Network Add-on Module, Colossus Addon Module (NAM/ CAM) for SC:S

[Romaq]

The NAM I'm already familiar with, and because I've not done SC4 play since mention of SC:S, I didn't really look into the Colossus Addon Module (CAM). I just did tonight, now that it has been out long enough to be 'mature'.

I would strongly urge TM to read through the CAM 1.0 Manual, at least as a skim, and consider what CAM is attempting to accomplish with respect to staging and building density. It's possible that many of the issues involving CAM are not pertainant to SC:S, but without knowing how SC:S defines 'cities' and 'regions' within the game engine, I can't be sure so I thought I'd mention it.

Page 6 of the manual refers to 'Eternal Commuters'. Did SC:S avoid this problem in how it defined 'cities' and 'a region'? If 'Eternal Commuters' are possible, could SC:S poke a small flag on commuter traffic to track 'city of origin' and refuse to 'commute' to the city from whence they came from another city? Too bad with SC4 they didn't choose to pass 'GUID of city of origin + commuter count', and then have a means to forbid that count from 'commuting' to where they started.

One other thing to mention is 'Farming in CAM' page 17. Granted, that section of CAM relates to zoning industrial farms, which is a non-issue for SC:S. However, the point remains that a big 'selling feature' to living in Bellingham is that Mt. Baker *AND* the San Juans are in easy driving distance of one another. CAM provides for large farming industries, woodland preserves and 'historical landmarks'. SC:S would do well to fully realise natural venues as well as 'industrial farming'. And perhaps SC:S has this in place, but outside of screen shots of 'The Farm' archetype, we don't have bean spillage.

The NAM and the CAM represent many years of unsalaried volunteer work pertaining to SC4. They represent the unofficial SC4.5 development team, and they may well foster the SimCity Societies Plus development team after TM hands over The Gold Disk. I strongly urge some love shown in their direction. It would be a fantastic investment that would have far reaching implications towards the ongoing development of SC:S by the fanbase.

Last note... TM isn't Maxis, TM isn't EA. But Ron Humble appears to be hovering at the edges. Please ask EA to consider the release of 'bugfixes' to SC4 in the form of source code or, as appropriate, a DLL that opens up a few things, or fixes a few things. Hidden directories and files should never be 'counted' at startup time. For the love of god could we do something with the borked menu selection system? Is there any real reason files other than *.sc4lot and *.sc4desc should be read at startup? Could we open up transit? There's a whole message thread along the lines of areas of pain that SC4 suffers for lack of hooks into the code. I hope TM can avoid similar problems. And though I expect TM will create new ones for us, I hope they leave us the means to rise to the challenge and accomplish great things as has been done with the NAM and the CAM.

--Romaq