Should there be a state services building to address public services?

[Metz]

Government administration buildings could probably be used and modified to add these or have a seperate state services building that deals with the police, education (non tertiary), and healthcare. The production methods would be locked as they are currently dealt with through laws. Similar to how labor por subsistence farms is locked but it switches from serfs to free peasants based on the land reform law you have. Police would use servicemen, officers, and clerks schools and healthcare would use academics/clergy. Squalor should be an issue in states with fast urbanization and crime should appear if there is a lot of unemployment and a large decrease in SoL. If merged into administration buildings then the bureaucracy boost per building should be upped as you would be hiring extra pops already due to the other services they would be providing.

Alternatively, if separated into a public services building then the 3 categories could be modified by the player to impact quality (as the laws themselves are more about custodianship, IG benefits, and accessibility). In this case, police stations would use firearms, tools, and paper. Schools would use a lot of paper. Hospitals would use tools, fabric, and small amounts of liquor and opium.

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

I had a very similar idea for making institutions into buildings that I shared here. The main thrust of idea was mainly to better model transitions in control of institutions and the effects on political strength, but they would also affect goods consumption in ways similar to what you describe:

• Introduce some buildings that provide the effect of institutions, eg. Police Station, Hospital, Courthouse. Universities could double as the building for the education institution.
• Institutional buildings are owned by other buildings that employ administrators, possibly in another state.
• Laws change which buildings own these institutional buildings. For example, under Local Police the Police Station buildings would be owned by Manor Houses, while Dedicated Police Force would move ownership to Government Administration buildings.
• Constructing an institutional building would automatically increase the level of the ownership building, like how privatisation works.
• Political strength modifiers are applied to the employees of the ownership buildings. More buildings owned, more political strength.
• Changing institution laws would change who takes ownership of newly constructed buildings, while existing buildings would slowly transfer ownership, which addresses the issue of drift.
• Rather than unlocking institutional levels, relevant technologies would unlock production methods for institutional buildings. The extra cost of higher level institutions would come in the form of additional costs for goods and employees incurred by these PMs.
• More effective institutions would require PMs that require more qualified employees in the local buildings.
• Administrative capacity would be driven directly by the technology for PMs, the cost of goods and wages, and the availability of qualifications, rather than a magic bureaucracy resource.
• A Military Academy building as an ownership building for Barracks would solve the problem of officer recruitment, but they could also double as ownership buildings for Police Stations and Courthouses under laws like Militarised Police and Outlawed Dissent.
• Regular government-owned buildings could also be owned by the Government Administration buildings, replacing the bureaucracy cost of government ownership with the need to staff the administration.

The big problem is that more buildings means more pops, which could mean worse performance.