Transportation confusion?!?
I bought the transportation department and two bus terminals. The two bus terminals offer me 100% coverage to my current city. However after adding them they actually created road traffic issues in ...
Forum Discussion
I guess that depends on what you consider the cost to be. Keys are a renewable resource and easy to come by. Land is a precious limited resource. It would take a lot of bus terminals to equal the same coverage as a heliport. Those squares wasted on bus terminals could be used for more residential buildings or other population boosting specialty buildings. If the end goal is to increase the total population, the smallest footprint specialty buildings that offer the most boost and the largest area of coverage are the best.
EDIT: CJ nailed it. Totally agree.
EDIT: CJ nailed it. Totally agree.
The heliport has an 18x18 coverage radius and it costs 20 keys. And Chrissa makes a good point about keys being renewable. When you think about it, it costs virtually nothing to produce them except time in the factories and stores to produce items for disaster rebuilds or shipments
I was looking for the amount of space the building takes up. For example the bus terminals use up 4 squares each. I calculated out the ratio of space taken up by the buildings and their coverage for all but the buildings that require keys or I have not unlocked yet due to my level only being 15. For whatever reason they designed it so that if you don't have the keys you can't even drag the building for reference purposes. But you can drag buildings you don't have the simoleons for oddly.
- Oh sorry about that raven...im not sure how much space it takes..the highest transport building I have is airship hanger which takes up 6 squares (2x3). Heliport looks to be about 4x4. But I'm not sure on that.
The other metric you have to consider is % of population boost. Even though the bus terminal and heliport are the same size, the bus terminal only gives you a 20% population boost, while the heliport provides a 50% boost.
I am considering bulldozing my balloon park and bus terminal and replacing them with heliports. The novalty of the unmanned (or unsimmed) balloon floating past the city gets old after a while, and I would rather get the higher population boost.
By the way, bulldozing a building you purchased with keys gives you no refund in keys at all, unlike the service buildings and parks which give you 50% of your cost back when you destroy them.
I updated my chart to now include the balloon and heliport. The heliport offers the best coverage per square taken by the building at the very very small margin 2nd coverage to boost ratio. The balloon park covers 4.8 squares per percent boost and the heliport 4.48 squares per percent boost. I'm not sure the ratio of coverage to boost is even of any real consideration since anything that offers a boost the highest boost is the one you are going to want if your goal is maximum population unless there is a total cap to the boost possible between all sources of boosts.
