[QUESTION] Unnecessary longer path

I don't have to explain much. That's what workers are doing, instead of simply taking the elevator. Right above the room, there's a common room of the same department.. Access is ok. Worker from that floor use the room.

Hi, thanks for the message! There were a few different options how to set the rules for prioritizing the rooms where characters fill their needs and this is what we have now after tweaking the system a few times after counting in all the player feedback - employees:

- Prefer rooms of the same department on the same floor
- Prefer rooms of neighbouring departments on the same floor
- If nothing is free, they try rooms of the same departments across the hospital

It looks like different players have different expectations/preferences, I'm taking a note about 'one more vote for the same department'/shortest path

it makes sense in the logic that when routing to a need the character first "looks" for the shared room w/needed object closest via the floor their on, and then moves to the next closest room via elevator or outside path.
Course I understand that if the object in the closest room isn't available then naturally they'll look elsewhere. Also, I'm wondering is their any "residual" preference by staff to seek the object in a designated shared room that still belongs to their dept vs another dept's shared room?

jan.oxymoron wrote:Hi, thanks for the message! There were a few different options how to set the rules for prioritizing the rooms where characters fill their needs and this is what we have now after tweaking the system a few times after counting in all the player feedback - employees:

- Prefer rooms of the same department on the same floor
- Prefer rooms of neighbouring departments on the same floor
- If nothing is free, they try rooms of the same departments across the hospital

It looks like different players have different expectations/preferences, I'm taking a note about 'one more vote for the same department'/shortest path

Those behavior changes would surely make a difference. Imagine if I had a bigger hospital, but no common room in that specific area and floor. Workers would lose most of their work time going to the common room that's on the other side of the hospital, when there's a common room that's a few meters away. The game must be prepared for that. I understand how you think as a dev, but people that buy the game and just wanna play, hate to see what they'd call a buggy illogical behavior. Buyers generally won't care about how they should create strategies for things to work. They simply give a vote down and never play again. That's what I've been seeing on Steam. I was thinking twice about getting the game for this reason. Many reviews are considering that. I love the game and the project is complex. I know it takes time. But those things can't be ignored, otherwise negative reviews will keeep coming.

Also, have you noticed that employees go to the gift shop to drink juice as if it was a staff/common room? Another behavior problem. Also, the gift shop seems quite useless, because my patients are anti social and barely have any visitors.

jan.oxymoron wrote:Hi, thanks for the message! There were a few different options how to set the rules for prioritizing the rooms where characters fill their needs and this is what we have now after tweaking the system a few times after counting in all the player feedback - employees:

- Prefer rooms of the same department on the same floor
- Prefer rooms of neighbouring departments on the same floor
- If nothing is free, they try rooms of the same departments across the hospital

It looks like different players have different expectations/preferences, I'm taking a note about 'one more vote for the same department'/shortest path

Personally, I love how the rules are currently set up for prioritizing rooms. If I have multiple departments on the same floor and want staff to use department specific rooms? Then I place common room for each department on that floor. Do I want all staff to just use the nearest shared room? Then I make sure all common rooms on that floor belong to the same department so staff will just use whatever is closest. I can even make it so staff from a certain department only uses their common room on a particular floor while all the other staff on that floor go to the nearest shared room. So I'm a fan of the current system because I can choose which rooms I want my staff to use and plan which department each room belongs to in order to get the desired result.

Fading Qualia wrote:

jan.oxymoron wrote:Hi, thanks for the message! There were a few different options how to set the rules for prioritizing the rooms where characters fill their needs and this is what we have now after tweaking the system a few times after counting in all the player feedback - employees:

- Prefer rooms of the same department on the same floor
- Prefer rooms of neighbouring departments on the same floor
- If nothing is free, they try rooms of the same departments across the hospital

It looks like different players have different expectations/preferences, I'm taking a note about 'one more vote for the same department'/shortest path

Personally, I love how the rules are currently set up for prioritizing rooms. If I have multiple departments on the same floor and want staff to use department specific rooms? Then I place common room for each department on that floor. Do I want all staff to just use the nearest shared room? Then I make sure all common rooms on that floor belong to the same department so staff will just use whatever is closest. I can even make it so staff from a certain department only uses their common room on a particular floor while all the other staff on that floor go to the nearest shared room. So I'm a fan of the current system because I can choose which rooms I want my staff to use and plan which department each room belongs to in order to get the desired result.

works really good, and is largely what I do, however, I have taken 1/2 of a floor (in which the entire floor is dedicated to surgery) and set it up as surgery offices for each dept's surgery teams (day and noc). Thus I end up with every dept occupying said area. I've created one large shared common room and set it under general surgery. It seems to work okay, however occasionally it seems some staff will route to father away common rooms to use objects available to them at the one nearby. Overall, I get the sense routing has improved, though I don't know how much and have been distracted by other issues while playing to really track staff's movements.

Fading Qualia wrote:

jan.oxymoron wrote:Hi, thanks for the message! There were a few different options how to set the rules for prioritizing the rooms where characters fill their needs and this is what we have now after tweaking the system a few times after counting in all the player feedback - employees:

- Prefer rooms of the same department on the same floor
- Prefer rooms of neighbouring departments on the same floor
- If nothing is free, they try rooms of the same departments across the hospital

It looks like different players have different expectations/preferences, I'm taking a note about 'one more vote for the same department'/shortest path

Personally, I love how the rules are currently set up for prioritizing rooms. If I have multiple departments on the same floor and want staff to use department specific rooms? Then I place common room for each department on that floor. Do I want all staff to just use the nearest shared room? Then I make sure all common rooms on that floor belong to the same department so staff will just use whatever is closest. I can even make it so staff from a certain department only uses their common room on a particular floor while all the other staff on that floor go to the nearest shared room. So I'm a fan of the current system because I can choose which rooms I want my staff to use and plan which department each room belongs to in order to get the desired result.

Maybe you are, but many people giving negative for many of those bugs do not agree. And those bad reviews prevent people from buying. And the reviews are specific about buggy behaviors of the game.