Too many people active at night (go shopping), nights should be more quiet

[Mazisky]

I have a concern:

in my 20K city, i see lot of people going around all the night cause "go shopping", so the night is busy like the day, just a bit less. I think this totally delete the purpose of this mod because it's unrealistic. Even in biggest real cities there are no crowd of people at 3:00 AM unless there is a major event. I've set everything (night\2nd shift, shopping for fun and local shopping) at lower value, but it doesn't change, still too many "go shopping" people at night.

A good way to handle this (if possible) would be to reduce the amount of "shopping" allowed in the night time, maybe with a configurable slider.

[DaEgi01]

you don't use other mods to change the time do you? that would mess it all up. in my experience the issue happens because cims don't have enough time. they travel by car in a realistic speed, and with my realistic walking speed mod they walk appropriately slow. but their whole day is much shorter. so they start shopping at an appropriate time but are still en route at 3:00 AM. try to slow the time down via realtime settings and see if the issue still occurs as bad or if it gets better.

[Mazisky]

I know what u mean and that's exactly what i was thinking, but i've tried at Realtime speed 2 on slider, i 've spent like 20 mins in front of the monitor to see a whole in-game night. They just go out in the middle of the night for shopping, so it's not tied to the speed like some random 1st work shift who got late. There are hundreds of them that just go out from home (no work shifts going\return involved) to go shopping. That's gamebreaking. I think night shopping should be removed or reduced to something like 1% of the population or with a slider just like night shift, i don't know if it is possible or if the author wanna keep this way simply because he likes it more, i just would like to see his opinion on this.

[dymanoid]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

First of all, there is already a significant change in the citizens behavior at night. For example, there are no children, no teens, and no seniors that go out at night. If it is happening in your city, then there's some incompatible mod that conflicts with Real Time and messes up the carefully prepared personal schedules of the citizens. Furthermore, citizens tend not to search for entertainment at night, except of some bad ass party junkies that look e.g. for leisure districts.

However, the shopping at night cannot be completely deactivated. Neither can it be reduced to 1% or so. The reason is that a lot of the game logistics depends on the fact that the citizens constantly buy goods. In the early Real Time versions, only a couple of citizens could go out for shopping at night. That caused massive issues with the commercial buildings (the 'not enough customers' problem). So, I implemented the minimum required commercial customers flow to satisfy the game requirements.

I do not plan to overwhelm the game's economy model in Real Time. Thus, it will always be like that - citizens will go out at night for shopping. But only adults, and significantly fewer that in the day.

There are some opinions too, that the nights are already too boring. So I've got some requests how to entirely skip the night time. If we will make the streets empty at night, then the game will become unplayable and really boring. It's just about finding a compromise between realism and fun.

[Mazisky]

Thanks for your informative answer, Dymanoid.

So this thing need to exist for the game to work if im getting it right, im fine with it, altought hordes of night shopping maniacs are pretty disappointing. (i should check if i have elders or children in those because i didn't pay attention and if this is the case, i may have other issues).

I disagree to the opinions that nights are boring tho. The focus of this mod is to make realistic schedules and the 24 hours are the main part of this mod core. Night hours are part of that core because otherwise why play with day\night schedules in the first place? It is like using your "realistic population" mod and then complaining because "too many people on high residential!"...doesn't make sense at all.

Thank you for your time and dedication to make the game better in any case!

[dymanoid]

I also don't think that the nights are boring, but people are different.

Personally, I would really like to slightly reduce the night shopping activity of the city. And as I wrote, it was like that in the past. However, this didn't play well with the rest of the game, and completely changing the economy would be too much for Real Time. Sure, this is an interesting feature (more realism), but this would make Real Time just enormously complex. And probably only a few players would really enjoy such a feature, because it would make the game way more challenging (while way more realistic though).

[Mazisky]

Well, players that uses mods like this want more depth and complexity, realism (also challenge).

I think everyone would like that feature and the ones who don't like it, they wouldn't use this (or other gameplay) mods in the first place.

Im so sorry that im such a noob with programming or anything related to try smt, because real schedules with proper economy to keep realism at max level would be such a gamechanger for a vanilla game who's basically a city painter without the management aspect.

Rush hour, Real time, Realisitc Population etc. are all the most popular gameplay mods for a reason!

[DaEgi01]

The focus of this mod is to make realistic schedules and the 24 hours are the main part of this mod core. Night hours are part of that core because otherwise why play with day\night schedules in the first place?

I am totally with Mazisky on this. I understand though that you @dymanoid don't want to mess with the whole game economy too much and keep the mod tight and maintainable.

[Sipke82]

Im also totally with Maziky on this. Could it perhaps be possible to at least make 90% of the night shoppers "virtual" so that it is at least visually solved?

[RenaKunisaki]

Maybe a workaround would be for the few shoppers that do go out at night, to buy a lot of goods, so that the shops are satisfied.

[Mazisky]

I think commercial can be modified so they need less customers or maybe they should just stop working after 19:00 like in real life. Keep only leisure and tourism active at night.

The problem with this issue is that most of the mod features lose their meaning:

-Lights off at night? Cool, but it doesn't matter since people keep moving at night. -Parks close at night? Cool, but it doesn't matter since people go other places at night anyway. -Use budget sliders or make different lines for day and night? It doesn't matter since people use mass transit anyway at night.

Without modifying the economy this mod will have unrealistic schedules thus nullyfing the purpose of itself.

[dymanoid]

Okay, it seems that we really need a new "Real Economy" mod or something.

Don't forget though, that many players don't want the game to be even more complicated (which will happen with that changed economy model).

So I think there will be a new mod(-extension) at some time. If I find spare time for that 😃