[Deprecated] SOM – Services Optimization Module
——- UPDATE (May 9, 2015) ——-
SOM has been deprecated. The upgrades can be found here:
– [ARIS] Enhanced Garbage Truck AI
– [ARIS] Enhanced Hearse AI
– Stay tuned for the other AI enhancements!
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Tired of your hearses and garbage trucks taking leisure rides around town and not doing their job? This mod will reign them back in!
The Services Optimization Module (SOM) adjusts the AI behind service buildings and vehicles to make them more intelligent and more…well, human-like, along with human limitations.
What you will notice:
– Hearses are MUCH MORE effective! They pick up corpses similarly to how a real driver would AND at a range a real dispatcher would send them. On the other hand, the drivers are not robots: if they are told not to assist a certain building that’s right on their way, they MIGHT pick up the corpses from that building anyway. Also, if your city is overflooding with corpses, the drivers might get distracted when carrying out the dispatchers’ orders.
– Garbage trucks are actively seeking out target areas BEFORE they become a problem, like in real life. These guys are dedicated: they will do everything they can to clean up your streets. But that doesn’t mean you can be reckless when placing garbage facilities. Be reasonable with your facility placements, and the drivers and dispatchers will do the rest. Be reckless about it, you might just find your drivers take off on joy rides in protest.
– As long as there’s a problem, the related service does not allow their employees to sit idle. For example, if your city is being overrun by trash, landfills will keep on sending out garbage trucks until either the problem is addressed or they don’t have any more trucks to send.
What SOM does NOT do:
– SOM is not a replacement for intelligent city planning. If you have traffic jams everywhere, the service vehicles will also be stuck in traffic.
– SOM does not turn services into omnipresent beings. In other words, if it is unlikely for a driver to know that a particular building needs help in real life (such as having a corpse), the SOM driver also won’t know. Remember, SOM doesn’t give drivers x-ray vision. They only know what the dispatchers tell them, and dispatchers only know what has been timely reported to them.
– SOM does not create perfect operators nor perfect communication between the dispatchers and the drivers. Dispatchers will do everything they can to relay information to drivers in a timely manner; but it doesn’t mean it will happen. For example, if a driver is flying down the road and the dispatcher tells him that there’s a corpse in the building next to him, the driver might have already passed the building by the time the message is received. Plan your city in a way to minimize “human error” or be ready to have your city covered in corpses and garbage.
Future development:
– Look for ways to increase mod efficiency, or better tune it.