Sandbox mode

[Krazyone]

I see on the steam page it says there is a sandbox mode in game. From my experiance with recent games sandbox mode usually is unlimited funds. Is this just an open ended version of the normal game or do you get unlimited funds to do anything? I have this on my wishlist and it looks awesome but about the only gameplay i like is endles game modes that do not have a limit on how long you take and whatnot.

[happyscrub]

its sandbox with the option of having little money or free money

[roman.oxymoron]

Hi, yes sandbox is endless and you can set it as free building so you don't need to care about money.

[Grace_bannister]

roman i too have this question but i have brought and played it and play sandbox mode it says unlimited build but yet that is not exactly true yes its free build bot no coz soon as you run in the red you cant build a thing till your money is bk in the green ie not in debt also same for building objects and floors and walls and doors says free build but tha should include weather you in debt or in credit free build to me is free build not based on conditions im not nitpicking but just bringing up tht little thing tha doesnt actually make it free build specially when you missed a room and then faulsed to get a 100,000 pound loan to put you bk in credit to get that room soorted i always spot the problem after i hired all staff the one thing thats not free to hire or search for a cheap good doc with high stats

[mikamurakaoru]

Sandbox is not a "free build" mode, but "Endless mode" is more suitable.

[Krazyone]

Originally posted by happyscrub:

its sandbox with the option of having little money or free money

Originally posted by mikamurakaoru:

Sandbox is not a "free build" mode, but "Endless mode" is more suitable.

Ok so i got both responses....1 from the dev who says that it's free to build anything and miak and happy say that you can make it so its like a normal game but the game never ends. I take it you can do both and have options when you start the game to change that?

[ROFLpl0x]

Originally posted by Krazyone:

Originally posted by happyscrub:

its sandbox with the option of having little money or free money

Originally posted by mikamurakaoru:

Sandbox is not a "free build" mode, but "Endless mode" is more suitable.

Ok so i got both responses....1 from the dev who says that it's free to build anything and miak and happy say that you can make it so its like a normal game but the game never ends. I take it you can do both and have options when you start the game to change that?

There's a free build mode option you can check before starting a sandbox game but it doesn't really work. There's still costs involved with other things that prevent you from building if they put your account into the negative, even though you don't need any money.

Trying to hire decent staff is by far the worst offender. That aspect of the game really needs to be completely redone. You don't go to an employment agency looking to hire a receptionist, for example, and tell them to just give you any five random nurses they have on the books, never mind if they actually have the receptionist skill or not. You damn sure don't pay them $2.5k to give you five more random nurses because the first five sucked and/or weren't even able to do the job to begin with. You tell them "I need to hire a receptionist for my hospital. Lemme see your RECEPTIONIST nurses, not 25 interns and patient care nurses and one or two receptionists." And that's just a single type of nurse. You have to go through that for different types of doctors and techs, too. The way this works can easily bankrupt you before you've unpaused the game for the first time and prevent you from installing something as simple as a trash can, even in free build mode.

I'll just go ahead and say it. This is a really good game but there's a WTF moment waiting around almost every corner that shouldn't be there. I think the developer will fix them, though, and they're obviously capable. They've done a real bang up job on the game so far, they just released it without polishing the systems and it needs it badly.

[Krazyone]

Ah ok thank you that clears up my confusion. Thanks for answering!

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by ROFLwut?:

I'll just go ahead and say it. This is a really good game but there's a WTF moment waiting around almost every corner that shouldn't be there. I think the developer will fix them, though, and they're obviously capable. They've done a real bang up job on the game so far, they just released it without polishing the systems and it needs it badly.

I like the dynamic that you need to spend money to find the best talent (just like paying a headhunting firm in RL to find good candidates for your job opening) but to your point: yes if you're going to pay a headhunting fee, the headhunter is not going to put people without the right skills in front of you. I don't know that I'd completely redo the hiring process, but yeah at least only put the people with the specializations you're after in front of you when you hit that $2,500 button.

I found an interesting workaround however: as long as you're not looking for a doctor, you can hire staff for a certain department by looking at the available staff for hire in a different department, meaning you have 4x or 5x more candidates to peruse before spending another $2,500 to refresh the list. Aside from Radiology Technologists, all the Technologists for the various departments have the same mix of skills/specializations, as do Nurses. A Medical Surgery Nurse you find in the Hire Staff window for Internal Medicine is going to be just as effective doing Medical Surgery for your Cardiology department, so if you've got a Medical Surgery nurse for hire in Internal Medicine but you need one in Cardiology, first you click on her portrait in Internal Medicine to drag her to her workstation, and then click on Cardiology, and THEN drag her to her intended workstation. Same would go for, say, needing a good USG specialist in your General Surgery department but only finding one for hire in your Cardiology "Hire Staff" window. Any USG Technologist will work. Hire them from General Surgery and then change their department to Cardiology before you assign their workstation, no need to spend $2,500 to refresh the Technologists in your Cardiology window.

This works for janitors, nurses, and all Technologists except for Radiology Technologists.

Completely agree on your comments about being a really good game but with too many WTF that shouldn't happen moments. But also agree the devs still have my confidence, I'm loving this game even in it's less-than-perfect state. Really what's missing is a bit more polish, plus more tools for Build mode. And would really like to see performance improvements so we can get the cap above 200.

[ROFLpl0x]

The biggest problem with the hiring is that the game assumes you don't already have a whole stack of applicants to choose from without going through an employment agency and having to pay them $2.5k per roll for a bunch of random candidates that either you wouldn't hire on a bet or they can't do the job anyway, but you still have to pay to see them. There's work arounds for it, like you can work around free build bankruptcy by taking out a loan, but it shouldn't be something that has to be worked around, especially when you just start a map with $50k in your account and it takes half that just to find a single receptionist that's A. actually a receptionist and B. not loaded down with bad traits. This doesn't always happen but it can. You often get stuck in a reroll RNG hell that ends up costing $20k or more to get out of, just to find one single candidate that can fill the the most minor role, like a receptionist, and with acceptable efficiency.

If the game is going to charge at all just to see candidates, those candidates need to be at least qualified to do the job you're trying to fill. Beyond that, the cost to reroll them should be broken down per job type and maybe per level. $2.5k to see a list of surgeons? Fine, as long as they're actually surgeons. The same $2.5k to see a random list of nurses or janitors or generic interns of any type, and a bunch of crappy ones at that? No. Hell no!

And it's painfully bad when all this goes down in free build completely opposite the way it should. Only free build mode I've ever seen that doesn't cost any money to build but you can't build unless you have money. You can hire all the staff you want to hire, though, even though the game does charge you for that, and they'll keep right on working without any money to pay them. You just get further and further into the red and the game doesn't care one way or the other.

I'm sure the developer didn't intend for it to work this way, at least I hope not. It's just one more thing that didn't get tested properly before the game went on the store shelf.

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by ROFLwut?:

If the game is going to charge at all just to see candidates, those candidates need to be at least qualified to do the job you're trying to fill. Beyond that, the cost to reroll them should be broken down per job type and maybe per level. $2.5k to see a list of surgeons? Fine, as long as they're actually surgeons. The same $2.5k to see a random list of nurses or janitors or generic interns of any type, and a bunch of crappy ones at that? No. Hell no!

Haha, agreed, yes. But this is where I stop expecting realism and remind myself this is, at the end of the day, a game. It does seem ridiculous to pay the same amount to refresh doctors as it does janitors, but I'm having an easy time overlooking that part. Every time I open a new department it seems I'm spending around $50,000-$60,000 just to see the best candidates. It's money well spent though, some of those hidden "perks" are really nasty and it's important to weed them out. My physical structure is completely built, I don't need the money for anything else now.

[OutS|der]

2.5 to refresh and another 4k to see the hidden attributes. Spent almost 900k on hiring with one of the prefab hostipitals.

[Sehtim]

Do you know, that you can respecc your staff?
If you need a receptionist, for example, you can hire a surgery nurse, change his/her specc to reception and voilla, you can assign him/her to the reception. (The % is set to 0 though, but you have some working staff at least)

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by Sehtim:

Do you know, that you can respecc your staff?
If you need a receptionist, for example, you can hire a surgery nurse, change his/her specc to reception and voilla, you can assign him/her to the reception. (The % is set to 0 though, but you have some working staff at least)

How do you change their specialization? Just click on it in their character card?

[Cas]

Originally posted by Oceansize:

Originally posted by Sehtim:

Do you know, that you can respecc your staff?
If you need a receptionist, for example, you can hire a surgery nurse, change his/her specc to reception and voilla, you can assign him/her to the reception. (The % is set to 0 though, but you have some working staff at least)

How do you change their specialization? Just click on it in their character card?

Yep just click the icon and it lets you pick a new specialisation - it does reset the skill in that specialisation to 0 however.
I’ve found this very useful as my clinic interns had a really annoying habit of picking anaesthetist instead of advanced diagnostic as they levelled up!

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by Dan:

Originally posted by Oceansize:

How do you change their specialization? Just click on it in their character card?

Yep just click the icon and it lets you pick a new specialisation - it does reset the skill in that specialisation to 0 however.
I’ve found this very useful as my clinic interns had a really annoying habit of picking anaesthetist instead of advanced diagnostic as they levelled up!

Oh dang it never occurred to me that an intern with no specialization is eventually going to pick one. I guess I assumed they were going to stay specialization-less forever and XP would only improve the skills they already had.

I guess I better go through my interns and make sure they're picking appropriate specializations. 8o