[Stock Exploit] De-zoning/Re-zoning Cells

[1unladenswallow]

With a prison of just 19 I was able to just dezone and rezone the prison cells (pressing play just long enough for the game to catch on to 0 cells/19cells) and within an hour in-game time and 3 or 4 times doing this made 12k. Larger Prisons would hypothetically be even more able to take advantage of this.

[Stereolab]

What? How does this make you money?

[HerrJoebob]

X2, is that a grant glitch or something?

[Murph]

I think some detailed explanation is in order from the OP here. There isn't any normal automatic cash award for zoning cells, just one-time grants. When I'm developing a prison, it's not at all unusual for me to de-zone and re-zone cells, and I don't think I have ever seen any extra income generated by doing that.

OP, exactly what are you doing that generates unlimited cash? Can you please give us a step by step method for it (don't worry, it's perfectly legit to share exploits for this game, as it's not multi-player competitive, and this is the private alpha/developer forum intended for sharing bugs in detail).

The closest thing I can think of is artificial manipulation of prison value, selling shares while it's high, pushing the value down, buying them back. That cheat does exist and work, but I'm not sure that it's even worth fixing. A game like this should not have to plug every single obscure exploit, but instead should place the responsibility to play honestly on the player. People who are unable to play on honour/honesty, well they need to fix their minds…

[1unladenswallow]

OK, when you take out a loan selling shares of stock, that stock is calculated as such: Total Prison Value minus Cash Reserves.

Now, included in that Total Prison Value (TPV) is a prisoner capacity bonus. That bonus equates to $500 per cell.

In a simple example suppose your prison has 20 cells. That prisoner capacity bonus is then $10,000. Any shares sold will include that $10,000 as a part.

Now, having sold those shares, return to your prison (assuming everything is paused for the time being). Dezone those prison cells. Hit play to watch the prisoner capacity at the top of the screen drop to 0. Pause again. Return to the Valuation tab for stock. Now you'll notice that the $10,000 that was originally included in the sale is dropped to $0. Buy back those shares. Go back to your prison, rezone everything, You should have more $$ than what you started with. This assumes that the bricks & mortar hasn't been dropping so significantly to nullify the bonus (it shouldn't). Hit play until your prison capacity is once again recognized, then feel free to repeat as often as you like.

It all boils down to that prisoner capacity bonus being a component in the share price. Questions?

[1unladenswallow]

Oh, and the fact that I was able to do this with a prison that never had 20 cells or prisoners when that's a supposed requirement (which was highlighted green with [PASSED] when I did it) may have been a bug, but the money making principles remain the same.

[TearingTerran]

They've fixed this in the bug bash.

https://twitter.com/IVSoftware/status/5 ... 5180326912

[Murph]

They've fixed this in the bug bash.

https://twitter.com/IVSoftware/status/5 ... 5180326912

Don't worry though, if funds are tight, it's still easy to get a loan from a local businessman. Just edit the .prison file and search for "Finance" and "Balance".

Of course, one day he may ask you for a favour, and you will not be able to refuse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTtpWgrhS78

[TearingTerran]

Don't worry though, if funds are tight, it's still easy to get a loan from a local businessman

SHHH! : sly look :

[henke37]

Congratulations on discovering short selling in combination with stock value manipulation. You are not the first one to think of this scheme. But this particular value manipulation is new.