What are your thoughts of Alpha 13?

[thekillergreece]

This update made me come back, because Alpha 12 was almost same of Alpha11 with nothing new but half-finished contraband...Alpha13 finishes contraband abilities,system and such. As well as new feature, Guard patroll.


Really..Is Guard Patrol worth it? I got confused how to use it...I finally managed how it works but its bit lame idea...Stationed,patrolling, what are the differences? Now I have to remove every stationed guard on my prison and re-manage it...


Escape Tunnels..Theeere, you smart Chris, its easy to lose prisoners , I hope you will add Watchtowers with armed guards(Sniper) to shoot down prisoners, or at least warn shot, making them stop running.


Guard popup marker... Whyyyyy, you developers broke it :S? Now I cannot know whats going on..Especially with riots.. When I saw the first newest popup market in Alpha 12, I said it looked weird and lame design, and I couldnt click it and show me the location... I hope popup marker will be fixed in alpha14, orthewise, we will lose a lot guards.. :/..


New A.I Ability: More than 3 guards will be involved to 1 escaping prisoner! This was very annoyed in previous Alpha, 3 guards spotted an escaping prisoner and was after him. Run,run, prisoner even passed a lot guards who werent bothered to go after him...So he escaped...Because of the guards not bothering to stop him. Now, this alpha13, if a prisoner is escaping, every guard on sight will go after him, more than 3 guards!


What else? The material! Perimeter walls. Actually, prisoners could use some kind huge blanket, throw it to the other side, and climb, escape. But doing so, will immediately alarm the guards and rush to the scene and attempt to stop them.(This way escape happened a lot in 1800 century..)


And a small missed/rushed development on need popup, if someone wants clothing, the pic inside the popup, doesnt show clothing..It shows "Complain pic".....


So what are YOUR thoughts?

[HerrJoebob]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

[thekillergreece]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

Well,well, if IV(Chris) wants a challenging game, why he doesnt bother to make a new Difficult setting system?
You can choose the difficult setting when starting a new prison. You select size of prison and then you select the difficult setting. Easy, Normal, Hard, Challenging...That would be better for NEWCOMERS players..

[Rappelle]

You can't set policies for Complaints as shown in the video. Makes me sad.

[SeaCarrot]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

The only thing that repels people from Dwarf Fortress that I've encounted is the graphics. PA doesn't have that problem. Actually even comparing the two is blasphemy, they share nothing in common besides the similar interface genre.

[SeaCarrot]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

Well,well, if IV(Chris) wants a challenging game, why he doesnt bother to make a new Difficult setting system?
You can choose the difficult setting when starting a new prison. You select size of prison and then you select the difficult setting. Easy, Normal, Hard, Challenging...That would be better for NEWCOMERS players..

There is a difficulty setting in game, its called Min sec, Medium sec and Max sec prisoners.

[thekillergreece]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

Well,well, if IV(Chris) wants a challenging game, why he doesnt bother to make a new Difficult setting system?
You can choose the difficult setting when starting a new prison. You select size of prison and then you select the difficult setting. Easy, Normal, Hard, Challenging...That would be better for NEWCOMERS players..

There is a difficulty setting in game, its called Min sec, Medium sec and Max sec prisoners.

Thats not difficulty setting I am talking about..I mean if you are on Easy mode, you can be notified that a guard spotted an incident, ability to disable prisoner outcome, cheap objects and small amount of prisoners incoming, however on challenging mode, you will NOT be notified for a guard spotted an incident, you wont have the ability to disable prisoner outcome, very expensive objects and a lot prisoners coming...

Min,Med, Max sec prisoners have nothing to do with the difficulty. They always can be stopped riots if you have more than 100+ guards. Easy.

[Novbert]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

Challange was one thing that was entirely missing from the game until now, and I'm glad to hear it's finally there. Now it will make sense to do regular Shakedowns, keep up an infirmary, a morgue, solitary cells, etc. many-many features of the game suddenly started to make sense.

I also don't get the DF comparison here. The biggest challenge in DF is the crappy user interface. Once you've got used to that, it's rather sandboxy.

[HerrJoebob]

I also don't get the DF comparison here. The biggest challenge in DF is the crappy user interface. Once you've got used to that, it's rather sandboxy.

That's actually fair; DF's interface might be its biggest obstacle and PA doesn't share that flaw. The point I was trying to make was that the number of things you have to do to make a working fortress is immense, and I hope that PA doesn't get to the point of being that intimidating.

[HerrJoebob]

You can't set policies for Complaints as shown in the video. Makes me sad.

^^ this.

I was really looking forward to making a 'right wing hellhole'.

[Novbert]

the number of things you have to do to make a working fortress is immense, and I hope that PA doesn't get to the point of being that intimidating.

Actually I can see the opposite direction of development in case of PA i.e.: The player is given lots of tools and many options to set up a working prison, and not all of them are necessary for every scenario. I see the introduction of punishments as a step towards that goal. Now two entirely different playing styles (and everything in between) are equally supported. I'm looking forward to see more of this kind of stuff.

[esdee]

I think the new system could be nice addition, but I don't like the fact that almost every prisoner will start digging his own tunnel after while.

I let my perfectly working prison idle for a bit and then did a shakedowown... more than half of the prisoners were digging a tunnel. It is a bit silly and not realistic at all.

[Flint]

I already found a glitch made tunnels pointless and rendered the update as it stands useless. Topic already made Prison Architect: The Tunnel Exploit

It's a good idea but I don't have to worry about tunnels all that much now.

[Causeless]

Thanks for starting this... After wrestling with 2 new prisons tonight I was going to start my own thread. This is a really challenging update!

The risk profile is entirely different... In A12 I could make a prison that was open to max from the beginning and end up with only 3-4 murders by day 15, and then settle into boredom.

Tonight I was unable to keep min sec guys happy enough to prevent escapes or injuries. I haven't needed 2 doctors in a really long time.

Long term, is this good for the game? I've no idea. My worry is this becomes Dwarf Fortress which repels newcomers like a duck's back repels water. Hopefully IV can get a good intro campaign going to introduce all the things you need to make a working prison...

The only thing that repels people from Dwarf Fortress that I've encounted is the graphics. PA doesn't have that problem. Actually even comparing the two is blasphemy, they share nothing in common besides the similar interface genre.

They share quite a bit in common, but more in background stuff than in gameplay. The nerds who get super excited about the AI in dwarf fortress (like me) are the same that get excited about it in PA, Castle Story, Stonehearth, and so on.