Need Help Restricting Staffs to theirs Department's Common Room/WC

Hi, I think the inclusion of shared room in patch 1.1 was a great way to deal with high-traffic situations, but there's one problem...

The AI seems to randomize which Common Room/WC the staffs are going to. Here's one example I encountered - a staff from the first floor, northwest corner of the map walk half a map toward the elevator located at the northeast corner, take the elevator to the second floor, and go to the Common Room on the second floor at the southwest of the map. What's even more is that the said staff ignored 2 elevators and several other Common Rooms along the way. And yes, the ignored staff room is vacant. I don't know if staffs have preference for certain things in the room, I tried adding/removing things but results are inconsistent.

So to deal with this, I modified the Surgery.xml by setting <EquipmentFromAnyDepartment> to false. And it works, now the patients are being operated in the operating room of their respective apartment like prior to the patch.

However, I can't find the similar line concerning the scripts that sends the staffs to the Common Room and WC. So I added <EquipmentFromAnyDepartment>false<EquipmentFromAnyDepartment> to ControlScripts.xml and Needs.xml in the line I assumed control the scripts for staff when they're fulfilling their need. It didn't ruin my game, but nothing changed, staffs are still traveling half a map just to get different department's Common Room while ignoring their department's Common Room right next to their workplace.

Is there's a way to modify the .xml files so that staffs will only be using or at least prefer to use their department's Common Room/WC like prior to the patch 1.1? I don't think I got the right file and/or line.

Hi, unfortunately the rules are in code (and with the number of requests to make more rooms shared we didn't expect this would be something that would make sense to be editable). Btw, WCs have been already shared before 1.1.

But, for the common rooms, employees actually prefer common rooms of their own department, so you can probably solve it by slightly increasing the 'capacity' (I think it's mostly visible during lunch, so a couple of extra fridges can make it work mostly like before).

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the explanation, it seems that adding more fridge do help. I also removed water coolers from all common rooms because that happened to be one of the culprits (despite that I have water coolers in every corridors, AI still prefers water coolers in the common room, and they apparently don't considers the distance).