Every single prison I make ends badly about 5 days in. Help!

[mred209]

Hiya,

I set up everything i need to satisfy the various grants, and usually have enough left over to add a workshop, laundry and common room. Regime is the standard amount of sleep, an hour for breakfast, lunch and dinner; an hour of freetime before breakfast and after lunch and dinner. Couple of hours of yard time. About 6 hours total of work. Everyone gets fed.

My prison is spacious, the cell block holds about 18, the holding cell copes with 8-16 overflow, I usually have about 6 or 7 guards and the most number of prisoners I've ever had is about 25-30.

(Yeah I know, I'm getting to why.)

About 5 days in it all goes to shit. Prisoners start rioting all the goddamn time when they're in their cells. They get hold of knives, guns, night-sticks, all sorts of stuff. They steal keys constantly. When they aren't beating the shit out of each other in the yard or in the canteen or in the cell block, they're making a break for the main door. Interestingly, I've never had a single fire...

Every single penny I make when the unbearably-slow clock gets to midnight gets spent on repairs, making it nigh on impossible for me to ever expand to a new cellblock, meaning I never get to take new prisoners on, meaning I never increase my profits.

I know you can pause the second after midnight and quickly spend the profits before the repairs get subtracted, to add a new guard or two or whatever, but it doesn't make much of a dent, especially if my blood-lusting cons have knifed a couple to death recently. Every time I think I've learned from all this and start over, the same thing happens eventually.

No screens I'\m afraid because I'm not posting from the same computer I usually play on, and I have sooooo many prisons I've started and abandoned.

They all go this way, every time. It's very frustrating. Any tips, or things you need to know to help work out where I'm going wrong?

[VoiD88]

It would be interesting to know what gets them annoyed like that. On your next try, you could hire a psychologist and take a look at the Need Report to see what they are angry about.

[mred209]

I have a psych, and a couple of docs to patch up the constant, constant knifings. I keep forgetting about the psych eval page on the reports. On the actual prisoners I hover over they're always grousing about stuff I totally have covered.

For example, recreation. I always install at least one pool table, some book shelves and a TV in a common room, and weights in the yard, and there's enough free time for them to use them if they wanted (at least, I think so!).

Missing home: I have a visitation room and plenty of phones.

Clean clothes is a regular complaint: there's a laundry with prisoners assigned to work there, even though most of them just hang around in the middle doing nothing coz there's not enough cleaning to occupy them.

But the psychologist page shows a bit more detail, doesn't it? Not just a row of ++++++++++++++++++++? I'll check it out next time and see if it tells me anything I haven't already tried to fix.

Bloody moaning murderous light-fingered bastard prisoners.

[Aznsteel]

What if I told you that the common room was broken in Alpha-8?

[TheLordOfEvil]

Try having your regime more compressed together. You have everything so spaced out that they probably aren't having enough time to do everything. Depending on how complex your prison is it could take them some time to actually reach the areas that they need to in order to satisfy their needs. I find what works best is instead of having say, 4 hours of free time evenly spread out through the day, have 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night. This gives them plenty of time to move between all the rooms and gives them ample amounts of time to actually use the equipment when they get there (I've seen prisoners hog a pool table for the entire 2 hour block). I can have them work for a 9 hour straight block without anyone complaining when they get back to their cells (except for laundry which I can't get a system going for the life of me) using that compressed system instead of spacing it all out.

[VoiD88]

For example, recreation. I always install at least one pool table, some book shelves and a TV in a common room, and weights in the yard, and there's enough free time for them to use them if they wanted (at least, I think so!).

Haven't tested those things in a while, but Bookshelves didn't work at all in some previous Alpha, so unless they fixed it, prisoners can't satisfy their recreation need with those.
The common room also didn't work as intended before, it had to be in the same "sector" (not divided by a door or in another building) as the cells for the prisoners of those cells to be able to use the common room at all.
Next issue, Pool Tables and TVs only ever allow for one prisoner at a time to satisfy their need. If a prisoner is already using a TV, no other prisoner will be able to use it until he leaves.
Weight benches are not able to satisfy recreation, they satisfy the excercise need.

Clean clothes is a regular complaint: there's a laundry with prisoners assigned to work there, even though most of them just hang around in the middle doing nothing coz there's not enough cleaning to occupy them.

Laundry system is a little bugged at the moment. If you can see an empty Laundry Cart somewhere that says "Moving Laundry Cart" but no prisoner is coming to do it, try right clicking it to cancel and restart the job, that might provoke your inmates into geting a move on.

[themadmoore]

I have found that my common room works fine ... 4 -6 TV's, Pool table, two or three benches and about 4 phones.

Also they won't change their uniforms unless they have actually had shower time ... showering in free-time doesn't count.
It's funny watching them all run starkers from their cells to the shower room.

Here are some clips of my most recent attempt!

Hope this is of some use.

[Chad]

I always place some TVs and phones in the Canteen. I use to set 3 meals per day with 2 hours each. Many Prisoners are well fed and use their time in the canteen for their family and recreation needs.

[xngxng]

Also be sure you're not in "Bangup". (The button flashing in the lower right of the screen)

I usually end up in it because it activates when exiting bureaucracy-screen.

[mred209]

Yeah I've found myself accidentally activating BangUp approximately every 5 minutes of real time.

I can tell there's a lot of bugginess stopping things working, so I figured most people were probably having the same issues, but then I see shots of incredible, HUGE sprawling prisons with hundreds of prisoners/staff and wonder what the hell I'm doing wrong.

I figure "only playing a few hours a week" is probably the reason...

Thanks for the suggestions, will bear them all in mind on my next installment of 'Build A Prison Everyone Hates'

[4m3nd]

pretty much what was said above. Get a psych. Check the needs tab. Anything red (not orange, although that's close to it) is a problem. It means you have at least one prisoner very pissed about that very thing. Could be more, if the red part's longer.
Make sure your prisoners have ample time to get to the area and satisfy the need. Ie, if a prisoner is far away from the canteen, one hour might not be enough. he might get there, get a tray, sit down and start eating - and then it's bed time.

What you can do, until you have been able to satisfy the need, is station more guards where the troublemakers are.
For instance, if you have one guy freak out during the night about something you can't really create a freetime at midnight, but you don't want him to keep everyone up.

Simply station two or three guards near his cell, make the patrol area small enough for this. You'll see the prisoner calm down.

of course, you do need to work on satisfying that need otherwise you get problems the moment that prisoner is alone with others.

BTW - am I the only one who puts a guard on permanent station in the shower rooms?

[Neddleson]

What is it that prisoners are angry about?, from what I can hear you need some work time in your regime as your prisoners won't be getting clean clothes with your current regime as that time is when the new clothes can be cleaned and handed out from the laundry, then add a shower time in as that is the time they will change into the new clothes

[acegamer08]

[quote="4m3nd"]pretty much what was said above. Get a psych. Check the needs tab. Anything red (not orange, although that's close to it) is a problem. It means you have at least one prisoner very pissed about that very thing. Could be more, if the red part's longer.
Make sure your prisoners have ample time to get to the area and satisfy the need. Ie, if a prisoner is far away from the canteen, one hour might not be enough. he might get there, get a tray, sit down and start eating - and then it's bed time.

What you can do, until you have been able to satisfy the need, is station more guards where the troublemakers are.
For instance, if you have one guy freak out during the night about something you can't really create a freetime at midnight, but you don't want him to keep everyone up.

Simply station two or three guards near his cell, make the patrol area small enough for this. You'll see the prisoner calm down.

of course, you do need to work on satisfying that need otherwise you get problems the moment that prisoner is alone with others.

BTW - am I the only one who puts a guard on permanent station in the shower rooms?[/quote]

no your not the only one who puts guards on permanent station in the shower, i do also...at least i did. (i remade my prison because of issues, now all the cells have showers in them)

and as far as your other statement...two or three guards near the cell will calm a prisoner down?, i read that one was all it took, i tried that (one guard), didnt work...i even put the guard in the cell with him (one patrol point)....nothing. so, two or three guards is the secret???

[VoiD88]

[...] if a prisoner is far away from the canteen, one hour might not be enough. he might get there, get a tray, sit down and start eating - and then it's bed time.

Actually, I think they fixed at least part of this problem in Alpha 9: I've noticed that prisoners who already are in the process of "get tray->sit down->eat" will continue to do so until their tray is empty, even if the regime already jumped to the next item on the list. Haven't checked if they can still satisfy their food need by this though...

[Sopatis]

Hi there!

I agree with the above said and want to add a little bit more to help you start your first prison.

- Start by grabbing contracts and building 6 offices (4x4 each) and hire a warden asap, research finance, hire accountant, research maintainance, hire foreman and finally research prison labour (bureaucracy)

- Start with low risk prisoners only at like day 3 (prisoners tab)

- I work with an standard room size of 9x13. It is big enough for 8 cells and good for most rooms

-Try to minimize expensures in the beginning aka build only what you really need and that is: offices, kitchen, canteen, 8 cells, workshop for 8, shower

-the regime: 7h sleep is enough, 1h shower in the morning, then 2h eat, 1h free time, 8h work, 2h eat, 1h free time, 2h yard (where the phones are)
I have no idea how the perfect regime looks like, but when you do it like that it will work as they have enough time to eat, will work efficient, will clean their clothes as they change it before work time..

- only take additional prisoners in when u have cells (bed, tv, toilet lamp 2x3 cells work perfect) and a working place (workshop, laundry, kitchen) for them. The max amount of employees a room can have seems to be 20 and can be created by a room size of aprox. 260 tiles+.

-place the kitchen and workshops near the street (delivery zone and garbage) for shorter material delivery routes

-place a guard in each shower, entrance zone, canteen and yard and make sure you check them with a matal detector (not the guards, the prisoners! =)

--> here is my working noob prison at day 25: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/578988199759866576/F415070631CEEDCD370519424A25452D69E86E9D/


I wish you great Luck!