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The Unofficial FAQ (Frequently Asked Question)
Hello, my name is Steve Novicki. I am a gigantic fan of Yoot
Saito's masterpiece SimTower, and I will be narrating this FAQ, which
took me approximately a full two days to write, so you better
appreciate it! Also, this FAQ is legally Copyright February 15, 2000
by Steve Novicki. Do not rip off of this FAQ, I can and will take
legal action against you, meaning that I will sue you and easily win.
With that boring crap said, let's get to the FAQ!
CONTENTS
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 - A SimTower Day's Schedule
2 - Tower Transportation
3 - Shops, Fast Food Places, and Other Places of Commerce
4 - Offices and Condos
5 - Hotels, Suites, and Housekeeping
6 - SimTower's Method of Evaluation
7 г When VIPs Come For a Visit
8 г Star Requirements
9 - And Of Course, Last But Certainly Not Least, Cheats
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 - The Time Schedule of a Normal Day (weekday) in SimTower
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Every building in SimTower starts and stops at a specific time,
as they do in real life. I have compiled a list of all of the
starting and stopping times that different buildings open and close.
5:00AM : Dawn.
6:30AM : Hotel guests begin to check out, continues until noon.
7:00AM : Garbage pickup.
9:00AM : Workday begins (Offices open.)
10:00AM : Shops and Fast Food open.
12:00PM - 1:00PM : Lunch hour.
1:00PM - 4:00PM : Movie runs in the theaters.
5:00PM : Offices begin to close.
Restaurants open.
Income from Party Halls.
5:00PM - 8:00PM : Movie runs in the theaters.
6:00PM : Dusk.
8:00PM : Movie Theaters close.
Income from Movie Theaters.
9:00PM : Shops and Fast Food close.
Income from Fast Food.
11:00PM : Restaurants close.
Income from Restaurants.
There you have it, a complete listing of a SimTower workday,
either the first or second weekday. It is always like this, no
exceptions. Also, I'm not sure, but I think that it's at 5:00PM that
your Hotel guests begin to check in, either five or 6:00PM. Check for
me, will ya?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
2 - Tower Transportation
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In SimTower, your transportation system MUST be completely
perfect and bug-free, or else it will crumble and fail when your
tower ages. Fortunately, I am here to help you achieve this :)
When you start out, you should have at least one elevator
spanning all of your floors, at the most, fifteen floors. This helps
ease congestion when your tower is older and more populated. Also,
keep in mind that your Sims can only change elevators ONCE PERT TRIP.
This means that if a Sim rides an Express Elevator up to floor sixty,
and wants to get to floor sixty-eight, he can change elevators only
once to get to floor sixty-eight. Keep his in mind when designing
your elevator system. Also, the Sims cannot change elevators at just
any old floor, they must ride up to a Sky Lobby and there they can
switch. Shafts cannot be placed over other objects like stairs,
escalators, and stuff like that, so be careful when planning them.
One last thing for elevators, the shafts cannot overlap when they
don't have at least eight floors of free space on either side. This
frustrated me many times, so keep it in mind. There is a maximum of
twenty-four elevator shafts allowed in a single tower.
Stairs are SimTower's most primitive mode of transportation.
However, they provide an excellent means of elevator congestion
relief, such as at lunch hour. With a few well-placed stairs, you can
alleviate almost half of your elevators' congestion. The Sims are
only willing to walk at the most four flights of stairs to get to a
certain destination, this is about the only rule to follow while
placing stairs. You can have a maximum of sixty-four total stairs and
escalators. They also cost a mere $5,000 per set of stairs, not that
much at all.
Escalators are special. They can only be used in commercial
areas, like shops, restaurants, fast food, etc., but can also be
placed in just blank floor sections. They, like stairs, don't cost
much at all, just a lot of commercial space to use them in. You can
have a maximum of sixty-four total stairs and escalators.
This concludes the Transportation section of my FAQ. I hope
that it has been most useful to you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
3 - Shops, Fast Food Places, and Other Places of Commerce
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Places of commerce are very important to your tower in the
manner of money and population. They all have set amounts of daily
income, like $-5,000, $0, and $5,000, and these are very important to
your tower's funds. They also boost your population to be able to
graduate to higher Star ratings.
Fast Food Places -- These are available at the beginning of the
game. They generate a pretty good source of income, however have a
very bad environment, but this isn't very important to you. If I were
you, I would only build three or four of these at the beginning just
to generate some income, but then stop building these when
restaurants come around. Fast Food places cost $100,000 each.
Restaurants -- Available at the three-Star rating. These are
VERY hard to achieve the Good and Very Good evaluation, mainly
because not that many people patronize these, they are all at the
Fast Foods instead :) Restaurants open at night, and usually lose
money unless they are far developed. Build most of these when you get
the chance, because they generate far more income than Fast Food
places and are all around better than Fast Food places, the only
downside to restaurants is their very large price.
11:00PM : Restaurants close.
Income from Restaurants.
There you have it, a complete listing of a SimTower workday,
either the first or second weekday. It is always like this, no
exceptions. Also, I'm not sure, but I think that it's at 5:00PM that
your Hotel guests begin to check in, either five or 6:00PM. Check for
me, will ya?
4 - Offices and Condos
Offices in SimTower, as in real life, are the primary building
block of any good skyscraper. They are pretty much self-sufficient,
but let's go over some basic facts about them, shall we?
1. Offices cost $40,000 each.
2. Offices require any kind of transportation, except
Escalators, for obvious reasons.
3. Offices fork over their rent on a quarterly basis.
4. Offices can hold a maximum of six workers.
5. They do not need to be placed in any specific area of
the tower.
6. They have three different rent rates.
The facts listed above should pretty much answer all of your
questions about Offices, but I'll go into some more detail. Each
Office forks over their rent promptly at 5:00AM every morning of the
first weekday (pretty different from real life, huh?) Offices start
to open at 9:00AM every weekday morning, and start to close at 5:00PM
every afternoon. But some workaholics leave their lights on well past
8:00PM. Also, you should never place Offices after 1:00PM on the
second weekday. They do not sell until the next weekday, therefore
cheating you out of a rent. The only times they do sell is on the
first weekday, 9:00AM - 12:59PM, and the same for the second weekday.
Last, since there is no limit to the amount of Offices you can have,
you could build only commercial areas the first five floors around
any Sky Lobby, and then use a mixture of Offices and Hotels to fill
up the rest of the space.
One last thing about Offices; they don't mind being next to
other Offices. Some places, like Hotels, get cranky if they're placed
next to a noisy place like an Office or a Restaurant; Offices don't
care one way or the other if they're next to another Office or place
that makes a lot of noise. It's just that Offices are the place that
is noisy so you should place an entire floor of just Offices to
ensure that people don't get cranky.
Condominiums (Condos) are different from other buildings in
SimTower; they do not generate a quarterly, daily, or yearly income.
Instead, when a condo sells, the money is forked over to you in one
large amount; there is no income. I think that this is kind of bad,
because it costs money to keep those condos in working condition. And
these figures add up fast in your account. Therefore, only place
condos when you're completely financially secure. Condos cost
anywhere from $40,000 - $200,000 each (please, don't make the mistake
of selling a Condo for half of its initial building cost!), and like
Offices, the price affects the happiness of the Condo's inhabitants.
If you're not careful, the happiness of its inhabitants deteriorates
due to an expensive price, so keep that in mind. And if you place a
Condo anytime during 9:00AM г 12:59PM on either of the two weekdays,
it sells almost immediately, so keep this in mind as well. I think
that's all there is on Condos.
5 г Hotels, Suites, and Housekeeping
Another form of excellent daily income are Hotels and Hotel
Suites. Both of these provide a very good source of daily income to
ease your budget (and, in the early beginning of all my towers, I use
this income to live upon) and live on sometimes.
There are two kinds of Hotels: Single Hotels and Double Hotels.
Single Hotels are just what they sound like: single hotel rooms. Same
for Double Hotel rooms, they are double hotel rooms. But double rooms
bring in more income with less complaining. Single hotels take up
less space, therefore fitting more in a given amount of space, but
double rooms take up a larger yet smaller amount of space, and have
more "bang for their buck". Single Hotels are available in the two-
Star rating, Double Hotels in the three-Star rating. These are both
adversely affected by noise from Offices, Restaurants, etc. and
simply will not put up with the noise. If you let the problem go on
too long, they will eventually pack up and boycott the rooms. Suites
are like Single Hotels, but much, much more luxurious, therefore more
expensive. But the Sims who stay in these Suites don't seem to mind.
If the transportation system is good, they like it. Also, VIPs who
come and stay in your tower only stay in Suites. (See more about VIPs
in section 7 г Dealing with VIPs.) All Hotels, Suites, included,
require some kind of transportation, in case you haven't already
guessed.
However, someone needs to clean up these dirty rooms after
people mess them up, and the perfect people to do so are the
Housekeeping staff. When you place a Housekeeping unit, you
automatically have six housekeeping people to tend to all of your
dirty Hotel rooms. They are crucial to your tower, because if you
leave your Hotel rooms dirty for more than three days, they become
infested with cockroaches, rendering the room useless and inhibiting
other people from staying in that room. Destroy cockroach-infested
rooms as quick as possible, because they spread horizontally to other
Hotel rooms, regardless if they're clean or not.
Getting back to Housekeeping, you need at least one if you have
Hotel rooms in your tower. They also require transportation in the
form of Service Elevators, a special kind of elevator available from
the three-Star rating and on. You will know if you have enough or not
by looking at the Map window under Hotel at five or six o'clock in
the evening. If there are any dirty rooms, you clearly do not have
enough Housekeeping staff. One last comment on Housekeeping: once you
place a unit, you cannot bulldoze or get rid of it. Period.
6 г SimTower's Method of Evaluation
One thing that I believe would be frustrating to new SimTower
players is the seemingly complicated method of evaluation the game
uses. I was building many different buildings and they were all
getting red (bad) evaluations. Why is this? I wondered. Well, I found
the answer from SimTower: The Official Strategy Guide from Prima
Publishing. Read on to find this out.
First of all, whenever you first build something, it has a Red
(bad) evaluation. Then, as the customers start coming there and
patronizing the place, its evaluation slowly increases. The highest
it can increase to is Business Is Very Good. This means that whoever
came to the store while there is a Good or Very Good evaluation will
be very pleased with the store. So pleased, in fact that the next
day, they will come back to that same store with a friend. If they
encounter no transportation problems, and get to the store while
there is a Good or Very Good evaluation, the same thing happens. For
instance, maybe you have just built a Men's Clothing shop. Its
current patronage is maybe three people, and it has a Red (bad)
evaluation. As people come and patronize the store, the evaluation
slowly builds up to Good, and the Very Good. The customers who
visited the shop when there was a Good or Very Good evaluation will
like the store so much, they will come back the next day and bring a
friend. So in other words, if you have a shop that is more than a few
days old and it still has constant Red (bad) evaluations, maybe you
should look into it more closely.
Offices are simpler. See, Sims hate to wait for anything. The
only thing in your tower that would make them wait is your elevator
system. Therefore, if an Office is suffering from a constant Red
(bad) evaluation, that means only one thing: poor transportation.
One rectification for this major problem is to personally name
one Sim from the Office that is suffering. Follow that Sim around
throughout the entire workday, or workdays if you have to. If he/she
encounters any elevator that makes him/her wait, that could possibly
be the problem, so fix it. Another way that Sims get mad and suffer
from Red (bad) evaluations is that maybe a bunch of Sims from the
same Office encounter a ad elevator, making them wait. If a bunch of
Sims get mad and turn red, the evaluation of the Office that they're
all from goes down very quickly. All Offices that have Red (bad)
evaluations for en extended period of time eventually boycott their
Office and seek another Office elsewhere.
7 г When VIPs Come For a Visit
When VIPs were coming for visits to my tower, more often than
not were they giving me bad evaluations. In case you do not know, you
must have gotten a good rating from the VIP who stays in your Hotel
Suites in order to graduate to a four-Star rating, then to five and
Tower.
VIPs come to your Tower once every nine years, giving you
chances to make up for your mistakes of the past. Your job is to make
their stay in your tower as comfortable and leisurely as possible.
Listed below are some strategies to accomplishing this.
1. When the VIP arrives, quickly scan the parking garage and
all elevators to see where he is, he's a bright yellow Sim.
2. Once you find him, pinpoint which elevator(s) he is going to
take.
3. After this, find out exactly which Hotel Suite he is going
to.
4. Once this is achieved, deactivate all elevator service to
all floors except the one where the Suite he is staying in
is located on.
5. Make sure that every, single, picky, little thing in your
tower that he might use has a perfect transportation system.
6. Pray.
Following these steps will almost guarantee you a successful
VIP visit. At 11:00AM promptly the next morning, he will depart your
tower. A message box will pop up on the screen, the box deciding your
fate of whether you can graduate to a four-Star tower or not.
8 г Star Requirements
In order to achieve certain Star ratings, you must meet certain
criteria to graduate to higher ratings. Listed below are the six Star
ratings possible of achieving, and exactly what you need to get them.
One Star г none
Two Stars г A minimum population of 300 people
Three Stars г Minimum population of 1,000 people
More than one Security office
Four Stars г Minimum population of 5,000 people
Recycling Center
Parking
Medical Center near ground floor Lobby
More than one Hotel Suite
Favorable rating from a VIP
Five Stars г Minimum population of 10,000 people
Metro Station placed
New Recycling and Medical demands met
TOWER г Minimum population of 15,000 people
Cathedral placed on 100th floor
There you have it, the complete criteria for graduating
to higher Star ratings.
9 г And Of Course, Last But Certainly Not Least, Cheats
So ya wanna cheat, do ya? Just keep in mind that with cheating,
you are not playing the game to its fullest extent, therefore not
getting your moneys' worth out of the game. But if you're like me and
get the game's fullest amount of fun out of using cheat codes, this
section is for you, my friend!
NOTE: THERE ARE NO EASTER EGGS FOR SIMTOWER. NONE WHATSOEVER.
But there are a few cheats anyway.
1. Start a new tower. Then click on the Lobby tool WITHOUT
clicking anywhere else in the screen. If you do, you must
start a new tower because clicking anywhere else than you're
supposed to deactivates this cheat.
2. Scroll the screen down so that it shows the very, very
bottom of the screen. Scroll all the way to the left.
3. Click ONCE in the far bottom and left area. You should
double your starting funds from $2 million to $4 million.
There, but I don't really consider this a cheat. I say a
cheat is a cheat when you can get infinite funds if you
want. But here is another that does not relate to money.
1. Start a new tower without a Lobby.
2. Click on the Lobby tool.
3. Build a new Lobby on the ground floor, but while doing
so, hold down Control while you click to get a two-
story Lobby.
4. Likewise, hole down Control and Shift to get a three-
story Lobby.
While this is not very healthy for your funds (it costs a
lot), it also drastically reduces the amount of anger Sims go through
while waiting for an elevator in the ground floor Lobby.
This concludes my SimTower FAQ (Frequently Asked Question). I
hope that you have enjoyed it to its fullest extent, and that it has
somewhat helped you to become a better SimTower architect. I had fun
typing this FAQ, and will probably type more to come. Look for other
FAQs from me in the future, I love strategy/simulation games like
SimCity 2000, Theme Hospital, SimFarm, and games like that. Farewell,
my friends.
Hello, my name is Steve Novicki. I am a gigantic fan of Yoot
Saito's masterpiece SimTower, and I will be narrating this FAQ, which
took me approximately a full two days to write, so you better
appreciate it! Also, this FAQ is legally Copyright February 15, 2000
by Steve Novicki. Do not rip off of this FAQ, I can and will take
legal action against you, meaning that I will sue you and easily win.
With that boring crap said, let's get to the FAQ!
CONTENTS
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 - A SimTower Day's Schedule
2 - Tower Transportation
3 - Shops, Fast Food Places, and Other Places of Commerce
4 - Offices and Condos
5 - Hotels, Suites, and Housekeeping
6 - SimTower's Method of Evaluation
7 г When VIPs Come For a Visit
8 г Star Requirements
9 - And Of Course, Last But Certainly Not Least, Cheats
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 - The Time Schedule of a Normal Day (weekday) in SimTower
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Every building in SimTower starts and stops at a specific time,
as they do in real life. I have compiled a list of all of the
starting and stopping times that different buildings open and close.
5:00AM : Dawn.
6:30AM : Hotel guests begin to check out, continues until noon.
7:00AM : Garbage pickup.
9:00AM : Workday begins (Offices open.)
10:00AM : Shops and Fast Food open.
12:00PM - 1:00PM : Lunch hour.
1:00PM - 4:00PM : Movie runs in the theaters.
5:00PM : Offices begin to close.
Restaurants open.
Income from Party Halls.
5:00PM - 8:00PM : Movie runs in the theaters.
6:00PM : Dusk.
8:00PM : Movie Theaters close.
Income from Movie Theaters.
9:00PM : Shops and Fast Food close.
Income from Fast Food.
11:00PM : Restaurants close.
Income from Restaurants.
There you have it, a complete listing of a SimTower workday,
either the first or second weekday. It is always like this, no
exceptions. Also, I'm not sure, but I think that it's at 5:00PM that
your Hotel guests begin to check in, either five or 6:00PM. Check for
me, will ya?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
2 - Tower Transportation
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In SimTower, your transportation system MUST be completely
perfect and bug-free, or else it will crumble and fail when your
tower ages. Fortunately, I am here to help you achieve this :)
When you start out, you should have at least one elevator
spanning all of your floors, at the most, fifteen floors. This helps
ease congestion when your tower is older and more populated. Also,
keep in mind that your Sims can only change elevators ONCE PERT TRIP.
This means that if a Sim rides an Express Elevator up to floor sixty,
and wants to get to floor sixty-eight, he can change elevators only
once to get to floor sixty-eight. Keep his in mind when designing
your elevator system. Also, the Sims cannot change elevators at just
any old floor, they must ride up to a Sky Lobby and there they can
switch. Shafts cannot be placed over other objects like stairs,
escalators, and stuff like that, so be careful when planning them.
One last thing for elevators, the shafts cannot overlap when they
don't have at least eight floors of free space on either side. This
frustrated me many times, so keep it in mind. There is a maximum of
twenty-four elevator shafts allowed in a single tower.
Stairs are SimTower's most primitive mode of transportation.
However, they provide an excellent means of elevator congestion
relief, such as at lunch hour. With a few well-placed stairs, you can
alleviate almost half of your elevators' congestion. The Sims are
only willing to walk at the most four flights of stairs to get to a
certain destination, this is about the only rule to follow while
placing stairs. You can have a maximum of sixty-four total stairs and
escalators. They also cost a mere $5,000 per set of stairs, not that
much at all.
Escalators are special. They can only be used in commercial
areas, like shops, restaurants, fast food, etc., but can also be
placed in just blank floor sections. They, like stairs, don't cost
much at all, just a lot of commercial space to use them in. You can
have a maximum of sixty-four total stairs and escalators.
This concludes the Transportation section of my FAQ. I hope
that it has been most useful to you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
3 - Shops, Fast Food Places, and Other Places of Commerce
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Places of commerce are very important to your tower in the
manner of money and population. They all have set amounts of daily
income, like $-5,000, $0, and $5,000, and these are very important to
your tower's funds. They also boost your population to be able to
graduate to higher Star ratings.
Fast Food Places -- These are available at the beginning of the
game. They generate a pretty good source of income, however have a
very bad environment, but this isn't very important to you. If I were
you, I would only build three or four of these at the beginning just
to generate some income, but then stop building these when
restaurants come around. Fast Food places cost $100,000 each.
Restaurants -- Available at the three-Star rating. These are
VERY hard to achieve the Good and Very Good evaluation, mainly
because not that many people patronize these, they are all at the
Fast Foods instead :) Restaurants open at night, and usually lose
money unless they are far developed. Build most of these when you get
the chance, because they generate far more income than Fast Food
places and are all around better than Fast Food places, the only
downside to restaurants is their very large price.
11:00PM : Restaurants close.
Income from Restaurants.
There you have it, a complete listing of a SimTower workday,
either the first or second weekday. It is always like this, no
exceptions. Also, I'm not sure, but I think that it's at 5:00PM that
your Hotel guests begin to check in, either five or 6:00PM. Check for
me, will ya?
4 - Offices and Condos
Offices in SimTower, as in real life, are the primary building
block of any good skyscraper. They are pretty much self-sufficient,
but let's go over some basic facts about them, shall we?
1. Offices cost $40,000 each.
2. Offices require any kind of transportation, except
Escalators, for obvious reasons.
3. Offices fork over their rent on a quarterly basis.
4. Offices can hold a maximum of six workers.
5. They do not need to be placed in any specific area of
the tower.
6. They have three different rent rates.
The facts listed above should pretty much answer all of your
questions about Offices, but I'll go into some more detail. Each
Office forks over their rent promptly at 5:00AM every morning of the
first weekday (pretty different from real life, huh?) Offices start
to open at 9:00AM every weekday morning, and start to close at 5:00PM
every afternoon. But some workaholics leave their lights on well past
8:00PM. Also, you should never place Offices after 1:00PM on the
second weekday. They do not sell until the next weekday, therefore
cheating you out of a rent. The only times they do sell is on the
first weekday, 9:00AM - 12:59PM, and the same for the second weekday.
Last, since there is no limit to the amount of Offices you can have,
you could build only commercial areas the first five floors around
any Sky Lobby, and then use a mixture of Offices and Hotels to fill
up the rest of the space.
One last thing about Offices; they don't mind being next to
other Offices. Some places, like Hotels, get cranky if they're placed
next to a noisy place like an Office or a Restaurant; Offices don't
care one way or the other if they're next to another Office or place
that makes a lot of noise. It's just that Offices are the place that
is noisy so you should place an entire floor of just Offices to
ensure that people don't get cranky.
Condominiums (Condos) are different from other buildings in
SimTower; they do not generate a quarterly, daily, or yearly income.
Instead, when a condo sells, the money is forked over to you in one
large amount; there is no income. I think that this is kind of bad,
because it costs money to keep those condos in working condition. And
these figures add up fast in your account. Therefore, only place
condos when you're completely financially secure. Condos cost
anywhere from $40,000 - $200,000 each (please, don't make the mistake
of selling a Condo for half of its initial building cost!), and like
Offices, the price affects the happiness of the Condo's inhabitants.
If you're not careful, the happiness of its inhabitants deteriorates
due to an expensive price, so keep that in mind. And if you place a
Condo anytime during 9:00AM г 12:59PM on either of the two weekdays,
it sells almost immediately, so keep this in mind as well. I think
that's all there is on Condos.
5 г Hotels, Suites, and Housekeeping
Another form of excellent daily income are Hotels and Hotel
Suites. Both of these provide a very good source of daily income to
ease your budget (and, in the early beginning of all my towers, I use
this income to live upon) and live on sometimes.
There are two kinds of Hotels: Single Hotels and Double Hotels.
Single Hotels are just what they sound like: single hotel rooms. Same
for Double Hotel rooms, they are double hotel rooms. But double rooms
bring in more income with less complaining. Single hotels take up
less space, therefore fitting more in a given amount of space, but
double rooms take up a larger yet smaller amount of space, and have
more "bang for their buck". Single Hotels are available in the two-
Star rating, Double Hotels in the three-Star rating. These are both
adversely affected by noise from Offices, Restaurants, etc. and
simply will not put up with the noise. If you let the problem go on
too long, they will eventually pack up and boycott the rooms. Suites
are like Single Hotels, but much, much more luxurious, therefore more
expensive. But the Sims who stay in these Suites don't seem to mind.
If the transportation system is good, they like it. Also, VIPs who
come and stay in your tower only stay in Suites. (See more about VIPs
in section 7 г Dealing with VIPs.) All Hotels, Suites, included,
require some kind of transportation, in case you haven't already
guessed.
However, someone needs to clean up these dirty rooms after
people mess them up, and the perfect people to do so are the
Housekeeping staff. When you place a Housekeeping unit, you
automatically have six housekeeping people to tend to all of your
dirty Hotel rooms. They are crucial to your tower, because if you
leave your Hotel rooms dirty for more than three days, they become
infested with cockroaches, rendering the room useless and inhibiting
other people from staying in that room. Destroy cockroach-infested
rooms as quick as possible, because they spread horizontally to other
Hotel rooms, regardless if they're clean or not.
Getting back to Housekeeping, you need at least one if you have
Hotel rooms in your tower. They also require transportation in the
form of Service Elevators, a special kind of elevator available from
the three-Star rating and on. You will know if you have enough or not
by looking at the Map window under Hotel at five or six o'clock in
the evening. If there are any dirty rooms, you clearly do not have
enough Housekeeping staff. One last comment on Housekeeping: once you
place a unit, you cannot bulldoze or get rid of it. Period.
6 г SimTower's Method of Evaluation
One thing that I believe would be frustrating to new SimTower
players is the seemingly complicated method of evaluation the game
uses. I was building many different buildings and they were all
getting red (bad) evaluations. Why is this? I wondered. Well, I found
the answer from SimTower: The Official Strategy Guide from Prima
Publishing. Read on to find this out.
First of all, whenever you first build something, it has a Red
(bad) evaluation. Then, as the customers start coming there and
patronizing the place, its evaluation slowly increases. The highest
it can increase to is Business Is Very Good. This means that whoever
came to the store while there is a Good or Very Good evaluation will
be very pleased with the store. So pleased, in fact that the next
day, they will come back to that same store with a friend. If they
encounter no transportation problems, and get to the store while
there is a Good or Very Good evaluation, the same thing happens. For
instance, maybe you have just built a Men's Clothing shop. Its
current patronage is maybe three people, and it has a Red (bad)
evaluation. As people come and patronize the store, the evaluation
slowly builds up to Good, and the Very Good. The customers who
visited the shop when there was a Good or Very Good evaluation will
like the store so much, they will come back the next day and bring a
friend. So in other words, if you have a shop that is more than a few
days old and it still has constant Red (bad) evaluations, maybe you
should look into it more closely.
Offices are simpler. See, Sims hate to wait for anything. The
only thing in your tower that would make them wait is your elevator
system. Therefore, if an Office is suffering from a constant Red
(bad) evaluation, that means only one thing: poor transportation.
One rectification for this major problem is to personally name
one Sim from the Office that is suffering. Follow that Sim around
throughout the entire workday, or workdays if you have to. If he/she
encounters any elevator that makes him/her wait, that could possibly
be the problem, so fix it. Another way that Sims get mad and suffer
from Red (bad) evaluations is that maybe a bunch of Sims from the
same Office encounter a ad elevator, making them wait. If a bunch of
Sims get mad and turn red, the evaluation of the Office that they're
all from goes down very quickly. All Offices that have Red (bad)
evaluations for en extended period of time eventually boycott their
Office and seek another Office elsewhere.
7 г When VIPs Come For a Visit
When VIPs were coming for visits to my tower, more often than
not were they giving me bad evaluations. In case you do not know, you
must have gotten a good rating from the VIP who stays in your Hotel
Suites in order to graduate to a four-Star rating, then to five and
Tower.
VIPs come to your Tower once every nine years, giving you
chances to make up for your mistakes of the past. Your job is to make
their stay in your tower as comfortable and leisurely as possible.
Listed below are some strategies to accomplishing this.
1. When the VIP arrives, quickly scan the parking garage and
all elevators to see where he is, he's a bright yellow Sim.
2. Once you find him, pinpoint which elevator(s) he is going to
take.
3. After this, find out exactly which Hotel Suite he is going
to.
4. Once this is achieved, deactivate all elevator service to
all floors except the one where the Suite he is staying in
is located on.
5. Make sure that every, single, picky, little thing in your
tower that he might use has a perfect transportation system.
6. Pray.
Following these steps will almost guarantee you a successful
VIP visit. At 11:00AM promptly the next morning, he will depart your
tower. A message box will pop up on the screen, the box deciding your
fate of whether you can graduate to a four-Star tower or not.
8 г Star Requirements
In order to achieve certain Star ratings, you must meet certain
criteria to graduate to higher ratings. Listed below are the six Star
ratings possible of achieving, and exactly what you need to get them.
One Star г none
Two Stars г A minimum population of 300 people
Three Stars г Minimum population of 1,000 people
More than one Security office
Four Stars г Minimum population of 5,000 people
Recycling Center
Parking
Medical Center near ground floor Lobby
More than one Hotel Suite
Favorable rating from a VIP
Five Stars г Minimum population of 10,000 people
Metro Station placed
New Recycling and Medical demands met
TOWER г Minimum population of 15,000 people
Cathedral placed on 100th floor
There you have it, the complete criteria for graduating
to higher Star ratings.
9 г And Of Course, Last But Certainly Not Least, Cheats
So ya wanna cheat, do ya? Just keep in mind that with cheating,
you are not playing the game to its fullest extent, therefore not
getting your moneys' worth out of the game. But if you're like me and
get the game's fullest amount of fun out of using cheat codes, this
section is for you, my friend!
NOTE: THERE ARE NO EASTER EGGS FOR SIMTOWER. NONE WHATSOEVER.
But there are a few cheats anyway.
1. Start a new tower. Then click on the Lobby tool WITHOUT
clicking anywhere else in the screen. If you do, you must
start a new tower because clicking anywhere else than you're
supposed to deactivates this cheat.
2. Scroll the screen down so that it shows the very, very
bottom of the screen. Scroll all the way to the left.
3. Click ONCE in the far bottom and left area. You should
double your starting funds from $2 million to $4 million.
There, but I don't really consider this a cheat. I say a
cheat is a cheat when you can get infinite funds if you
want. But here is another that does not relate to money.
1. Start a new tower without a Lobby.
2. Click on the Lobby tool.
3. Build a new Lobby on the ground floor, but while doing
so, hold down Control while you click to get a two-
story Lobby.
4. Likewise, hole down Control and Shift to get a three-
story Lobby.
While this is not very healthy for your funds (it costs a
lot), it also drastically reduces the amount of anger Sims go through
while waiting for an elevator in the ground floor Lobby.
This concludes my SimTower FAQ (Frequently Asked Question). I
hope that you have enjoyed it to its fullest extent, and that it has
somewhat helped you to become a better SimTower architect. I had fun
typing this FAQ, and will probably type more to come. Look for other
FAQs from me in the future, I love strategy/simulation games like
SimCity 2000, Theme Hospital, SimFarm, and games like that. Farewell,
my friends.