Prison Architect - Raid Boss Level Prisoners

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Prison Architect - Raid Boss Level Prisoners

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Box Hill Strangler posted:

How often do dogs give false positives? If 4 or 5 flags have come up over a few days is there a chance theres no tunnels at all? Or do the flags also represent something else?

When I was building a new prison to try to plan for the new alpha changes, I had a few dogs on patrol the day before any prisoners arrived, and they were constantly barking at phantom tunnels.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2014 06:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 00:52

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Jeoh posted:

After building my huge prison I forgot to save enough money for guards, and now everyone is rioting constantly. How can I fix this? I just need 1k to get an account so I can get that grant and a bunch of Cell Block grants.

Isn't there some emergency federal bailout grant if you wind up with no money? I think I recall them saying it could only be used once, but at least it might get you back on your feet.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 05:13

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

ZombieLenin posted:

Is there any variety to what your prisoners build in a workshop? As far as I can tell the saws do nothing, and the presses only make license plates.

Designate some open area of your prison as "Forestry", and your gardeners will plant trees, then chop them down when they're fully grown. Then your prisoners will turn logs into planks and beds, which are more lucrative than license plates. However, your prison will automatically buy sheet metal for license plates when you have the money for it.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 03:45

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Coolguye posted:

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.

Unless you turn off incoming prisoners for the first day or two while building, you'll be very pressed for time and money for your early inmates. You definitely need a holding cell with showers and toilets, a canteen, a kitchen, an office for your warden and an accountant, and preferably a yard.

That's probably going to stretch your resources as far as they can go on the first day, so unless you're plotting things out well in advance, the rest of the prison can wait.

...except a perimeter fence. Make sure you have one of those unless you want constant escape attempts.

quote:

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.

That depends on your regime, which you define in the workbook in the lower right. The important factor is prisoners' needs, which you can also see in the Needs tab. Tinker with the regime until you find one that generally keeps prisoners happiest.

Prisoners have to sleep at night, and they will be hungry, stinky, and poopy first thing in the morning, so you will want some combination of Eating/Free Time/Shower to take care of those needs. After that, maybe you build workshops, cleaning closets, and laundries for them to work at, which needs Work time, or maybe you give them Free Time/Yard to satisfy their entertainment, family contact, and exercise. It's up to you to decide whether two or three meals make sense, or if they need more free time, or whatever keeps their needs met.

quote:

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.

Prisoners will try to escape if there's nothing between them and freedom, and they'll sometimes try to escape if there's just one open door to the outside world. At least two doors -- or road gates -- will keep most prisoners inside.

Use the Deployment button on the bottom of the screen to set areas as "Staff Only" if prisoners shouldn't be there. It won't always stop them from running, but it'll (usually) prevent guards from opening doors for them.

Also, the more expensive the door, the stronger it is, so if you really need to keep prisoners away fro an area, consider a jail door or even a solitary door instead of just a regular/staff door.

And keep in mind that prisoners will try to tunnel out of your prison, so if there are any large water pipes leading to the outer walls, prisoners can and will use them to speed up their escape.

quote:

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

I think tripping the circuit breakers repeatedly is supposed to wear out capacitors, but I've never seen any wear and tear damage to power plants or water pumps.

quote:

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

The best tutorial in game is to follow the flow of Grants in the workbook, which will walk you through a lot of the basic buildings and give you some cash for them as well. It's not a great tutorial, so I'd recommend checking YouTube for simple prison starts to get a feel for how other people get up and running.

The official alpha videos are also a surprisingly good source for understanding all the new game features and seeing a few sample prison layouts as they demonstrate.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 09:05

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

McGlockenshire posted:

Oddly enough, half of those punishments didn't even get applied until I loaded the save. Running the "bugbash-2b" version, I figure that it's a bugfix for the "if you get tazered while doing something wrong you will never be punished" thing.

On a related note, I was going bonkers trying to figure out why my new prison refused to let me build door controls until I noticed the "bugbash-2j" version in the save file. :downs:

Turns out you need to leave the Bug Bash beta group to get the more recent regular versions.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 08:52

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Vahakyla posted:

Besides that, I wish there would be a way to have two man cells. It would be such a good idea for low sec guys.

That sounds terrifying. My low sec prisoners are constantly planning their Great Escape.

I had dogs on patrol around all the cell blocks, but they didn't alert very often, and repeated cell block searches found nothing.

After a few days, they finally caught someone underground, and...

I thought I was being paranoid with THREE perimeter walls. :aaa:

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 18:45

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

hailthefish posted:

That trail of yellow flags is kind of a big clue.

The dogs would flag maybe once per pass, maybe not at all, for a few days. I was getting that many alerts before any prisoners moved in. It wasn't until that night that they actually uncovered the tunnel, and I had searched the whole cell block at least twice before that. All the yellow flags were from a 5-minute span with two dogs circling the area.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 01:25

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Moridin920 posted:

Click on a prisoner in solitary, if they can be made a CI the button will appear to the right of their portrait under the 'Experience' tab.

Also, you don't have to click on them if you just bring up the informant view in Contraband. It'll highlight any potential CIs, so the trouble is just breaking them in the first place.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 16:01

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Wallet posted:

I was trying to figure out exactly how the needs system works (by looking at save files mostly) so that I could figure out exactly how long a meal of varying sizes lasts and exactly how much sleep prisoners need, but I haven't been able to pin the numbers down. Does anyone know if the devs have posted that information somewhere or if someone else has figured it out?

They did talk a bit about those settings in the alpha 24 video. Skip to about 30 minutes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSmPl80bSPA&t=1780s

But it looks like those data files are wrapped up in some binary file somewhere. The modding forum might have some better information on it.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 21:56

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Ha, a repeat of last year's, I presume.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 17:54

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

There was also talk earlier in the thread about possibly having too many laundry baskets, and they would never get moved back to the laundry room until they were full. The recommendation was deleting extra baskets manually from the save file there, too.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2014 04:11

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

My goodness! :swoon:

Getting both the kitchen scheduler and the class scheduler is huge. Here's hoping they both work as intended because they look exactly like what the doctor ordered for scheduling problems.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 13:33

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

cyclonic posted:

By sluggish I meant it seems like when I increase the game speed it doesn't make as big of a difference as when I had a smaller prison. But probably for similar reasons - including staff that's about 500 people to simulate. After Sim City I just worry about simulation with a lot of units, as sad as that is.

Game runs smooth, I just wish I could fast forward a little faster when I'm building new cell blocks. Guess I'm just impatient.

Yeah, currently, the game starts to chug after a few hundred prisoners. Adding additional plots of land is usually the worst performance hit, but hopefully they do another performance-improvement pass one of these months.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 05:21

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Of all the places in the prison I'd be worried about a riot invading, the room packed full of guards is probably the lowest on the list. Just stick some solitary doors on it and call it good.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 17:21

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Pornographic Memory posted:

Armed guards are kind of a double edged sword for riots - sometimes a few shotgun blasts will make a crowd of prisoners surrender, on the other hand not all prisoners are scared of getting shot to death and I'm pretty sure killing dozens of prisoners even in a riot is a game over condition.

If they haven't changed it since they introduced failure conditions (in alpha 20), you should always get one warning before losing. So, you get one shot at mass murder, and then you get a death counter you can't exceed without losing.

cyclonic posted:

Huh. I did not know I could order my cops around directly like that - can you order janitors to clean up specific spots too? What I've been doing is just hiring new cops next to where I need them - sometimes they wander in the riot zones, sometimes they don't.

If you drag across an area, it will only select cops. You can click on any staff member and order them to move elsewhere -- handy for when they get stuck in a door or something -- but you can't directly give them orders, so they may get to where you want them and wander off to do whatever jobs they prefer.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 03:07

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Campaign mode (and, perhaps in a related vein, the mysterious Polaroids we've seen occasionally in the alpha demo videos) is a big one that isn't in yet, especially with that button in the developer mode labeled "Cutscenes."

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 10:06

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

nielsm posted:

Does anyone know if prisoners can die of old age?

Death from old age is not currently in the game. They mentioned it in the alpha video about failure conditions.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 18:29

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

The big news here is that they expanded the kitchen planning system from last update to the laundry system, so maybe you can actually have more than one functioning laundry room now.

Also, being able to set time-specific deployment schedules (i.e., more guards in the canteen at lunch, more in the cell blocks at night, etc.) sounds useful. I wonder how well it will work in practice.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 00:52

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

CrusherEAGLE posted:

Edit: I'm also curious to know if the game devs have actually done some real prison stuff to get experience for this game. I'm sure this has been answered somewhere.

I doubt it counts as "real prison stuff," but Chris thought of the game while taking a trip to Alcatraz to do research for Subversion.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 12:49

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

skooma512 posted:

I hope this game gets more vertical. It'll be a pain in the dick to implement I know, but almost no prisons except maybe for POW camps are just one story.

Also could use some guard towers. What's a prison without towers at the corner?

While those would be obvious improvements to the whole prison aesthetic, I'm not sure how they'd actually implement them in the game as it is now. Being flat gives you an easy awareness of the map that would be hard to maintain if you needed to switch layers, and the art style is very flat as well. Plus, Introversion have never been very good at UI design, so it would probably end up a horrible mess to sort through.

I'm guessing guard towers won't happen simply because having snipers or spotters who can see everywhere would make outdoor patrols unnecessary.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 20:47

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:

I haven't played in months how do informants work?

You need to pressure prisoners into working for you, so look for ones who are in solitary. They will have a circle around them in the uh... Intelligence menu? They just changed the name of it in the current version, but something like that.

Once they're recruited, you can call them into your security office to squawk, which raises the other prisoners' suspicion of them, which can get them killed if you pump them for information too much.

Here's the old alpha video talking about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSmPl80bSPA&t=290s

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 03:32

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

BrassRoots posted:

N/M: found out you have to build walls and doors first.....

So uh, why would workers not finish foundations? I have lay them down and they put the steel and the start of the foundations down but never seem to finish them. Am i limited as to my area at first or something?

You do need at least one door somewhere, but you don't need to build the walls. They'll do that on their own once they finish. They just won't actually fill the whole foundation in unless there's a door in place.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 09:20

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

nielsm posted:

But neither of those are true: The reoffending chance value is not the final number that gets used to determine whether a released prisoner gets back into crime, as far as I understood the video. And your distribution of prisoners across the range is not linear either.

Unless I misunderstood what they were saying, the reoffending percentage is the final number the sim has assigned based on all the factors in your prison, so you can trust it to be a dice roll with that percentage.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 20:15

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

You can definitely cheese requirements like that by having workshops, yards, etc. with toilets (or even showers, if you feel daring enough to keep them near power tools). Prisoners won't, say, leave the workshop during work hours to use a toilet that's in a nearby common room, but if you place them in the areas prisoners already congregate at, it'll help.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2015 00:37

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Daily prisoner grants are now the same across all security levels so you can't abuse making min-sec dudes max-sec anymore. It's balanced out by a lump sum payment when a prisoner enters your prison.

Also, wires for cameras and the like can be anchored to arbitrary spots on the screen to clean up the rat's nest of lines all over the place.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 13:47

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Bondematt posted:

Oh gee this guy wants to mop inside the armory, guess I better let him in.

You can stop prisoners from trying to get into places like that by going into the Deployment screen and zoning them as Staff Only. Only your janitors will try to clean there.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 09:48

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Green Wing posted:

Is there a delay before the latest Alpha is actually released, or is my Steam not updating?

If you opted into a bug bash beta at some point, make sure you turn it off afterward.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 22:48

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Brightman posted:

you can put capacitors on all four sides (do corners count? I forget, I feel like they don't, like the max is 12 capacitors).

Yes, corners count.

# ¿ May 14, 2015 09:57

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

MPLS to NOLA posted:

The real question is how do I assign 3 of my 10 guards a patrol route, which I paid at least $1000 to know how to do and still don't.

Here's the Introversion alpha video where they went over the patrol system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSrUCIEFAuc&t=200s

# ¿ May 18, 2015 07:38

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Der Kyhe posted:

EDIT: Also, as viewable in the picture, my workers managed to somehow gently caress up a construction site to expand the wing section-serving kitchens doorway. The staff door there works, and the walls seem to be solid, but the construction site graphics just don't seem to disappear nor are there any tasks associated to the construction.

I'm not sure I see what you're talking about from that screenshot, but I assume you mean the two darkened hallways next to the kitchen on the left side of the road. It looks like the floor is still dirt. Can you drag a new foundation over those inside areas (excluding the existing walls)? You might have to bulldoze a few wall pieces near the doors, but it should fill those areas in.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 02:22

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

KillHour posted:

No, they explicitly said they would be thrown in a holding cell if there was nothing low enough.

I did a quick test. New prison, eight cells, eight prisoners. I gave all cells as many amenities as I could think of and got them all to quality 8.

After about a week, none of their "deserved" scores had dropped below 8, even with all three solitary cells filled almost constantly due to weapons, drugs, and forks.

So then I build a holding cell, gave it six beds, and let it run for another few days. Once I did that, prisoners' deserved room scores started dropping to zero every time they got punished, but none of them were ever moved to the holding cell.

Finally, I dismantled all the stuff in half the rooms, dropping them to 5 ("below average"). Prisoners with lower scores got sent there, leaving the quality 8 rooms free.

It seems that as long as you have any sort of normal cell, prisoners will be sent to the lowest-quality ones that match their rating first. They don't get sent to a holding cell if there are empty cells, even if they don't meet the rating requirement.

Also, while I was testing, it seemed like something about punishments is broken. I kept seeing prisoners standing around cuffed with no active tasks.

FronzelNeekburm fucked around with this message at 22:00 on May 30, 2015

# ¿ May 30, 2015 21:58

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

StrangeAeon posted:

By now, every inmate remains in shackles, regardless of the time of day or situation. I even removed all Punishments from the policy, but they remain chained and wandering listlessly about.

Unless they have pending punishments left over from before you changed the policies, I suspect that's a bug. I saw something similar a few weeks ago when I was fiddling with the current release.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 04:58

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

StrangeAeon posted:

Reform classes don't seem to work at all for me. I have prisoners interested in various things, and even occasionally see them participating (particularly in the Spiritual Guidance), but nobody Succeeds at their classes or job training, and more often than not, nobody shows up at all. Any advice to get job training and education set up properly?

I'm not sure from your description, but prisoners only go to class during Work hours, and I think they usually need three hours? So make sure you have work time set up in the regime.

If they do go to class but never pass, sometimes that's normal, and sometimes it means they're too depressed from wallowing in their own poo poo and getting shoved around by armed guards. If they have a "suppressed" status or an addiction or anything else bugging them, they won't learn as well.

quote:

The infirmary might be bugged. I mentioned my doctors moving like a school of fish, and they continued that behavior the entire time. They would swarm onto a single patient, treat them, then drift away. Most injured prisoners and guards were ignored entirely, and I suspect it's a problem with doctors prioritizing whom to treat. Of course, my infirmary was pretty full, and perhaps there was a pathing issue? Has anyone else seen this behavior, or fixed it?

This does sound like a bug or something, especially if there are untreated patients sitting in the infirmary.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 07:38

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

EasternBronze posted:

Anyone have any idea how to get death row inmates? I researched executions, built an execution chamber and have a few cells designated as "Death Row". The tooltip for Intake tells me I need a special "Death Row cell" but Im not sure what makes that different from a regular cell... I never get any death row inamtes ever, is there some special thing that I'm missing here?

You might need to zone that cell block Death Row in the Deployment screen.

Also, check Intake in the Reports screen to make sure you're allowing death row prisoners in.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2015 12:05

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Coolguye posted:

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.

I'm guessing the far side of the road doesn't give you much room to stick guards and patrol for anyone escaping until you buy up the next plot of land.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2015 09:08

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Baronjutter posted:

Prisoners seem to all have a room quality they "deserve". Is this room quality set in stone or goes up or down based on good/bad behavior?

The deserved quality resets to 0 if they get in trouble, and it ticks up over time if they behave.

quote:

If I have a shower in every cell do I still need a shower room or a dedicated shower-time on my schedule?

As nielsm says, if you don't zone a "Shower" room, then you shouldn't have a Shower time because the prisoners won't have a place to go. They can still use the showers in their rooms during free time (or work time, if they don't have a job).

Sometimes it's worth compromising and putting a shower room (or hallway) in, just so you can force everyone to shower every day. Some prisoners don't, and it pisses the others off.

quote:

I think I've seen prisoners play pool but I've never seen them read a book and my library is empty shelves and unsorted books, yet I sometimes see prisoners complaining about literacy needs. Do I need to do something to get my library "working" ?

I haven't tried libraries yet, but I think you need prisoners working there to sort/shelve/check out books.

quote:

Mail room seems broken.

Known issue in alpha 33. Bug reports say it should be fixed in 34, which should be out within a week.

quote:

Any tips on keeping prisoners calm and happy and helping them pass their classes and generally get reformed/rehabilitated? I'm trying to run a comfortable non-3rd world style prison even though the game seems very based around american prison and crime stereotypes.

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.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2015 20:44

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Haha, they insert characters from a giant .BMP file instead of just using an actual font with Unicode support. No wonder non-Latin support was such a mess.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2015 17:36

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

Between the new gangs and the accuracy nerf for weapons and tasers, this sounds like a pretty brutal update.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 19:01

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

euphronius posted:

I remember there being a spreadsheet on the ratios for fridges cookers cooks servers prisoners. Does anyone have that bookmarked or whatever. Ty.

The PA subreddit has a couple of posts on the subject.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 12:48

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 00:52

FronzelNeekburm: Jun 1, 2001; STOP, MORTTIME

super fart shooter posted:

So whatever happened to the tablet version? They made an entire video about it a few months back, but it still hasn't come out and as far as I can tell they haven't mentioned it once since then

Their tablet subforum seems pretty dead. I'm guessing all their attention is on the PC 1.0 release. They had secret test builds that some people were playing around with, but nothing public recently.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 18:24

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Prison Architect - Raid Boss Level Prisoners

«‹›2 »