No Office Demand Fix

No Office Demand Fix is a Cities: Skylines II mod with shipped office fixes plus a separate experimental software-troubleshooting toolset:

• Phantom Vacancy: occupied properties that are still counted as market listings
• Office AI chunk iteration: office stock consumption and virtual export should not stop at the first low-stock office in a chunk
• office-resource / software instability: experimental import seller and buyer fallbacks plus optional diagnostics for remaining virtual-resource stalls

The current release ships the confirmed Signature phantom-vacancy fix and an always-on office AI hotfix, and also includes enabled-by-default experimental software import seller and buyer fallbacks. Diagnostics remain available for troubleshooting but are disabled by default. Optional coarse performance telemetry is also available for before/after steady-state and stall comparisons and is disabled by default. It keeps the broader software track under investigation.

This release also restores the older 2x office resource-demand baseline with a direct Harmony patch instead of keeping the newer vanilla 3x multiplier, so office-demand comparisons remain compatible with earlier evidence gathered before that vanilla change.

Current Release

What the current code does:

• fixes stale PropertyOnMarket and PropertyToBeOnMarket state on occupied Signature office and industrial properties before demand and property search evaluate them
• hotfixes the vanilla office AI loop so one low-stock office no longer prevents later offices in the same chunk from consuming output and queuing virtual exports
• restores the pre-hotfix office demand baseline for office resources with a direct Harmony patch, so office-demand comparisons stay on the older 2x basis rather than vanilla's newer 3x
• includes an experimental Harmony-based outside-connection virtual seller correction that appends active outside connections reporting stock for office virtual-resource imports when the vanilla seller pass filtered them out because the prefab storage mask does not list that virtual resource
• includes an experimental virtual office buyer timing correction that adds a narrow post-vanilla fallback buyer for zero-weight office inputs when a company still has no buyer, path, trip, or current-trading state
• keeps diagnostics available for office demand, phantom vacancy, and software producer/consumer office state when you turn them on for troubleshooting
• retires the earlier office-resource storage patch experiment because zero-weight office resources do not fit the current vanilla virtual-resource architecture

What it does not claim:

• it is not a proven fix for every No Office Demand case
• broader software-related office/resource stalls are still under investigation and are not presented as a confirmed fix
• non-signature phantom vacancy is still monitored, not ruled out

Settings

Current defaults from Setting.cs:

Setting	Default	Purpose
EnablePhantomVacancyFix	true	Enables the shipped guard that removes stale market state from occupied Signature office and industrial properties. Applies immediately to future simulation ticks; disabling it stops future corrections but does not restore already cleaned-up market state.
EnableOutsideConnectionVirtualSellerFix	true	Enables the default experimental software import seller fallback. Takes effect on the next game launch. It only appends active outside connections that already report stock for the requested office virtual-resource import but were filtered out by the prefab storage mask, and it does not change cargo or storage definitions.
EnableVirtualOfficeResourceBuyerFix	true	Enables the default experimental software import buyer fallback. It adds a narrow fallback ResourceBuyer for zero-weight office inputs such as Software when a company is below the low-stock threshold but still has no buyer/path/trip/current-trading state.
EnableOfficeDemandDirectPatch	true	Restores the pre-1.5.6f1 office demand baseline with the shipped direct Harmony patch. Keep it on for the current release unless you are intentionally comparing against the newer vanilla 3x baseline.
EnableDemandDiagnostics	false	Logs office-demand, phantom-vacancy, and software office-state details when the simulation looks suspicious. Disabled by default; turn it on for troubleshooting, or leave it off for quieter logs.
DiagnosticsSamplesPerDay	2	Sets how many scheduled diagnostic samples run per displayed in-game day while diagnostics are enabled. Higher values produce denser logs.
CaptureStableEvidence	false	Keeps scheduled software diagnostics running even when the city looks stable. Use it only when you want baseline logs for troubleshooting.
VerboseLogging	false	Adds noisier correction traces and supplemental office-trade detail lines, and forces diagnostics output at the configured cadence while it is on. Use it only when you want detailed troubleshooting logs.
EnablePerformanceTelemetry	false	Captures coarse, render-aligned performance summaries and stall events, then writes perf_summary.csv and perf_stalls.csv when the current session ends. Keep it off unless you are intentionally measuring performance.
PerformanceTelemetrySamplingIntervalSec	1.0	Controls the coarse render-aligned summary window for performance telemetry in seconds. Lower values produce denser CSV output and slightly more telemetry overhead.
PerformanceTelemetryStallThresholdMs	250	Defines the render-aligned frame-latency threshold used to start and end coarse stall-event tracking.

Implementation

• Signature phantom-vacancy fix: SignaturePropertyMarketGuardSystem.cs
• office AI hotfix: OfficeAIHotfixPatch.cs, OfficeAIHotfixSystem.cs
• office demand direct patch: IndustrialDemandOfficeBaselinePatch.cs
• outside-connection virtual seller patch: OutsideConnectionVirtualSellerFixPatch.cs
• virtual office buyer cadence fix: VirtualOfficeResourceBuyerFixSystem.cs
• diagnostics: OfficeDemandDiagnosticsSystem.cs
• performance telemetry: PerformanceTelemetrySystem.cs, PerformanceTelemetryCollector.cs

Current Status

The safest repository-facing summary of the current release is:

• confirmed fix for the reproduced Signature phantom-vacancy symptom
• confirmed fix for the office AI chunk-iteration abort on low stock
• shipped comparability rollback for the pre-hotfix office demand baseline via a direct Harmony patch
• default experimental software import seller and buyer fallbacks; diagnostics remain available but disabled by default
• retired office-resource storage patch experiment
• broader software-related office/resource stalls remain under investigation
• office-demand/global-sales undercount remains a separate follow-up line rather than part of the current runtime corrections

Current evidence does not support treating software producer or consumer distress as direct proof of lower office demand by itself. The software path remains investigational. The experimental settings only address a narrow outside-connection seller fallback and a narrow buyer-timing gap; they do not reintroduce cargo or storage physicalization.

Non-Goals

• faking office demand directly
• blanket vacancy overrides across every property type
• pushing zero-weight office resources through cargo/storage definitions as if they were physical goods
• claiming the software track is solved without stronger evidence

Planning And Tracking

Active work is tracked in the public project board NoOfficeDemandFix Tracker. For the operating rules behind that board, start with MAINTAINING.md.

Reporting And Telemetry

For coarse performance comparisons, start with PERF_REPORTING.md. Turn on EnablePerformanceTelemetry, and keep PerformanceTelemetrySamplingIntervalSec and PerformanceTelemetryStallThresholdMs the same across a direct baseline / comparison pair.

If you want to submit a raw diagnostics log for maintainer triage or later promotion into a normalized evidence issue, start with LOG_REPORTING.md. Turn on EnableDemandDiagnostics first, because diagnostics are not enabled by default in the current release.

Contributor And Maintainer Docs

• Contributor workflow: CONTRIBUTING.md
• Maintainer and release workflow: MAINTAINING.md
• Performance telemetry reporting: PERF_REPORTING.md
• Software evidence schema: .github/software-evidence-schema.md
• Software investigation workflow: .github/software-investigation-workflow.md
• Software evidence issue form: .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/software_evidence.yml
• Software investigation issue form: .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/software_investigation.yml