Tunnels Detection.

[zbyrne]

Right so I've deffo got a tunnel. Deffo not a false positive this time (often get them in completely improbable places, so I'm confident dismissing them)

However...due to the nature of my cells layout, I'd go as far to guess said tunnel could originate in any one of 40+ cells. I've done several shakedowns, and targeted the area, but 40+ toilets is 38+ too many to bother removing. There really ought to be a better way of detecting, or just figuring out where they start off. Can't I get my lads to dig into it, and then follow the light???

Now I'd say if nothing has been included to deal with this in A27 we'll have to wait at least another month. I like the idea of tunnels, but I argue the balance is horribly skewed at the moment.

(P.s) I was going to upload images to show exactly what I was talking about, but I'd have to upload them to internets first to link to this and that's far too much work

[Chibs]

My suggestion would be implementing Geophysical Anomaly Detectors. It's basically an instrument that allows you to detect cavities below the surface. You could balance it out by making it super expensive and put the max amount to 1. To use it, you would have to mark an area, and a worker along with a guard would then go and scan the area you've marked. If there is a tunnel there, workers will go and dig it up/reveal it. You could also limit the search area and how fast the thing works to balance it out.

[zbyrne]

Its just frustrating that there's no way to find a tunnel without finding the entrance. I know it's there - there are 2 or 3 dozens little flags lumped together along a tiny 1 square wide corridor. But it could have originated from any number of cells, and I just don't want to pull apart 40 cells looking for it.

[Chibs]

You should be able to command your workers to dig trenches to look for tunnels, if your trench encounters a tunnel, it gets revealed.. If you don't find a tunnel, then you got a lovely trench that you can fill back up with the tunnel repair thingy. Then you wouldnt have to remove toilets, you could just tell em to dig a hole where you think the tunnel is...

[BigJDub]

Do a shake down. Shakedowns will find tunnels. Then zoom out select the tunnel repair tool hold the mouse button down and drag out the square to cover your entire cell area. You just hi lighted all the tunnels even the ones you cant see. Your workers will now fix them. Problem solved. If you do a shakedown every night while the inmates are asleep and fix the tunnels right away you will never have a brake out.

[VoiD88]

Do a shake down. Shakedowns will find tunnels. Then zoom out select the tunnel repair tool hold the mouse button down and drag out the square to cover your entire cell area. You just hi lighted all the tunnels even the ones you cant see. Your workers will now fix them. Problem solved. If you do a shakedown every night while the inmates are asleep and fix the tunnels right away you will never have a brake out.

Wrong. Since a few Alphas ago, shakedowns only have a CHANCE to find each escape tunnel. If you do regular shakedowns every night, the chance to find all of them increases of course, but it will never be 100% unless you manually dismantle all the toilets in your prison.

[mrdave72]

Could you install a toilet where you KNOW a tunnel is and then search/remove it to discover the tunnel? I've never tried it, but it seems it ought to work.

[kmce]

What are these Geophysical Anomaly Detectors you speak of?

[SamsamTS]

As a workaround you can replace the sleep time by lockup in your regime. Sleep time is essentially the same thing as lockup with the added ability to dig tunnels. Prisoners do sleep during lockup (at night) but they don't dig at all. Doing this remove tunneling completely and may be considered as cheating, but in the current situation finding tunnel might be a real tedious task and is not fun at all imho (dogs don't detect tunnels indoor, searching toilet is not guarantied, no way to search for tunnels specifically, informants don't reveal tunnels (afaik), ...).

It is up to you to decide if you want to do that or not, as for myself my choice is made.

[YMS]

However, that workaround should be considered a bug and be fixed. It's nice for you now to avoid issues that might get fixed sometime for themselves, but it's a flaw in terms of a realistic simulation. If prisoners dig tunnels during night when it's called sleep time, they are going to dig tunnels during night when it's called lockup time.