\SimTower: The Phantom Horror/ Made by Mental.Man@excite.com (Now known as IcePotato) Version 1.6 Finished 9/20/00 0. What's New! 1. Introduction 2. Facilities and What They Do 3. Walkthrough 4. Emergencies and Special Events 5. The Non-Existent Cheats 6. Notes and Stuff 7. Credits What's New! This version has: Corrected my E-Mail Made some extremely minor changes in section 7 and 3 Introduction SimTower is a very good, addictive game (at least, until you get to 4 stars). It is also frustrating, hard and confusing. This walkthrough will get you through the worst and best of this game (mainly worst). However, this is not supposed to be used as an alternative help guide. In fact, before you start the game, I recommend reading the /entire\ help file. This explains a lot, but not everything. Also, try fooling around with the game before you read this, because I am NOT going to go into detail over every little thing. This is my first walkthrough. I chose an easy, stupid game that no one has done before because this is my first walkthrough. So now you know why this is so bad. Facilities and What They Do Lobby- Costs $5,000 per section plus maintenance. This is the foundation of your building. It can be placed every 15 floors, and it is the only place where your residents will change elevators. Offices and fast food places need to be close to here. Empty Floor- Costs $500 per section. Lets you put in an empty floor. If you put a facility on a section without an empty floor, you will be charged for constructing an empty floor Stairs- Costs $5,000 each. Can be used instead of elevator, but residents will only use up to four sets of them. Best if connected to Lobby. Standard Elevators- Cost$200,000 a shaft, $80,000 a car, plus maintenance. Basic method of transportation. Can cover up to 30 floors. Only takes residents, visitors and workers. Office- Costs $40,000 each. Brings in population on weekdays, income, and stress. Very useful in the beginning. Can adjust rent. Fast Food Place- Causes very little stress, brings in very little population, makes very little money. Only useful in the beginning. Condo- Costs $80,000 each. Major source of population, brings in a little money at first. Must be near elevator. Service Elevator- Used by housekeeping. Must be used if housekeeping is not on same floor as hotel rooms, or if there is a recycling center. Single Hotel Room- Costs $20,000 each. Brings in money and one person. Very useful during two-star period. Security- Costs $100,000 plus maintenance. Finds bombs and fights fires. Required for three stars. Housekeeping- Costs $50,000 plus maintenance. Keeps hotel rooms and suites clean. Escalator- Costs $20,000 plus maintenance. Used more than stairs. Can only be placed in empty floors or commercial spaces. Residents will only use seven of these to get to a site. Express Elevator- Costs $400,000 shaft, $150,000 car plus maintenance. Goes to every 15 floors plus all underground floors. Restaurant- Costs $200,000 each. Brings in some population and money. Mainly used during dinner hours Retail Shop- Costs $100,000 each. Rent is adjustable. Brings in some population and money. Movie Theater- Costs $500,000 each plus movie changes. Brings in some money and population. Party Hall- Costs $100,000 each. Brings in population and money. Twin Hotel Room- Costs $50,000 each. Brings in money and two people. Better than one room because it brings in more money and people for less cleaning Hotel Suite- Costs $100,000 each. Holds two people and must have one parking space per suite. VIP's only stay in suite. Required for four stars. Medical Center- Costs $500,000 each. Used by office workers. Necessary for four stars. Recycling Center- Costs $500,000 plus maintenance. Necessary for four stars Parking Spot- Costs $3,000 each. Needs Parking Ramp. Office and Hotel Suits need these. Parking Ramp/Gate- Costs $50,000 each plus maintenance. Needed for parking spaces. Metro Station- Costs $1,000,000 plus maintenance. Needed for five stars. Brings people to your tower. Cathedral- Can only be put on a 100-story, five star building. Needed for "Tower" rating. Walkthrough Starting out: How to construct, double your funds, and get a decent population! Doubling Your Funds: When you first start out, you have money, one star and a really fast clock. Slow down the clock by clicking on "Options" then "Fast Mode". Now, go to the absolute bottom-left of the screen. Click on the "Lobby" button on your toolbar, and try to build a lobby. Your funds automatically double! Now, build a lobby by clicking on a spot on the ground. Once you have done this, go and build a minimum of one underground fast food place, and at least one story of offices. Use stairs to connect your offices, lobby, and fast food place. Remember, your occupants only want to climb FOUR sets of stairs to get to their destination. This means that you should only start out with one basement level, one lobby, and a maximum of 2 stories of offices (which, by the way, are your major sources of income. and stress for the first star). If you leave the tower minimized, it still runs. This means that you can start up your computer, load your tower, and leave it minimized the rest of the day while you work! Since no one has heard of overtime in SimTower, no Sim works on the weekends (signified by the red WE in the info bar. You know, the one with the star on it!), which means that on a rainy weekday, more people come to your caf‚ than on a sunny weekend! You can alter this by adding a floor of condos, which means you have to add an elevator, which costs money every quarter, not to mention the construction costs! (Note: People only get mildly stressed when they take the stairs, but it normally doesn't get out of hand.) Getting Your Stars: How to Get More Facilities! To get two stars, you need a population of 300 people. Easy, right? Nope. It is a complicated thing, and you do NOT get two stars just by slapping on another 15 floors with condos (which are your major source of population, but don't get you any money after someone buys them). Instead, you need to go through a long and rigorous process involving elevators, floors, and the fast mode function. First, you need to get your first four floors established. Then, you need to get your elevator system working by fooling around in the control panel, working towards eliminating stress. After this is done, you need to add floor by floor of condos ONLY! Mixing condos, offices, and fast food places on the same floor is generally a bad idea because everyone complains about the noise level unless you have lots of space between them. Also, try not to get your tower 30 stories high before you even get two stars, because it is better to build out instead of up, even though it means more elevators, because it generally reduces stress. Once you get to a lot of floors of condos and offices that are all near the lobby, and an elevator shaft, you may find people are getting stressed (turning pink or red), or your elevators have big fats "F"s on them most of the time (they are full). This means that you should add another car in your shaft. Before you add that last condo to get a population of 300, remember that your population ebbs and flows. This may make that last condo unnecessary. Two Stars! What Now? (To Get Three Stars) Well, by now you should have 300 population, a couple floors of offices, a fast food place, two or more elevator cars, and lots of condos. Now, you can add security, service elevators, a single hotel room, and housekeeping. Start off by adding one security on the bottom, middle, and top floors of your building. Now, put in housekeeping and a bunch of hotel rooms. If the last two are not on the same floor, connect them with a service elevator. Add a separate shaft so guests don't have to use a busy elevator. When the rooms are finally bringing in cash, check the finance window to make sure that they make more money than Housekeeping spends! Remember, Housekeeping can support up to 6 floors of hotels, as long as the hotels are fairly close to Housekeeping. Once again, if people are stressed out waiting for the "lift" (as they call it in Great Britain), add a new car or shaft. Keep on expanding! To get to the big three, you need at least two security offices, and a population of 1,000. Ouch! Don't worry, though: just add lots of condos and hotels. It will bring up your population. Still, your tower is going to go through some drastic changes. Get all of your elevators and make them go up to your highest level. Add shafts if necessary. Add as many condos as you can, but don't get another cluster of hotel rooms just yet. Also, don't worry about evaluation unless it is red. Then, you wait until they move out and lower the price on the condo. When terrorists loom, you generally want to find the bomb. Yes, the bomb can explode, but the ransom is much larger than the repair costs (probably). If your tower is the maximum width, you probably want to pay him, though, because unless the bomb is on the right side of the tower, your security will never get there on time. If your population is around 600-800, it is time for another cluster of hotels! Place the hotels on the 3rd through 8th floors so you can use stairs to get to some of them, and place the Housekeeping on the 2nd with some more offices and stairs. Make sure the offices are not on the same floor as condos or hotels! Three Stars = Trouble! Three Stars: The messiest, most unrefined part of the game. One star was easy. Two stars were challenging. Three is a complete disaster. By now, all of your space has run out. You people are unhappy, and your elevator/escalator strategy is horrible. Whatever you do, don't blame me! To get 4 stars you need a population of 5000, medical and recycling needs met, and a favorable VIP rating. First, you should get one hotel suite on the second floor. Give it its own elevator and housekeeping. Add at least one parking spot per suite. When the VIP comes, watch his evaluation very carefully. If it is yellow or red, lower the price of his room. That takes care of one requirement for 4 stars (favorable VIP rating). (Note: If your other single hotel rooms have a good elevator system, and they are clean when the guests arrive [HA!!!], you do not need to isolate your suite). Now, all you need to do is add on about 2,500 condos (seriously) and have at least two medical and recycling centers. This may sound easy, but it isn't. All your tenants get PO'ed at you and move out. After they move, lower the price so others can move in. Add about two movie theaters and one party hall. And here's one final tip: Screw money. You are going to lose so much it won't be funny. So forget about it! 4 Stars = Run Away Screaming 4 stars should not happen. Your entire hotel is shunned, but people still stay. This is pretty hard. Add a metro station (Yes, it costs money but it brings tons of people to your tower. And you need it to get 5 stars.) Get 10,000 people. You will need every square pixel of space for this physical improbability, but it isn't really worth it. This is where the game becomes a nightmare, because of the billions of screaming tenants and unhappy residents. Just ignore them. 5 Stars=Shoot me now. This is it. No, it's not the end of the game. Maxis wants to brainwash you into playing a decent game like SimCity 3000 by addicting you to a horrible, old game. Unfortunately, if you are playing this, you cannot walk away from this for more than a day, so get 15,000 people and a Cathedral. Than you get a rating of "Tower". Whoopee. Emergencies and Special Events Fires: The most dangerous thing in existence. Fires eat away at your facilities, and there are only two ways to stop them: The quick, expensive way or the slow, cheap way. The quick way is to call in the copter for $500000. It works, but it doesn't get there in time to save the first two buildings that burn down. The slow way is to wait until Security comes. It works, but it probably won't save the floor that is burning. Bombs: Psychopathic terrorists like to call you up and ask for 2-30000 bucks. The catch? If you don't pay them, they will nicely start up a timed bomb. Your Security will try to find the bomb. If you have a huge tower that is the maximum length and width and stuff, you will probably want to shove the money down their throats. Otherwise, your Security will probably find the bomb in time. It helps, though, if your security is spread out so you don't have 5 rent-a-cops going along the same floor. VIP Visits: See the 3 Stars Section Santa Clause: As far as I can tell, this does nothing. Santa shows up. Whoopee. Maybe he takes all those grumpy tenants and throws them out the window? The Non-Existent Cheats What has Maxis done!?!? Contrary to almost all of their games, there are no decent cheats for this game! There is only one, and it lets you start out with 400000 instead of 200000 bucks. See the Walkthrough section Notes and Stuff Bulldozing is free. When condos are bulldozed or the residents move out, the money you have made is subtracted from your account. Stay on one or two stars or a while to build up money. Don't put all of your security on the same floor. Don't be afraid to start over. Try everything! Limits and Restrictions: 24 elevator shafts per tower, 8 cars per shaft; 64 total stairs and escalators; 512 parking spaces, restaurants, shops, fast food places; 10 medical centers and security; 16 theaters and party halls, one metro station and cathedral. Note: Don't try to max out everything until much later in the game Credits Written by me( mental.man). Maxis made SimTower. GameFaqs.com and some other people posted it. Whoopee. My e-mail is IcePotato85@hotmail.com. If you hate this, let me know. If you have anything that I didn't mention, let me know. If you like this game or you work for Maxis, don't let me know. This document copyright Ice Potato Corp.- Better Than The Ones You Find in the Grocery Store! Don't reproduce any part of this without my permission- This Means YOU!!!