THIS THREAD HAS BEEN PINNED TO AVOID CONFUSION due to new "mechanic" (approach is the better word). of connections. Some buildings will have "conflicting connections" (= in the same place) - official term is MEC aka Mutually exclusive connection. This will help many players to optimalise some layouts (conveyors etc) while still keep the number of buildings in bottom menu unchanged.

It passed the internal test without issues, now it will come to beta. It will confuse some players for sure, but after the initial phase we believe things will settle down pretty naturally. In this thread you can find more information as well a space for direct feedback to authors of the changes :)

Please be polite. Critique is allowed, praise is welcome, rudeness and personal attacks will be removed according to policy of the forums :)
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ORGINAL POST STARTING HERE
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Hi, everyone,
whoever wants to try these changes, feel free to download current version from my googledisc. Link in video description bellow, as non-steam links are pretty restricted here.

Over last few months we have been perfecting building connectivity of buildings based on our UX. You can see the result in video bellow (9 minutes long). This thread is a written summary of proposed changes in detail. Feel free to comment and offer adjustments (or simply agree) if you want :)
https://youtu.be/ZfavKdeq29E

List of buildings with more/improved pathways connections. Pathing inside building included (people are not disappearing into walls)

Multiple of these buildings have more pathways then needed to simply allow cleaner grid snapping of paths (no more diagonal connections)

• Big prison (+4)
  
• Small courthouse (+1)
  
• Technical university (+2)
  
• Big orphanage (+2)
  
• Small firestation (3 moved, +1 added)
  
• Medium Firestation (+6)
  
• Hospital (medium) (+2)
  
• Cinema (3 moved a little for grid)
  
• SNP Museum (+4)
  
• Beach bar (all 4 moved, +1 added)
  
• Brick houses for 110 workers (87% quality)
  
• Big heating plant (+3)
  
• Vanilla L-shaped bus stations (+2 / +4)
  
• Big bus station (+1)
  
• Lookout tower (+1)
  
• Lookout tower 2 (+2, had none)
  
• ZOO (+3, had none)
  
• All vanilla monuments added alternative side connection
  
• Logging camp (+4)
  
• Lumber mill (+2)
  
• Gravel processing plant (+2)
  
• Gravel recycling (+1, also +1 road entrance)
  
• Asphalt plant (+2)
  
• Concrete plant (+2)
  
• Brickworks (+2)
  
• Coal mine (+2)
  
• Coal processing (+4)
  
• Iron mine (+2)
  
• Iron processing (+4)
  
• Small Police station (+2, disabled heating)

Some buildings you need to build via road connection despite there being no need for it - path would suffice. These buildings got added pathway connection to the same coordinates as road connection, enabeling you to CHOOSE which type you´d prefer. COs are fine with it (as they always were, old vanilla HQ prefabs are having road and path connections for ages and neither emergency, nor construction and nor waste crews have no problem accessing it via either)

• Museum of republic
  
• Art gallery
  
• Conveyor tower (all, bulk and aggregate)
  
• Cableway pylons (all of them)
  
• Heat pumping stations (both big and small)

Some buildings have been added/moved factory connections for grid reasons.

There are also few industrial buildings that are having factory connection (FC) vs. path connection collision on the list. Same logic, giving you more freedom in placement and connectivity. These are marked "FC vs. path"

• Small incinerator (FC vs. paths, 4x)
  
• Small dump with claw (+1)
  
• Large dump with claw (+2)
  
• Large raildump with claw (+2))
  
• Small dump (FC moved to grid)
  
• Big dump (FC moved to grid)
  
• Small open storage (+3)
  
• Big open storage (+3, 1 moved)
  
• Food factory (FC vs. paths 5x)
  
• Distillery (FC vs. paths 5x)
  
• Slaughter house (FC vs. paths 1x)
  
• Big cableway station (+3), it has been a massive pain otherwise to place well
  
• General separation (FC vs. paths 2x)

• Small shops have added display names based on real locations (Lípa, Mír, Beta) SCRAPPED due to inability of defining into strings, need help of 3Division
  
• Added road connection for sewage outflow as a connectivity variant (as you usually take dedicated road there anyway
  
• Sewage substation, switch and pumps got removed "path connectivity vector" - this result in path being connectable from ALL 360° without need to turn the building around (just aim your outlet the way you want, path will connect from any direction)
  
• Same has been done for water substation and switch (see video for demostration)
  
• Added reverse directions for upper conveyor on new vanilla aggregate storages (mutually exclusive on each side, but allows for more freedom in conveyor systems building)
  
• Small DO footprint filled more with asphalt, 1 car parking spot added (now 6 vehicles instead of 5)
  
• Big DO and TS footprint filled with aphalt to mark better it´s boundaries
  
• Added conveyor connection to longer side of big heating plant
  
• Added side heat connection to vanilla heat exchangers
  
• Added extra two road connections to big technical services
  
• Small TS footprint filled more with asphalt to match its area, 1 car parking spot added (now 5 vehicles instead of 4)
  
• Added a road connection to a sewage outlet to give your freedom of choice
  
• Changed long rail cargo stations - added asphalt textures and crossings, removed FC leading directly to its service house, side FC connection changed to a road connection
  
• Fixed big vanilla monuments loyalty distances and values based on their files
  
• Water treatments have larger storages for water
  
• Small scrapyard have larger storages for recycled materials (DO optimisation)
  
• Removed collisions on vanilla small waste stands and gates to allow placing them closer to existing buildings or into unused parts of their rectangular shapes despite those buildings being not rectangulas (big universities etc.). Do not abuse, they still need their roadpath to be connectable, though.
  
• Increased dump amount available in free dump based on its dimensions compared to other dumps. Now it is in line.
  
• Increased power of vanilla water pumps - small one can now fully pressurise a big pipe, big one is 3x the power.
  
• updated bauxite mine and processing (storage capacities are higher)
  
• updated alumina plant (two new connectors for aluminum oxide)
  
• updated open storage textures (removed studs added concrete areas as default)
  
• Added path connections to big waste containers, made smaller big containers non-collision to place.
  
• Removed one-way limiter for metro surface stations so they can be used as a turnaround station
  
• Fixed Panorama restaurant to not have collisions under round part
  
• Added "rotational sidewalks" to ES DLC sewage pumps and switch
  
• Fixed all incinerators so they do not produce waste from workers anymore
  
• Changed icons for underground wires and added brighter colours for easier distinguish

There are few, but would be great

• Make collision areas of all residential buldings smaller and of most big buildings as well. This would allow to build blocks of houses without small gaps. Same for mirrored TS/DO buildings; it is very tricky to do it now - making the collision edge 5 meters smaller on each side would result in natural transitions without disrupting any operation.
  
  This go for big TU, big Party HQ, DOs, TS, all residentials (especially those 84% prefabs that have their \_ shaped housing, but it can be connected only as a second one for both sides, not gradually continued). Also open storages (big and small) are supersized in collisions compared to their actual size.
  
• Add grass textures as a paint-over area
  
• Add dirt texture as a paint over area (similar to dirt roads and paths; would be usable under cableway pylons, conveyor towers etc)
  
• Decrease the height of big vanilla heat exchanger by 2 - it was slightly higher even for ancient vanilla prefabs, nowadays it is humongously oversized compared to any other HE.

That is all for now. We are discussing tweaks of iron mine+processing and aluminum oxide plant for example, so once they are built, they will be added to the list, but so far this is all.

Let us know in the comments how you feel about combined and mutual exclusive connections. Would it be a confusion for you? Is if a good idea for general public? Would you utilise this a lot? Feedback is important for us!

Those who would like to download this for themselves and try are welcome, instructions and directory are in the video descriptions (google disk and copy-paste, nothing special, don´t worry).

Have a nice day!
Comrade Sirius Czech out :)
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EDIT 07-13 Added sewage outlet road connection and overhauled big cableway station in the downloadable file.
EDIT 07-16 Woodcutting post changed and added improved customs, for that were somehow working the old way despite changes in beta.
EDIT 07-17 Upgraded long railroad cargo stations
EDIT 07-26 Removed names from shops (need strings to be able to make localised versions). Added water pumps. Added non-collisions placing for waste stands and gates. Updated tags on buildings associated with ES DLC
EDIT 07-28 Updated tags based on ES DLC, updated bauxite mine, processing and alumina plant, updated open storage textures. Added path connections to big waste containers.
EDIT 07-30 Updated general separation
EDIT 07-31 Changed surface metro station for bi-rectional (standard) rails, not one-way
EDIT 08-02 Panorama restaurant fix added
EDIT 10-08 Added few DLC buildings, fixed incinerators waste production
EDIT 10-16 Edited HV wires textures and added icons to both MV and HV for better distinguishability of what you have actually built (fancy for ES)
Current version is 1.12.3