Clinics and small schools

[cpsof95 0]

Is there any use for medical clinics and small schools? The larger units seem to be a lot more cost-effective, even for small towns.

Even if I cut the ambulance funding of a hospital to zero, the coverage area will be the same as for the medical clinic with full ambulance funding. So you get the same coverage for less costs with a hospital. The patient capacity in hospitals is cheaper as well. One unit of capacity costs about §0.60 in clinics, but only §0.33 in hospitals.

Yes, the hospitals are more expensive to build, but this difference is quickly overcome due to the huge difference in maintenance costs.

So even if you only have one resident in your town, you should build a hospital. That doesn't seem to make much sense.

And the same scenario goes for the schools as well. Is there a game balance problem here, or is there something wrong with my thinking?

[whoopscareless 0]

I find that in low density cities and tiny villages, the hospital building itself is far too large and spoils the skyline. Amongst medium and high density stuff it's fair game, but anywhere else you're treading the line between function and realism. Low-density stuff tends to turn over a large profit in the end and so it's easier to justify there, as well.

I also think of it like local surgeries offer one-to-one personalised care. Hospitals offer factory line fixing. You pay more for the extra attention. (Plus if you have no hospitals you don't get that darn helicopter buzzing around all the flaming time. Drives me mad, so it does.)

[XpirAment 0]

I suppose this is more of a question on game playing than about efficiency.  I build small schools and clinics in my small towns, but since they are used to raise the wealth of your sims, it's a matter of if you are trying to design a small affluent town or a small poor town.  My farming villages don't get schools or hospitals or police stations, but get fire stations (just because I hate having to deal with fires every ten minutes).  My bedroom communities get a little of everything.  The small schools and clinics come in handy.

[cpsof95 0]

Ok, I did some more calculations. Sorry for quite a long post, but I found this very interesting (and annoying, at the same time).

Let's take a look at the school bus funding first.

The coverage radius of a full funded school (or hospital) is about double the size of school with no bus funding. According to basic geometry you need 4 schools with no bus funding to cover the same area as with 1 full funded school. Let's say you need 20 teachers in the full funded school. Why not build 4 schools and have 5 teachers in each one of them? You pay the same salary to the teachers, but you don't give a dime to the bus drivers.

But hey, you must pay §6300 to build those 3 extra schools! Well, you save §500 each month, so you get your money back in 12,5 months.

But now I have schools and hospitals all over the city, and there's no room for the residents who pay taxes! Large elementary schools are shaped 4x3. By building those 3 extra schools we have lost 36 valuable tiles. These 36 tiles save me §500 each month, so that would be about §14 per tile. Each medium-wealth resident in one of my towns pays taxes about §0.66 with 9.0% tax rate. So we would need at least 21 residents in one tile to make it more profitable to have houses instead of schools. Obviously, that's not possible in low-density areas. But with mid-density residences we're about breaking even. Low-wealth residents pay less taxes, but there are more of them in each house so the income per tile might be about the same, as well as for the high-wealth residents.

Each resident also increases the commercial and industrial income, but also requires transportation, water, power etc. How can we know if the additional income or expenses are higher? Take a look at your budget. There you can see your commercial and industrial income. You also see how much you have to pay to have the city running. Probably the expenses are higher than the commercial and industrial income. If you divide the net expenses with your city population, you'll see how much each resident effectively costs you. I checked two of my small cities and the costs were between §0.15 and §0.20. These figures might be different for larger cities, but I don't have any of them, so I couldn't check.

Now remember that the medium-wealth residents were paying taxes about §0.66 each month. So for better analysis we should use §0.50 net income per resident. If we remade our analysis with this figure, we would obviously require a bit more residents per tile to make school bus funding profitable. But the general observation would about be the same. School buses are profitable in high-density areas, break even in mid-density areas and cost too much in low-density areas.

Notice that large high schools are shaped 6x4, so they are double the size of large elementary schools. Bus funding is the same §500. Since you lose more tiles by buildings high schools, it's more profitable to use bus funding with high schools than it is with elementary schools.

Furthermore, ambulance funding is much cheaper than bus funding, so you probably shouldn't build lots of hospitals without ambulance funding even in low-density areas, where the income per tile is low.

Ok then, after a little sidestep, back to the original topic. Is there any reason to build small schools? Obviously, if you need a large coverage, it's more effective in every aspect to build large units.

But how about a small coverage? Should you build a small school with full bus funding instead of a large school with no bus funding? A large school would then cover about 75% of the area of a small school. Small elementary schools are shaped 3x2 and large elementary schools are shaped 4x3. So a large school takes 6 extra tiles. Effectively you save about §75 to take the smaller coverage area into account. That would be §12.5 per tile.

Notice that in our earlier analysis the cost per tile was §14. Since these figures are very close to each other, we would get the same result: If you need a small coverage area, build large schools without bus funding in low-density areas and small schools with bus funding in high-density areas (assuming the school capacity won't be a problem). In mid-density areas, do what you want.

Large high schools take 8 extra tiles and only cover about 60% compared to full funded small high schools. The saved cost per tile with a large high school would be only §7.5, which is only a little over a half of the earlier figures. Since using extra tiles saves less money than before, you need less income per tile to make small high schools with bus funding profitable.

How about full funded clinics versus hospitals without ambulance funding? We get the same coverage. Clinics take 10 tiles less, but cost §100 more. That's §10 per tile. But remember that the same patient capacity costs a lot more in the clinics! So you shouldn't build clinics anywhere! In low-density areas the tiles are not that valuable and in the high-density areas you need high patient capacity for a reasonable price.

Summary

1) You should prefer bus and ambulance funding in high-density areas to use your valuable tiles more efficiently. In low-density areas you should cut the coverage funding to zero and build several large units as your tiles are not so valuable.

2) Since high-density areas probably have lots of students and patients, you need large units there as well. So you should only build large schools and hospitals, and then adjust their funding to your needs.

3) The only profitable small unit is a small high school in mid-density areas.

4) It doesn't make any sense that you get the same coverage for different costs depending on the size of the building. School buses and ambulances on the road don't use less fuel if they're going to a big place instead of a small place.

Suggestions

1) The flawed bus and ambulance funding system messes things up. It really shouldn't matter how big your units are when you're paying for the coverage.

2) The civic buildings are way too cheap to build. Also, the larger units should cost a lot more compared to the smaller units.