Elevators

Elevators are the main method of transportation up and down levels in a tower. They are the second-most preferred method of transit after escalators. Sims will queue up at an elevator on their floor to travel to their desired destination. The longer a sim has to wait, the higher their stress level will be. If sims in your tower become too stressed, they will move out. This makes an efficient use elevators paramount when building a successful tower. Elevators range in capacity, price, and upkeep cost based on the type of elevator.

Function and Control
Each elevator car in an elevator shaft has a designated home level. This is the level the elevator waits on when it is not responding to a call by a sim. Multiple cars can share the same home level. When a sim calls the elevator, the elevators in the shaft will first look for any elevators that are currently moving in the direction the sim desires to go. If a moving elevator is within the number of levels set in the "Waiting Car Response" setting, then a new elevator will not respond. Otherwise, a new car will be dispatched. When an elevator arrives at a level and loads sims, it will wait for a number of seconds set in the "Standard Floor Departure" setting before departing. Any new sim that arrives in this time frame will be loaded, until no sim arrives in that window of time. Then the car will depart.

The elevator settings can be accessed by using the Query tool on an elevator shaft. The top of the grid determines whether the elevator is on a weekday (WD) schedule, or a weekend (WE) schedule. Below that, there are 6 individual time frames during the day, with the current time frame selected. A grid will display all levels serviced by the shaft, as well as all cars in the shaft, what action is being taken, and what their home floor is. "Waiting Car Response" sets the maximum number of floors a car moving in the shaft can be to a waiting sim before a new car is deployed. "Standard Floor Departure" sets the minimum number of game seconds a car will wait after picking up a sim before departing. These two settings are unique to each WD and WE time frame, and all elevator settings are unique per elevator shaft.

Standard Elevator
This is the first elevator available. It will be the most prevalent method of travel within floors between lobbies. Standard elevators can service any level from B10 to 100, but it is not recommended that any given standard elevator shaft services more than 15 levels (1-14, 15-29, 30-44, etc). When operating an elevator within 15 floors, it is recommended to set "Waiting Car Response" to 1 and "Standard Floor Departure" to 30 for each time frame in both WD and WE schedules. Setting the minimum number of floors for "Waiting Car Response" will ensure that most empty elevators will respond to call from a new level, and setting the "Standard Floor Departure" to the second minimum will provide a proper balance between waiting time vs. number of sims taken.

Express Elevator
This elevator becomes available once a player reaches a 3-Star Rating. It travels the fastest and has the largest capacity of all three elevators. However, it can only transit sims to every 15th level (1, 15, 30, 45, etc.) as well as down to all sub-levels. Due to the high cost of construction and maintenance and the high amount of use, it is recommended to only use express elevators to service parking, the lobby, and one of the remaining skylobbies. For example, the first express elevator shaft built will service the parking level, level 1, and level 15. The second express elevator shaft will service the parking level, level 1, and level 30, but not level 15. When splitting up elevator use in this way, the only sims that use any given express elevator will only be travelling to locations that can be reached from the skylobby it is servicing. Setting "Standard Floor Departure" to 30 works in the same way as it does for standard elevators. Since express elevators only stop every 15 levels, the "Waiting Car Response" setting can be left on the default value.

Service Elevator
This elevator becomes available once a player reaches a 2-Star Rating. Only housekeepers can use these elevators, so sims will never queue up at them, and they won't be counted as a legitimate path for sims to transit. Due to the low amount of use these elevators have compared to others, it is often financially beneficial to opt to place housekeeping on each floor of hotel rooms, instead of relying on service elevators to transport them between levels.

Restrictions
A tower can only have a combined total of 24 elevator shafts, including service elevators. Each shaft can only hold a maximum of 8 cars. Express elevators will only travel to every 15th level, as well as all sub-levels.