Feeding prisoners takes too long

[jamtarts]

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/707403913780159033/4B70834894FF8FA00E6E0B9CC5FD273A886552E5/

Here's a screenshot of a prison I've been building. As you can see, to get to and from the canteen they have to go through a metal detector and two locking doors that have a servo assist.

Now, without getting too personal about my life, I've been inside prison, We were given an hour. This would include getting from work/education (we didn't have freetime for library or visits, guards would come escort us from work to there) to our wing, where the kitchen canteen was located, we'd queue up (and the prison I was in was three times the number in this one I took a screenshot of) get our food, then back in our cells. I'd often have my dinner, and pudding, then get a cup of the tea on the go in half an hour. An hour was enough from us. And I've been looking at the distances my prisoners from cell block C (not shown, further north in my prison, each cell block has a jail door separating them) go from there to the canteen. It's less than when I used to work in the workshop, or even the library. Again, food was served all in this time. Even when the world cup was on and we were all banged up the canteen prisoners came to our door to give us baguettes.

So it's a whinge really. I have a lunch period that's two hours long, then an evening repast that's 4 hours, and still it's not enough.

Do I have enough benches?
Do guards enjoy the daily death toll because they can't be fucked to open the doors?
Am I mixing up reality with a simulation?
Should prisoners be allowed to eat in their cells? (We had plastic cutlery, that said you probably still could do some damage poking someone with the knife, and did the washing up in our sinks. And we had proper sinks, not those intergrated jobbies lik in US prison)

Thing is, whilst I and others take the effort to whinge about how this needs fixing and make this better/include this feature, I'll say this: It's rare a game comes along that I get proper addicted to, until it's 4 in the morning and I see the time and go "oh, I should be feeling sleepy now."

Last time that happened was with simcity. So well done you chaps for making such a great game. Even if it does bring up mixed memories.

[jamtarts]

There's no way to attach .prison files here but I'd be willing to upload the save somewhere online if anyone wants to try it for themselves. What i keep doing is making a new prison, spending all day on it, then when it goes tits up (usually when over 100 inmates) I just restart and do another.

I have been looking at howto videos and people sharing tips, I even so one where a guy had the prisoners on freetime instead of sleep (and they just wake up at with the rest of the day being freetime, work, sleep, looping over and over in one hour increments. Apparently worked well. Can't find the link now, I'd sahre it if I could but I can't find it.

[xlr8films]

I've been locked up also. Texas. The thing that I see (in this game) is the cooks just stand around when they could be loading the serving tables. That imo is what creates the slack. That and the cook times.

I attach a canteen adjacent to a yard and make the inmates gather there and then it still takes 2.5 hrs for them to eat (I have 500+ in mine) and I have metal detectors inbetween my yard and the canteen. I know that having them slows the rate at which they enter, but it is a necessary evil for contraband.

How many cookers do you have?

[xlr8films]

BTW... the metric is... 1 serving table = 4 cookers = 2 fridges.

And: Quantity of meal (small = 1, medium = 2, large = 3) * prisoners to be fed / 80 (the max # of portions possible on a single serve table) = the # of serve tables you need.

So, in your case, insofar as serve tables, at max, 137 * 2 (medium) / 80 = 3.4, so you only need 4 tables atm. Adding a 5th makes the chefs overwork. I need 14 to function at "normal" speed.

EDIT: I should mention that math is from a few builds ago. I don't know if it's still solid but I haven't seen anything or read anything contrary ... yet.

Here is mine (still a WIP): http://cloud-2.steamusercontent.com/ugc ... F8EB6119C/

[jamtarts]

Whilst that formulae is fairly simple, I'd love it if someone would write that up. Here's hoping it'll go into a tutorials.

Didn't know about the ratio of fridges to cookers. I thought as there's food coming in every day, I was being generous with 3, and I have 11 cookers. I even put tables in my kitchen but the chefs seem to do all their prep on the fridges. Maybe that's slowing them down. Time to redo the kitchen.

Now a lot of this can be trial and error but I'd have never found that out if I hadn't asked. I have a friend who would never go onto a forum and just complains to me when he can't do something, like I am supposed to be the ultimate reference. I'm flattered, but I digress: These sorts of things should go into a handy guide, and not the ultimate 70 pages long guide but a nice colour pdf, with youtuby links, explaining how to do what. Even have template prisons with simple tasks to do, like wiring up CCTV cameras, logic gate how to's (I wanted a pressure plate activated road gate but you can't put them in the road) and how to do a vulnerable prisoner unit/having seperate facilities for protective custody prisoners (or, put them on a different regime so they don't mix with other inmates during yard/freetime or dinnertime.)

Thanks guys. I'll give it a go later.

[xlr8films]

Yeah forums are your friend, for sure. I copied that math and a few other notes into my phone's notepad so I wouldn't lose it.