Covering fire stations, retained crew system

    Right, again sorry if there is already a post, but I again can't find it.

    In the County of Lincolnshire, UK, Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service operate 38 fire stations across the county. When appliances are called for say an extended period of time, which is typically around two hours or more, other appliances will go and cover their grounds IF they are otherwise not covered by any other appliance. For instance, Caistor Fire Station will often have their appliance at Gainsborough Fire Station covering Gainsborough's grounds while they are out, and when they get back, Caistor leave and return to their own station. I would like to see a feature like this, along side a retained crewing system, where the number of people "on call" for an appliance varies and can change every so often when the player is online. That is in the next paragraph for more details. The feature in summary, is fire station A can have their appliance moved to fire station B until B are back, if the player does not do this themself, it will be done automatically after say 5 mins so you can't have more than the correct amount of appliances at the station with the expansions.

    The Retained Crewing system would include an automatically varying amount of people who are on call for an appliance, with an automatic delay for them to get to the station and get ready. They would then respond like any other appliance. You would dispatch the appliance like normal, but there is an automatic delay for the crew to arrive on station. The crew responds like any other. If I am forgetting something, I will likely add it in a response to the post!

    Thanks for reading if you read it all... that's a lot...

    The idea has been suggested every once and a while over the years, although not for some time now I think. In principle it would be an interesting game dynamic. However, nobody has yet to come up with a version of this idea that will actually run in-game without significant complications “behind the scenes” in the code, and is feesable to introduce to all players without “breaking” or otherwise interrupting the playstyles of players who aren’t looking to use this feature.

    If you can come up with a comprehensive solution to all of the above, I have no doubt it would be looked at and seriously considered. The tough bit is getting to that solution.

    How about trying this...

    Set the appliances within the station to have available times
    Setup several local Home Response Locations
    Assign the staff to the opposite station

    When the station is live, it uses its own staff
    When the station is off, it uses the Home Response Location staff

    I apologise, I really am entirely unable to envision or understand how you expect this to work. Staff cannot travel from station to station.

    Quote from mjkerr

    It was just a suggestion

    In effect this is how some staff are assigned, they need to travel (urgently) to the station to then use the station vehicle

    I understand how retained duty systems work. The question is how they could be implemented in-game with the current systems.

    Since the game does not allow for staff to travel, this cannot work.

    you can always use a staging area and move a fire truck to that staging area and make that the fire station

    • New
    Quote from Whitchit

    The idea has been suggested every once and a while over the years, although not for some time now I think. In principle it would be an interesting game dynamic. However, nobody has yet to come up with a version of this idea that will actually run in-game without significant complications “behind the scenes” in the code, and is feesable to introduce to all players without “breaking” or otherwise interrupting the playstyles of players who aren’t looking to use this feature.

    If you can come up with a comprehensive solution to all of the above, I have no doubt it would be looked at and seriously considered. The tough bit is getting to that solution.

    Now I'm no scripter, but if the system works similarly to the expansion system already in game, but instead it only works if one of the vehicles is out of the station doing literally anything, then that could be a way to do it. To neaten and further explain what I mean, it would be:
    - Call is generated and you dispatch an appliance to the incident
    - That frees up a "cover" slot in the station, where you can send another unit to take the place in that cover slot
    - The unit you send to the cover slot is then automatically removed when the normal appliance gets back, or you can do it manually
    - The cover slot is only open if one of the stations normal appliances are not in the station
    - Should it be required, you can dispatch the unit to an incident in the normal way

    Hope that is nice and clear, and also solves some of the issues you mentioned!

    • New
    Quote from nick12

    you can always use a staging area and move a fire truck to that staging area and make that the fire station

    Honestly I did not think about that. While I do have quite an extensive service within the game, I do not yet fully understand all of the game mechanics and what they are able to do. I have just gotten to the stage where every fire station I build, they increase in price. Now for a small fire station I am looking at around 282,000 credits, which has made things significantly harder. That's a very good idea and I will certainly try it out!

    • New

    Staging areas are the best option, but I believe that another way it could work is similar to how moving from stations works, moving to staging, and so on. The hardest part would be coding it to either auto-do it or manually do it, and remembering to undo it each time. They'd also just need to do a new tab or something.

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