Homes to People Ratio

[lshiffer]

Are there any guidelines to the number of homes our city should have? We clearly need 5-7 Restaurants, 1 Market, and 1 Bank at a minimum, but there hasn't been any mention of homes.

For instance, if a city has five homes and an apartment complex, I worry that too many people in the Apartment could create an effect of unison. Such as certain jobs that have the same Start and End time for however many people live in that complex... Visually it could look like a horde and disproportionally populate the map (such as everyone at the bus stop nearest the apartment as opposed to spread out across the map).

Is there a suggested or minimum number of homes each city should have? My current thought is one home per required Person which is determined by the number of simultaneous jobs (For instance, if each Restaurant has a Host, Waiter, Cashier, and Cook active at once, that's 4*(5||6||7) homes for Restaurants alone) which equates to approximately 20-30 homes distributed across the map which would put a majority of people into dedicated homes with the rest in an Apartment. As we'll need more than the required number of Persons to visit the businesses during operation.

[dwilczyn]

I haven't thought about it. You seem to have a good handle on this. As you say, the number of people you need depends on the number of workplaces you have and employees and customers they need to make things active. Then you need people just hanging around.

Can people share apartments and homes, or will that complicate things?

[lshiffer]

People sharing homes complicates things slightly... Such as 2+ people in the same home wanting to make dinner at the same time, or the sharing of fridgeStock data. But not too much to handle.

Though it does bring about the question of how rent is handled as in my current design every Home has a rent value which is paid depending on if the occupant is the owner. Will have to decide if Persons split rent when no occupant is Owner or if occupants pay Owner if Owner is an occupant, or if everyone lives free if Owner is an occupant.

So brings about a few questions and slight design modifications.

[dwilczyn]

Interesting issues, I hope you take them on, but certainly not required of v1.