Setting Up the Scenario

Before the game starts, the player can set a number of parameters such as city size, friends per person, virus fatality rate, vaccination willingness of the population, vaccination research time and many more.

Allowing Player Control

The player of VirusEpidemic is tasked to keep the outbreak under control. To do so, we offer the player following controls:

• Mask Rules: The player can enforce the wearing of medical masks either indoors or both outdoors and indoors. The citizens’ homes are excluded from this rule.;
• Minimum Distance: The player can set a minimum distance citizens will have to keep from another.
• Meeting Size: The player can regulate the number of people allowed to meet.
• Number of Clients: The player can regulate how many clients are allowed per store.
• Number of Guests: The player can regulate the number of guests social and gastronomical buildings are allowed to host at once.
• Working from Home (Home-Office): The player can force citizens to work from home wherever possible (not every job offers this possibility). This can be turned on and off for specific city-modules only or for the entire city at once.
• Test Management: The player can set the availability for virus-tests. Tests can be made available either to citizens with noticeable symptoms only (cough or worse) or to everyone regardless their symptoms. If a citizen is tested positive, the entire household is quarantined until they recovered. Citizens are more likely to test themselves when their symptoms are more severe.

The player needs to make use of these controls in a resourceful way. Every action has complications on the cities budget and the citizens happiness. If either citizen-happiness or budget drops to 0%, the player is forced to loosen up controls. The more current confirmed virus cases there are, the smaller the happiness penalty becomes (Citizens are more likely to accept restrictions if they feel endangered).
The epidemic can take a quite different course depending on the simulation parameters chosen and player actions taken. Following graphs give a small overview over the effect of some of those: