[Suggestion] Prisoner Crowd and Dispersion Behavior

[_alphaBeta_]

Did some searches, came up empty. If I missed something, please direct me to the existing discussion(s).
I think prisoners need to be more aware of events taking place around them. Specifically the prisoners who are not involved in a specific incident should be more reactive to add some realism and logic.

Fights
It can be difficult to determine who is even involved in a small fight right now since there's usually a number of other bystander prisoners walking around aimlessly in the room. Some of them move through the center of the fight in random patterns. To mirror real-world behavior, bystanders should move away from the fight and circle around the active fighters. They could be cheering, just plain curious, trying to avoid injury themselves, or completely disinterested and moving to another location outside the circle.

Show of Force
Sending a half dozen guards into a room with trouble with batons drawn should cause compliant prisoners to back away and disperse if they were crowded together, perhaps watching a fight. Compliant prisoners wouldn't want to be between armed guards and their non-compliant prisoner targets. Again this would help with determining which prisoners are compliant or otherwise involved in a fight, destruction or riot.

Complaints / Angry Prisoners
Perhaps compliant prisoners should keep their distance from angry, actively complaining prisoners to help protect themselves if the prisoner suddenly becomes violent. This would also lend itself nicely to gang leaders (if gangs ever happen) with non-affiliated members keeping their distance.

Fire
Well documented in the early PA videos that show prisoners calmly having their food in a canteen that's also on fire. Not sure if this has been improved, but it's nothing new.

[xander]

I seem to recall something like this discussed a while back in terms of how a gang mechanic might be implemented, but, like you, I am coming up empty (which is even more annoying, because I distinctly remember posting in that thread). Specifically with regard to fights, my thought on implementation was something along the lines of an attraction-repulsion style of behaviour. By default, if there is a fight going on, nearby prisoners will be attracted to it (assuming that they have no other tasks that they are in the middle of). However, at a certain proximity, the fight is repulsive (rather than attractive). If a fight gets big enough (i.e. enough people are fighting or there are enough spectators), other prisoners might join (in either role), even ignoring other tasks. "Cowardly" prisoners might try to stay farther back, and "Angry" prisoners (or gang-affiliated prisoners) might actively start fighting. However, we can assume that most of the prisoners will be neither gang-affiliated nor cowardly, so the balance of attraction and repulsion should cause the prisoners to form a ring around the fight.

Or something like that.

xander

[neale1993]

Reading the title of this made me think of actual guard actions to try to disperse a crowd of fighters and it got me thinking...

What tools; equipment or actions could the guards have in order to disperse a crowd? I'm thinking along the lines of tear gas, or using guard dogs, riot shields etc in order to 'taunt' the prisoners back, showing but not using force, until ultimately necessary.

It could be similar in the situations you bring up. Imagine you've got a 5 man brawl, with 50+ prisoners circling the fight. How would the guards possibly break through with out some means of crowd dispersal? With more tools like this I think it might bring a more tactical feel to breaking up a riot or brawl, rather than sending all your guards in head first.

[Axios]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correcti ... ponse_Team

[McLumberjack]

I like the idea of a circle of prisoners in the yard with a fight in the middle, stopping your guards getting in to break it up. Fire a warning shot from the guard tower and everyone drops on their bellies, letting the guards do their thing.

Seems authentically (cinematically) prison-y.

[snarst]

+1 this idea sounds cool

[peardude]

To add to the idea of dispersing prisoners maybe there can be prisoners who try to alert others of the incoming guards (with contraband like cell phone, radio), and some cowardly runs get away before the guards come or maybe some guilty murders, too. Also a small fight between 2 gang members or leaders might lead to a gang vs. gang type thing with bystanders fleeing before the guards turn up, maybe even some cowardly ones trying to tell the guards of the fight if it's really far away.

[_alphaBeta_]

I also think we need some less-lethal area-of-effect weapons as suggested. While the game performance improves, prisons are going to become larger in size and population. The game currently doesn't have a way of dealing with a few hundred rioting prisoners. The easy solution would be to allow calling in more riot police (since the current maximum won't cut it with a very large riot), but I'd still like to see them as an absolute last resort for the player. Less-lethal weapons, especially area-of-effect would help quite a bit.

I'm not trying to make this into a Total War real-time battle, but it would be nice if prisoners worked together to a certain extent against the guards. If they're rioting, forming a line or other defensive formations would make the mini battles we have in this game look more realistic. I'm not expecting prisoners to form up like a military unit, but I think this would add some excitement to taking back sectors of a rioting prison rather than having prisoners and guards randomly dance around clubbing one another. Coordinated guard behavior would also be welcome with a volley of tear gas, bean bag rounds, rubber bullets, pepper balls, and/or flash bang grenades etc. to try to thin out the rioting crowd before any hand-to-hand contact. Some prisoners would be incapacitated and others may start to lose their rioting will based on the show of force. Others can keep rioting until taken down directly. While the eventual goal for guards seems to be that players will not have direct control, it would be nice if the player can make some tactical decisions from weighing the current situation.

[snarst]

I also think we need some less-lethal area-of-effect weapons as suggested. While the game performance improves, prisons are going to become larger in size and population. The game currently doesn't have a way of dealing with a few hundred rioting prisoners. The easy solution would be to allow calling in more riot police (since the current maximum won't cut it with a very large riot), but I'd still like to see them as an absolute last resort for the player. Less-lethal weapons, especially area-of-effect would help quite a bit.

I'm not trying to make this into a Total War real-time battle, but it would be nice if prisoners worked together to a certain extent against the guards. If they're rioting, forming a line or other defensive formations would make the mini battles we have in this game look more realistic. I'm not expecting prisoners to form up like a military unit, but I think this would add some excitement to taking back sectors of a rioting prison rather than having prisoners and guards randomly dance around clubbing one another. Coordinated guard behavior would also be welcome with a volley of tear gas, bean bag rounds, rubber bullets, pepper balls, and/or flash bang grenades etc. to try to thin out the rioting crowd before any hand-to-hand contact. Some prisoners would be incapacitated and others may start to lose their rioting will based on the show of force. Others can keep rioting until taken down directly. While the eventual goal for guards seems to be that players will not have direct control, it would be nice if the player can make some tactical decisions from weighing the current situation.

Don't forget CERT.

[_alphaBeta_]

I wanted to add some more info to this thread with Alpha-17 context regarding armed guards. I think it's now even more important for prisoners to have some behavior factors regarding show of force. We have an issue now where it doesn't seem to matter to prisoners that other prisoners are being shot dead by armed guards. If I'm escaping a prison and two fellow prisoners in front of me just got their heads blown off at the front gate by armed guards, I think I'm going to surrender immediately and hope they don't just shoot me anyway for their trouble.

While some personality types may cause prisoners to "fight to the death," most prisoners should have some kind of surrender threshold after witnessing deadly force in their proximity. Same should apply for non-lethal force as well, but especially deadly force. Prisoners need to flatten down against a wall, surrender, run away, and/or try to not be in between non-compliant prisoners and armed guards actively shooting.

[RichieGrape]

To add to the idea of dispersing prisoners maybe there can be prisoners who try to alert others of the incoming guards (with contraband like cell phone, radio), and some cowardly runs get away before the guards come or maybe some guilty murders, too. Also a small fight between 2 gang members or leaders might lead to a gang vs. gang type thing with bystanders fleeing before the guards turn up, maybe even some cowardly ones trying to tell the guards of the fight if it's really far away.

yea i have been working on a mod and after going through the list i think there is one major trait missing..."snitch" this would be the one running to alert guards that something is going on..or dropping hints where contraband is hidden or who is smuggling it in prisoner/staff/or visitors...but only does so if he feels well treated in the prison

love the attractive/repulsive idea...in a realistic situation..shit pops off and some of the prisoners are gonna run and try to get the hell out of there..while others will cheer, watch, and egg it on..and yet others might join in....would like a warning alarm..sort of like hitting shake down...but instead forces all compliant prisoners to lay down on the ground where they are(might even cause fights to stop on occasion in fear of guard retaliation

[_alphaBeta_]

Snitch is a great idea. May go well with staff corruption if that gets implemented, which essentially means that "both sides" would be capable of corruption.

The "lay down on the floor" idea is what I was trying to get at earlier, and I think you hit it. Only difference I'd offer is that I don't even think the player should even need to activate this condition like a shakedown or bangup. If a room is currently in riot mode, or a large fight in progress, compliant prisoners need a way to identify themselves. Would-be compliant prisoners shouldn't need the player to activate a condition that asks for surrender as the staff should take care of that directly and automatically.

Before we even get to there, however, the main issue is that prisoners first need to have logic to surrender. All the riots I've seen, the rioting prisoners fight until the last prisoner is cuffed. I don't think this is realistic if a good amount of force has been demonstrated, especially deadly force.

[Raaaahman]

I seem to recall something like this discussed a while back in terms of how a gang mechanic might be implemented, but, like you, I am coming up empty (which is even more annoying, because I distinctly remember posting in that thread). Specifically with regard to fights, my thought on implementation was something along the lines of an attraction-repulsion style of behaviour. By default, if there is a fight going on, nearby prisoners will be attracted to it (assuming that they have no other tasks that they are in the middle of). However, at a certain proximity, the fight is repulsive (rather than attractive). If a fight gets big enough (i.e. enough people are fighting or there are enough spectators), other prisoners might join (in either role), even ignoring other tasks. "Cowardly" prisoners might try to stay farther back, and "Angry" prisoners (or gang-affiliated prisoners) might actively start fighting. However, we can assume that most of the prisoners will be neither gang-affiliated nor cowardly, so the balance of attraction and repulsion should cause the prisoners to form a ring around the fight.

I really love the idea of an attraction-repulsion behavior. I think it not only apply to fights, like having junkheads that turn around some actual drug possesser, or more peaceful prisoners keeping their distance from others that carry weapons. It would add so much prison-like feeling when regarding the game and can allow the player to locate dangerous prisoners with a lot of observation and could occupate them during time they're not building. It could also prefigure other mechanics like gangs and socialization.


I also like to see prisoners circle around fights, troubling guards to get in the middle, and the behavior of the prisoners progressively change while guards are doing their jobs. But I think that even with this addition, the player has already enough tools to deal with fights:

1. Prevention: Use armed guards to suppress.
2. Number: If guards are overwhelmed, just sends more guards!
3. Call for a lockdown: Every prisoners that isn't to much implied into a fight get back in their cells while guards deal with the rest, it might cause prisoners enjoying the show of the fight entering it because they don't want to go back in their cells.
4.Call the riot police. It's their jobs, and that may be them that gets the new tools of crowd dispersion like the tear gas and stuff...
5. Ultimate solution: Send your armed guards to definitevely calm the situation.

[CplHenderson]

I really like this kind of idea, and I've been in support of it for a while. I also do recall this being posted in a previous thread, as xander mentioned, but I can't find it either.

I have to wonder about CERT - is it really necessary to program an entire new unit? I mean, at the base, they would be really similar to riot police.

[Pallemaker]

A lot of good ideas in this thread! Crowd mentality and additional individual traits would go a long way to make the prisoners less generic. I think the prisoner-focus of the game is one of it's great strenghts (I for instance love the fact that a few of the prisoners are innocent of what they are convicted of).

Regarding show of force/intimidation, I think guard dogs could get an "intimidation factor" similar to, but smaller than, armed guards. After all: guard dogs are mean (at least they look mean), and prisoners should be less inclined to wreak havoc when getting their legs and/or face chewed off is a real concern.