Candor City

Candor City: The Big Time. (A lore inspired city) by Shadowstar Size: 6x9 Population: 1372 Requirements: None

Description: Bright Lights, Big City. This is where dreams are made, or ruined. Beneath the polished streets and shining facade lies a seedy underbelly of greed and corruption. Can you make it big without becoming a tool of the corps? Or will you leech off the rich in pursuit of a misguided morality? Originally inspired by the title screen artwork for Shadows of Doubt. Stand outside of City Hall facing south toward the commercial towers to see a reasonable facsimile of the title screen.

Lore: Home of the Candor News Network (at least conceptually), This city is steeped in lore. Several major corporations in the UAS have a presence here, with Starch Kola having the largest annex next to Candor itself, and El-Gen prominent throughout the strip with its many sync clinics. Most of the action happens around the central Candor Strip, a high-wealth boardwalk of capitalistic decadence featuring businesses of all kinds and the appetites to match. Here the wealthy display the trophies of their success for all to see, tempting both fortune seekers and thieves of ill intent. Rival corporations have turned this glitzy corridor into a silent warzone, executing their endless plots against one another, still careful to avoid the gaze of the Starch Kola Enforcers, which grows ever more complacent and lazy with every passing year. Soon, there may be nothing to stop them from driving the city to full scale anarchy, and already the cracks have begun to show. Now Candor City is at a turning point. Will it survive the coming strife, or succumb to the chaos that will ensue in the wake of the cutthroat tactics used by these new corporations that gaze upon the ivory towers with jealous eyes?

Performance Expectation: With a population over 1000, you may experience some performance issues, though I have attempted to minimize these as much as possible by clustering businesses along a few major routes and simplifying pathing, which can lead to road congestion. This can be both good (easier to find people), or bad (more people to navigate around when traveling). So far I think it works.

Travel Times: Most of the action will be clustered around the central Candor Strip, but as a very large city there will still be some travel time on occasion. It is a medium-difficulty city with good opportunities mixed in with some hopefully unique challenges.

Layout and Background: This city has a fairly straightforward layout. The central Candor Strip forms the main pathway through the city, though is often congested. Alternate routes exist but for easy access to shops and other venues, it's recommended to stick to the Strip, which is also relatively safe from muggers. A major district is Candor East, originally a high wealth district for residents who wanted to avoid the hustle and bustle of the strip. It's mostly walled off from the rest of the city, but has access on the south and east oceanside routes. The "Strip to Candor East Main Route" is, by extension, also one of the most congested routes in the city because of this. While Candor East is somewhat quieter than the strip, it is still a popular area with several offices and upscale businesses in operation. Just west of the strip is Krueger Center, a multiple-block section of the city annexed by Starch Kola. There you will find the upscale Starch Tower, Krueger Memorial Tower, and Park Place. Starch Tower is one of the few designated Echelon buildings in the UAS, with nearly all of its apartments classified as Echelon level habitations, except for the service habitations on the lower levels. It is quite distinctive, with its bright red decor and polished floors, though recent management problems have begun to erode the opulent veneer. The south end of the Strip is dominated by the colossal Candor Building, headquarters of the Candor News Network, and the University Tower, once a beating heart of technological innovation in the UAS, now mainly given over to dead-end jobbers enslaved by student loans. South of the Strip is the Candor Grande hotel, which once catered to the city's tourism industry and now stands as a pale reminder of the city's past. Across from the hotel are the Hostel buildings, built to support incoming students back when the University was popular enough that immigration overtaxed the capacity of the hotel. These buildings are populated by a mix of citizens of varying wealth levels, though many are beginning to migrate to the northside. Northside is the main industrial section of the city and was built over the city's old Japantown district when it was broken up into multiple smaller districts (and sank). Businesses here range from wealthy to poor, and cheap housing is available for those struggling to make ends meet, though conditions are often unhealthy and difficult. Candor City is not an industrial producer, and mainly relies on imports. The facilities in Northside are primarily devoted to processing imported goods for distribution through the rest of the city, as well as the export of waste products. Despite this, there are a few laboratories engaged in research and development, hoping to find ways to prevent an even darker future from falling upon the city. The most notable of these is Argon Labs, which hosts a number of small, independent lab facilities dedicated to a brighter future. A prominent feature of the Northside is the Gekokujo Plaza, home to one of the city's most popular diners. It caters to the working-class clientele of the city; those not wealthy enough to partake of the city's more upscale services. It was once believed that a trip to Gekokujo could give even the most desperate man enough hope and strength to reach the top. Sadly, that dream is as faded as the wallpaper these days. Still, the diner does good business and remains in operation thanks to the sustained level of desperation amongst the workers of the city.

Notes: This is my second city. I used feedback from my first city (Arcadia) in its creation. This one does not require any mods (as far as I am aware), and should work in vanilla or any modpack you want, having been made using only the Density mod and the ExtraCityEdit mod.