Inmate Flow & Multiple Rooms

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r0y
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Inmate Flow & Multiple Rooms

Postby r0y » Tue Apr 08, 2014 10:09 pm

I was reading this thread on tip & tricks and noticed there was some discussion on having multiple rooms/zones.

What I'm seeing with my 300-ish inmates prison is that I cannot get inmates to use the nearest room. I've got them using both Laundries, but I have one Kitchen with two Canteens (one on each side) and all the prisoners want to go to only ONE of the Canteens, and they don't seem to be able to eat in the MASSIVE 3-hour eating window I've given them (or the percentage in the left-hand to-do list is wrong or misunderstood by me).

Also, I have two massive showers, but like the canteens, all the prisoners head WAY OVER to just one (and in one corner, it seems).

I've dropboxed a tar-balled (2.2MB) prison file HERE for anyone wanting to watch the flow and see what I'm talking about. Basically, my prison layout row is something like:

||cells cells cells | showers | cells cells cells cells cells cells | showers || < six rows of this in the "bulk" of the prison.

With each "cells" being a 10-block cell. Max capacity is 600, and I edited an initial blank prison because I wanted to examine "larger" populations and their patterns. There needs to be a "use the nearest" AI option.

Here is a screenshot showing them clump into the shower - maybe they all REALLY love bathing together, I dunno... ;-)
akusteele
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Re: Inmate Flow & Multiple Rooms

Postby akusteele » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:35 am

I read this and looked your prison and (unless you've fixed them yet) i found few problems here..

As you can notice (from that border in the first picture where that toilet is facing downwards) that the long shower area close to the road you have is not marked for it's entire length and the showers on the left side of the prison is not marked at all, which is why all the prisoners wants to use that part on bottom right.

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After extending the shower room close the road and adding shower room on left side:

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Second problem (or problems) you have is.
With eating times (problem is not with the regime) but rather with those two canteens.. In that save file you uploaded, atm you got 312 prisoners out of 595 and on each canteen you have _only_ two serving tables per canteen, which is FAR TOO few when you should have between 10-20 in each canteen (as each serving table can hold 40 meals (a guess, not completely sure)).
Second problem that those canteens have is tables and benches.. each of those bench-table-bench sets have seats for 8 prisoners to eat and you got 17 sets in each canteen, which totals 272 seats for prisoners to eat and you got 312.

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Another thing which might be a problem is the amount of fridges and cookers.. you got 7 fridges and 7 cookers when prison of that size safer bet would be double the amount you have now.
And also you got moderately big kitchen but only 20 cooks, which is causing the problem that those cooks can't do all that work in time before next meal time is already coming up, so better amount would be i.e 40 cooks. (if you look all those dirty foodtrays stacked in the sinks waiting to be washed):

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Third thing what is a possible problem is to do with the phones and tv's you got (or the lack of) in your prison.. I counted total of 34 phones and 46 tv sets scattered around the prison, where the tv's on lower part of the prison is facing the wall (not sure if that is the problem).
But the problem with phones and tv's is, that there is way too few of each for those 312 out of 595 prisoners to be used when there is Free Time periods in the Regime or during Work hours if all the prisoners don't have jobs assigned to them.

This can be seen with that red "Critical" indicator in the Needs section with "Family" and "Recreation" bars.

Also as can be seen on those fixed shower screenshots, by the time i played the save till end of the current Meal time in the Regime and changed the following 2 Work hours into Shower time, the Threat level indicator reached full. (in real time, about 5 minutes) :D
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Re: Inmate Flow & Multiple Rooms

Postby PatrickV » Tue Apr 15, 2014 1:45 am

Nice prison.
akusteele is right about those things. I tend to think big to handle large capacity.
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Re: Inmate Flow & Multiple Rooms

Postby r0y » Wed Apr 16, 2014 5:44 pm

Thank you so much for the very helpful information! I can't believe I didn't mark the showers (there's a n00b move); as for the number of things, I am not at all aware of how much of anything in particular is needed for certain populations. I figured the food serving was all during the time given, therefore even two serving tables should handle it... maybe 3-4, but more than 10? I've eaten in packed mess halls (both military and Las Vegas buffets) and they just keep bringing food containers to replace empty ones, and the line flows. That said, if there are hard number requirements (minimums) for the game, I'd sure like to know what it is. Unless that is part of the "figuring it out IS the fun" portion of the game.

Same with TV's - more than one prisoner should be able to watch TV, so knowing that there's a 10 prisoners per TV would be nice to figure out or be known (via pop-up?). The phones would be similar, in that the same guy shouldn't hog the phone for the whole hour or more (whatever the freetime is), so there should be a number per phone as well.

Maybe the devs will tell us? Maybe they keep it secret so we can add/remove to figure it out as part of the gameplay...?

Regardless, than you again for the very helpful review.

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