Taser feedback

[TommyTFN]

I think it'd be more fun to offset the 'instant KO' effect of tazers with increased aggression from other prisoners. If my buddy gets tazed, and I'm already a bit jumpy, that might just be the last straw, so all the guy's buddies standing around him could totally fly off the handle and whoops, you've got a riot on your hands. On the other hand, if the scene is relatively placid, but there's a single prisoner throwing down, who then gets tazed, it would make sense for his buddies to probably not give a shit- it might even cow them into submission.

[#fookin.RedOctober]

I've had that, I've also found that when a guys running off they're great but if a few guys are gonna go they're gonna go. Had a rumble go in the canteen earlier and despite the taser 3 guards came in and two had to be revived by the doc. They're not game breaking unless you have a well balanced prison from the outset. I think some requirement needs to be added for the levels of roll out, say they only get carried in Max sec areas unless the guard is armed anyway.

[snarst]

How about making the use of a tazer something that causes an increase in temperature, using them to constantly quell fights could spark a riot.

[EddieG]

Disclaimer: I only started playing A-18

A Taser is a force multiplier. Say a fight breaks out with 2-3 inmates - The ability to immediately drop one buys the guard some time for others to get on scene and assist. I'm currently working ~240 prisoners. I've got 150 guards, with currently only 55 available.

I've got 4 cell blocks on each side @ 40 prisoners each (the last one on each side is closed) with 3 "Yard" structures between them. The intermediate structures run the depth of the cell block and consist of roughly 1/3 "Yard", 1/3 CCTV (worthless, but probably not forever) and Staff Room out building and (if I can use it) 1/3 forestry behind.

Total size for these structures is: 205m x 39m

Down the center is a nearly monolithic... "stuff" building. It is nearly as long as the row of prison blocks. This center structure is 33m wide.

Total size of two rows of cell blocks, central building, and paths is: 205m x 117m

The facility is huge and help can be a long way away. I'm currently running into an issue where, as I play, I learn how many of what item is needed to serve x prisoners... I mean that is what this is about right? Figuring out how to design and place your buildings in such a way that your prisoners aren't kicking off because the hour you planned for eating doesn't give them enough time to get to the Cantina and eat? Being a Prison Architect? I need to redesign the central section slightly now that I have a better understanding of prisoner pathing, but I'm quite happy with the sides. The redesign is also needed because workers can't bring materials back from the front gate in anything remotely like a timely fashion.

But anyway IMHO the Tasers take forever to recharge and only fix one problem per use. If you have one belligerent, you're likely to have another.

At least leave them alone until there are some major changes to the AI pathing. Most of my guards spend their time involved in a Nylon Pile-on in an empty Cantina, empty holding cell, or worse yet - the security office. I spend entirely too much time adding and subtracting the cantina area before and after meals so my guards will be... SOMEWHERE ELSE. I don't have a holding cell and I don't have a security office for similar reasons.

I've got patrols, but the only ones that seem to do me any good are K-9s. The officer walks the route and the dog randomly sniffs people. Outside of that, a standard guard on a patrol path doesn't seem to do F-ALL if anything happens near by, and I'm not so sure stationed officers do much good either. I think at the very least they "see" things and call for someone else to deal with it... someone who is ~250m away at the delivery area.

If I didn't need the delivery area, I wouldn't have it either.

TLDR; Please leave Tasers as they are. They may be game breaking in small facilities but they sure don't seem to be in large ones.

[Sparrrrow]

[..] I've got 4 cell blocks on each side @ 40 prisoners each (the last one on each side is closed) with 3 "Yard" structures between them. The intermediate structures run the depth of the cell block and consist of roughly 1/3 "Yard", 1/3 CCTV (worthless, but probably not forever) and Staff Room out building and (if I can use it) 1/3 forestry behind.

Total size for these structures is: 205m x 39m

Down the center is a nearly monolithic... "stuff" building. It is nearly as long as the row of prison blocks. This center structure is 33m wide.

Total size of two rows of cell blocks, central building, and paths is: 205m x 117m [..]

maybe a picture makes it clearer.

[EddieG]

You got it.

The original plan was to put a series of workshops and a cantina with a split between them that was roughly evenly spaced between two cell blocks. I started with two on top to get the hang of things and found that my design was seriously lacking. What you see now is my current cell block design and I'm actually very happy with it. Unfortunately it did not line up correctly with the center structure but it became pretty clear fairly quickly that I'd have to rebuild it anyway. Of the 229 prisoners, almost all of them are high risk and they stamp out ~$15,000 worth of license plates a day. Its lovely. I think as of this screen shot I've had 3000+hrs with no incidents.

PS: Each of those workshops count as a separate entity so I can technically have up to 60 workers. I rarely get over 40 but when I get a couple carpenters going they make use of all of those tables in every section. It helps to resolve the issues with workmen not being able to move fast enough. By the time the 1-2 carpenters have made use of all 12 tables, someone has come along and collected a bed or two and they go back to the next available table. It isn't because I have a shortage of workmen either. I believe I've got at least 50 and you can see the line of delivery trucks backed up.

Current full view - I plan to redesign the central structure at some point in the next few days. The travel time for workers to get from the existing workshops is entirely too long. The three empty sections on the left hand side would be a second set of workshops as I had planned on extending this as far to the left as possible. If/when they implement delivery vehicles, there isn't much point in going past the depth I've got so I'll design around those limitations.


I would consider other designs, but having two separate cantinas is a very delicate balance. For the morning meal, prisoners from the 3rd pair (top and bottom) use the left side cantina. Since the ratio of working prisoners to total prisoners is fairly low, I find that the bulk of the prisoners end up in the right side cantina for evening meals. Long story short: Until if/when "zones" are implemented that restrict prisoners to certain sections, it is fairly difficult to run multiple cantinas.

2 cell blocks and the intermediate yard/out building/forestry section for a better idea of scale:


150 guards, 49 available and that entire complex to work with. If I didn't have Tasers working as they do presently, I'd probably have some major issues. I've already had 6 deaths and I'm not remotely happy about it.

If I went with a wider plan and say 60 prisoners per unit instead of 40, I might have some success buuuuuut. AI pathing is absurd. I've watched prisoners go from the first cell block alllllll the way to the farthest yard on the opposite side just to use the phone or work out. They get there, their free time runs out without their needs taken care of and they start breaking things. Going wider would only make that worse. Instead of having a full blown uprising and some dead guards, that fool just rides the lightning and we're done. Problem solved, problem staying solved.

Also with regards to movement speed: Note the concrete tile everywhere. I'm giving it my all.

[EddieG]

Ok so I wanted to change the central section so much that I just went ahead and started from scratch.

I don't know if it is my design (hooray, I'm a Prison Architect!) or what, but I almost don't need guards. One of the two major incidents I've had so far - which resulted in a body no less - was right at the initial intake. I built enough of the facility to get my placement right and then opened intake. I cheated a bit and set my intakes at 40 till I was full and maaaaybe missed a square of fence. Things went down hill pretty bad almost instantly.

AAAANYWAY - Now that I don't have incidents at all due to a better design, I have some additional observations on Tasers: When 40 prisoners tried to bolt through a gap in the fence, the result was one single body. Roughly 20 prisoners got to ride the lightning on that one and rather than a bunch of dead prisoners and guards, I had a bunch of blinking Tasers and one body.

I also had another incident at roughly max capacity (~300ish) inmates where I accidentally knocked a hole in... yup, the perimeter wall. I was installing a road gate to solve a bottle neck issue up front and ended up with a hole (possibly a bug, but couldn't repeat) next to the gate. No deaths but it sounded like the Taser sound effect was stuck repeating about half way through the effect for a good 30 seconds.

Where I'm heading with this is the observation that good prison design nearly drops your guards down to basically a janitor/workman. They do the janitor thing every time a search comes up, and the workman thing every time they need to escort someone. I'm currently sitting at max cap with 200 guards and 34 free. The only thing I really need them for is searches and escorts. Dogs, metal detectors, policy, regime and design do most of the work, Tasers are along for the ride and keep a small mistake (or bug) from turning into an irrecoverable situation that ruins your prison.

You could say counter that mistakes have consequences... In real life, yeah they do. A mistake in a video game typically results in reloading a previous save. Tasers, as they are currently, allow you to make some goofs along the way while you learn without making the penalty for mistakes so massive that you either reload or just give up entirely. If I wanted to play a Top Down Strategy game (which this is to some degree) that involved a high body count and destruction, I'd go play Rise of Nations or something. This game is great because it appeals to my OCD need for order and structure. Keeping my "Danger Meter" blank is a goal, smart design in all aspects of the game are critical in reaching that.

One of my lesser incidents involved installing a cooker. I've got ~8 heavily loaded power grids for this facility and that cooker happened to bridge two of them... right in the middle of meal prep. A couple people ended up not getting fed and got mad, a few got to ride the lightning and all was well. No massive brawl because cookers have wiring sticking out the side of them for no reason which can bridge the gap between power grids.

If you want to make a change then maybe give them a very small chance of actually killing someone. Maybe the inmate had a heart condition... or maybe the probes hit just right to nuke his Purkinje Fibers... who knows.

Also you asked for a picture related to the layout and the absurd amount of guards standing in the holding cell. The first image is the new layout - the holding cell is in the far top right corner - looks like 5 regular cells but they don't have doors. The second image is a Nylon Pile-On. I would say that dude is a major threat, but they stand there even when its empty. If there are problems, they've got a long way to run.

[dogsbody]

TASER NOT TAZER!

What should be canonical? The real-world brand name, or the in-game typo?

xander

Odd enough for me, I call them Tazers in real life EVEN if it is not called like that. They could also be called "Stun Gun".

Advice from The Powers That Be irl state that you are only allowed to call something a Taser if its made by the specified company, else you have to refer to it as a "Stun Gun type device"

[knoest26]

Advice from The Powers That Be irl state that you are only allowed to call something a Taser if its made by the specified company, else you have to refer to it as a "Stun Gun type device"

Let's do a demographic voting. Everybody who thinks the name 'Taser' is a completerly unexceptable name for the stun guns please hover over Prison Architect in your steam games list, click right and select 'Remove local content'. Everybody who can live the name 'Taser'; Well done, you have the basic ability of being social.

[xander]

Advice from The Powers That Be irl state that you are only allowed to call something a Taser if its made by the specified company, else you have to refer to it as a "Stun Gun type device"

Let's do a demographic voting. Everybody who thinks the name 'Taser' is a completerly unexceptable name for the stun guns please hover over Prison Architect in your steam games list, click right and select 'Remove local content'. Everybody who can live the name 'Taser'; Well done, you have the basic ability of being social.

I prefer "Tazer," as it is currently spelled in the game. :P

xander

[Person012345]

Prison Architect is set in an alternate universe where they developed the stun gun but called it the "tazer" instead. Done.

[lugaru]

I mean as a fan of 'reduced lethality' weapons (they are all potentially deadly) I would not mind if a tazer was upgraded to a stun gun.

In other words this is getting a little granular and making a mini game out of quelling fights but it would be cool that somebody running a total 'daycare' style prison might never need to invest while somebody with a huge prison (like the one shown above) might upgrade to really high tech crowd dispersal options like gas cannisters or whatnot.

As for who gets what, I'm really leaning on each guard having 'all' equipment listed and the ability to buy it. Example:

Click on cell block guard. Click on armor, and it gets deducted from my total. He starts running to the armory to retrieve it... while he is on his way I click again and give him "taser", it also gets deducted and queued up for him to retrieve when he gets there. That way It is my own damn fault if a guard is not prepared for a fight, instead of all my guards being prepared automatically via unlock.

[xander]

Click on cell block guard. Click on armor, and it gets deducted from my total. He starts running to the armory to retrieve it... while he is on his way I click again and give him "taser", it also gets deducted and queued up for him to retrieve when he gets there. That way It is my own damn fault if a guard is not prepared for a fight, instead of all my guards being prepared automatically via unlock.

As has been noted before, the problem with this approach is that we don't have that much granular control over which guards go where. Guards are assigned to particular parts of the prison by the game automatically (and, frankly, I think that is a philosophy of game design that IV want to stick to fairly closely---they want the autonomous agents to behave autonomously). The solution that has been proposed before is that equipment loadouts are on a per-patrol or per-room basis. In a stable prison, this would mean that the normal duty cycle for a guard is (1) go to the armoury to pick up gear, (2) go to the designated patrol or room, (3) work until tired, (4) return gear to the armoury, (5) rest in the staff room (or armoury for armed guards?), (6) GOTO 1.

There are two times when this goes a little haywire: (1) when new guards are hired (or guards are manually reassigned by the player) and (2) when a guard does not have an actual assignment. In the case of (1), having all staff arrive on the bus would keep it from being too much of a problem, and manual reassignment would have to factor in the delay of picking up equipment. In the case of (2), I suppose that a non-patrol, non-location based loadout would be the correct option (i.e. all unassigned guards will, by default, carry certain equipment).

xander

[lugaru]

Yeah, in terms of granular guard control you are totally right, I have a lot of experience with the Sims games and even though MAXIS has poured a ton of money into coding for pathfinding and autonomy and well it still produces weird behavioral glitches. I could picture assigning a 'kit' to areas could produce an 'arm, disarm, arm' effect as officers switch jobs. But yeah, for sure my approach of assigning on a guard by guard basis would be worse, since they would get 'lost in the system' in a large prison as they change jobs.