One medical post overcrowded, other medical post empty

[serein]

I passed the law to allow overcrowding, assuming that I could just build additional medical posts later and patients would fill them until they had to resort to overcrowding, but that's not the case. They just go to the crowded one until it's completely full and then pour over into the second medical post. Is that intended?

[Spooky]

yeah pretty much. overcrowding just lets a medical tent/imfirmary have double the capacity, theres no real negative to it

[serein]

The real negative is the permanent discontentment modifier that could be avoided if only they'd prefer going to a medical post that has spare beds first.

[Stormmaster]

I tried it today for the first (and, hopefully, last) time — very disappointed with Overcrowding.

I could understand that people who are already in treatment in an overcrowded facility remain there, but the fact that the new ones happily go to overcrowded instead of the empty one is really bad. Even if the other post is just next to it, ugh.

[Cynbell]

I know it sounds dumb but...what if you just take out the enginners on both infirmaries, unpause for a few secs and then put them back in?

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by serein:

I passed the law to allow overcrowding,

But isn't that what you ordered? Medical tents are to cram in 10 people instead of 5. Your engineers obeyed. You're the captain, they do as ordered. If you don't need the extra space, don't pass the overcrowding law. This applies actually to all of the available laws in the books. If you don't need it, don't pass it. They're there to give solutions to problems. If you don't have a problem don't try to fix it.

It's dumb only from the point-of-view of a society where the leadership gives only rough guidelines and expects the subordinate levels to figure their own best solutions. In a "captain of a ship at sea" style scenario the leader makes the decisions and whether the decisions are good or bad, when time matters carrying the orders out consistently without hesitation is usually better than wasting time waiting for confirmation and having to explain the background and the whole picture to each and everyone every time you give a command.

Applied to the "unnecessary overcrowding" situation your engineers might not have had the whole picture. For all they knew, you might have had information about a coming wave of refugees and thus planning ahead to get space for them. Even if it's in reality a dumb game-AI, your engineers actually did exactly as expected, there.

Leading a civilian society with a dictatorship gets people killed. Leading an army with democracy gets people killed. Know when and where to use either form of governing if you don't want to end up with lots of bodies.

[serein]

Originally posted by Pembroke:

But isn't that what you ordered? Medical tents are to cram in 10 people instead of 5. Your engineers obeyed. You're the captain, they do as ordered. If you don't need the extra space, don't pass the overcrowding law. This applies actually to all of the available laws in the books. If you don't need it, don't pass it.

First of all, leave the snark at the door.

I ordered that law, yes. I got a ton of sick people very suddenly early in a playthrough and then a week later I no longer needed the extra beds. It was one of my first playthroughs and I was learning the ins and outs of the different laws, and it's the last time I'll use Overcrowding as it is because even in an emergency that law is pointless.

Originally posted by Pembroke:

This applies actually to all of the available laws in the books. If you don't need it, don't pass it.

I also ordered soup to be made. That law is the one where the leader gets the option to decide when the cooks make soup and when they make standard rations. In case you didn't notice, you get to switch soup on/off. The cooks don't just get locked into making soup forever.

In another playthrough I ordered the sick to be given extra rations, and they're not given extra rations every time, the leader gives the order on when or if to give them extra rations.

I also ordered extended shifts. But the workers don't automatically work extended shifts all the time, you see? Even if I ordered them to, they will eventually complain and ask me to change it, because the game attempts to simulate the desires of real people.

I hope you can see where I'm going here when I say there's a pattern.

Originally posted by Pembroke:

Applied to the "unnecessary overcrowding" situation your engineers might not have had the whole picture. For all they knew, you might have had information about a coming wave of refugees and thus planning ahead to get space for them. Even if it's in reality a dumb game-AI, your engineers actually did exactly as expected, there.

I don't know where you got that impression, but I'm not complaining about the engineers. I'm complaining about the patients, who complain that it's overcrowded when they could have gone next door to an empty medical post. It's a game mechanic that could be intentional (if so, this law really might as well not exist) or it could just be dumb AI. It certainly feels like dumb AI.

I'm fine with being unable to turn overcrowding on or off, but this part of this law is plain silly. There's no motivation to improve healthcare after this law because even if you do, it won't be used to its full potential. Plenty of other bad situations you put your people in to save lives in the long run, you're given an option to change the situation, but not this one. This one is just sort of a flat, dull tone in an otherwise interesting landscape of human decisions. This one turns the people into dumb dumbs with no actual desires.

An alternative way the law could work might be: make the patients have common sense and have them prefer less crowded medical posts, and then make the negative effects get worse and worse over time if medical posts are >5 or infirmaries are >10 for too long. Then it wouldn't feel so flat and boring. Then it would have pros and cons that actually make sense, and it would feel like a real alternative to Extra Rations rather than the blank filler law it is.

[Oddible]

The problem is you can't turn it off. If Overcrowding was a toggle / option on a Medical Center rather than a permanent discontent modifier that would be better. I don't need it all the time.