[SUGGESTION] Emergency Services Requirements

[Praetyre]

Presently, you can essentially use Emergency Services as free super-units, with no penalties other than raising your Danger Level with all those Riot Guards. I propose an alternative to what seems to be some planned cash-per-hour system for them; emergency services require emergenices to call (and are free);

Firemen would require a fire onsite. Paramedics would require 10 or more unconscious persons. Riot Squads would require a riot, naturally. Further, calling in additional units would require a tougher situation to merit it; to call in a second fire truck, you would require either a fire that has engulfed an entire room or is in or near "critical" or "vulnerable" areas, such as Power Generators or Workshops. Paramedics would require 20 unconscious for a second squad, and 40 for a third. Riot Police would require 20 and 40 rioting prisoners, respectively, to call in a second and third squad.

To avoid the annoyance of being "just out of reach" of these values, every time they were met, there would be a 10 minute grace period allowing them to be still called in even if a single prisoner was subdued or healed or what have you. This grace period could only be otherwise ended by there being no unconscious people on the map or the riot/fire ending.

This would put added emphasis to what I feel ought to be a more developed medical side of the game; see the latter part of my post here; http://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=48342&p=563953&hilit=paramedics#p563953 for information on that, as well as my Medical Chief idea in my Transportation/Staff thread; http://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=48246

[Karrade]

Presently, you can essentially use Emergency Services as free super-units, with no penalties other than raising your Danger Level with all those Riot Guards. I propose an alternative to what seems to be some planned cash-per-hour system for them; emergency services require emergenices to call (and are free);

Firemen would require a fire onsite. Paramedics would require 10 or more unconscious persons. Riot Squads would require a riot, naturally. Further, calling in additional units would require a tougher situation to merit it; to call in a second fire truck, you would require either a fire that has engulfed an entire room or is in or near "critical" or "vulnerable" areas, such as Power Generators or Workshops. Paramedics would require 20 unconscious for a second squad, and 40 for a third. Riot Police would require 20 and 40 rioting prisoners, respectively, to call in a second and third squad.

To avoid the annoyance of being "just out of reach" of these values, every time they were met, there would be a 10 minute grace period allowing them to be still called in even if a single prisoner was subdued or healed or what have you. This grace period could only be otherwise ended by there being no unconscious people on the map or the riot/fire ending.

This would put added emphasis to what I feel ought to be a more developed medical side of the game; see the latter part of my post here; http://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=48342&p=563953&hilit=paramedics#p563953 for information on that, as well as my Medical Chief idea in my Transportation/Staff thread; http://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=48246

No to part of this, I'd like to be able to call them in preparation for something bad happening not wait until it happened.

That said emergency credits could be gained and spent as a side currency. Called Authority. The more you need outside assistance the lower your authority score, and the lower the score the more nasty things might happen. Instant lose is one way but i'd rather have people less like to give you grants, or invest, give you money etc. You might get an inspector come around if you authority is low and if any bad things happen when the inspector's here you get fined, if the inspector dies.... very bad things happen

You get the idea you can mess with it adding various effects, like slower deliveries import/export due to people double checking everything you are doing, (either out of game or in game) and I think an authority value fits for this kind of simulation. I don't feel a real prison admin would instantly lose his job, but have increasing amounts of red tape to deal with, depending on the situation .

[Renaissance0321]

No and no. Totally unrealistic and silly. There shouldn't be criteria for that. You are in charge of managing your prison, you should be able to call in additional forces for shakedowns, lockdowns or whatever else you got going on just like in real life.

[Praetyre]

What is the second no in response to?

Also, as for as realism is concerned, do you honestly believe that emergency services departments dispatch all available units for one minor call? It is actually a crime in many places to fraudulently call such a service (I'd imagine the penalties would be especially severe for misuse of ambulance services), and i am aware of no situation where local emergecny services have filled in for a prison under construction (I can see personnel supplied by higher-ranking members of the prison body/corporation supplying such temporarily, but that would just amount to free trained and experienced guards until your prison opened).

[Sgt.Golden]

I agree with some part of this but not all. You have to think that you don't just call riot police for a shakedown becuase in real life prisons have they own emergency responds unit. In PA you don't. I feel that when you call riot police or any other service it will cost you money. Also we have to think that in the end of the day you are the boss of your prison and you control everything. So if you want to call riot police why not.

[chess123mate]

Presently, you can essentially use Emergency Services as free super-units

I completely agree.

I don't think it's good to be able to bring in the emergency services "for the fun of it".
-You don't have to pay them wages
-They are willing to stand in the middle of your prison indefinitely
Thus, they act as extremely cheap "scouts" (if you have Fog of War on), with the added bonus of being able to help out if something goes wrong. It's nice when your guards refuse to stay in a room (ie you don't have deployment and/or patrols researched), but nonetheless illogical.

On the other hand, I agree that adding criteria to enable you to call them seems like a bad idea.

So, instead of requiring criteria to be met before calling them in, why not have certain criteria to be met to have them stay and/or not fine you?

This way, you could call in an emergency squad whenever you like. The squad will stay with you for as long as they have something useful to do (other than just walking around) -- the riot police will stay while a riot is on (or even just if they're fighting prisoners at all), the medics will stay while there are people to heal (and during a riot), the firemen will stay while there is a fire. Then, somewhere around 1-4 hours after a squad's last action, they will automatically leave. If a squad leaves without having done anything and no other squads of that type did anything in the last 1-4 hours either, then you are fined for calling in emergency services without need. (The extra condition means you won't be penalized for calling in 3 riot police squads when only 2 were used/necessary.)

[blacksythe]

There is already a way of managing the riot guards.

Simple can be called in anytime
remain in prison while riot is ongoing
leave prison a certain time after a riot is ended.

If there is no riot ongoing leave prison after a certain amount of time.

Fireman, arrive on scene roam prison looking for a fire/ ask guard wheres the fire leave once prison is checked (simulating safety checks)

Paramedics, no solution anyone?

[SonofSuperJoe]

I agree that calling in emergency services is a bit nuts right now (even so many months after this was originally posted).

They're free, they're ridiculously good, and you can use them from the start if you're bad at handling situations early on when you should probably just get a game over.

To that end, it seems like there need both to be more limits on them and requirements for them. However, like others said on this, having strict conditions that have to be met seems to be the wrong sort of requirement for them. Because what if you want to call a service a bit early because you see the situation escalating to the point that the service will be required, but you haven't met the game's seemingly arbitrary pre-req, like two rooms need to be taken over during a riot before you can call the riot squad or something?

So, requirements:

First, all emergency services should need to require a "Big Red Emergency Phone" item, to be placed in the Warden's Office after researching it as a tech in the Bureaucracy menu. This allows for a direct line to the services themselves, which the player figured out through researching how to make the right connections with the right people in their Bureaucracy research. Additionally, this phone could also be used to receive governor's calls for stays of execution if the execution chamber ever gets implemented at a later time (also, the Warden needs some unique items for his office, don't ya think?) The Firemen and Paramedics both should come with the basic research, but the Riot Squad should come from research via the Security Chief.

By locking them out this way, the Emergency Services become part of a sense of progression and must be earned, which is always good, and they limit them out of the very early game, when mismanagement should probably force a game over or restart anyway.

Next,the first call for each should be free, but after that, it should cause a financial penalty to call each emergency service. Not from the service themselves (they're obviously public services) but from the Company, as calling them represents a failure on your part as an Architect. It should definitely be a temporary valuation hit as the service will lower trust that your prison's value is high, but there should also be a more active and obvious penalty. Perhaps a temporary increase in your corporate tax rate?

There should be an active financial penalty if you call a service and they really needn't be there. If you call paramedics to heal less than four people, or the riot squad when there's no actual riot while they're on site they should bill you for making an unnecessary call and wasting their time when they would better serve other public interests.

Finally, there really should be a cooldown period before they can get called again. At least a day. Perhaps more. Perhaps it should increase every time they're used, so that if you call firemen once it takes a day to cooldown, then if you call them twice, it takes two?

With all of that in place, the emergency service should feel a lot better tuned than they are currently, without them being unfair or unrealistic.

That said, all these services should only be necessary if the player has other means of stopping their associated issues without calling them. This is currently true for both medical services and the riot squad, you can have doctors and armed guards take their place normally. However, this is untrue for firemen. There's on other way to put out a fire should it occur.

To that end, the game REALLY needs fire extinguishers. This way small fires could be put out by guards before they get out of hand (also needed, a higher chance of small fires occurring - I recommend them being used by prisoners as diversions for larger goals) and the fire truck needs to be called. As it is, fires just have no other method to be dealt with. Also, fire extinguishers could be good weapons to be used by prisoners too if they get unruly, so their inclusion would be nice regardless of anything else.