I feel like my inn is overstaffed...

[Quetzalcoatl]

At times, my number of employees equal my number of guests.

BUT my inn still has poor service because nobody waits the tables. My Inn is dirty because nobody cleans despite calling for Priority cleaning several times. And crappy food because my Chef just wanders around the inn doing NOTHING while my kitchenhands do the actual cooking.

I made reasonable Shifts with rotations for some of my employees so they don't get overworked. I made sure I set priorities for each and every employee so they have dedicated tasks based on their traits (they said perfectionists are good cleaners so I can have sparkly furnitures). Yet somehow my entire inn is still inefficient.

IMO, besides the AI needing (a lot of) tweaks to fix bugs, they should also buff up some employee parameters. It's normal to have an employee with 3 negative traits and one positive trait, so no work actually gets done. Everyone gets fatigued very easily so Breaks happen often, and that's not counting the "breaks" Smokers, Gossipers and Slackers do while on duty. I'd rather pay big money for a competent waitress than MY CHEF WHO I PAY 400 GULDENS JUST FOR HIM TO WANDER AROUND MY INN.

And without the Guest Patience buff, my guests already complain after just sitting for a few seconds so I had to get more waitresses to please them, which leads to the overstaffing problem.

... I guess this turned into a rant, but I just hope they just make the staff more productive even with the triple negative traits so my humble inn isn't flooded with employees akin to a five star hotel. How about they make waitresses get orders per table instead of per person? That will save them tremendous amount of time walking in and out of the counter / kitchen / wine barrel. And it's also closer to real life waiters.

And finally, screw my Chef!!

[oi__io]

Just out of curiosity, did you hire a lot of low level worker? If you did, what's their level now? Do you have any that leveled up past level 6? Do you have any that has leveled up past level 10 from level 1?

In my inn the highest level worker that I hired from the beginning is now at level 8. I hired one level 11 worker just to compare. The one at level 11 has mostly good traits while the one at level 8 has mostly bad traits (Smoker, Dull, Slowpoke) but level 8 moves waaay faster than level 11. They both screw up at about the same rate mainly because I focus on Comfort rather than Quality because I want them to keep leveling up.

That lead me to believe that either the trait is bugged out or the worker that level up naturally is better than worker that started at higher level despite the bad trait.

In my campaign playthrough the hiring list seems to refresh every other day at midnight so I always hire new ones if I see decent traits. Eventually I got more worker than I needed but my inn is very clean most of the time.

It will get dirty when I started hiring town criers in more than two cities at the same time. I assume more traffic in and out of the main hall causes it to get dirty. But eventually my drudges manage to catch up once they're not occupied with carrying stuff or making beds or some other random stuff they do.

There's too many unknown variables in this game to properly minmax it. For my own sanity, I turn blind eye to inefficiency and just roll with it.

[Quetzalcoatl]

My servants level up faster than most, so my earliest servants I had since Act 1 are now at Lv10 or 11. They could have leveled more if I hadn't delayed their upgrade (don't have money for that). My drudges are at average lv8. I rarely fire employees since I needed the manpower due to inefficiency so I keep even the bad ones with me (like that freakin' Chef).

For additional info. I have around a dozen Maids, highest is 11 and the lowest is 6. Drudges I have a dozen, with one being 11 and the lowest around 4.

Other guys said that Priority cleaning is really bugged right now, which could explain why I never see anybody cleaning up my main hall after calling for a clean up a few times.

I also roll with the complaints, but the narrator is flooding me with them every other second.

[Wantoomany]

How do you have a level 6 Maid? Maid is just a title for a higher level server. Just like Cook is the title for a higher level kitchenhand.

[Quetzalcoatl]

By maids I meant the entire class. Servant would have been a more accurate term I should have said. I have a dozen Servants, around 3 of which started at Lv11 (Maide).

[oi__io]

In terms of number of workers and their levels, yours seems to be waay ahead of mine. Have you tried setting the priority of the workers to be on Quality or Speed? I think poor service can be negated by Speed while crappy food can be negated by Quality and better kitchen appliance.

[oi__io]

I have a theory on this. I assume the workers always got task automatically queued up so that might explain the delay when you make changes to priority etc. I guess they'll try to complete their current queue first before moving on to something else.

This is just a hunch because when I see my Tinhorn standing idle I can queue stealing task multiple times in a row and he'll immediately try do the job in the exact order given. However if he's occupied with something else that he initiated by himself, he will not immediately respond until he's idle again.

Another assumption is that when a customer is ready to order, a random worker is assigned to take the order. However if that worker is currently occupied, the customer will have to wait until the worker is ready. This might explain why no one is taking order even when you have enough servants to cover all tables. Customers are forced to wait because they're assigned to currently occupied worker.

If this is true, it might also explain why the inn is dirty even when everyone is prioritized to do cleaning. The ones assign to do the cleaning is occupied with something else.

This is purely speculation tho. Might not even be true because I've seen a bunch of workers bumping into one another trying to clean the exact same spot.

[Quetzalcoatl]

I currently set my sliders Quality and Comfort, with minimum Speed. But with the amount of servants I had that shouldn't be a problem.

When I started a new sandbox game, I could see my employees much better (since there's only a few of them). I have a patron capacity of 16, full house, with 3 Lv1 servants. I set them all to be waitresses (max waiting tables, Quality & Comfort slider).

But even with that, only 1 of them waits the tables, and at times none at all. One of my waitresses took a break after just serving 2 or 3. I already put my wine barrels very close to the tables so travel time should have been mitigated, but I get a flood of "Poor service" complaints because none of them get served. From my observation, it's not that my waitresses are slow. It's just that they're not working at all.

Looking at the patrons though, they're rather impatient. 5~10 seconds after they just sat and they already started following up on their order. 5~10 seconds is just enough time for a min speed Waitress to take an order, get the wine, and return back. That means a small starter inn needs around 1:1 patron to waitress ratio, maybe 2:1 if I amp up the speed slider (haven't tried tho). That's quite insane as that sort of ratio could easily bloat the required number of staff to decently run my inn.

I'm hoping they tweak the waiting system so that even the least competent waitress can handle at least one table (4~6 patrons). As it is now, the one-by-one serving is too slow and rather unrealistic. There are pictures out there of IRL waitresses holding 24 mugs of beer at once so it's not far fetched to have that in-game.

[oi__io]

Hmm. Have you tried switching it around so that Speed is the highest priority while Comfort and Quality at a slightly lower priority? Don't go to the extreme min/max since that might lead to other issues, just move the sliders so that there's significant enough gap between them. Give it a try and see if there's any difference. Just for science.

I think the reason as to why they only serve one customer at a time in this game is due to limitation in game mechanic. The worker can only carry one item at a time. Doesn't matter who's doing the carrying, and doesn't matter what they're carrying, only one item at a time.

However I've seen one servant takes order from multiple customers in one go. I didn't watch long enough to see who actually delivers the order tho. I'm still at the stage of the game where everyone is complaining about poor service (because I prioritized Comfort) but I manage to negate it by having clean main hall and appropriate deco for the Distressed. Everyone else hates the deco but they're not my target customer so it doesn't matter to me if they're not satisfied.

[Quetzalcoatl]

I could try experimenting with the sliders so Speed is the highest. Still, I don't think it will help out tremendously as they'll still serve and satisfy one patron at a time. After 3 patrons, my servants will call for a break while 12 other patrons are complaining about nobody serving them.

I'll acknowledge the in-game limitation, but I do hope they could work on that. They could have some sort of limited inventory system for each of the staff. Like, maybe 3 or 4 stacks of items can be carried by a person, then expand if said person has a bag or if they have the Smart Trait. We could have Drudges carry 2~4 boxes of wine / sausages / candles... wait no some of those are too heavy, and a weight system might complicate the system further. But I would still love them to do something about it.

Alternative solution may be to NOT put patrons on a short fuse.

[Vosoros]

Just skim-reading but this smacks to me of too large an Inn. My main hall is a mere 5x3 squares with 3 tables and a total of 18 chairs. To staff the 1 level Inn I have 8 servers, 4 drudges, 2 watchmen and 1 cook. Which means half of those are active at any given time.

Given the small, efficient Inn design for the staff to get around the Inn is mostly served and cleaned well. However, to offset occasions with poor service I have invested in quality décor and kept the prices low. Each of those can offset such things. Top that off with quality food and drink and my profits on a drinks delivery alone can conservatively bring in 20,000 guldens.

Finding a balance in the design and staff levels is tricky, but once you have it you're gulden...

[Shork with a Torpedo]

So many wall of text so i didn't read all of them. Pardon me if i miss some point.

But after my 5th Inn got to 50+ fame and around 60hrs of play,

Except the buggy path finding system and AI, nobody like bugs, including me.

I have never have issues with the RNG system. May be cause i'm too used with RNG based games.

Accept the the imperfect, deal with it, life is never be perfect and also games. You will gonna get low most of the time, and struggle most of the time.

And that will make you more satisfied when go through all the hard work and struggle when your Inn finally have a stable income and making profit, have tons of money and expand like it's a tycoon game.

Anyway, pro tip:

- Try the sandbox mode first, (not the carefree mode) then go to campaign. (Although they recommending you to go campaign first)

[Shork with a Torpedo]

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

And without the Guest Patience buff, my guests already complain after just sitting for a few seconds so I had to get more waitresses to please them, which leads to the overstaffing problem.

Life is hard, my friend, life is hard.

Welcome to the RNG based game.

[oi__io]

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

I could try experimenting with the sliders so Speed is the highest. Still, I don't think it will help out tremendously as they'll still serve and satisfy one patron at a time. After 3 patrons, my servants will call for a break while 12 other patrons are complaining about nobody serving them.

The frequent breaks is due to Comfort priority. If you set it lower than Speed and Quality, they'll work longer hours and take less break. You did mentioned you set Speed to minimum in previous post, so theoretically that could be the major cause of poor service.

Just as a reminder, Quality means the worker will spend more time on the job so they'll screw up less but it'll take longer to complete a job, making customer wait, thus causing poor service. Comfort means the worker will take more breaks but they'll have better mood and level up faster. Speed means they'll work faster at expense of quality so they'll screw up more.

For my high level worker I set Speed and Quality at same priority while Comfort is slightly lower. I boost their mood by having beds for them to recover, praise them once a day, have Bards performing every so often and a Dartboard for them to use when they're taking a break. It's working for me so far.

Originally posted by Vosoros:

Just skim-reading but this smacks to me of too large an Inn.

Perhaps you're right. I just completed my second run of the campaign mode to get 100% achievement and I did it all without adding second floor to the inn. Everything's built on the ground floor. Got nothing to do with Trovin's tax, just wanted to complete it with simpler layout.

In the end, I have a 5x4 main hall with only seven tables, with six basic stool on either sides of each table. My kitchen is a modest 7x2, big enough to fit the appliance plus several storage racks and two dishwasher so I don't need separate storage room. I have a 4x4 guest room with 11 beds and a 4x2 staff room with 6 beds. I also have several 2x2 private rooms for the various special guests.

I have never tried building a massive inn before. I guess I'll try it next in sandbox mode just to see if it is economically feasible.

[Shork with a Torpedo]

For worker and servant set at speed 50%, quality and comfort same lvl.
For Cook, set at 50% for quality, speed and comfort same lvl.
For thug and scoundrel, set comfort for 50%, quality and speed same lvl. (only for low lvl, if you have high lvl, set at same everything would work best)

DO NOT set anything to max, it's won't help you anything, it just make thing worse.


I have 8 servant, 8 drudge, 1 chief, 1 kitchenhand, 1 thug, 1 scoundrel. In an Inn with 50+ fame, and 200 guest per days, crowding time at 40 guests and i don't have anything issue except they don't clean the private room bed (it's a bug). And yes, some time the room is dirty to and i got complaint about that but will mostly fixed in 1-2 in-game hours (about 3-5 min real-life without speed up).

Also praise them more often, i haven't having any issue of worker break to many or scew up all the time even with new hire and low lvl employee. (They still does but 1 in a while)

[Quetzalcoatl]

Originally posted by Vosoros:

Just skim-reading but this smacks to me of too large an Inn. My main hall is a mere 5x3 squares with 3 tables and a total of 18 chairs. To staff the 1 level Inn I have 8 servers, 4 drudges, 2 watchmen and 1 cook. Which means half of those are active at any given time.

That's exactly the problem I'm pointing. Do you REALLY need 8 servers to accommodate 18 patrons? That's almost 2:1 ratio assuming you set all your Servants to be waitresses.

As I mentioned in my post, my inn had a capacity of 16 with a 4x4 Hall, and the 3 waitresses (most I can get early game) I had are severely lacking because only one of them decides to work at a time while the others are chatting away or slacking off.