesn't effect anything, I was just curious if they would.
So city: A <--> B <--> C
Could a sim from either A travel through B and go visit C if someone was hosting an event? Just curious how far a sim might travel to go see stuff. - [–]MaxisScott 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
that is a bit tricky to answer because what you see on the screen and what is really going on under the hood is a bit different. One the screen you may see A, B, & C all in a line connected by one common road or rail line. Technically speaking, they are all 3 'connected' and they can all trade with each other. Visually, if A is sending resources to C you may think that the resource is passing thru B on the way but in reality the resource is going directly from A to C. Anything passing thru B on the way to C is visual.
Now there is a case where A and C would not be able to trade even tho they are both connected to B. If A was connected to B via just a road and C was connected to B via just a rail connection, then the 3 cities do not share a common link like in the first example. In that case A would not be able to trade with C, but B could still trade with both.
[–]Cronus3166 2 points 1 day ago (2|0)
That's kind of what I assumed would happen, but it's always nice to have the correct answer from one of the big players! Once again, I thank you for taking the time to answer my rants. This game has been the first time ever I've had developers actually take time out of their day to answer my personal questions. I truly thank you <3
With that said, I think I am pretty good now on multiplayer and region-play. Now... let's all get into that DeLorean, kick it to 88 mph and go to March 5, 2013!
[–]Venakulator 1 point 1 day ago (1|0)
if this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you gonna see some serious shit !
[–]MaxisScott 1 point 8 hours ago (1|0)
glad i could answer your questions!
[–]theoryofjustice 1 point 1 day ago (1|0)
Is it possible to build in both cities A and C an airport to enable trade between them?
[–]MaxisScott 3 points 8 hours ago (3|0)
Not really. Airports will bring in tourists and cargo from "the region" but not really from specific cities. That way if your playing a city in a region no other cities, you can have an airport and it will still be useful to your city and your not required to build up a region of cities first.Thank you so much for coming and answering these questions, can't wait to see the game this weekend.
Regarding shared resources (police, fire services, power, water), are these billed to the city that's consuming them? If so, can I control the rate at which it's billed, and if I'm the buyer, can I choose the rate I want to pay? Can I choose which city to take power from? For example, if one guy is making "dirty" power and the other is making "green" power, can I select where my power comes from?
When sims travel from another city to my city to work, who pays their wages and gets their taxes? I know that, if they come to my casino from another town, they spend in my city so I get that money, but if they come to work in my city, I pay their wages but do I get their taxes? Do they shop in my stores and spend money in my town?
Thanks again for being so awesome.
[–]MaxisScott 3 points 8 hours ago (3|0)
As a provider of fire, police, health, and/or garbage services you can choose how many vehicles to share and with who to share them. Each time one of those vehicle helps a neighbor your city get a bonus which is not charged to your neighbor. Sharing a vehicle does not take it out of service for your own city.
With power and water, if you have any excess, then any of your neighbors can choose to purchase that excess and you will profit from that purchase. How much they can purchase is based on how much excess you have and how much need they have. The price per unit is fixed (and i don't remember what that was based on). Your neighbors will never be able to cause a shortage in your city since they can only buy excess. As a neighbor tho you can get hosed if your provider cant keep up with your needs. You can buy from multiple neighbors, so that you don't have to have one city provide everything.
Finally, with sewage, it works similar to power and water except instead sending out stuff, your taking in sewage from your neighbor. If you have enough excess sewage processing capacity, then a neighbor can choose to purchase that capacity and send sewage to you. You will profit from from whatever your neighbor sends. Don't worry, it wont be possible to grief your neighbor with sewage. (air pollution is a different story)
On a side note, i learned today that the top tier sewage processing plant will put water back into the ground. That means you could take a city which is completely dry, bring in all the sewage from your neighbors, clean it, put it back into the ground, and then turn back around and resell that clean ground water to your neighbors. Not sure if that whole loop is actually sustainable or profitable, but its still pretty awesome!
[–]macallen 1 point 7 hours ago (1|0)
Thank you thank you thank you!
What about people? In one of the movies, they explained that people will drive from one city to work in another? Who pays their wages/collects their taxes?[–]MaxisScott 1 point 6 hours ago (1|0)
They are paid by the shops or factories they go work at. They will take that money home and spend it at shops/casinos/etc. Shops in turn buy 'freight' from industries which is sold to shoppers. The better that commodity chain is, the happier your city will be.