Cities: Skylines II – Service Building Upgrades

Upgrades

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In Cities: Skylines II each city service building (with few exceptions) is upgradeable, extending its operations to service more citizens and answer different needs of the citizens.

Upgrades can add new functionality or expand the existing functionalities of a service building. For example, you can place an ambulance depot or an extension wing to a Medical Clinic to add more ambulances and patient capacity.

Similarly, placing an extension wing to an Elementary School increases its student capacity while placing a Children’s Clinic or a Playground improves student Health and Well-being, respectively, both adding new effects to the Elementary School.

A power plant can have additional turbines built, increasing the electricity output, an exhaust filter added to decrease the amount of air pollution created by the power plant, or additional storage space for storing fuel. Upgrades come in many forms and improve service buildings in many different ways.

It is worth noting that adding upgrades costs money and in most cases, the upgrades also add to the building’s upkeep cost. It may not always be beneficial to build all upgrades for a building but instead to consider the needs of the city and its citizens.

Is the exhaust filter necessary for that power plant which is already downwind from the city and the air pollution spreads away from the residential areas? Maybe not. But if the power plant is located near the city center and was built in the early days of the city, the exhaust filter might be exactly what the plant needs.

It can continue to operate closer to the city without causing too much harm with its air pollution. If the school is already full of students but more eligible citizens are in the city, is it better to upgrade the school with additional student capacity or build an entirely new school in another part of the city?

This depends on where the students are located as providing them with nearby facilities cuts travel time and contributes less to traffic congestion.

Upgrade Types

Service upgrades are divided into three categories: Operational, Extensions, and Sub-buildings.

• Operational upgrades add functional and statistical changes to the building without changing its looks. These can be bandwidth increases for the Radio Mast, exhaust filters installed in a Coal Power Plant, or a dispatch center built inside the Taxi Depot.
• Extensions are visible upgrades connected directly to the main building, usually increasing the building’s capacity for vehicles, output, range, or the number of citizens being serviced. These include, among other things, extension wings for medical facilities and schools providing more patient and student capacity, respectively, garages for various services increasing the size of their service vehicle fleet and additional turbines for power plants increasing their electricity output and fuel consumption. Extensions have a fixed position on the building lot and fit inside the existing lot size.
• Sub-buildings are separate buildings attached to the service building’s existing lot. They can increase, for example, the fuel storage capacity of power plants or add new functionality to a building, such as the aforementioned Children’s Clinic and Playground upgrades for the Elementary School. Sub-buildings naturally require additional space to be built so it is important to take into consideration the placement of the service building and make sure that there is enough free space around them for those potential sub-buildings added in the future!