Campaign 1 In Debt

[rwh39407]

I am having trouble with the above mentioned campaign with the genearl surgery department. I hired techs with USG and cardio for the correct rooms but they are not registered that I have hired them under hospitalization. Also I keep losing money. Do I need a reception area plus a waiting room?

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by Shizette:

Having the same issue with those positions. I completed all of the tasks from the insurance company but the next campaign is still gray. So I built reception - already had a waiting area. Still nada.

I just confirmed by loading a save I made of Campaign 1: the game quits to the main menu and unlocks campaign 2 AS SOON AS I click on the down arrow in the Finance screen to pay off the last $20,000 chunk of debt. I don't need to get to midnight with a positive balance or anything like that. I had already completed all of the other insurance objectives (getting to 50 patients per day)

So if the mission doesn't end when you do that, yeah something's definitely not right. I wouldn't waste any more time with that save.

[Shizette]

Originally posted by Oceansize:

I just confirmed by loading a save I made of Campaign 1: the game quits to the main menu and unlocks campaign 2 AS SOON AS I click on the down arrow in the Finance screen to pay off the last $20,000 chunk of debt. I don't need to get to midnight with a positive balance or anything like that. I had already completed all of the other insurance objectives (getting to 50 patients per day)

So if the mission doesn't end when you do that, yeah something's definitely not right. I wouldn't waste any more time with that save.

I wasn't thinking. Seriously. I had a positive balance $92k but had I thought for more than a few seconds, I would have realized much earlier - if you're 100k in debt and have 92k, you're still -8k in the hole - even though it appears you have a balance above zero. After you explained how loans work in game, when payments were taken, it dawned on me. DUH! I was able to pay 80k right away and it took me another day to get the rest. As you said, the moment you pay to zero - thecampaign 2 is available.

Thanks again!

[Oceansize]

Once I figured out the cash flow issue (discussed below), this campaign actually became quite easy for me (although it still takes some time regardless). PS I only used prefab rooms when building out General Surgery. I'm sure that saved me some grief.

The main trick they're trying to teach you in this campaign is that maximizing cash flow right away (by going even deeper into debt) and opening your General Surgery Dept right away might very well be more important than trying to get out of debt first.

dorianmode suggests waiting a bit to open GS, being more patient to build up some cash, but I found this to be wasted time because my outflows were matching my inflows, never making any progress in my bank balance, until I opened GS and started making fat cash on abdominal and larathropic (sp?) surgeries (admittedly it never occurred to me to get rid of some equipment, I am always using prefabs so far, so I wasn't really thinking about the cost that went into them as being negotiable).

I guess the main difference between the two strategies was dorianmode emphasized a lean & mean approach that required getting rid of some nice things and cutting staff, whereas I dug a slightly deeper hole in the short term in order to make the best hospital I could and thus get the highest paying procedures ASAP. Aka the "ya gotta have money to make money, so if you don't have it, borrow it" approach.

So the most efficient strategy (for me) was:

1) Take out even more loans at the outset and completely build & staff your General Surgery Dept. by completing insurance objectives as quickly as possible; you want to open up lucrative avenues for treatment ASAP, surgeries are the quickest way to paying off that loan, so get to the point you can do General Surgeries ASAP

2) Once GS is up & running to your satisfaction, pay off portions of the loan AS SOON AS you have $20,000 burning a hole in your pocket, I mean like right away. At the very least, MAKE SURE you do this before 20:00, otherwise that principal will get sucked up by wages and you'll lose a chance to retire the interest on another $20,000 chunk of debt (wasted $200 per day, per chunk)

Cheers all, hope this helps

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by Shizette:

I wasn't thinking. Seriously. I had a positive balance $92k but had I thought for more than a few seconds, I would have realized much earlier - if you're 100k in debt and have 92k, you're still -8k in the hole - even though it appears you have a balance above zero. After you explained how loans work in game, when payments were taken, it dawned on me. DUH! I was able to pay 80k right away and it took me another day to get the rest. As you said, the moment you pay to zero - thecampaign 2 is available.

Thanks again!

Right on man, glad to hear I helped get you to your "a-ha" moment, lol. I'm a financial advisor in RL so this is my baileywick

[dorianmode]

It's a good point overall - accessing the new revenue streams is worthwhile.

Prefabs are horribly ineffcient - huge space to bed ratio and lots of unnecessary equipment. Just like the prebuilt stuff in the hospital.
Keeping the extraneous expense to a minimum while opening up the new department is what I actually did - OP mentioned 'keep losing money' so it made sense to focus on that.
I like grabbing at the lucrative stuff quickly, but made the mistake of overextending myself in Sandbox, and it taking an age to dig myself out (before I knew in advance exactly what the loan limit was) - hitting 500k limit without completing the hospitalisation wing I was building. Lesson learned!

The prefab wards in particular make me wince - especially since the single rooms have things like TVs that the patients can't watch from their beds.

Also worth noting that the insurance objectives in the campaign are huge bursts of cash which can help pay down a debt quickly, so your plan of chasing them might be the best speed strategy.

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by dorianmode:

It's a good point overall - accessing the new revenue streams is worthwhile.

Prefabs are horribly ineffcient - huge space to bed ratio and lots of unnecessary equipment. Just like the prebuilt stuff in the hospital.
Keeping the extraneous expense to a minimum while opening up the new department is what I actually did - OP mentioned 'keep losing money' so it made sense to focus on that.
I like grabbing at the lucrative stuff quickly, but made the mistake of overextending myself in Sandbox, and it taking an age to dig myself out (before I knew in advance exactly what the loan limit was) - hitting 500k limit without completing the hospitalisation wing I was building. Lesson learned!

The prefab wards in particular make me wince - especially since the single rooms have things like TVs that the patients can't watch from their beds.

Also worth noting that the insurance objectives in the campaign are huge bursts of cash which can help pay down a debt quickly, so your plan of chasing them might be the best speed strategy.

Agreed I could do better eventually by building myself instead of using prefabs, although those prefab rooms are smaller than the ones I was building in sandbox so I obviously have a lot ot learn about building more efficiently, lol. But yeah if I can make most rooms smaller then I can have more wards, more GS offices, etc. Good point.

[Sprool]

Agreed on the above re wasteful prefabs. I also started off by eliminating a load of staff - thered more docs and nurses on night shift than needed, more emergency clinic docs, way too many cleaners, too many lab staff - you can fire a load of unnecessary ones, then sell off the extra unneeded equipment to get a much leaner cashflow to start with, before settling in and starting to build towards the insurance goals.

[Anaztazioch]

I cant help you more than ask you to play tutorials.
Every problem i see above is regarding the UI and department assignings.

You can recruit neuro technicans in emergency dep. even tough they have no use over there, no room or equipment requiering their skill.

What i couldbt veryfy is whether you need seperate receptions for seperate departments, that you need seperate cario/urology rooms for seperate departments etc.

[dorianmode]

@Anaztazioch

Why revive an old thread to ask off-topic questions?

Hiring automatically filters if you hire for a specific workspace. One reception can serve your whole hospital. You need at least one waiting room per department. You need separate copies of diagnostic rooms for each department - this is made clear with numbers on the management panel being red or green.

All of these questions have been answered many times elsewhere - recommend you search before posting.