Staff Management (Scheduling) Tutorial!

[OllieInTheMiddle]

Hello Sim Casino players! This is my tutorial for the staff management part of the game.

You wondered why all your workers are present 24 hours a day, while there is nothing to do in your little casino between 2:00 and 8:00 am? (Which by the way means, that you also have to PAY them 24 hours a day?)

Well, fortunately that´s not necessary, as you can manage their schedules (and the time they get paid!) via the Staff Hub. The problem: I didn´t find any explanation in the discussions, on youtube or anywhere on the net about how this works. So after some frustrating trial and error I figured it out by myself. I would like to share this information with you, so you don´t have to reinvate the wheel when you are new to the game (like we all are).

Dear devs: I absolutely love this game, it has so much potential due to its micromanagement options, but there are no explanations in any form at all. No ingame tutorial, no written explanation, nothing. And that could result in frustrated players and unnecessary bugreports, so a tutorial should be a very high prio right now! But for the rest: great game!

Before I start I would like to mention, that I´m German, so please excuse any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes!

Okay, here we go:

At the bottom of your main screen, you find all the tools you need to run your casino, staring with the Build tool and ending with the research tool. Right before the research tool you will find the Staff Hub tool, where you can manage the schedules for your staff. Unfortunateley it needs a lot of polishment as right now it´s kind of confusing and not very user friendly, but on the flip side of the coin it seems to work.

When you open it, you will see the different staff descriptions on the left side, together with the loan they get per hour. On the right side you will find the detailled information per employee group. There are two different types of workers: those who need a designated area (like housekeeping, workmen and security guards) and those who need a designated
workplace, like the retail worker. There is a little difference between those two, regarding the schedule management. I will get back to this a little later.

Usually you start with one security guard, designated to the cash vault area, one housekeeping, designated to the garbage area and two workmen, designated to the deliveries. Lets take a closer look at the housekeeping guy, designated to the garbage area. You see two tools on the right side. One drop down tool, that says "Daytime Monday-Friday" and if you click
on the arrow, you will see another one, saying "Daytime Saturday & Sunday". The reason the game makes this difference is, that it´s usually much busier in the weekend, and therefore you are able to create two different schedules for the same kind of employee. Below the drop down tool you find a box with the number 1, which means you are hiring one employee right now. You can change this number to fire or hire staff. For this tutorial we just leave it the way it is as
we don´t need more than one housekeeping staff for the garbage.

The scheduled default time for all employees is 24/7, which is not very useful. We´ve just opened our casino and right now, we pay the housekeeping 16 bucks per hour, just to empty our very first trashcan once a day. Let´s say, we want him to work from 3pm until 11pm on weekdays and from 12pm until 2am in the weekend. On the top of your management screen you find the "Advanced options: Manage schedules & Set Patrol Areas" button. Click on it and at the bottom of your screen you will find the schedule tool. Click the "Staff Overlay Settings"
drop down tool and chosse "Housekeeping". Right now, you only see one schedule, saying "Daytime". For this tutorial, we will change the name to "Default" (because with more and more different schedules, the whole thing will become an utterly mess if you don´t use useful names). When you move your mouse to the button with the three dots, you will see that its name changes to "Rename Daytime". Click on it, change the name to "Default" by overwriting
it and click on the rename button. You can see that the name has been changed. To create a new schedule click the "+" button, name the new schedule "housekeepweek" and confirm by clicking "create". Create another schedule and name it "housekeepingweekend". The selected "Staff Scheduled Overlay" shows Monday-Friday in the drop down
tool. Click the created "housekeepingweek" button and move the cursor below the timeschedule, under the 3pm that indicates "default". Click the left mosuebutton and slide it to the right until the 11pm. You can see that you´ve just overwritten the default time for this period with your "housekeepingweek" schedule. Now select Saturday & Sunday in the
Staff Schedules Overlay drop down tool and click on the "housekeepingweekend" button.

Repeat the whole thing, but for the weekend schedule as indicated above. It´s a little tricky as you have to use the sliding tool two time: from Midday until the end of the schedule and from the beginning of the schedule to 2am. This means that you´ve now created the weekend schedule for the housekeeping, which is from 12pm until 2am the next morning.

Okay, so far, so good. We´ve now created a schedule, but our employees still don´t know if tthey should use the default or the other ones. Go back to the Staff Hub Screen. Behind the Housekeeping/Garbage icon, click the drop down tool.
You will see some changes here. The misleading word "daytime" is replaced by the word "default" and you see four new options, two for our housekeepingweek schedule and two for our housekeepingweekend schedule.

We now have to tell the game, what schedules it has to use for the housekeeping. And we do this by indicating the number of employees per schedule, one for one! (YES, very complicated and not very user friendly but, hey, it´s early access and right now we have to deal with it...) We do not use the default schedule at all, so for both you change the number to 0 and confirm. For the housekeepingweek Monday-Friday we don´t change the "1" as we want our one employee to use this schedule for Monday-Friday. The setting for the weekend for housekeepingweek
however is "0" as this is not our weekend schedule. For the housekeeping weekend schedule we need 0 workers from Monday-Friday and 1 worker for Saturday & Sunday. Done!

IMPORTANT! If you leave the screen and come back later you will see that the drop down menu shows the Default Monday-Friday option, but that´s because it´s the first
option in your drop down tool. If you click it and select the different options you will see that all your settings are still there and haven´t been changed. And remember that all we´ve done so far has only been selected for housekeeping so no other rules have been
added to the other employee groups.

You will see that housekeeping will use your schedule, however, sometimes they are half an hour late or leave to late, but for the rest it works fine so far. That is the good news!

Now the bad news! We are not done, yet! (Yes, I can hear you complaining, but sorry, you have to deal with it.) Remember that I´ve told you, that it works a little different for those employees with a designated workplace instead of a designated area? For our tutorial we will open a bar in our casino. So if not done yet, build the bar and go back to you Staff management screen. For these kinds of jobs you are hiring and firing your staff automatically with
building or deleting the workplace. A bar automatically comes with one employee. No more workers are needed and you can only fire them by demolishing the bar. So how do we tell the programme what schedule we have to use? Actually it´s easy, peasy: Creating new schedules work exactly as indicated above. But in this case you have to select or unselect the little box "Open during this schedule?" per schedule. The rest is history!

That was about it. I hope, this tutorial was helpful and understandable. If you have any questions or remarks, please let me know.

[alwaysbebrian]

This is excellent work and will be much appreciated by many users!

[Borrego6165]

Fantastic tutorial! Yesterday we patched it so that it auto-selects the current schedules in the dropdowns.

Since SimAirport on the schedule screen, you can click on tables directly to adjust the number of workers on them instead of just using the staff hub. It tends to be a bit quicker than using the dropdowns and you can get a quick visual for your whole casino :)

[OllieInTheMiddle]

Originally posted by alwaysbebrian:

This is excellent work and will be much appreciated by many users!

Thank you, I certainly hope so. :)

Originally posted by Borrego6165:

Fantastic tutorial! Yesterday we patched it so that it auto-selects the current schedules in the dropdowns.

Since SimAirport on the schedule screen, you can click on tables directly to adjust the number of workers on them instead of just using the staff hub. It tends to be a bit quicker than using the dropdowns and you can get a quick visual for your whole casino :)

Thank you. Perhaps you can flag this tutorial, so people can find it easier?
The game makes progress very fast, thumbs up for that! :) I hope I can join your youtube session tonight. 7PM EST is at 1am my time, but hey, it´s weekend. :D

[TeknoTel]

Thanks for the tutorial. This area will definitely need some work as it is a little confusing, even after the tutorial I am still a little confused if I am being honest.

Can you assign other staff to housekeeping week? Like Security guard for example?

[jfoytek]

Problem!!!

The Game forces you to have a guy working 24/7
If I select my Schedule and put a 1 in the place I don't get a Check Mark to confirm unless their is an extra person to work the custom schedule I made!!!

So for instance!

I have 1 Maintenance guy that I want to work from Midnight - 3 AM every day
If I put 0 in the Default / Daytime Schedule it says I will fire the employeet!!!

And if I put 1 in my Custom Schedule I do not get the check mark to confirm the schedule change!

I can get 1 guy to work 24/7 and then another guy to work 3 hours a day but I can't get only 1 guy to work 3 hours a day!

Because of this my Casino's keep going broke because I don't have enough income when I start out to pay my huge employee cost...

WTF I can hire 2 Maintenance guys to my custom schedule but I can't hire 1???
Why is this system so obtuse even while understanding how it works I still have no idea how it works!!!

[jfoytek]

I have tried every which way I can to get 1 Single employee to do a custom Schedule seems impossible...

I Can Hire 2 Security Guards to my Custom Schedule but NOT 1...
If I do hire 2 I then cannot change it too 1... I can change it to 0 which fires the employee's...

However if I hire a Security Guard 24/7 I can hire 1... But if I change the Default schedule to 0 he gets fired he does not move to my custom schedule!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9vbi-uADLc

[tukman01]

Awesome tutorial

[OllieInTheMiddle]

Originally posted by jfoytek:

Problem!!!

The Game forces you to have a guy working 24/7
If I select my Schedule and put a 1 in the place I don't get a Check Mark to confirm unless their is an extra person to work the custom schedule I made!!!

So for instance!

I have 1 Maintenance guy that I want to work from Midnight - 3 AM every day
If I put 0 in the Default / Daytime Schedule it says I will fire the employeet!!!

And if I put 1 in my Custom Schedule I do not get the check mark to confirm the schedule change!

I can get 1 guy to work 24/7 and then another guy to work 3 hours a day but I can't get only 1 guy to work 3 hours a day!

Because of this my Casino's keep going broke because I don't have enough income when I start out to pay my huge employee cost...

The game doesn´t force you to have a guy who works 24/7. That´s the default rule, which is always there, but you don´t have to use it. You can use your schedule for 1 guy only as long as you´ve created a custom rule (which you did, as far as I understand). The remark that you are firing one guy is VERY misleading and I forgot to ask the devs to change this as this only applies if you only have a default rule.

Let´s say you´ve renamed the default rule from "daytime" into "default" like I´ve described in the tutorial. And you´ve created a custom rule for your maintenance guy (for midweek and weekend, to make things easy) and named it "housekeeping allweek". If you look at your staff management screen, you will find the drop down menu above the number of employees and if you click it, you will see 4 (!) rules. The first two rules are the default rules for midweek and weekend. You don´t want to use it, so you put a "0" in both boxes. YES, the game says you are firing the guy, but you are not! Once again, this is very misleading! Ýou only tell the game that zero persons have to use the default rule, that´s all. If you don´t use custom rules, yes, of course, you would fire the guy as there is no rule left to work with. But as you´ve created a custom rule which you will find below the default rule and you put a "1" under "housekeeping allweek Monday-Friday" and a "1" under "housekeeping allweek Suturday & Sunday" you still have the same guy working for you, but he will use your custom rule.

So, all you have to do is selecting the drop down and tell the game if you want 0 or 1 (or more) guys PER (!) rule. If you want to use different times for midweek and weekend, then you have to create another custom rule and you would see six rules in the drop down menu. And again, you would have to select the number of persons per rule.

If you only see the default rule in the drop down menu above the number, then you have not chosen the right type of employee in the "staff overlay settings" drop down menu (under advanced options) as here you have to choose "housekeeping" as well.

Sane for the security guy! Hope it´s clear now and you don´t get broke anymore. :)

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by Ollie:

Originally posted by jfoytek:

Problem!!!

The Game forces you to have a guy working 24/7
If I select my Schedule and put a 1 in the place I don't get a Check Mark to confirm unless their is an extra person to work the custom schedule I made!!!

So for instance!

I have 1 Maintenance guy that I want to work from Midnight - 3 AM every day
If I put 0 in the Default / Daytime Schedule it says I will fire the employeet!!!

And if I put 1 in my Custom Schedule I do not get the check mark to confirm the schedule change!

I can get 1 guy to work 24/7 and then another guy to work 3 hours a day but I can't get only 1 guy to work 3 hours a day!

Because of this my Casino's keep going broke because I don't have enough income when I start out to pay my huge employee cost...

The game doesn´t force you to have a guy who works 24/7. That´s the default rule, which is always there, but you don´t have to use it. You can use your schedule for 1 guy only as long as you´ve created a custom rule (which you did, as far as I understand). The remark that you are firing one guy is VERY misleading and I forgot to ask the devs to change this as this only applies if you only have a default rule.

Let´s say you´ve renamed the default rule from "daytime" into "default" like I´ve described in the tutorial. And you´ve created a custom rule for your maintenance guy (for midweek and weekend, to make things easy) and named it "housekeeping allweek". If you look at your staff management screen, you will find the drop down menu above the number of employees and if you click it, you will see 4 (!) rules. The first two rules are the default rules for midweek and weekend. You don´t want to use it, so you put a "0" in both boxes. YES, the game says you are firing the guy, but you are not! Once again, this is very misleading! Ýou only tell the game that zero persons have to use the default rule, that´s all. If you don´t use custom rules, yes, of course, you would fire the guy as there is no rule left to work with. But as you´ve created a custom rule which you will find below the default rule and you put a "1" under "housekeeping allweek Monday-Friday" and a "1" under "housekeeping allweek Suturday & Sunday" you still have the same guy working for you, but he will use your custom rule.

So, all you have to do is selecting the drop down and tell the game if you want 0 or 1 (or more) guys PER (!) rule. If you want to use different times for midweek and weekend, then you have to create another custom rule and you would see six rules in the drop down menu. And again, you would have to select the number of persons per rule.

If you only see the default rule in the drop down menu above the number, then you have not chosen the right type of employee in the "staff overlay settings" drop down menu (under advanced options) as here you have to choose "housekeeping" as well.

Sane for the security guy! Hope it´s clear now and you don´t get broke anymore. :)

Did you watch my video It clearly shows that the security guards were fired... No longer listed as any being their...

I have done it about 20 times now... It doesn't work the way you say it does!
I have hired the guy with the normal ruleset. I place 0 in the ruleset and it says he will be fired, the total of security guards changes from 1 to 0 and it shows no security guards listed as sleeping or with a ?... And I have the custom rule created it doesn't magically shift the guy over to it...

The closest I can get is to Hire 2 guys with the custom rule set as It won't let me hire 1 guy with the custom rule set and for the life of me I don't understand why! I clearly demonstrate this in the video, and I have banged my head against a wall for 6 hours now trying to get 1 Security guard to work 3 hours each day... It just doesnt work I can have 2 security guards work 3 hours each day but thats as close as I can get....

[OllieInTheMiddle]

Originally posted by tukman01:

Awesome tutorial

Thanks. :)

Originally posted by TeknoTel:

Thanks for the tutorial. This area will definitely need some work as it is a little confusing, even after the tutorial I am still a little confused if I am being honest.

Can you assign other staff to housekeeping week? Like Security guard for example?

The problem is, the game works the other ways round. You can use the same rule for different types of employees, but in that case I would give the rule another name. Because if you use the same color/rule for, let´s say, housekeeping and security, then the name "housekeeping week" would be misleading. And besides, you can also use the same color/rule, but with different times for different types of employees. as you have to use the slides per staff type!

I wasn´t that far in the game, yet, when I wrote the turorial. It only explains the basics, but I figured out, that some things are possible, but complicated. For example: I thought, that it´s not possible to create a rule for two employees of the same type with overlapping times! If you have 2 Housekeeping and you want one to work only from 10am-1pm and the other one from 8am-2pm then the problem is that every custom rule for the same type of employee overrules all other rules. So if you created the 10am-1pm rule ("HouseOne") and you want to create the 8am-2pm rule ("HouseTwo") for the second person it will simply overrule the first rule. You can put 2 Housekeping on that rule, but it´s not possible that one of them works shorter within that time. I figured out it´s because the game thinks of hours you have to pay per employee and not of an employee as a dedicated person with a name (if this makes sense). So you use the slide for HouseOne from 8am-2pm. Then you use the slide for HouseTwo from 10am-1pm. And it actually creates the following: 8am-10am HouseOne, 10am-1pm HouseTwo, 1pm-2pm HouseOne.

In the Staff Management drop down you choose 1 person for the HouseOne rule and Two persons for the HouseTwo rule. Which means that 1 person works from 8am-2pm and two persons work from 10am-1pm, including (!) the first person. That´s how the game thinks and once you figured it out it gets easier to get creative with your schedules. :)

[OllieInTheMiddle]

Originally posted by jfoytek:

Originally posted by Ollie:

The game doesn´t force you to have a guy who works 24/7. That´s the default rule, which is always there, but you don´t have to use it. You can use your schedule for 1 guy only as long as you´ve created a custom rule (which you did, as far as I understand). The remark that you are firing one guy is VERY misleading and I forgot to ask the devs to change this as this only applies if you only have a default rule.

Let´s say you´ve renamed the default rule from "daytime" into "default" like I´ve described in the tutorial. And you´ve created a custom rule for your maintenance guy (for midweek and weekend, to make things easy) and named it "housekeeping allweek". If you look at your staff management screen, you will find the drop down menu above the number of employees and if you click it, you will see 4 (!) rules. The first two rules are the default rules for midweek and weekend. You don´t want to use it, so you put a "0" in both boxes. YES, the game says you are firing the guy, but you are not! Once again, this is very misleading! Ýou only tell the game that zero persons have to use the default rule, that´s all. If you don´t use custom rules, yes, of course, you would fire the guy as there is no rule left to work with. But as you´ve created a custom rule which you will find below the default rule and you put a "1" under "housekeeping allweek Monday-Friday" and a "1" under "housekeeping allweek Suturday & Sunday" you still have the same guy working for you, but he will use your custom rule.

So, all you have to do is selecting the drop down and tell the game if you want 0 or 1 (or more) guys PER (!) rule. If you want to use different times for midweek and weekend, then you have to create another custom rule and you would see six rules in the drop down menu. And again, you would have to select the number of persons per rule.

If you only see the default rule in the drop down menu above the number, then you have not chosen the right type of employee in the "staff overlay settings" drop down menu (under advanced options) as here you have to choose "housekeeping" as well.

Sane for the security guy! Hope it´s clear now and you don´t get broke anymore. :)

Did you watch my video It clearly shows that the security guards were fired... No longer listed as any being their...

I have done it about 20 times now... It doesn't work the way you say it does!
I have hired the guy with the normal ruleset. I place 0 in the ruleset and it says he will be fired, the total of security guards changes from 1 to 0 and it shows no security guards listed as sleeping or with a ?... And I have the custom rule created it doesn't magically shift the guy over to it...

The closest I can get is to Hire 2 guys with the custom rule set as It won't let me hire 1 guy with the custom rule set and for the life of me I don't understand why! I clearly demonstrate this in the video, and I have banged my head against a wall for 6 hours now trying to get 1 Security guard to work 3 hours each day... It just doesnt work I can have 2 security guards work 3 hours each day but thats as close as I can get....

I haven´t seen the vid when I´ve read your comment, I guess you´ve added it later? But I now see where you are coming from and just tested it. I don´t have this problem: when I change the number to "1" for a custom schedule for the security guy, I get the check mark and can change it to one person. Also tested it with other employees. This looks like a glitch or bug, so that´s definitely something for the devs to look at. Have you tried to start a new casino under another name and if yes, did this occur again?

And yes, the remarks/tooltips about firing somebody have to be changed as they are incorrect.

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by Ollie:

Originally posted by jfoytek:

Did you watch my video It clearly shows that the security guards were fired... No longer listed as any being their...

I have done it about 20 times now... It doesn't work the way you say it does!
I have hired the guy with the normal ruleset. I place 0 in the ruleset and it says he will be fired, the total of security guards changes from 1 to 0 and it shows no security guards listed as sleeping or with a ?... And I have the custom rule created it doesn't magically shift the guy over to it...

The closest I can get is to Hire 2 guys with the custom rule set as It won't let me hire 1 guy with the custom rule set and for the life of me I don't understand why! I clearly demonstrate this in the video, and I have banged my head against a wall for 6 hours now trying to get 1 Security guard to work 3 hours each day... It just doesnt work I can have 2 security guards work 3 hours each day but thats as close as I can get....

I haven´t seen the vid when I´ve read your comment, I guess you´ve added it later? But I now see where you are coming from and just tested it. I don´t have this problem: when I change the number to "1" for a custom schedule for the security guy, I get the check mark and can change it to one person. Also tested it with other employees. This looks like a glitch or bug, so that´s definitely something for the devs to look at. Have you tried to start a new casino under another name and if yes, did this occur again?

And yes, the remarks/tooltips about firing somebody have to be changed as they are incorrect.

Thank you for confirming its not normal behavior.... Will try a new casino....
Additionally I wish their was a way to fire the Admin guy he is costing me and arm and a leg to do nothing!!!

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by Ollie:

I haven´t seen the vid when I´ve read your comment, I guess you´ve added it later? But I now see where you are coming from and just tested it. I don´t have this problem: when I change the number to "1" for a custom schedule for the security guy, I get the check mark and can change it to one person. Also tested it with other employees. This looks like a glitch or bug, so that´s definitely something for the devs to look at. Have you tried to start a new casino under another name and if yes, did this occur again?

And yes, the remarks/tooltips about firing somebody have to be changed as they are incorrect.

The new game seems to work fine, clicked on the submit bug report button not sure if it did anything lol.... In this new game I am going full, business and hotel at first since its far cheeper then casino stuff and requires next to no wages...

[BFlo]

Great Tutorial, just wish I had read it a day or two ago before I learned it the hard way myself. However the one bit I was trying to find out was not addressed in your tutorial. I am wondering why you have to create a schedule for both weekday and weekend in order to select to weekday one for Monday-Friday and the weekend for Saturday-Sunday. This seems redundant as well as adding to the confusion. I have also posted a related bug where when selecting a schedule for an employee, the S-S setting will copy the M-F setting instead of saving it's own state. Your tutorial conveniently shows a workaround, but I am not sure if that was intentional.

[OllieInTheMiddle]

Originally posted by BFlo:

Great Tutorial, just wish I had read it a day or two ago before I learned it the hard way myself. However the one bit I was trying to find out was not addressed in your tutorial. I am wondering why you have to create a schedule for both weekday and weekend in order to select to weekday one for Monday-Friday and the weekend for Saturday-Sunday. This seems redundant as well as adding to the confusion. I have also posted a related bug where when selecting a schedule for an employee, the S-S setting will copy the M-F setting instead of saving it's own state. Your tutorial conveniently shows a workaround, but I am not sure if that was intentional.

Thank you. :)

1) Midweek and weekend. I´ve actually mentioned it in my tutorial: "One drop down tool, that says "Daytime Monday-Friday" and if you click on the arrow, you will see another one, saying "Daytime Saturday & Sunday". The reason the game makes this difference is, that it´s usually much busier in the weekend, and therefore you are able to create two different schedules for the same kind of employee." But you are absolutely right, it´s very confusing in the beginning, I´ve figured it out after some time of experimenting.

2) Related bug. Can you explain, what you mean with "saving it´s own state"? The custom rule you create can be used for either midweek and weekend, or for both at the same time. If you create a custom rule, the game only knows for what type of employee it´s meant, but not if you want to use it for weekend or midweek. That´s why you have to select the number of people for midweek and weekend in the staff management rule. For example, as it´s busier in the weekend you can use the same rule for 1 person midweek and 2 persons weekend.

Not sure if that answers your question. I´personally think it works as intended, but that´s something for the devs to answer. Let me know as soon as you´ve received an answer or if I got you wrong and you´ve meant something different.

In my answer to TeknoTel I´ve also mentioned a more advanced method to plan different times for a different number of same employee types by using two rules.