More Exciting Than Expected

For this developer’s diary on “Electricity and Water” I didn’t expect much but it ended up impressing me.

To keep it short and sweet, here are my main takeaways:

• Power can be imported using power lines to outside connections
• Power can be exported but you have to plan wisely as excess power can also be stored to used during off hours if you use something like solar
• Power usage will spike as during summer people will use air conditioning and heating during winter
• Operational, extensions and sub/buildings are included when upgrading electricity buildings
• Each power line has a maximum capacity and transformers are needed to help balance out grids to prevent outages
• Water can be drawn from a surface body or pumped from underground
• The underground sources do replenish but can run out if pumped at a rate higher than it is replenished
• The power cables underneath the roads aren’t the only ones you must rely on as these need to connect to high voltage lines and transformers

It’s quite interesting to see as with each update, you see some people (like myself) really happy about the deeper mechanics and others feeling this is straying too much from the previous game which was essentially just a painter.

I’m sure mods will be able to remove a lot of these functions. It’s better to have them all in for those who want them as I’m sure it’s easier to remove them than it is to add them in through mods. That’s it for this post and I’ll be back as always on Friday with the developer’s deep dive.