Two Tier Health Care

[Coconut Kid]

The religious service system has two tiers - Church with HS educated Priest, and Cathedral with College educated Bishop.

The health care service system has two tiers of buildings, but both are staffed with College educated Doctors.

If the Clinic were to be staffed with HS educated persons from among the existing "cast" (because we can expect no new persons, but we can change buildings ourselves), which of the four above would you prefer to "stand-in" as Nurse?

Comments welcome.

[nmikey84]

I would say teacher, because their outfit kind of seems the most nurse-ish. Not that TV white, sexy BS but actual nurse clothes.

[Coconut Kid]

I'm sorry that 'nmikey84' did not vote although he posted a message with his preference.

I'm also sorry that no one else cares to post a vote.

I think you can vote even if you are not registered.

Or maybe not.

[JakiusCeasar]

I'd say a pit boss could put in a slot pharmacy, so I'll go with him. The tropicans will pay for their health care, dadgumed it!

[Coconut Kid]

... The Tropicans will pay for their health care, ...

While I don't support the Pit Boss to stand-in as a nurse, I fully support the idea of paying for the top (satisfaction) level of heath care and religion.

Therefore, while the Clinic (w/Teachers) and Church (w/Priests) remain "free" - I edit my Hospital (w/Doctors) and Cathedral (w/Bishops [2]) to require payment even though the lie about the services being free still appears.

That sparks the idea of a poll about requiring pay for the "free" things of Tropico.

After a lot more time and thought, I have come to the conclusion that there is no gameplay use in trying to devise a system of charging NPCs for use of churches\cathedrals because it is just twaddling around with the accounting. Anything more than collecting a "thythe" really doesn't pass muster. Religion consists of a state controlled (although the Religious Faction does its best to control El Presidente) operation which the player is "expected" to manipulate to increase his respect amongst the people. The gameplay aspect is much more effective if the player has to calculate how much he can or wishes to pay to meet or not meet this "need" of his people.

It's similar to fee education, but very different from free food and free health care.

[JakiusCeasar]

Wow, I made  a joke and actually made a good point.

I think that the player should be allowed to set a price for human services, but also set funding for the buildings quality. That way, there could be lower quality free clinics and hospitals, but high price, high quality institutes as well.

[JakiusCeasar]

My main concern though is that you have children, which always have a salary of 0 and only share a home with their parents, would end up in the red for all values except rest and food, leaving dissatisfied young people, especially if they never see the best health care, as most would not. Currently, how does entertainment work for children currently, remind me.

[Coconut Kid]

concern -- children, which always have a salary of 0 and only share a home with their parents, would end up in the red for all values except rest and food, leaving dissatisfied young people, especially if they never see the best health care, as most would not. Currently, how does entertainment work for children currently, remind me.

Another good point. However, linking the fee with the quality of the building would require some basic program changes -- none of the buildings do that now.

These are probably the reasons that the game designers made food, religion, health care, and education free for everyone.

Let me review my changes (which can be made by editing the buildings file):

• Clinics = always free, staffed by HS educated Teachers (in lieu of Nurses), basic quality of 50
• Hospitals = fixed but hidden charge (amount set by edit of building file), staffed by College educated Doctors, basic quality of 90
• Churches = always free, staffed by HS educated Priests, basic quality of 50
• Cathedral = fixed but hidden charge (amount set by edit of building file), staffed by College educated Bishops, basic quality of 90
• Marketplace = fixed but hidden fee (amount set by edit of building file), staffed by 'Uneducated' Shopkeeper¹, free food would still be available at Farms, Restaurant, & Gourmet Restaurant

I wish I could remind you of how 'entertainment' works for "units" between the ages of 4 through 12, but I don't know. I speculate that the program just recharges them (on the basis that they are running & playing) when they make comments such as getting a puppy for their birthday or pretending to be an aeroplane. They can visit the Restaurant & Gourmet Restaurant - but they go into the back door and reduce the stock of food. I never looked at their entertainment meter during one of those events. I base this speculation on the reported observation that if there is no Health Care building, units will make a remark about eating rocks or using snake oil and their Heath Care meter will recharge.

I think that no one has ever thought/worried about them (4/12 age) since they can't do much about being unhappy over not being entertained.

¹ = IIRC, I have already discovered and reported how to change the education level of units.

[Coconut Kid]

this post's contents became unneeded when I could edit a previous post

Now reserved for future use.

[JakiusCeasar]

I'm curious how the marketplace fees are run. Food seems to just be "picked up" with no actual service being recorded, so when the hidden fee is there, do the rules for pay apply, where a agent will not pick up food thier unless it is equal or less than his or her salary, or does it work in a style that's closer to bank accounts, where the spending level of the unit doesn't matter, but money is exchanged?

[Coconut Kid]

I'm curious how the marketplace fees are run. ...

I have to confess that I have not run it enough to say with assurance.

As set up by the game (no charge), unit (Agent) picks up food and the inventory of food is reduced by a "meal."

I speculate -- And I now know that I was very far off the mark.

With a 'hidden' fee, the unit's ability to pick up a meal would indeed be limited by the relationship of its monthly pay and the fee. I am assuming that relationship would be treated the same as the fees set for entertainment buildings.

It's worth noting here that the evidence so far is that there is no fancy accounting for individual units in terms of savings from month to month. It appears that the designers made the assumption that simplicity was good enough -- 1/3 of family income determines maximum monthly rent (no doubt deducted before pay is issued) ; since the entertainment meter needs feeding only on more than a monthly cycle, each adult (13 &+) unit is assumed to have at least their full current monthly pay amount in their pocket when they hit the entertainment building. That is how minor details are subsumed to simplify the program code (I think).

So if my speculation is correct, the units with a current monthly pay amount less that the hidden fee would be locked out of the Market Place, and would have to go to one of the actually free places to get a meal.

IMHO, that would improve the verisimilitude of the Market Place as a place which "actually" provides other goods such as clothing, etc. which are not otherwise represented in the game. It's not perfect at all, of course.

Since the hidden fee can't be changed on the fly, the amount has to be carefully considered. I would suggest an absolute maximum of $20 and a useful minimum of $5. The collections should show up under the misc. category in the Almanac.

This radically changes the considerations of where to build Market Places.

I hope this answers your question. In summary, the unit's spending level is very much limited.

 

[JakiusCeasar]

If we could build a new Tropico, then I would like to see markets of different price and quality. It seems for fitting that food would share the 1/3 rule of living expensive that the Tropicans have, apparently Tropico is a place where frugality is a national trait.

[Coconut Kid]

I would agree with that.

Two things to think about though.

1} I would say that the 1/3 of income rule about rent is a common rule of thumb for housing, and the other 2/3rds has to cover everything else. So if you go down that road, the computer code balloons if you try to get too detailed.

2} Now (the original game) those units of crops consumed as food are an overhead burden which is not included in the Almanac money figures. They just make the farming operation look less efficient. So to make food sales at Market Places reflect accurately in the Almanac, there should be a credit to farm sales for the crops delivered to the Market place - this is currently done for goods delivered to the second step in production chains.

In any case, it is an interesting idea to play around with; and it is easy to see why the quantity of computer code can spin out of control with such ideas.

 

[Brf]

I have never tried putting a price on a marketplace, although I have put them on clinics... and used caberets for other than entertainment...

The food pickup at restaurants is done at the back door, so I assume it is free. Maybe the marketplace food would be the same way.

[Coconut Kid]

... The food pickup at restaurants is done at the back door, so I assume it is free. Maybe the marketplace food would be the same way.

I make the same assumption about the "back door" food pickups. I also broadened the assumption to include that this is a special routine to make food free at a building with a charge. I have observed children picking up food at restaurants. So there is some evidence that the "backdoor" food is free.

I have not yet tested the charge at Marketplaces. You may well be absolutely correct that the food may still be free. However, I have tested a charge for the Cathedral (in connection with opening it to tourists as a sight-seeing attraction), and I have not seen children using it as they did before the charge.

That's just to clarify some of my assumptions, not to be argumentative. You typically have better evidence than I do. O.K.?

 

[Brf]

Yeah. We are all playing beyond the rules when we are doing stuff like this.
It might be hard to tell just what is happening unless we do alot of money micro-managing, as we did when we proved the hotel-income bug.

[El-Bueno]

that would be really neat if there was a two tier system like with the churches, and actually I think the 'cook' as used in small restaurant could do a good nurse impression, she has a white uniform and little cooks hat which is like a nurses. Is it actually possible to modify the game?

[Coconut Kid]

... Is it actually possible to modify the game?

There are two files - building data and unit data - which may be changed using commonly available programs such as "hackman." Look here to see what you would be working with:

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=10835.0

There are a number of discussions about this if you look around.

 

[El-Bueno]

neat, I will look into that

[Coconut Kid]

Perhaps some posts were lost; but I need to report my latest thoughts on this topic.

I have decided that the best base avatar to convert totally to the HS educated Nurse identity is the Engineer. It does not take too much suspension of belief although it isn't very close to the typical American image of a nurse. It has the advantage of not needed to be shared with another job as the Teacher would have to be.

That is because the Laborer concurrently would be converted from a single building uneducated NPC to a multi-building HS educated Mechanic NPC which covers many buildings and functions.


I have become aware of another problem with the two tier concept. It is the rate of <<through-put>> for the buildings as related to simulation.

In the "real world," patients spend less time in a clinic setting because they receive diagnosis and a prescription for 'out-patient' treatment; but the patient in the hospital setting (at least in the 1950s) spends a longer time because the treatment often involves a period in bed.  How can we reverse the speed of <<through-put>> between the two buildings? Is it simply by reversing the base service quality level? I doubt it because then no one would build and staff Hospitals.

I believe there is a simple answer within my grasp, but I can't grasp it.