[Suggestion] Display failure metrics

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ChosenWell
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[Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby ChosenWell » Fri Jan 16, 2015 9:02 am

Is it possible to display the failure metrics in the UI?

I am assuming failure states are something like:
deaths / total incarcerations years = x. If x is greater then (predetermined) y, player fails.

The player should be aware of this failure threshold (x/y) somehow in the UI.

Doing this would create more situational responding to prisoners during the mid-game. i.e.- I better stop building my fancy new wing and attend to these deaths or I lose. Letting players know how effective their strategy is.

It will also allow developers to increase the pressure (difficulty) on the players to perform more actions associated with prisoner management, like proper build order and attention individual prisoner states through use of informants, etc.

The same could be used for other metrics like escapes, riots, abuse claims, etc.

Thanks
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CumpyLustard
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Re: [Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby CumpyLustard » Sat Jan 17, 2015 9:40 am

I'm not sure what you're asking for. Doesn't the "too many deaths" failure condition display that you can't have 5 deaths in 24 hours, with a big clock at the bottom of your screen?

Also, I don't think the "too many deaths" failure condition is based on any formula, I'm pretty sure it's just 20 deaths regardless of how many prisoners you have (as it also includes staff).
czar mohab
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Re: [Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby czar mohab » Mon Jan 19, 2015 11:59 pm

CumpyLustard wrote:I'm not sure what you're asking for. Doesn't the "too many deaths" failure condition display that you can't have 5 deaths in 24 hours, with a big clock at the bottom of your screen?

Also, I don't think the "too many deaths" failure condition is based on any formula, I'm pretty sure it's just 20 deaths regardless of how many prisoners you have (as it also includes staff).


OP is asking for a counter to indicate how long before one reaches the "you done messed up now!" phone call. Specifically towards the death count (# of deaths in this period / # of deaths before phone call) but could be expanded to include riots (time since riot started / time until phone call), escapes ( # of escapes / # of escapes before phone call) or any other failure implemented or otherwise.

I'm personally for it; and it only has to be available so long as the specific counter is relevant. No one died in the last 24 hours? Counter goes away.

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Re: [Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby CumpyLustard » Tue Jan 20, 2015 12:47 am

czar mohab wrote:
CumpyLustard wrote:I'm not sure what you're asking for. Doesn't the "too many deaths" failure condition display that you can't have 5 deaths in 24 hours, with a big clock at the bottom of your screen?

Also, I don't think the "too many deaths" failure condition is based on any formula, I'm pretty sure it's just 20 deaths regardless of how many prisoners you have (as it also includes staff).


OP is asking for a counter to indicate how long before one reaches the "you done messed up now!" phone call. Specifically towards the death count (# of deaths in this period / # of deaths before phone call) but could be expanded to include riots (time since riot started / time until phone call), escapes ( # of escapes / # of escapes before phone call) or any other failure implemented or otherwise.

I'm personally for it; and it only has to be available so long as the specific counter is relevant. No one died in the last 24 hours? Counter goes away.

The Czar


Oh, alright. That could be useful, yeah.
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Re: [Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby SonofSuperJoe » Sat Jan 24, 2015 1:03 am

I think, partially at least, the OP is presuming (and thus, kind of asking for) a long term failure option in addition to the current failure option of gross criminal negligence based on accruing a massive number of deaths in a single day (followed by a number of deaths the following day).

This has some potential merit, as it's probably a lot more realistic to be honest. If there was a rate of x number of deaths allowed per year based on a value of total prisoner population through that year, and the player exceeded that number, then they could get a warning for the gross criminal negligence (long form) failure state , and then get another year that they have to meet a heightened standard for or they trigger that fail state.

For example, let's say that the Long-term death rate per year is 10% to trigger the probation year. So for every 100 prisoners, 10 deaths are allowed over one "year" (currently 5 in-game days I think). If you hit 10 deaths within that time frame, you get a warning and over the next "year" of five days, you cannot have more than 5 deaths. If you do, you trigger the Gross Criminal Negligence ending.

This would make failing the game a much more common (and thus dangerous) possibility than it is currently, and in a way that is far more realistic to the concept of the Gross Criminal Negligence failure state - most prisons shut down for deaths presumably aren't shut down due to a couple bad days or months, but due to longer term, more systemic failures. Besides, getting 20 deaths in one day (the current trigger for this failure state) is almost certainly due to a riot breaking out in the current game, which already has its own unique failure state associated with mismanaging it.

Of course, for this long term Gross Criminal Negligence failure to work, you'd have to better define a "year" for the player. Something that should probably already be done at some point anyway, but would be necessary if you were going to have any kind of longer term failure options in the game (this could also include Escapes as a trigger, rather than just deaths).

If such a longer term failure state were in the game (I'd nominate that it should be), then displaying the failure metrics so that you had accrued 3/10 deaths allowed - the OP's original point - would be necessary, yeah.
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Re: [Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby HerrJoebob » Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:12 pm

SonofSuperJoe, that makes a lot of sense. I nicknamed my last supermax "SnitchesGetStitches" because of my inability for special needs inmates (snitches or law enforcement) to survive long enough to get two meals, and I still had a very high prison rating.

Sure I was running a ton of addiction recovery and training programs, but it does seem like there should be more downside to having a murder every couple of days...
SonofSuperJoe
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Re: [Suggestion] Display failure metrics

Postby SonofSuperJoe » Wed Jan 28, 2015 5:42 am

Thanks HerrJoeBob.

Also, there's really something to be said for a longer term failure state in the game as it is. Some lazy analysis:

Currently, there are three point five failure states in the game, yeah?

There's the Riot Fail - Player cannot contain a riot quickly enough, national guard is called in and the game ends with them massacring everyone in your prison to regain control.

There's the Debt fail - player has a negative cashflow AND a negative bank balance for 24 hours, then gets another 24 to rectify this or they lose control of the prison from the CEO.

Finally there's Gross Criminal Negligence - Player gets 20 deaths OR 20 escapes in one day (is this either or, or and/or is a question I actually should test - i.e. is it a combination of escapes and deaths or could you theoretically have 19 escapes and 19 deaths in a single day and be fine), giving the player one more day with the death/escape count set to 5 to fix (the Death/Escape split accounting for the "half" of the three and a half states mentioned above).

The thing is, ALL of these failure states are actually really similar to each other and overlap quite a bit.

The prime example is the high number of deaths required for of the Gross Criminal Negligence state. As I mentioned in my first post, this state is almost certainly only going to trigger due to a riot, though it at least can also occur due to averting a riot failure state by putting it down too harshly.

Obviously the overlap is intentional. It creates a web of failure possibilities that can all happen due to general mismanagement; avoiding one state could potentially lead to triggering another in a chain of causality (avoid debt with firings, this leads to a riot, then the player puts down riot violently and triggers Criminal negligence being the most likely chain). However, the similarity in the different states also means that all of them come down to the same thing - the player has a single bad day.

The problem is that such similar states result in the same problem - that single bad day is pretty easy to prevent if you know what the failure states are. At this point, most players in the alpha likely know what these states are already (due to at least watching alpha videos if not experiencing them at least once themselves) and thus engineer the potential for failure out of their game. The debt fail is the easiest to avoid - just don't over spend (and there's that bailout grant which acts as an "extra life" if you still screw up as I recall). The Riot has a LOT of safeguards - aside from armed guards and tasers making it increasingly less likely even in a really messed up prison, the three riot squads the player can call in are a massive boon to quelling any potential insurrection.

The one that's potentially the hardest to "engineer out" is the Gross Criminal negligence state. Or it would be if it weren't so dependent on it practically needing a riot to occur for it to trigger. Since you have such strong safeguards for both the Debt and the Riot fails, this carries over to the GCN fail with the same level of overlap.

And that's a problem. Or it's a problem to me at least.

A general issue I have in a lot of survival sandbox games that I've seen or played: the game ultimately is about the player engineering out the aspects of the game that make it risky and/or challenging and therefore, fun to play. I played Don't Starve a bit ago and this was a major issue I saw in it. Once you had built up a fortress and self sustaining ecosystem, the game became a lot less fun to play. Thankfully there was an endgame "secret quest" you could go on to try and get through from there in order to keep some interest going, but once the survival needs are essentially taken care of, a big part of the game's appeal goes away.

Prison Architect has a very strong likelihood of possessing this same problem with the current ways failure is implemented - once you have some experience with the game you design your jail to minimize failure and it's very likely you'll never encounter it again.

One potential way to alleviate this issue, and something I notice with the better survival games (like Don't Starve) is to make the game a LOT harder. If the potential for failure is really high, especially early on, then at least when the player finally "engineers out" the potential for failure they get a sense of accomplishment out of it. Reaching that level of safety and assurance comes with a sensation of having "won" a little.

Right now, there's very little sense of accomplishment for engineering out failure in PA, because all the safeguards in place really make the chances of triggering failure pretty minimal. On top of that, the way the failure states overlap so strongly makes it very easy to avoid all three of them at once.

The simplest way to increase the difficulty AND break a bit out of the overlap is changing one of the failure states (or adding in a new one) so that there's not so much crossover between the trigger methods.

As I see it, the Gross Criminal Negligence state is the one that has the most realistic potential to be altered and/or added to. In the more long term method I mentioned in my earlier post. Having a longer term failure trigger makes it a lot harder to avoid even if you know what you're doing in the game, and keeps the threat of failure more ever present and consistent, rather than the massive rarity it currently is.

Doing this would keep the risk factor high and player on their toes a LOT more, which (in my opinion anyway) ultimately makes it more involving and more fun.

OBVIOUS CAVEAT - Not everyone's like myself and is a glutton for punishment in games. Some folks just want to build freely in a game for a bit of a diversion. But this feels catered to already with the "sandbox, infinite money" options on map generation, so I don't think that's making the "normal" game quite a bit harder actually has much of a downside - if people want the stress free game, they can play the stress free game mode.

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