Hospital usage always 1.5x capacity?

[dlo§rhuj]

Hello, I've been experiencing a rather strange bug in my largest city. No matter what I do, the hospital usage appears to be much higher than its capacity, no matter how high the capacity actually is. For four hospitals, usage is always around 1.5x the capacity. It doesn't matter whether the capacity is 20,000, 50,000, 200,000 or even 10,000,000 - usage is always 1.5x the capacity.

When I try to build a new hospital (of the same type) in the city, it does not seem to take away a significant amount of patients from the other hospitals (it does, but it's a very low amount) - rather the amount of patients increases the more hospitals I have, which makes no sense at all (unless it causes more people to get crushed by ambulance cars...). If I place a Maxis hospital or a Maxis clinic in the city (right in the middle where the large residental skyscrapers are), it doesn't even get anywhere close to full usage - the clinic usually only has about 70-90 patients while the large hospital continues being extremely overcrowded.

The problem is that it causes my doctors to strike constantly, without me being able to do anything. I have the feeling I hit an obscure bug there, but does anyone know what might cause this?

[HappyDays]

What you've encountered is not unique to hospitals, and cannot be worked around unless you increase capacity to truly insane degrees. I've seen it mentioned a few times over the years, but I've never seen a good explanation of what you're experiencing. Well, here goes:

Given a large enough city, any "constantly used" series of civic buildings (Hospitals, libraries, museums) will eventually reach a point where they "unhinge" from the realities of the simulator. First, the radius effect of every building does nothing to decrease demand on other individual buildings. For example, let's say you have 10 city wide libraries. All 10 will reflect nearly the same exact capacity usage, and all of them will be over-capacity.

Second, capacity will always appear to be a touch above the capacity of the building regardless of how many you plop or how large they are. A civic building with a extraordinarily large capacity of tens of millions will outrun this.

Third, there are two unhinge mechanics in play. One occurs when the town is simply gigantic, at least 4 or 5 million. The second occurs when you place a civic building with a capacity over a unhinge value in the city, instantly causing that entire civic sphere to unhinge.

For example, with most hospitals, you require a vast number of sims to cause them to unhinge. If you plop the Bywater Spring hospital, however, unhinging occurs instantly (Plop it one of the tutorial cities to see this). For hospitals, the "unhinge" number is slightly over 100k capacity.

Any that is capable of striking will eventually do so, this most noticeably affecting hospitals. Those that strike will, of course, have a negative effect on the city. Those that do not simply appear to become less efficient, but I have not noticed a decrease in actual positive effect.

I believe the cause is due to some number in the simulator becoming so large that the simulator isn't properly taking it into consideration. It makes sense, given SimCity 4 was never meant to have cities as large as CAM allows (Which I can only imagine you're using). I know of no cure besides shrinking the city down below the unhinge level, or not using buildings that cause instant unhinging. It is not a death curse like the Prop Pox, though if you plan on making cities unimaginably huge I'd highly recommend you mod a civic building to have a ridiculous capacity, tens of millions, in order to mitigate issues with striking or the visual decrease of efficiency.

P.S.: As you've noted, having low capacity hospitals will allow them to escape unhinging, but at the same time they'll instantly go overcapacity if the larger, unhinged hospital were to be demolished. Radius does play a roll, and there might be other other factors at play.