The other posts in this first batch are about things that are in the game now. This one isn't. It's what I'm starting on next, so treat all of it as planned and not promised. If something changes when I build it, I'll say so here.
Town Plans
Right now the game has too many ways to progress. There are population milestones, then research for each era (26 projects, done in order), then a set of graduate programmes, plus landmarks, district levels and achievements on the side. Each one made sense when I added it. Together they're a lot to keep in your head, and someone playing an early build told me that late in a big city they'd simply run out of things to aim for.
So research and the graduate programmes are being folded into one tree called Town Plans. It has seven branches, which are Homes, Industry and Materials, Transport, Utilities and Green, Services and Culture, Tourism, and Region. There are about 70 plans in it once the new services below are counted, and you can get all of them in one city. The choice is what order you take them in, not which ones you give up.
Milestones stay as the backbone and pay out Ideas, which is what plans cost. Landmarks, district levels, Voxies' requests and achievements pay Ideas too, so the things you do anyway feed into it. The everyday basics stay on the milestones, so nothing you have today gets locked behind a plan.
Services round the corner
The game has the big civic buildings, like hospitals, the university, the stadium and a launch pad. What it's missing is the small stuff a real neighbourhood has. The plan is 29 new services, things like a playground, allotments, a rain garden, a bike dock, a post office, a fire post and a police post. A few will be small enough to fit on a single tile, including the verges, so the odd leftover plot at the end of a street finally has a use.
Homes at levels 4 and 5 will want places nearby, a mix of these within a short walk. It will only slow growth down, never stop it. Grumpy towns aren't cosy.
Where the rubbish goes
This is the one I'm most pleased to be fixing. At the moment, bin lorries drive round your town and really do collect the rubbish. Then they get back to the depot and it disappears.
In the plan, a landfill fills up, and when it's full you can cap it and turn it into a park on a hill. Recycling gives you back materials. Compost feeds the green spaces. There'll be a transfer station, energy from waste, and a way to send it away by rail.
While looking into this I found that the recycling centre's description said it earned you money. It never did. It now says what it really does, which is sort the waste with far less mess around it than a landfill.
And the rest of the materials work
The deposits post covers what's been done there. What's left is the screens that tell you what each quarter of a map is rich in, and a way to stake a mining claim in a quarter you haven't settled yet.
No dates, because I'd only be guessing. The devlog will say when each bit lands.