Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
So I just bought this game. I'm a little off-balance as far as my first design though. The CEO's letter simply says to make sure you have some spots for the prisoners coming in, plus a canteen and kitchen. Oh and a warden so he needs an office.

That's not terribly descriptive, and I find myself unsure of what to do in the early going. What would make sense to me is some sort of lobby up front, with offices and staff facilities near the main entrance, and then an inmate processing room where new inmates have their dignity taken away. Then a wing for gen-pop behind that, with prisoner services further back from lockup.

The issue is that is that the game is really unclear on exactly how prisoners will go about their daily business, and therefore it's super hard to decide what workflow makes sense for managing them. What is the traditional way for managing prisoner traffic? I obviously don't want them coming any closer to the street than their cell until their release.

Also, is there any reason for anyone to be accessing the electrical and water substations after they're created?

Really I'm sort of hoping for a generalized quickstart guide, but there doesn't appear to be a good one available.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Met posted:

It's an early-access game that isn't scope-complete yet. Tutorials and smarter start scenarios will probably be saved until it gets closer to 1.0. As it is, there's no reason to write content for a game that will need to be rewritten.

I understand that. That doesn't mean I can't use a forum post like yo:


or that I couldn't benefit from a wiki post in the vein of this one for a much spergier game.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
So I confirmed something that has been in the back of my head for a few days.



Prisoners, during lockup, will use a shower in their cells, same way they will use the toilet. This is kind of nice as it makes the shower room basically obsolete as long as you have at least an hour or two of lockup per day.

The tradeoff is that this is a far more expensive cell, since you essentially need as many shower heads as you have prisoners, and enough drains around so it won't damage the bed. The drains here are certainly suboptimal; I didn't try simply putting a drain directly under the shower (which might work), but even if that doesn't, you can get it down to 2.5 drains per cell fairly easily. This was more just brute force to see if the concept was good.

Anyway, I feel the upsides could be worth it. Lockup is substantially safer than Shower time, because generally nobody gets shanked during Lockup, and having a fully satisfied Hygiene need to start the day off tends to make prisoners a lot more chill as they head to the Canteen for breakfast.

Now, it would be nice if there were a way to make a morning Lockup hour force-awaken all the prisoners, so they poo poo and shower consistently. I've noticed that if I have an hour or two of lockup prior to breakfast, half of the population just sleeps through the lockup portion.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Oct 22, 2014

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Wallet posted:

I've been using minsec cells for a while that look like this:

Which seem to be working well. I know they could be more space efficient, but the smaller arrangements look weird. If I was going to restart I would probably get rid of the bookshelves, though, since they don't seem to get used often.
It's an interesting study on exactly how much is too much to furnish a cell. With the standard 2x3 layout, which has minimized expenses on walls, you can get almost everything a prisoner could want to stay placid. For reference, in the vanilla game this is:

1) Bed (sleep/comfort) ($200)
2) Toilet (bladder/bowels) ($100)
3) Shower (hygiene) ($20) (plus $60 for a minimal 3 drains to contain the water safely in this design)
4) Weight bench (exercise) ($100)
5) TV (entertainment) ($200)
6) Telephone (family) ($300)
With a potential option to add in a large Window ($200) to fight Freedom need increase, though with the increased Lockup times these designs lend themselves to, it might be a lost cause.

Obviously as the bed is 2x1 this leaves you short a space. But even if you do something janky like stack the TV on top of the phone (this MIGHT be possible?), when you toss in the cost of the walls and the cell door (25$*8 + 1*50 = 250 + 100) this makes for a price tag of 980 + 350 = loving $1350-$1550 bucks for a single cell. For reference, the walls evaluated at 25 are the ones that either are part of the foundation (and therefore share costs with that whole mess) or are shared with the cell beside it (and are therefore halved in price).

But yeah, you have to hold a normal-sec prisoner for ~two weeks before you start turning a profit on them, though obviously being able to cut back on free/shower/yard to instead have them make more license plates and poo poo could help this equation substantially in the longer run. Having everything in the cell means that you can actually rely on prisoners to satisfy their needs and get contented in a few hours, rather than having them use communal facilities and end up just acting like dickheads to each other, or, just as likely, run off and grab contraband they've organized from God knows where.

For my part I think what I might try to do is to have a couple hours of Yard time and just put the benches/telephones/TVs out there. It is pretty easy to secure a Yard, especially with armed guards, and you can get the expensive poo poo out there for them to share nice. Hopefully.

For my money though I think I'll probably prefer to put more stuff in my cells as opposed to less. It was really nice having 3 Volatile prisoners and 1 Snitch show up in my first batch of guys in my last experiment run and see that they were basically totally chill with each other as long as I posted a guard in the Canteen. The Volatile guys simply never had a reason to go off.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 23, 2014

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Wallet posted:

Not needing a separate shower room (and avoiding the inevitable fights because prisoners are pissy in the morning) makes in-cell showers seem worth it. For the rest of their needs I just add extra poo poo to other rooms like phones in the canteen and toilets in showers and poo poo like that.

It would be nice if prisoners could write/read letters for family need, then you could isolate them very easily.

Phones in the canteen make a lot of sense. I run 3 one-hour meals a day and it's very rare that prisoners need more than half an hour to get food and eat since I run a Canteen per cell-block and I very frequently see them milling around for the other half of an hour. Giving them a couple of phones to satisfy family need while they're in the area seems super convenient.

TVs might make sense in the Canteen for the same reason, though weight benches end up seeming a little silly.

Away all Goats posted:

Wait are you serious? :aaa:

I thought they were purely cosmetic like lights and never bothered to check if it affected their needs.
I'm quite serious, but it doesn't satisfy the need so much as it lowers its growth rate. You can't keep prisoners on lockup for 6+ hours a day and expect that their Freedom need will never get that high; only Yard and Free time slots will actually satisfy it, but those obviously have other problems. Windows do, however, allow prisoners to tolerate more Lockup time before their Freedom need goes critical so it's easier to find a balance.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Oct 23, 2014

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Yeah it's becoming obvious that the prisoners will use equipment that's in their allowed area no matter what it is, if they feel they need it. I totally believe that weight benches would get used like crazy in the canteen, along with anything else that satisfied needs. Hell I'm positive that if you dropped a toilet in there it would practically get fought over because eating outright increases the Poo need. In that way, Free Time is kind of the worst thing you can do from a strategic aspect - it indicates that you haven't properly thought out how to keep people happy in-regimen, so you're just relying on them meeting their needs and being good when you give them the run of the place. Which, no loving duh, of course they won't, they're criminals.

I just have a few standards remaining on aesthetics and weights in the cafeteria just looks weird. :v: I could get sold on a couple of bathrooms off to the side, though...

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 23, 2014

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Shakedowns also work best in the last few hours before people go to bed. That way if they're innocent, they only have an hour or two to be pissy about it before they go to sleep and forget it. If they're guilty, then they're going to the hole anyway so gently caress them.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Pornographic Memory posted:

If for some reason you don't have Yard time in your regime you should put it in, they added some new behaviors for prisoners.

Like?

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Broken Cog posted:

Is successfully reforming prisoners supposed to be this difficult? I've been running alcoholism/drug rehabilitation and as many classes and jobs I can set up, and my prison grading on reform is still just a 1.

And sheesh, it seems 80% of my prisones come in with a drug addiction of some kind, which makes it hard for them to concentrate in classes.


Edit: Also, keeping my meals at maximum quality and variety is doing wonders for my health statistics.

Are you keeping them suppressed? Suppression states from being around Armed Guards or just recently coming out of solitary will wreck a prisoner's attention at a reform program. Fire your Armed Guards or keep them stationed in the armory, which should obviously be far away from normal prisoner routes. Be aware, they can suppress through walls.

Reform scores shot the gently caress up for me after I fired the dudes toting shotguns. After Tazer Rollout (and the appropriate save file editing to get people certified, because the class was bugged to poo poo last time I tried it) normal guards can handle the occasional scuffle quickly and gently, and if your prison is more violent than that you've got some problems, at least if you're running the sort of prison where you give a poo poo about reform scores.


Broken Cog posted:

Regarding tunnels: Is there any way of discovering tunnels other than dismantling toilets?

Also, is there any downside to just opening up all the jobs I have room for(Laundry, Cleaning cupboard, Kitchen).
Your guards CAN find tunnels when they search the toilet, but their chances of doing so are very low. I've searched an entire cell block for a tunnel I knew was there 10 times before finally getting fed up and dismantling every toilet in the block during afternoon working time.

Blackray Jack posted:

I only let prisoners take laundry duty, since that has no contraband and it really helps out in keeping prisoners clothed. Oh and metalshop I guess, although a warning on metalshops in that the only item they can smuggle out in a guaranteed fashion is an improvised pickaxe since it's not metal and therefore not detectable by metal detectors.
The biggest thing that I didn't do for a long while that I should've been doing is changing the prison policy to search both the prisoner and the prisoner's cell whenever any contraband is found. It really helps to find things like clubs stolen from the cleaning closet and improvised pickaxes made in the workshop after some dork steals something smelly or metallic.


What are people doing for punishment policies on contraband etc? I've been finding the contraband problem so endemic and intractable in a goody-two-shoes-let's-reform-all-the-mans prison that I'm considering just turning off punishments for all contraband. All it does is force my guards to tediously truck prisoners to and from solitary, and even at 4-6 hours in the hole for a naughty item there seems to be flat zero deterrent potential. I'd almost rather just confiscate it and let the prisoner get back to work/class.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Three-Phase posted:

I was a bit "Phfft, how bad could legendary prisoners be?" until an incident happened at my main prison today:

  • Legendary prisoner flew off the handle
  • Guard tazed legendary prisoner, nothing happened
  • Legendary prisoner punches the guard once, killing her
  • I sic more than a dozen guards on the position, finally getting a successful tazer takedown

As far as searches go, I just do a shakedown every night at 1:00AM.

Truthfully the last few times I had a Legendary prisoner built them private quarters and kept him indoors 24 hours a day. It was just safer for everyone that way. Every so often I would deconstruct the toilet while he was asleep just to make sure he wasn't getting any funny ideas.

He left with a pretty high reoffend rate because his reform was like 2 (I made him do his own laundry, but that was it) but he served his sentence and didn't get the opportunity to kill anyone, which honestly is all you can ask for in these sorts of situations.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Keeping contraband under control isn't the difficult part; the game is very clear on where contraband comes from and it's very, very easy to set up structures so you'll detect 90% of the incoming contraband immediately, and get the other 10% when some yutz inevitably fucks up by lifting poison from the cleaning cupboard and thinking that's gonna fly as he rolls past a dog patrol. Having a policy to search his cell, and re-search the prisoner, will help you find the odd spoon, club, or whatever that someone managed to miss on another search.

My larger issue is that I am not finding punishment for contraband to be productive at all, at least for a reform focused prison. Even when I throw prisoners in the hole for 6 hours for having a cell phone, I just bust the same idiot for having poison or a screwdriver 24 hours later. All it does is add a suppression state and make him miss sessions of his reform program/work, which in many ways is counterproductive. Thematically I guess it makes sense, but I guess I'm at a loss for what throwing people in the hole actually accomplishes.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
The idea that Dwarf Fortress has a strong personal narrative is pretty funny honestly. Literally every story I've ever heard from that game in my 4-odd years of playing it are stupid situations owing to the fact that it's not complete and Toady has zero quality control measures. It doesn't matter if Urist Peepants, Peasant with 0 bravery got scared by a corpse in the refuse pile and jumped into the river to get away from the corpse of a cow, because Urister Stonehearts with 101 bravery did the same thing an hour later.

e: Also, you haven't really played this game until you've had 'that one loving prisoner' who rolls in with legendary stats and also something like Snitch - so dudes try to start poo poo with him all the time, only to get the poo poo murdered out of them in one loving punch because the snitch also happens to have Extremely Deadly.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Rapacity posted:

I'm dumbfounded
that's probably because you're dumb

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
The game as it stands is more fully featured than a number of simulation games I have played, but by the same token if your habit with these games is to binge and bust then you should probably hold off as the game still has a long way to go to be 'done' and I seriously doubt the current incarnation is the best one out there.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Sarrisan posted:

My only problem is that my newest prison, is almost going... too well. It's max-sec only, but with no particular effort towards any actual security beyond having a bunch of guards. Still, my prisoners never seem to try to break out because they are too happy. Mind you, I'm only 12 games in (My longest game yet, since I keep restarting). Will my prisoners get less boring soon or should I start a new game and roleplay Hitler?
In previous patches I would have told you that you're just lucky, and wait until you get an Extremely Deadly Snitch/Ex-Cop in your poo poo and grind your teeth as he murders a bunch of dudes who try to gently caress him up, with basically nothing you can do about it, but the new scheduling tools have made it a lot easier to make sure that you have sufficient guard coverage at flash points throughout the day, so maybe it's easier now? I have actually not tried a max-sec prison since the new patch.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

The REAL Gtab Fan posted:

People use shower and yard time?

Freetime - Work - Eat - Forever.

I personally put showers into each cell. You need plumbing in there anyway for the toilet, and you can just put some drains underneath the bed to keep it from being damaged. That way prisoners shower during Lockup. It's nice because they're a ton calmer during chow or work time, and nobody's gotten shanked in their cells yet so it's a lot safer too.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Brightman posted:

I stopped playing right before the CI update and I don't understand how you get them, like I had a decent amount of guys in Solitary and there didn't seem to be a recruit option with any of them. Was it just bad luck or am I missing an option somewhere?
Depending on the inmate it can take some time for the recruit option to pop up. Stoics in particular don't recruit on very easily.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

GamingHyena posted:

Is that even possible? I've run some pretty big prisons off of only one water source.
I think he's talking less about water exhaustion and more talking about 'the big pipes are too far away from the thing using the water'.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Yes, but the only time you get access to food is during Eat periods. Basically, Free Time will mean you can finish your meal if you've got one, but you can't go get chow.

It's probably better to just put stuff into the canteen to allow prisoners to handle needs if they're good on food. Some toilets, TVs, and phones will allow people to handle their needs once they're through eating and mostly get rid of the need for free time.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
There is a guide on Steam with those numbers. Search for...ratios, I believe it is.

I would link it directly but I'm on my phone right now.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Nalesh posted:

Seems easier to just give each cell a shower and put them on lockdown for an hour or two in the morning :v:

After you get down from 2x3 cells showers don't always make sense like that, though that said I find myself preferring more and more luxurious cells the longer I play just because they solve so many loving problems before they start. It'd probably be different if you had small maintenance costs per piece of furniture (like a 5 dollar recurring charge per phone, per week or some poo poo) but when it doesn't cost money to keep a shower, weight bench, and TV in the cell, but it DOES cost money to pay the guards to make these assholes not tear each other apart in the showers, I'll keep making sure that they show up to the canteen in a good mood, thanks.

e: Also it's funny to me that they still don't count time sleeping as time 'not locked down'. My punishment scores stay high even in hippy dippy let's reform prisons simply because every night, I have one hour of 'sleep' and another 7-8 hours of lockdown. Of course, we're tough on crime! Our prisoners spend 10 hours at a time locked down! Granted, that's from midnight to 10AM, so most people just sleep, but...

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 21:48 on May 21, 2015

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
I will reserve judgment on it until I see that it can actually affect inmate behavior. I currently run with no solitary rules at all unless I'm looking to recruit a CI or two, because in the game's current incarnation punishments don't really matter. Lockdown works well with nice cells since an inmate can poo poo, shower, lift weights, and generally cool off from an incident, but that's really more of a side effect than the punishment having a real effect.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Basically if you have one of those dickheads in your prison, you should have free fire on eternally.

People don't get second chances when there's a loving super villain on site.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
The current best way to combat tunneling is to simply have enough time outside of Lockdown that Freedom doesn't show up as a need. Prisoners generally won't tunnel until Freedom becomes a thing for them.

This is less effective in a max sec prison of course, as max sec guys will act out from having nothing to lose.

If you would like to have lots of Lockup for punishment and security purposes you can simply set the regime to mandate 1 hour of sleep and 7 hours of lockup for a normal 8 hour night. Time sleeping and locked down doesn't aggravate Freedom, but still counts as time locked up for the purposes of scoring.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Regarding PC and Visitation, if you have different holding areas for PC I believe you can just make another visitation room, and their families will prefer the visitation room that is closest to their inmates' cell.

I also find that it's harmless to mix PC and Death Row, because Death Row guys are basically confined to their cells anyway. That said, there's also a pretty low risk in mixing PC with minsec, since minsec guys generally have one foot out the door and don't want to increase their sentence. You can make it double sure by moving the high risk portions of the day (eat and yard) to be a few hours before the general schedule, so PC eats by themselves in an empty canteen, and is out on the yard while everyone else is scurrying about working.

As far as setups go, this is mine for the moment, with regime attached. This is an older screenshot, but I liked it because it has a lot of empty space though, so you can easily expand various needs with no issue:



lovely cells to control behavior, for example, can easily slot in next to the infirmary. The thing I like about this setup is that it's easy to duplicate. I could build a copy of these cell blocks all down the line and have perfect separation of security levels and decent backups in case of a riot. It's more expensive to get each cell block up and running (I generally don't undertake it unless I have 100k or so), but the sectioned-off utilities are pretty nice. The max-sec variation of this block has Perimeter Walls around except for one square that comes out by Deliveries, where I naturally have a dog patrol constantly sniffing the deliveries for contraband. Without any large pipes except in the very center of the block, diggers only have that area to go for. :v:

That said, I have had only one problem with gen-pop and PC sharing facilities in this setup. Part of this is the constantly cool atmosphere; the only time temperature spikes is in the morning, when people wake up smelly and poopy, but prisoners are guaranteed to wake up by 8AM, so the general population has a chance to poo poo and shower before they show up to the canteen. Then at the canteen, the first two meals of the day cools people off even further, since they're basically guaranteed to get chow thanks to free time, and if they finish early they have enough time to go pray or grab a book while the rest of the prison watches TV or uses the phones. PC has cleared out of the canteen and started their work day by the time genpop shows up anyway. There's enough jobs in the place to keep most folks busy, and the combination of low temperature plus the only armed guards patrolling outside the cell block means that reform programs are generally pretty popular. I think I only have like 2 or 3 prisoners in a normal cell block of 52 treating Work as Free Time.

The one problem I had was the cleaning cupboard. If a PC guy gets shuffled onto mopping duty, there tends to be a lot of idle time hanging around in there in the afternoon. So, I ended up needing to station a guard in there during work hours to make sure the PC guys don't get jumped.

Having a lot of Workshop space has made this prison stupid profitable, though. Most prisoners like at least workshop safety a lot, and I tend to have a couple of carpenters per cell block too.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jun 18, 2015

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

PantsFreeZone posted:

Nice layout. My OCD approves. Just a small suggestion which probably won't matter much unless you expand, but I like to keep EXPORTS close to the Workshops to save time on workman trips. Means more profits.

Yeah I didn't like the idea of them being in the northern utility building, mostly because that would push Visitation down to the southern building and put the supply of contraband tools and poo poo that much closer to the main airlocks.

Could I just set them any old where in the inner yard area and have exports simply teleport out?

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Sometimes the pump will be a target during riots. It can be a real issue if you've got some rear end in a top hat pyro setting fires everywhere and you can't use the sprinkler system you installed. However, I've only ever seen water pumps be targets of opportunity (e.g., a dickhead will attack it if it happens to be on his way out), so it's generally a relatively small problem. Power stations are the much bigger consideration - even though they again are simply targets of opportunity, losing power during a riot is a serious problem.

Of course, it's worth noting that after they're installed and have a utility egress, you never need to touch these utilities again. If you're concerned about their security, just stick them in a dark room and then go all Cask of Amontillado on that poo poo. Not even legendaries will beat down solid walls.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

The Deadly Hume posted:

The only issue I can see with keeping the pump across the road is that the main pipeline is basically a highway for tunnelling escapees.

One could say that this just gives you a good way to determine where escapees are going to try to tunnel (for dogs to patrol), but I'd agree with you and say that one should channel those tunnels by making every other option suck rear end, not making one option really attractive.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

widespread posted:

So I think I wanna go small and burst out from there. Like, start with min-sec majority and maybe normal sec. Should I still go for every grant? Or rather, what SHOULD I go for with min-sec prisons?

None of the grants really change with the context of mostly min sec. I mean, maybe it won't make sense to keep armed guards around because I seriously have never seen min secs kick off hard, but it's still worthwhile to research all of that stuff and grab the grant money.

The main thing it changes is that you can expect fewer special cases as you get things working. Probably won't have any snitches, definitely won't have a problematic legendary, etc etc.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Rooms not being utilized is 9 times out of 10 an issue with the path. Make sure you're not unintentionally blocking the area off with staff only zones or something of that nature.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Baronjutter posted:

Library doesn't show up as a workable room for me in the labour assignment screen. My library is open though, does it need walls or something? The room seems functional its self.

Yes, it needs to be enclosed to be workable, even though this isn't actually part of the room description.


BurntCornMuffin posted:

The opposite, actually. Prisoners in higher than average cells don't want to lose them, and behave better. Prisoners in lower than average cells get jealous and kick off more. Ultimately, it's a tool to control where trouble happens, so you can put guards where they are more effective.
Nah. The best way to use it as I've seen it is to have about 15-20% of your 'actual' cells be as lovely as humanly possible, and then bargain on keeping those cells empty on a day-to-day basis. This basically gives you the deterrent effect of having punishment cells for dumbasses who misbehave, without giving you the chronic problem of dealing with the horseshit of the prison poors. Overall number of incidents of my prisons has dropped a lot even in max sec since I did this, and it's effectively the same concept as Solitary only it actually works.

nielsm posted:

Since prisoners with unmet needs tend to have a shorter fuse and be less capable in work and reform programs, it's a good idea to make sure everyone gets to use shower and toilet first thing in the morning. If you just start the day with free time, everyone will tend to sleep in and not bother using any shower/toilet even in their own cell, until they're forced out by a later work or eat regime, and end up being cranky/ineffective. For that reason I prefer sending everyone to Yard first thing in the morning, and then have a yard with all facilities available.
Prisoners are guaranteed to be up and about at 8AM, so if you do not start your 'day' until 9AM, they will have an hour to poo poo and shower in their cells. It's also worth noting that you can set up a shower/bathroom area in the Canteen and it will be used exactly the way you expect, like any other facility. I tend to prefer putting things in the prisoner's cell, though, simply because showers are super cheap, I'm already installing plumbing for the toilet, and nobody has ever gotten the poo poo beaten out of them during Lockdown. I can't say the same about Yard time, max secs will light up just seeing someone look at them funny if they're hungry, stinky, and poopy walking out onto the yard.

FronzelNeekburm posted:

Watch their needs and see if any are piling up, like bowels and food in the morning like nielsm mentioned. Class performance can also be impacted by suppression, which happens when guards are scaring the prisoners into good behavior.
Well Fed also improves attention in classes, so a robust meal plan actually will pay big cash dividends over the long term if you pair it with a parole program.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Baronjutter posted:


I don't see the point of lock up, it's time when prisoners aren't "productive". I want them out meeting their needs and taking classes. I guess my main concern is how much freedom I can give them and have them still be happy. Like if I don't FORCE them to shower will they shower on their own or get stinky and mad about being dirty while being too lazy to wash them selves? Basically can I treat these people like adults and give them them mostly free reign all day or do I have to force them to meet certain needs?

Also how do people arrange their prisons in terms of security levels? I've only been dealing with low and medium dudes, which seem fine mixed. Later should I have self-sufficient segregated wings for each security level, each other their own spectrum of cell qualities and their own kitchens and such?
The one I use is in the screenshot I had earlier, but I'll link it again for convenience:



Lockup time increases the prisoner's 'punishment' and 'security' sliders for the purposes of reoffending, so it is not at all useless if your inmates are meeting their needs in well-furnished cells. Showers and weight benches are both pretty cheap to install and handle needs nicely. In a standard 2x3 cell there's still one more spot for something to go down - the most obvious of these things is a TV or a phone, but that makes each cell more expensive than I'm willing to consider really.

Regarding security levels, the ideal situation is completely segregated. Min sec and Mid Sec can generally mix okay, but the higher number of Snitches from Min Sec will breed violence from the Mids eventually. Max Sec will generally bully around everyone since most of them are there till the end of loving time anyway. You also want to really watch the Max Secs because they're by far the most likely to have rough modifiers or be Legendary, but keeping the extra guards around is neither necessary nor helpful for the other prisoners.

More realistically, most violence happens when people are crunched in and locally outnumber the guards by a lot. This is during Shower, Eat, Yard, and sometimes Work in places like the Cleaning Cupboard when there's nothing to do so people mill around. So if you keep each level of prisoner on a slightly different schedule so they don't run into eachother at these times, and they never outnumber the guards by too much, you will have fewer and fewer problems.

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jun 23, 2015

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

PantsFreeZone posted:

I'm pretty sure room quality is a deterrent to problems, not a cause of them.

Meaning: Prisoners in 8/9/10 rated rooms will try not to get into trouble to avoid losing their swanky accommodations.

The way I set up my cells is a 2 by 3 with Bed, Toilet, and Shower as the crappiest it will go. This cell rates a 3. If I have 150 cells, 50 or 1/3rd are basic. Then build 75 level 5s that are 3 by 3s adding Bookshelf and TV. Then 15 4 by 4s and 10 5 by 5s with as many amenities as I can fit.

The reason you want a high % of crappy basic cells is that it fixes the AVERAGE CELL grade, making prisoners content in the 75 3 by 3s but allowing for the fear of being downgraded. Also, having a lot of AVERAGE and BELOW AVERAGE cells means your Holding Cells will always be empty if there are more/equal amounts of cells to prisoners.

Essentially, the trick is to make a number of bad cells that you are to regard something like Solitary - if they are not occupied, good. That means they are doing their job of deterring bad behavior by their very existence. The difference, of course, is that Solitary cells don't actually do that, regardless of how miserable they are or how long the sentences inside them may be.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Corpses can hold some loot that you don't want getting out, so the morgue is the place the bodies stay until the hearse arrives.

Instead of, you know, the ground. Where people can steal poo poo.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Away all Goats posted:

Damnit I JUST started a new prison :saddowns:

Still I'm glad they finally started implementing gangs after there were rumors they found them too difficult/complicated to implement. The Store sounds neat too.

By contrast, this is perfect for me, as I've run across a few things I'd like to correct in my current prison, and it's been going great for the last few weeks and my valuation is through the roof!

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
I think I'm gonna leave Gangs off until they're fully implemented. As they stand, anyone who shows up with tats gets slapped with a Supermax status and put on lockdown for 20 hours a day in a kitted out cell to keep them placid. I don't see the benefit in trying to integrate them. Their Reform score is invariably going to blow rear end since they will not work and will not attend programs (the two chief ways of raising that score), so if you want to get rid of them as quickly as possible without murdering them, you will have to double down on the other scores to try to get rid of them on parole. If they're lifers you have even less incentive to let them out, and you might as well leave them on 24 hour lockdown with meal delivery enabled. The occasional broken door as dumbasses boil over from Freedom need is just the cost of doing business at that point.

Actually, while writing this post I got half of an idea on something. It is possible to set up doors such that they automatically lock shut at certain times in the day, right? Could someone provide a tutorial on that? Googling for it yields little.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Door servos were always super loving picky for me. You're supposed to put the gear part over the door you want to connect, right? Every time I tried that with a Remote Door it never opened, ever, for any reason. Are there any other rules you have to follow?

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Yep. Wired them up to a door control console in the security room for an airlock out of the big self-contained cell block I was showing off a page back or so. Never did work.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
There's an error state on Remote Doors if you misplace the servos, telling you that they won't function without servos attached. They don't have those in my screenshot so as far as I can tell it's correct.

Here's a screenshot with them closed to make it easier to see though:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Well that is documented approximately nowhere. Alright, thanks, I'll give that a shot tomorrow.

  • Locked thread