Kunovega wrote: All 12 (gates and solitary doors) are connected to only 1 door controller.
Eek, so what happens if that 1 guard who controls that 1 controller decides to take a break? The whole system will get stuck...
Please use a backup door control panel so a second guard will always be able to continue the work.
This also speeds up the time it takes to open a door for somebody, since two guards will be able to open the same doors time will be divided by half.
edit: ah but you don't want that on purpose, so I assume you have free roaming guards always nearby that control desk?
Here are two screenshots of a (almost) perfectly working system:
First of all, the road has been completely altered. From left to right: intake, cargo, cargo, emergencies.
Having two cargo roads works
so much better for deliveries, it's a no-brainer to implement this when running a large prison.
Also having prisoner intake separated from cargo is
much much much more efficient. Did I say
much more yet?
Road sensors do their job better than logic circuits - they take less time to respond and are easier to use.
Yes it requires two door servo's at a gate, thus visually a bit less attractive.
But it's by far the best solution I've tried in many many hours of finding a good way.
With the use of logic bridges you can easily bundle the signals coming from the sensors and apply them to more gates where desired.
The little room next to the classroom contains all bridges needed in this setup.
To make road sensors work they will need status lights, which is a good way to add a tiny delay where needed.
Connect it like this: sensor - statuslight - servoOpen, or sensor - statuslight - servoClosed.
The status lights can be put under a door servo so they won't sting you in the eyes by being all over the place.
To add a delay, simply chain a few status lights in a row before the last one connects to the servo. So you do: sensor - statuslight - statuslight - statuslight- (etc) - servo.
I used this last method at the intake road, where two snitch sorters are checking the intake bus. These handy tools need a little delay (about 5-10 seconds) to do their job.
Once the bus passes the first gate, the road sensor which will close that gate also will shut the gate in front of the bus, so it has nowhere to move.
Once the sequence of 4 status lights is completed, the gate will be opened and the bus can proceed to the next snitch sorter.
You could use maybe one snitch sorter instead of two, but during testing I found out using only one snitch sorter will increase the chance of a snitch slipping through this system :s
So double check that prisoner bus to be sure nobody gets missed!
When sorting is done, the bus will be cleared to unload its fresh prison meat at the reception.
The road sensor over there makes sure that the gate behind the bus keeps closed shut until it's done unloading.
Prisoners will always shoot out of the first tile of the bus and if they have nowhere to move next to the bus they will move forwards instead of directly up.
Keep the first two tiles open (I used metal detectors) and use a brick wall to limit their route.
All area over there is marked as StaffOnly except the Reception room, so the only way to go is straight into reception.
This works very well but not 100% perfect - let's say 10 out of 400 prisoners will end up on the road anyway, usually when it's getting really crowded in reception.
Or, if the prisoner is on death row: these fellows really don't like to be inside the prison, nor walk an inch by themselves...
The double cargo route has a 'box of 6', so up to six trucks can be buffered inside the prison while the rest will be waiting outside a closed main gate.
When the first (double)gate opens, the truck will be captured into the top box and wait until the main (double)gate is closed by the sensor.
Again, an extra status light will provide the needed delay for the next gate to open while the first (double)gate gets closed.
When the cargo truck moves on, the gate for the middle box will be opened early if the route is clear, so the truck doesn't need to stop in there.
It will only wait in the middle box if the last box is filled (=truck over there standing on road sensor connected to servoClosed behind it).
The signal for servoClosed overrides the signal for servoOpen, so fortunately a gate will stay closed shut when both servos are active.
This whole box system acts like a buffer when too many trucks arrive for deliveries and too little workers are available to unload them quickly.
Why use a box of 6 and not simply remove those gates in between? Because when rush hour starts, that would mess up things badly.
Trucks really need to be separated one by one in order to have them drive when you want them to drive.
If a certain gate would not be there in between then a following truck in the row would drive too fast and ignore a closing gate in front of it, or get stuck in it.
Visitors will arrive between the second cargo road and the emergencies road.
You can change the visitors spawning location by editing the OriginX value in the save.
In this particular map OriginX is at 116. I was hoping the OriginY value would do something as well to this spawning location, but it seems it doesn't.
When putting another value at OriginX, the row of 5 tiles of 'unable to build on this road here' will also reposition.
So playing around a bit with this value will make it easy to build roads and stuff anywhere you like and to remove the original road.
Trucks will by default spawn a bit to the right of OriginX, unless you use the RoadWorks mod which allows you to have trucks go where you want them to go.
Drifting off, so lets get the attention back to the visitors.
At some point they will pass a few pressure pads (somewhere at the middle of the 'box of 6').
The perfect spot for these pads is something you have to test for your prison: it takes some time for visitors to walk and it takes some time for gates to close.
It also takes some time for the pressure pads to give 'area clear' signal for the trucks, so the whole thing comes down to trial and error while implementing it.
These pads will override all of the gates at the crossover, making sure those gates are closed shut while visitors walk on the crossroads to enter the prison.
This way no truck will ever collide with them, keeping things running smooth for the cpu.
It used to be a mess down there when 80 people would be entering the prison in the morning while colliding with several trucks on their way in...
Deliveries area is long enough to handle four trucks at once.
Usually only one or two trucks will be there, but you know those times of the day when a LOT of food arrives all at once, or sheet metal or whatever...
If two trucks are already unloading and new trucks arrive at Dock 3 or Dock 4, a road sensor will make sure no new trucks can enter deliveries by keeping the gates in front of the crossroads closed shut.
When this happens the buffer 'box of 6' will catch incoming trucks while still being able to have all prison entries closed at all times.
So there will be no way for any prisoner to just run to the roads and survive all the way to the last gate. More likely he will be either tazered, shot to death or torn apart and be eaten by a dog when that happens.
