My proposal is as follows:
The player needs to hire procurement employees (PE). Each PE can buy i.e. 1 item per day. If the player wants to buy 10 fuel trucks, he either needs to wait 10 days before he has the 10th, or has hires 10 PEs (or something in between).
The skill of a PE might i.e. decrease the time needed before he can buy something else, while the procurement director can use his skill to âenhanceâ the skill of his PEs, and / or put a cap on how much a player can buy in 1 transaction / day.
The micro oriented players can select specific candidates to scrape every little bit of advantage, while the player who doesnât care only needs to make sure that he hires some PEs and gives them a desk.
I kinda agree on the maximum transaction/day part, but the problem is that as of now, procurement does nothing except âresearchingâ stuffs to unlock. Iâd prefer if we separate the current procurement system into two part, which is the procurement itself that handles purchasing and contract management with suppliers, and spun off the âresearchâ side of the procurement to, say, the legal department and/or CTO/CIO.
Now that procurement only handles the purchasing and contract management, we can decide the benefits of hiring PEs. Aside from the transaction/day, a functioning Proc. Department should reduce the procurement costs (either base costs as in 1 AVGAS = $10 â $8, or cumulative costs as in 1 AVGAS = $10, 8 AVGAS â $70; this also includes reduction in item buildings like construction material, sofas, etc.) and grant better contract terms (reduced penalty, longer terms, reduced costs for fuel suppliers and contractors).
This ties in to the HR director. You need to hire HR employees (HRE), because 1 HRE can support up to 20 employees, so need more employees? Hire an HRE to be able to. And give him a desk of course.
The HR director skill could i.e. influence salary demands, while a HRE skill could influence happiness.
I disagree. Since board members and CEO are counted as staffs, then CEO canât expand without first hiring HR Dir., which doesnât make sense. It also doesnât make sense that you canât automatically expand your workforce because you donât have enough HR employees.
Therefore, I suggest that there should be no limitation on the amount of workforce you can hire without HRE. However, having an effective HR system would allow reduction in stress rate/increase in stress capacity (which in turn could lead to desertion and voluntary turnover) and improvement in the margin of learning. So what constitutes an effective HR system? To simplify, you need an adequate amount of, letâs say, HR Capacity. CEO starts with 15 HR capacity, and the HR Dir. comes with a startling 30 HR capacity. HRE can manage an additional 10 capacity/employees. If the number of employees is under the HR capacity, then you can see an improvement, which could depend on a formula mixing the skill of HR Dir. and the average skill of your HRE.
HR. Dir should also have the capacity to automate hiring and firing. If there is such a thing as promotion, an effective HR system should also highlight people with potential who could be upgraded to a new level, or brought into management (maybe when one of the director retires). This could also tie in with the shift-based system I will explain in the bottom.
The director in charge of maintenance and repairs could handle (as he does now in a rudimentary way) repairs for you. Set the percentage you want stuff to stay above, give him a budget and he will work his magic. The more maintenance employees (ME) you have, i.e. the more facilities (in $ value) you can maintain, while the director skill might influence the speed at which repairs are requested or reduce the cost of said repairs.
I kinda disagree, since the way value works in-game is a bit ⌠simplified. Usually, when we talk about maintenance and repairs, its based on the condition, not the value, since value is more related to the accounting terms, and it usually diminishes over time. I think the current system that the COO have is already fine though, it really helps reduce the manual clicking that you need.
That being said, having an automatic flight planner would be neat. I kinda miss that feature from the game TV Giant, where you can ask the game to automatically schedule the TV shows and/movies in the show planner.
To take this a step further, a player can hire Department heads. I.e. a head ramp agent might give the player insight in the exact number of ramp agents needed, and adds his skill as a bonus to the ramp agents.
I think this is a good idea, and I think this can tie in with HR Dir./Strategy Dir. as part of research. They would judge how to organize a new department under them.
Firing will of course have an effect. Why? Well, it would prevent the player from hiring 10 procurement employees, procure 10 fuel trucks, and fire the 10 employees again.
Firing too many people, or too often, and you will see less applicants and / or with worse skills. (Would you want to work for a company that has a reputation of firing its employees?)
Another penalty you could add to firing is paying severance package. So something like 3 daysâ worth of salary? There should be an option to mitigate or reduce the impact of firing too much people to the point of reverting back to normal. For example, maybe the HR Dir. could host internships, attend job fairs, to increase the amount of applicants in a short period of time? (This could also be looked at, that currently people tend to send you their CVs when you donât ask for them).
Each director could also act as advisor to the player, signalling certain (potential) problems, like a budget that is too low, too few employees, missing infrastructure, etc.
I agree that this should be a thing. That being said, I donât know if it is a good idea to hide problem indicators unless you hire a certain person. Iâm still on the fence about this one. I think itâs better that they advice on more underlying issues, like too few employees (calculated automatically based on demand).
I actually disagree. As Fredrik/Olof once mentioned the possibility of opening up night flights, it doesnât make sense if the airport doesnât have any staffs at night. Even without having night flights, what about security patrol? Surely you want your offices kept safe at night, or you hope no one is breaking into the cargo storage/plane hangar. What I suggest is a shift-based assignment system, similar to PAâs scheduling system for prisoners. Something like this, but to a maximum of 9 different shifts.
So in essence, it will looks simillar to the flight planner (and we shall call it ⌠the SHIFT planner!)
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Another suggestion I propose, since your idea consists of department budgeting, is hiring accountants under your CFO. This would allow you to mitigate the penalty and boosts the bonus of budgeting. It could also help in increasing deductible costs for your taxes, effectively finding ways/loopholes to reduce your taxes (which, sadly, is not implemented yet). However, I have not found a way to come up of a way to make them work in an effective system like in HRE or PE, whereby an effective system requires X people. Maybe it could be related with value?
On another note, I prefer removing Strategy Director completely, changing it into Marketing Director and allow under it, Marketing Department, PR Department, and Strategy. This will allow the airport, instead of just researching shops and cafes, to negotiate better terms with airlines and increase minimum airport rating (from 0.00% to a minimum score).
Another bag of worms one could open is outsourcing some jobs, like security and janitorial duties, which reduces HR burden (and make Proc. âcontract managementâ ability more worth it). Things such as airport staff union could also make the HR aspect deeper.
That being said, I donât think adding all this into the base game is a good idea. This might be better served as a mod, so as to keep the vanilla accessible, but allow more masochists to try the hard option.
But it does mean that the devs should have a rudimentary implementation we can hook into, with employee types, effects, etc.