Your staff and their Morale are the bloodline of your base in War Hospital. Without a well-organised staff, you cannot save or help anyone. However, with every activity requiring so much effort, you can often feel understaffed for the job. This is where using the War Hospital shift system can save you a lot of time.
Generally, managing your staff involves a lot of micromanagement as you need to check back on them every few seconds to ensure they don't get fatigued or collapse. This constant change can get tiresome, and if you're looking for an alternative, then the shift system is your solution. Let's find out what it is, how to unlock it, and its advantages.
While you're here, be sure to check out our full review of the game as well as how to get more Military Drafts.
What is the shift system?
Normally, when you assign a staff member to a post, they will be assigned for a whole 24 hours until you manually return to them and remove them. This constant checking up can get frustrating and requires a lot of micromanagement.
However, there's a method to circumvent this by opting for a shift system. The shift system allows you to schedule shifts for staff members working the same job, allowing them to work and rest automatically when their time comes up. In contrast to the normal 24-hour system, there are two types of shift systems: 12-hour shifts and 8-hour shifts.
You can change the type of shift you're working by opening the assignment menu and clicking on any of the three symbols on top for workers.
How to unlock the shift system
The shift system is initially unavailable to you until you invest in an improvement in the healing upgrade tree to unlock it. The first improvement will unlock the 12-hour shift system, and the second improvement will unlock the 8-hour shift system. Both of these will require you to have the necessary Freight and Military Drafts. Once your engineers are finished, you can then toggle shifts for all workers except Surgeons.
Shift system advantages
There are several advantages when you opt for the Shift System:
- You no longer have to manually keep swapping your staff in and out of 24-hour shifts to maintain their stamina as long as you can assign two to each post.
- Some staff members get a Morale boost if you assign them to a shift that they prefer.
- You can eventually turn the shift assignment to complete autopilot once you have enough staff members and assignment slots.
However, do note that the shift system has two disadvantages that might make you want to swap back to the 24-hour system periodically. Since you're dividing the workers into shifts, it reduces the effectiveness they could've had operating together. This issue comes up particularly when there is a high workload, and you need multiple Medical Workers or Engineers.
There are also some minor glitches that occur where the game doesn't notice that the shift has started and continues giving an error till you swap back to 24-hour shifts once.
That's all you need to know about the War Hospital shift system and how you can optimise your staff assignments without them getting fatigued and collapsing. For more optimal strategies, learn how to raise Morale and the best strategies to assign patients to doctors.