Allright, thanks for the tips you guys, you've allready helped me a lot and if this actually works for my epidemics I'll get through that level no problem. And asking help here doesn't feel as much like cheating because I feel they should just tell you some things. Of course it's good to have to figure some things out on your own, but this is like if you don't know it, it'll completely screw up your game and, as Pangaea mentioned, is just not fun. I'll try out the bigger waiting areas on my next game. Also, It'll prolly be a good idea to expand to the plots that are adjacient to my starting area on level 6, so infected people won't have to leave the building to get to their treatment rooms, giving me more time before the health dude comes along. (I thought "leaving the hospital" meant leaving the hospital grounds, not leaving a buidling...)

Just one more thing I'd wanted to ask as long as I'm on here, since the start of the 5th mission (the first one with earthquakes), I've continiously recieved the penalty for having crappy machinery in every single award ceremony. It didn't matter how many handymen I had focused on repairing them, how often I'd page them, or how many pieces of machinery I had. I've even gotten that award on the first ceremony of each year, where the only machinery I had was the inflator, which had been used like 2 or 3 times and then had been repaired. Any of you run into this? How do you fix it? (apart from non-stop paging it, although I'm not convinced that'd work).

And Pangaea, you probably allready know this (considering I know it), but if your dudes want to leave the pharmacy because they're tired, you can just higher the required tiredness to go to the staff room until the emergency is over and they'll stay. Of course, it'll mean that after you put it back to where it was (about 50%?) a lot of staff will head for the staff room at the same time, but at least you won't kill a helicopterload of people with it.

I have the exact same problem with negative award for machinery every single year, even when I just have one machine and it's hardly ever been used. Can only gather that the game is faulty in some way with this, because it doesn't make any sense. Always have lots of handymen and a fair few with instructions to just fix machines, and all machines are fixed well before they explode. The only problem is sometimes after earthquakes, when they deal out something like 5 or 6 damage on machines that has strength of 6-8. I've just stopped caring about it. You take a small reputation or money hit each year, but it seems like there is nothing you can do about it. The advisor keeps going on about failing machines too, but I'm yet to see any that are actually close to exploding from normal use.

After being so frustrated with the stupid staff who was hellbent on leaving rooms during emergencies I found a great way to deal with it. First I tried to increase the rest percentage, but that didn't do anything because the problem wasn't tiredness - they just left anyway. In Policy there is a checkbox whether staff are allowed to leave their room. Now I just click that so they aren't allowed to leave, and that has taken care of it. Just remember to remove it after the emergency or queues can get messed up as doctors won't leave their room and look after it.

Yeah, I assumed the game was bugged somewhere there, just wanted to make sure that it wasn't something I was doing wrong. And yeah, 29 reputation is not what's going to kill you... Not with a +60 reputation boost for having the most valuable hospital that I got each year after my hospital started taking off.

Yeah I allready knew about that policy button, used to play with it turned off, so I could more easily manage my doctors and know how many I needed. Rest times would make for a problem in that case though, so played my last game with the button turned off.

I've finally gotten past mission 6! I just started out really really small, with just the basic needs specified by MagicMagor, including the research department. Research wasn't my problem, a consultant in the department and 50% into Diagnosis equipment really skyrocketed my research, it got me the x-ray available about the time my first guest entered the hospital (built the research department right after building the training, with speed on 1). However, the slow was really, really hard, partly due to a few deaths that cost me the 10.000 award at the end of the year, but most of all a tidal wave of Bloaty Heads, Bald dudes, Slack Tongues and Surgery patients, which I couldn't cure yet (not without screwing up my broad corridors). It was only after 2 or 3 years that I finally managed to get some money in. Ironically I was bailed out of my $10.000 debt by a covered up epidemic.
First I purchased the building directly adjacent to my main hospital, so nobody would leave a building before they were cured, so it wouldn't screw up any epidemics. I used that part of the hospital to first build a Hair Restorer, then an inflator, Slack Tongue and Fracture clinic and topped it off with an Operating Theatre to start the real cash flow. The waiting rooms and the corridors really worked, and with 1 or 2 epidemics I got through that part. I started slowly buying more property, making sure that each new building I purchased had at least a GP's office, a pharmacy, a psychiatric and, needless to say, a waiting area, so epidemics could possibly be cured within each building.

Of course, this could only theoretically be true, and when I hospital really started booming, epidemics did come rushing in (I guess there's nothing to be done about that). However, I never had an epidemic with a bailout cost higher than 80.000 (I guess this again, is the work of the waiting areas and the broad corridors). With the exception of 2, I managed to cover them all up and instead they helped me towards my goal. One question did arise to me though, does the place where an epidemic start indicate where your hospital is too crowded?

Again, thanks for your help, I never would've made it through this level if not for you guys ;D

I'm not sure about the answer to your question at the end there, but from memory practically all epidemics occurred in the reception/GP area, or possibly some other high-traffic areas. So it's probably an indication that it's too crowded or too cramped. Hope you meant 8000 though, because an 80,000 cost epidemic would be one hell of a job to immunise! :D To me it looks like it's 2000 per head, so that's 40 people - to begin with. Think the highest I got, before the proper wide corridors and waiting areas design, was 24,000. That's pretty crazy.

Taking out loans is a viable option though (it sounds like you try to avoid that). Apparently you can borrow up to 40% of the hospital's value so that's a considerable amount. Best not to go that high, but I got quite near in the last mission, when we at some point had a 75,000 debt. It was used to buy land, stave off negative balance, and buy some expensive machines when they became available (like decontaminator). It also allowed me to finally build the operations theatre after surgeons had been trained. The consequence was more income, so with time it wasn't a problem to pay it off. Better to take out a loan that will allow you to buy more land and build more cure rooms, which will enable you to make more money, than to wait until money accumulates naturally. That can take quite some time in the beginning, when wages and heating costs are a real strain due to few patients and low income.

Really glad you managed to beat level 6 though! It was a slap in the face for me too, and it took a while to get enough money because the epidemics just kept coming and I didn't know how to fight that darn things at the time, so must have paid at least 100,000 for them all. With the more spacious design you shouldn't have that many problems with epidemics, and I also think they simply occur more easily on that level. At least that's what the briefing indicated.

Best of luck with the other levels. It's a fun game, but it's not exactly easy to figure out how to deal with epidemics as the game doesn't even give a hint about how to tackle them through design.

You need to put lots of research into Improvements. Once a piece of machinery has been improved (you'll get a notification about this), you should replace your machinery. The quality should be improved to 10 or 12, which means it can easily withstand earthquakes.

In regard to epidemics, no one has mentioned yet that you need loads of nurses to vaccinate everyone. When an epidemic happens and you can't pay for it, slow the time down to 1, click on every single infected person to get them vaccinated, and hire every nurse that's available. The nurses will roam the halls and vaccinate people, preventing the infection from spreading. You can fire the nurses later - although on later levels on hard, it's always a good idea to have 1 or 2 nurses to roam the halls just in case.

Also, design your hospital so that people don't have to go to another building to get diagnosed and treated. Put your staff room, research and training in a separate building, and maybe your clinics too if you don't have room. But try to put all your diagnosis and pharmacy in the main building (if it's big enough), so people aren't going outside and using up the timer. That's why the main building in later levels is so big.
On the policy screen you can choose whether staff are allowed to leave rooms or not. On later levels, I don't let them leave rooms at all - I have 2 or 3 consultants in GP offices and staff in all the other busy rooms, and 2 spare doctors. I manually move these doctors to clinics when they're needed.

Yeah, I meant 8000 :P... If it would've been 80000 I would just cover it and pray that the inspector will evacuate my place instead of fining me :P The highest I ever got was 40.000 I think.

I don't know, I guess I'm a bit afraid of taking out loans, when i was little and I played these games the first thing I'd do would be maxing out my loan with the bank, which eventually would come back to haunt me. I'm just really bad at prediciting what's going to happen and usually when i make a big investment it takes longer to pay itself back than I expected, which with a loan would just frustrate me. I did take out one during my last game though when the first Bloaty Head emergency occured, I borrowed 5000, placed an inflator as close as possible to my waiting areas, and then sold it and payed the loan back as soon as the emergency was over, turning a nice profit.

Ah yeah, I assumed so, because the earthquakes were also definitely more frequent in lvl 5. It only follows that epidemics should be less frequent in other levels, although you can kind of influence how often they occur.

Tothelighthouse: First of all, I don't think that'll be the solution, because as I said, even if I don't have any machines I get the penalty. Second of all, because I think improvements is an endless field of research, it's usually worth the while to rush Diagnosis/Cure equipment first so you'll have more stuff to build and more research % to put into improvements.

And you're kind of right, that's what I did too, but in the end you're going to have to expand, and that was the part I was talking about.

I agree, it seems to happen no matter what I do. Besides, if one were to buy a new machine each time its strength increased, it would get very expensive very quickly. It just increased with 1 or possibly 2 each time, so it's not really worth buying a new one until you really need it because the old's strength has decreased due to much use.

I was hesitant to take out loans in the beginning as well, but it really can be a good approach, especially if you need new cure rooms or land to expand. I'd say research-wise it's better with more emphasis on cure machines rather than diagnostics though. Cure is where the money is, and with the starting diagnosis machines you can often figure out what people have anyway - although it may take a while with only doctors in the GP office. Once you get Scanner and/or X-ray, you're sorted. But getting access to various cure machines is very important, so in the last missions I put a lot more emphasis on that instead of diagnosis machines.

In the late missions it's also important to put research into drugs right away, because their efficiency is quite low, at only 70-75% (probably even lower on hard difficulty, but I played on medium). That means people can die. So I tend to start off with 40-50% into drugs, and then about 5-10% in diagnostics and the rest in cure. Think it was 40-20-40 (cure, diagnosis, drugs) on the final mission, and that worked well. Do check out the the efficiency of drugs from time to time, though, because the game won't tell you when all are maxed out. Then you can reduce drugs research to 0%.

Yeah, at the moment I take out the loans when I need to, but it's just really small ones that I know I can pay back soon. It would probably be better if I was less careful about it though.

And yeah, I used to go for full diagnosis, because I didn't know consultant GP's made such a big difference, so I needed the Xray and Scanner asap. Maybe it's better to go more into Cure in the future. Though mostly by the time I got the money to expand I got a nice set of rooms on the to build list :P

Just passed through mission 7, it was pretty easy. Epidemics definitely occured less frequently than in level 6.

Hmm, sounds like a bug then. And in my suggestion, I assumed you'd already researched Diagnosis/Cure to 100% - I usually research cure, then diagnosis, then drugs and improvements together :)

I haven't played the later levels yet this time round, so I'm only going on memory (I played this game A LOT when I was a teen!), but I believe you can block off the exits with benches and reception desks and other furniture to stop infected people leaving before you cure them. If they managed to get out, or I was running out of time, I would slow time down and send them all to a rival hospital - even if I got a fine, at least I took out one of my competitors in the process!

I always designed my hospitals so that the illnesses most likely to cause epidemics could be diagnosed and treated in my main building. From memory, most of the epidemics are things treated at the pharmacy - so it just means sticking the pharmacy and all the diagnostics in the main building. Clincs and staff buildings can go elsewhere. And I'd redesign later on too keep it that way when I added scanner and x-ray. I remember deleting toilets in other buildings too, since a few times I had the timer run out because a patient went to another building to use the toilet.

Of course it's better to just reduce the number of epidemics, but there's already plenty of advice here for that. This is just meant to help if you find yourself with a massive epidemic :)

Yeah, but in the end you WILL have to expand, as in build more pharmacies/GP's/Psychiatrics, and by that time, I usually have no problem with building them in other buildings, because I can usually handle an odd fine if I fuck an epidemic up.

In mission 9 now, and your main building there is so big :P It's not even funny anymore.

Think it's mission 10 that was tough for me, because just about every building is tiny so it was hard to get a good flow going, and proper diagnosis and cure areas.

The main building on the last mission is pretty small, but there is room for a pharmacy or two (as per my screenshots for example) so the odd epidemic should be solvable. Sounds like you're doing very well and progressing nicely :)

Have you had problems with some doctors just staying in their room despite being tired and not walking to the staff room btw? It happened every now and then for me, and I've no idea why. In some cases the staff room was just across the hallway too, so it wasn't due to it being far away so they couldn't "see" it for some reason. Just plain weird. He'd just stay there (no patients to deal with either) and if I didn't notice it he'd get that sleepy cap icon over his head and ultimately demand a wage increase. Probably a bug that pops up sometimes, but it was annoying.

Yeah that sometimes happens randomnly. I'm just like "Get in the staff room you idiot" and pick them up and put them in the staff room manually. But it is annoying when you don't notice and they ask for a pay rise. It's possible its either a bug or they're just sinulating workaholics heh.

The original game always had some weird bugs though, it didn't happen for me with the GOG version but my original Windows disc version, I had this bug where some would get literally stuck in e.g. the Operating Theatre and when I picked them up and put them in the Staff Room there would be a duplicate sprite of them in the Operating Theatre. It would actually show an animation of them sitting on a couch or playing videogames in the Operating Theatre! Then if I fired them it'd just show a animation of them walking constantly in the Operating Theatre. But it'd still count as there being 2 Surgeons in the room so it effectively rendered my Operating room useless.There were other such odd bugs I kept getting that always made finishing the game impossible, but I finished the GOG version thankfully!

That happenend in my GoG version the other day, also in the Operating Theatre.

Ah, I guess I got lucky then. Though I was using alternating saves just incase. It must be some random glitch with the Operating Theatre. It is pretty funny, yet terribly frustrating at the same time!

I agree, it's a fun and an addictive game, but the bugs are sometimes frustrating.