[mpettitt]

Kind of. I picture it as being a function of input to output, so if the input changes, the output does too, but the output change is based on what changes have been made by the player.

E.g. if you have a hospital which can handle X patients per day and has a reputation of 90 when doing so, increasing the number of patients to 2x would probably decrease the reputation. You don't need to model the full hospital to determine this though, just have a "max patients" value which, when exceeded, puts a fractional multiplier on the output.

[fendy3002]

Well that's what "city stats" do. As you've said, population number decides the # of patients, # of workers in factory (we don't have that advanced assembler yet, haha), # of students for educational area.

And those "points" will also feedback as the input. Such as better hospitality points increase population cap, higher factory points allows the use of more equipments, higher education / tech points allows the use of more advanced equipment and ability to hire better doctors / engineers.

Now each "special building" have "budgets" assigned to them by the city. Those budget that'll be the balance and limit for equipment / room purchases and hiring, rather than directly received it from patients.