[NEED MORE INFO] Lazy Staff... Follow on from Steam Bug report page.

Give me a break Devs... I have six staff in pharmacy and still I have customers piling up because all the staff decide to go wandering off at the same time. I added 2 doctors and 3 transport only nurses to overnight staff in Int Med and still waited 10 hours for someone to pick a patient up from TC. I have 3 Gift Shop vendors all trained to over 90% and the same happens there.

It would appear from what you say that you are trying for some form of reality. I would suggest that you need to think about these things to add enjoyment rather than frustration to what is otherwise a very enjoyable sim.

I have made utterances to this effect before but as the hospital grows and player experience grows then these stupid anomalies become more obvious especially when trying to micro manage all to get the best possible value for money from all staff.

Hi, thanks for the save! We can try to investigate more, but having run the hospital for a day, all patients seem to get their medicine at the pharmacy even during the 'rush hour' (it is showing medium-high workload in management mode), it looks to be quite similar with the gift shop.

Regarding the patient transport I actually managed to catch one patient waiting to be hospitalized at Internal Medicine, but the reason was that there were no free beds at the HDU wards - could you check it wasn't the same in your case?

Hi,
I tried all different settings for all of the above mentioned. I checked bed availability, increased doctor/nurse ratio etc and still the outcome for all cases was the same. Yes, peeps do get served eventually at pharmacy and gift shop but my point was that they all go on "free time" together leaving the shops unattended which would never happen in RL. The 10 hour wait for transfer from TC to HDU occurs even though there are beds available and plenty of "Transfer Nurses" available. Even coding blue made no difference.

Hi, let me double-check if/how often it is actually free time - pharmacists should be able to go to the loo or get something to eat, but they should be only 'performing the free time activities' when there are no patients waiting for them.

Regarding the transport, it would be great if you could share a fresh save if you run into it again - this looks more like some very specific bug than a problem with the systems, I'm sure we would be getting many more reports of this if it was a common issue. Thanks in advance!

Sorry to have to continue with this but it is getting beyond a joke. I have u/loaded the sort of thing I am talking about. This is by no means the worst example but shows the queue in the pharmacy at 22:30 after both workers leave the shop empty and customers walk out because they have been away so long.

Would you please explain how they can come into work then wander off straight away for "filling needs", even though their perks do not indicate any such behaviour.

OM is responsible for the programming and so MUST know if this is normal behaviour or some bug that doesn't necessarily get reported by the majority because they may not even notice it or can't be bothered to report it. Perhaps you could let me know what "normal" behaviour should be.

I just can not believe it!!!! This worker returned for 23 minutes then walks out again with the shop still having a queue! Please give explanation of this behaviour.

Barnabyuk wrote:Sorry to have to continue with this but it is getting beyond a joke. I have u/loaded the sort of thing I am talking about. This is by no means the worst example but shows the queue in the pharmacy at 22:30 after both workers leave the shop empty and customers walk out because they have been away so long.

Would you please explain how they can come into work then wander off straight away for "filling needs", even though their perks do not indicate any such behaviour.

OM is responsible for the programming and so MUST know if this is normal behaviour or some bug that doesn't necessarily get reported by the majority because they may not even notice it or can't be bothered to report it. Perhaps you could let me know what "normal" behaviour should be.

Hi, I am trying to reproduce the behavior you are describing, but unfortunately with no luck. I even fired one of the Pharmacists to make the situation worse, yet I am unable to make the patients to leave due long wait. They seem to handle the patients quite well.
Yes sometimes the patients will create the queue, and yes Pharmacist can leave the Pharmacy even with patients present, when their need like food and toilet becomes critical. They will not leave for free time when they still have patients present though.
Have you by any chance tweak the waiting times for the pharmacy and gift shop in Tweakables? That might explain why they are leaving. Patients will wait there for up to 2.5 hours, so even if your staff is gone for longer time, because the only place to fill free time if further away, they should still be there.
Sometimes mods are also responsible for strange behavior, but the ones you have in your save should be save. Have you used and then disabled any other mods?
Any additional information might shed some light on, why your patients are leaving

Hi and thanks for quick reply. I haven't made any tweaks or changes other than the mods that you can see loaded. I have run a night shift with the two pharmacists and noted each. They both follow a similar pattern so I'll just describe one.
20:51 - Arrives for work. (why so late?).
21:20 - Filling Needs (leaving customer alone in shop).
21:58 - Returns to work.
22:42 - Filling Needs.
23:20 - Returns to work.
00:44 - Filling Needs (Leaves shop empty).
01:34 - Returns to work.
01:44 - Filling Needs (Leaves shop empty).
02:02 - Returns to work.
02:20 - Toilet break.
02:38 - Returns to work.
03:41 - Filling Needs (Leaves shop empty).
04:30 - Returns to work.
05:50 - Filling Needs. (Leaves shop empty).
06:07 - Returns to work.
06:15 - Filling Needs.
06:40 - Returns to work.
07:02 - GOES HOME LEAVING CUSTOMERS IN THE SHOP

Pharmacist in shop for 5.96 hours. Pharmacist on breaks for 4.21 hours.

I have fired this particular pharmacist (Peter Takahashi), and intend to do the same to all offending staff to try and make some sense of this but in all fairness I think that OM should visit this problem and either set fairer parameters or even better would be to give us some sort of disciplinary process so that we could bring staff into line rather than just having to fire them and go through all the expense of vetting yet more staff.

I have include my latest save for your perusal if it will help.

Umm...Not sure if you saw this post or you're just ignoring me, but I would have thought a comment was justified because of the effort that I went to in trying to help you iron out some sort of misstep in the program logic. Either way, please consider looking at the whole system of "filling needs" and "filling free time" because it is seems ridiculous to me. 

I just employed a new doctor to relieve a situation whereby patients were not getting treatment quickly enough. The doctor has all the good perks and no bad but as soon as I employed her she sat at her desk for less than 10 seconds and then went off for "filling time" twice in the first 40 minutes.

Hi @Barnabyuk, you are using mods, while these mods should not change this behaviour, I'd ask you to please respect the developers. The fact they are even helping when you are using mods is above and beyond and this team really bust their a**'es helping players out so please do not just assume they are ignoring you.

I downloaded your save and the first thing I noticed is you have almost no pharmacy staff at night, hiring just one more helped immediately relieve the pressure from the pharmacy. Another issue is your common room for your pharmacy staff is a decent distance away (it might not seem like much but if all staff are on break, they will take the time to travel back to help the awaiting patient). I'd recommend trying to get it closer if possible. Even an attached common room might help the staff move straight from room to room (my testing, even with the delays of travel wasn't bad from what you had by default).

Secondary, is this your issue (as below, before image)? Because I hired one more tech for pharmacy and your hospital is making bank from the pharmacy (I tested without that extra one and it still cleared out fairly quickly, you just get a bit of a peak in the morning). Like the developers, I cannot see the issue you are talking about unless it is a rare occurrence.

Spoiler:

I understand your frustration but taking it out on the developers will get you nowhere especially when the game is modded. Most developers from other games wouldn't even look at your report let alone download the mods you use to check out the issue. Consider verifying the integrity of your game or maybe reinstalling as a last case situation (backup your saves before hand just in case).

I get the defensive stance, you want to enjoy this game and the developers and I will help you do so, let us help you and lower that guard, you'll be amazed at what the modders and developers will do to help their player base.

Hope this helps.

EDIT:
So you know, the perk 'Hardworker' will prevent staff going on break if a patient needs help, having these staff with that may help you.

Barnabyuk wrote:Umm...Not sure if you saw this post or you're just ignoring me, but I would have thought a comment was justified because of the effort that I went to in trying to help you iron out some sort of misstep in the program logic. Either way, please consider looking at the whole system of "filling needs" and "filling free time" because it is seems ridiculous to me. 

I just employed a new doctor to relieve a situation whereby patients were not getting treatment quickly enough. The doctor has all the good perks and no bad but as soon as I employed her she sat at her desk for less than 10 seconds and then went off for "filling time" twice in the first 40 minutes.

Hi and thank you for additional information. Thanks to sleepy068 for help with analyzing the situation. And sorry for the slower response, but we are small team and I was also out of the office:)
But further testing did not reveal anything out of the ordinary. I was not able to reproduce patients leaving due to long wait times and the system with filling need and free time is working as it should. The list you sent also looks normal as well for someone who during 12 hour shift goes 7 or 8 to toilet or eat. I did not see any free time, which means the employee just took care of needs and skipped free time to tend to patients.
If you feel that they are do that too often, you can tweak the values in Needs.xml and slower the rate of needs. And also check if they dont have fast metabolism perk, which actually speeds it up. And as sleepy068 mentioned move common room or toilets closer. Maybe add wending machine or water cooler in their proximity. Any of these little tweaks will help you to get the game to state you will be satisfied with. Hope it helps:)

(Just connecting the other thread: https://projecthospital.forumotion.com/t2950-resolved-duplicate-lazy-staff-follow-on-from-steam-bug-report-page#10724)