Training vs cash flow

[Livia]

I'm on level 3. I've already gotten three stars there, but one thing with these games is I always get 3 stars long before I finish building the place, so I'm still playing the level. I was raking in the cash (as I did in the last two levels) with no issues, but as I train people, obviously their wages go up. Campus doesn't seem to bring in the cash flow like TPH did where the training pays off with success.

I haven't raised the tuition fees. In TPH I always put all the prices at full for everything, but as happiness is a much bigger factor in this game, especially for your cash flow in terms of student success, I haven't raised any prices.

In all three levels I've played, my students average is always in the mid 90s, even without staff training, but I suspect staff training will be more important in later levels to deal with chaos I am sure is coming (I hope the disasters in this game are not as extreme - that was the one thing I always hated about TPH - I liked when TPH started to have more variety in the issues besides just everything constantly breaking due to earthquakes and such), but how does this balance out with cash flow?

I find I never have enough janitors or assistants as there's constantly work for them to do that is not getting done - not sure this is a bug or what. I thought training would help, but that is also extremely slow going as you can only train one at a time in this game (I know I can have more machines, I just haven't done that yet), and also that people NEVER go for their training and of course they don't in the summer. Does training help them actually do the work better so I need less and can start firing people? Or is it better to have lots of low level people instead? In the last two levels I just hired lots because there was no training and those campuses run very smoothly and make lots of profit, but I am seeing less return now on level three.

Just wondering what I am missing. I am really enjoying the game, but haven't really sorted the mechanics. I thought I had, but clearly I had not, and I don't want to rush off to harder levels until I am more sure about cash flow.

[Kunovega]

The more you level up a course, the more you can raise the price which cuts down the number of people who will sign up. You tweak this as close as you can to a factor of 8 (16, 24, etc) and then lower the sign ups to 8/16/24/etc if you can't get it there from price adjustments alone.

Beyond that is marketing, if you market a specific course you'll have more applicants from that temporarily (where as the course level ups are permanent) this further gives you room (at least for the year) to adjust the price up and the actual intake down. (Additionally there are random events where transfer students visit your school to decide if they want to come the following year, these are like free marketing events which can give you 1 or more student applicants the same way marketing would have, you can deny these or use them to boost your prices)

The higher you can set the price while still taking in full classes (8 per class) the more money you will make.

Each class (per year) takes up 3 schedule slots. A teacher can teach 6 schedule slots, so 1 teacher can handle up to 2 classes (16 students) per year per course.

Optimal ratio is 1 teacher to 16 students (that's 2 class sets across 6 teaching sessions) set to the highest price you can make it while still getting 16 students.

Where this gets tricky is you'll need to do this for each year of a course, there are courses ranging from 1 to 4 years long though the majority of them are 3 years and the second most common are 2 years. (there's only 1 that's 1 year and 1 that's 4 years, the rest are 2 or 3, most being 3 years)

So if you have for example an intake of 16 students per year on a 3 year long course you would need 3 teachers, though you wouldn't need to hire them all until you actually get to the 3rd year of intake.

The secret is year to year you'll need to readjust these numbers every summer so that you don't accidently go over the 8 student ratio per class or you'll suddenly need extra rooms for less than an optimal number of students. (why spent $100,000 + teacher salary for say a single student? Which is what would happen if you were to say go from 16 to 17 student intake, you would suddenly have a class of 8, a class of 8 and a class of 1. The 8 + 8 could use 1 room and 1 teacher, but you would suddenly need another room and another teacher for 8 + 8 + 1)

Or to put it another way the cost of bringing in 17 students is the same cost as bringing in 32 students but without the income.

Basically 1 to 16 students all has the same cost to you. 17 to 32 students is the same cost to you. With any given set you'll want as many students for your costs without going over your fixed costs while maximizing the amount they pay.

That's all with the understanding of looking at just one course being run.

Things get slightly more complex (and fun) when you factor in running additional courses. The more complex courses need more than just one classroom type and thus may have empty slots in those rooms which could be use for other courses.

This can easily be seen from course management where it shows you which rooms are used for which years. Each room can be used up to 6 times per year.

If you have a course that uses a particular room twice a year every year for 3 years, you would only need 1 room for every 8 students, each year worth of students using the room twice for a total of 6 slots on the schedule.

For example virtual normality an optimal set up, a 3 year course that uses the VR room twice a year and the lecture hall 1 per year:
3 teachers = 16 students (2 classes of 8) per year over 3 years (48 total in the school after 3 years running) = 2 VR rooms + 1 lecture hall. (and you would only need 10 beds to support that many students).

The more extra students you have applying from increasing the course rating, advertising with marketing or transfer students from random events, the higher you can raise your price to reduce the student intake to just 16 without going over. Because if you went to 17 you would need +1 teacher, + 1 VR room, +1 lecture hall all at great expense while making only the income from a single additional student.

This the most basic example I can give you. It all gets slightly more complex when you factor in other courses or multiple courses with a wider range of which rooms they use and how many times per year.

For example when you get to say archeology, you suddenly need a computer room, but not very often. This means you could add another course that also only needs the computer room a little bit and it would be more income without needing any new rooms, filling in slots on the schedule to take advantage of open room times.

You can examine every course and see which ones layer best with each other and optimize around maximizing room usage always with the goal of not having to build more rooms for less than a full class worth of students.

In summary, read course management screens and actually try to understand them. It's not that complicated once you realize a room/class is always 8 students. Each course runs 3 class room schedule slots per year of various rooms, while each room can be used up to 6 times by any number of courses per year and each teacher can teach 6 times a year.

What changes from course to course is what rooms are used for how many times each and for how many years, and year to year how many students are applying that let you fluctuate the pricing and optimize intake without over spending on infrastructure to try and accommodate too few students to justify the price.

Overall it's not hard, but it can be interesting when you try to optimize which courses layer best with others to make full use of your rooms.

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It gets slightly more complex if you want dedicated tutors and/or researchers. I will typically hire +1 additional teacher and assign them to tutoring after my income is stable enough to afford it. You can set what their work assignments are.

So if I need 3 teachers for a 3 year course with 16 students per year (48 total) I'll have 4 teachers for that course type, 3 assigned to teaching with that course + inspiration training and then the 4th is assigned only to tutoring with tuition training instead of inspiration and I only need 1 tuition room for that set of students.

You can further optimize student movement by assigning specific rooms to specific courses, and so on, but that's a little more advanced and basically never really required, I just do it for fun on the larger campus maps.

For example you could have a dedicated building to something like general studies, it only needs 1 lecture hall for 16 students per year (1 year course), 1 teacher and a single tiny dorm of 4 beds and you have an extra income stream from a course that doesn't interfere with anything else going on and that dorm and lecture hall can be assigned to gen studies only while removing gen from the other lecture halls. There's any number of other ways you can do this with other courses as well.

[Livia]

I am aware of the 8 count. Though the system often LIMITS the number I can bring in for some reason I don't understand (isn't that for me to decide, game?), ie: 30 apply, game tells me 25, I limit to 24...game then makes it 22. Generally though I am running courses with 8/16/24/32 intakes each year.

Teacher number I was less sure about, especially running tuition rooms and covering breaks with those, so I have more than just those teaching. Also seeing exhausted teachers teaching, hence figuring that means I actually needed the couple extra.

I have been limiting rooms to one subject unless I have to open it to another rather than make another room for one subject. I've been having 3-4 as my standard room number per subject. But I also do that as I was hoping it would keep students in the spot I set up for them, but the little buggers wander all over the campus regardless.

I make big dorms with lots of bed - they seem to give me higher rent than smaller rooms.

I am strong TPH player, so I know how to run that game very well under any conditions (though I certainly have levels I hate and will never play again! )

I felt the lines in the tuition room awful long with only one room (though the game SUCKS at spreading out the queues and, unlike in TPH, I can't move students to a different room where the teacher is sitting their with their finger up their nose, while the other has a queue of 4-5). I tend to have 2-3 tuition rooms (depending on the intake) per subject. As I just got to training, I will need to do things like make them more custom for their areas.

All that said, teachers are my smallest number in terms of staff. It really does seem to be janitors and assistants (I have many food stalls because they don't hit the health, plus I get more money from them, and I also like to have more than one library) who take the bigger chunks. No matter how many janitors I have, the game tells me to hire more and they fail to keep on top of ANYTHING (like full dorms/bathrooms will go uncleaned for an entire year). I'm asking - will they do better with training and I will need less of them then? Better to have 40 level 1s, or can I do 20 higher levels basic idea.

I'm still making money, but I don't know if it will work in more chaotic levels. The rule of TPH was just to always be slow with building out, which kinda works here, but maybe I am just not building out slowly correctly.

TLTR: Training - is it worth it? TPH - YES! Better and faster results - more cash! TPC - ?

[Kunovega]

There's not a single campus where multiple libraries has been optimal, they are simply too expensive to justify and you never have more total students than one library can handle. One well built central library set to 3 staff (the highest you can assign to it) has worked for all of them. At most you just add more book cases and desks if any one particular piece of equipment has a line. I eventually hire 4 library staff set to library only so that 3 are working and 1 on break at any given time.

Total number of students across all courses is soft capped by your campus level and hard capped by the game at around 300. I rarely get beyond 200 on a campus before it's just not worth expanding more. How many are in any one specific course just depends on what courses I feel like activating on the campus.

Number of students available to apply is also shown in management, this changes from year to year, if there's not enough students applying you won't have enough to fill all of your courses either. If a course is being limited it's either because there's not enough total applying or you've hit a cap from either campus level or game max.

You shouldn't need more than 1 tuition room to around 24 students, though having 1 set for each course helps keep one room from being occupied by a teacher that doesn't even have students coming for them.

Janitors need skills or they are slow. Beds and toilets use the Maintenance skill and a higher skill speeds up their job completion and aerodynamics gets them around the campus faster.

[Livia]

I had lots applying. On the original management screen it shows it won't let me have the number I set it to, but then when I start the year, the number is correct, so, I dunno.

The campuses are pretty large - they have such a long walk for a single library, but if you've found that works, okay, I'll give that a shot on my next map. Mitton ended up being fine once I upped my student numbers. I think I expanded too fast as I was not keeping up with training (since it was new on this level along with research), so I likely have more staff than I need because of the training I think.

Yeah, I have discovered the maintenance skill is needed for general cleaning, so I had some folks with just the upgrade doing NOTHING (and still failing to upgrade on those rare times I needed it).

1 for 24 tuition - thanks for that. Still about 1-3 depending on intake as some courses I have 42 incoming, plus the ones already there. I haven't found - is there a way to see how many students of certain course you have already on the campus? I adjust my intake as required to not need to build more labs than what I have, so I don't really know the numbers for each. I'm sure it's somewhere in the menus, I just haven't found it - there's a lot!

Mitton, I suspect, is going to be my favourite level - I'm sure it goes to hell after this. But this one has no disasters and I can just build a pretty campus and watch all the fun animations.