[Suggestion] - Death by Old Age/Move to Death Row Mechanic

[PrisonerJoe]

After playing for awhile, I really do love it. However, i've encountered two things that I think could be improved. I know we're supposed to make individual posts for suggestions but I feel like these two need to be read back to back.

First, as far as I know the prisoners do not die of old age even if they have extremely long sentences. Second, I don't think that prisoners can be transferred to death row. If this is not true, then my suggestions are moot.

The death by old age is pretty straightforward. I have had prisoners that have incurred 100+ year sentences and, barring a miracle, will not survive long enough to be released. I think there should be an increasing chance of death by natural causes as they age. A new 'room' could be added by including a cemetery for those prisoners that die in prison (a mechanic could also be added where they is a % chance that they are not buried at the prison due to the family wanting the body to be buried outside the prison). This cemetery could be maintained by either janitors or prisoners working in the cleaning closet and could possibly fulfill spirituality/freedom needs (freedom since they could walk around outside while in the cemetery). These deaths would not count toward the "death" counter since they were not caused by negligence.

An alternative to this would be the chance that, if a prisoner commits enough serious crimes in prison, there is a chance where the sentence could be upgraded to death and the prisoner moved to death row. I feel like this should be a very low chance ( ~5-10%) to ensure that a prison can't become an execution factory and just rake in cash. A new room could also be implemented like the parole room and could be called court hearing or something similar (or they could go to the warden's office to hear their sentence, causing a risk that the warden is attacked/killed, making guards needed to guard the staff).

These two suggestions could work together so that prisoners could either be transferred to death row or still have the possibility of dying once they are old enough.

Any thoughts/feedback is appreciated.

[PrisonerJoe]

bump

[Jailer]

Hmm - interested who can find the oldest prisoner in their long-running prison?
I think it would take quite long to get them to 75 or 80 or so...

[bnarmz]

I wasn't aware that the prisoners never die, in a way that kind of sucks. Upgrading to death row by sending inmates back to trail for current crimes is a realistic procedure. But I would also want more options for them (and any inmate) to reform themselves, and more forms of suppression... other then extended jail time.

[ZuLeweiner]

Interesting. There also could be some "likelihood of clemency" because of their bad health caused by their advanced age.

[PrisonerJoe]

Hmm - interested who can find the oldest prisoner in their long-running prison?
I think it would take quite long to get them to 75 or 80 or so...

It would take quite some time; however, i've never encountered a prisoner who dies of old age, despite being beyond the normal lifespan.

I wasn't aware that the prisoners never die, in a way that kind of sucks. Upgrading to death row by sending inmates back to trail for current crimes is a realistic procedure. But I would also want more options for them (and any inmate) to reform themselves, and more forms of suppression... other then extended jail time.

Like I said, maybe i've just been unlucky and i've had some healthy prisoners, but these guys should have been dead by all accounts. I also agree that I would rather see prisoners have the option to reform themselves, but in the more extreme cases I feel it's just safer to execute them rather than give them the chance to kill more guards and prisoners (however, to keep balance, I think the trial chance should not be very high as I stated).

Interesting. There also could be some "likelihood of clemency" because of their bad health caused by their advanced age.

Agreed, or perhaps their likelihood of reoffending could lower significantly as they reach a certain age? Also, I think it would be interesting that certain traits could develop or decrease as a prisoner ages. For example, extremely strong could be downgraded to strong as the individual ages or a prisoner without a trait could develop a trait of "weak" or "bad heart". Bad heart could mean that if a taser is used on them, there is a greater chance that they will die from the hit.

[czar mohab]

They don't die of old age right now. Chris, in one of the alpha videos, mentioned that "death by old age hasn't been implemented - yet."

The Czar

[csayer89]

I definitely agree that it's about time that death by old age/natural causes was implemented, especially now that we have death row (meaning there's code already in place for deaths that do not count against you provided certain conditions are met) and those prisoners can be transferred to max-sec and given "life sentences" of 100+ years. I think my very first one of those was a 130-year sentence. It would take 65 years just for that guy to come up for parole. I forget what his age was, but if we were to assume he was 18 (the youngest age possible in the game, I think), then that would make him 83 when he became eligible for parole the first time. While it is certainly possible that he could still be living then (I believe the shortest-lived of my great-grandparents died at 88, my longest-lived at 99), it's also quite possible that he might have died of natural causes by then, and he certainly would by the next time he was eligible for parole if he didn't get paroled the first time.

One idea I've had for implementing this would be to give all prisoners a chance of encountering a serious (non-drug-related) medical issue, with that chance increasing as the prisoner ages. For example, an 18-year-old might have a 0.25% (a quarter of a percent) chance of having a medical emergency, increasing by a quarter of a percentage point every year until age 70, after which point it would increase by 1% each year thereafter. So a 70-year-old would have a 13% chance of a medical event, while an 80-year-old would have a 23% chance. Every so often (perhaps once per in-game hour), the game would select a certain number of your prisoners. For the sake of performance, especially on laptops and older computers trying to run medium-large prisons, we'll just say it's a low percentage of the prison population. Perhaps it'll select them based on prisoner ID number, the order in which they entered your prison, or just completely randomly. Anyway, however they're selected, the game will then compute their odds of a medical emergency based on their age, and then do a dice-roll to determine whether or not to give them one. If it does, and the prisoner is in a public place, then the game will treat it similarly to a drug overdose, with the prisoner being hauled off to the nearest infirmary. If they do not make it in time, they will die. If they do make it in time, they are either cured or given first-aid and then evacuated to a hospital for specialized treatment. The countdown for how long they have to receive treatment could be random--though weighted to give younger, stronger prisoners without active addictions a better chance of pulling through and older, weaker, drug-addicted prisoners a higher chance of instant or near-instant death. If the prisoner is sleeping at the time of the emergency, then perhaps the guards won't come escort them unless one of them happens to pass that cell and notice that something is wrong with the prisoner inside, resulting in the prisoner dying in their sleep.

If the devs really wanted to go in-depth with this, they could also add a random chance, again increasing with the prisoner's age, that even if they do receive prompt medical attention, they could still not pull through; and they could add another program for the infirmary, where prisoners could go to the infirmary to receive "preventative care" which could either decrease the chances of the prisoner having a medical emergency (or of them not pulling through if they do), add/change reputation (I liked the earlier suggestion about either downgrading reputation traits with age or adding new ones such as "weak" or "bad heart"), or there could be a rare case where it could result in a prisoner being diagnosed with a serious medical condition and sent to a hospital. Another in-depth optional extra could be to have the chance of a medical emergency be increased by addictions, such as a smoker developing lung cancer or an alcoholic developing liver problems, so they're not just running the risk of an overdose but also increasing their chances of dying by natural causes.

[PrisonerJoe]

They don't die of old age right now. Chris, in one of the alpha videos, mentioned that "death by old age hasn't been implemented - yet."

The Czar

Didn't know that, but that sounds very promising.

I definitely agree that it's about time that death by old age/natural causes was implemented, especially now that we have death row (meaning there's code already in place for deaths that do not count against you provided certain conditions are met) and those prisoners can be transferred to max-sec and given "life sentences" of 100+ years. I think my very first one of those was a 130-year sentence. It would take 65 years just for that guy to come up for parole. I forget what his age was, but if we were to assume he was 18 (the youngest age possible in the game, I think), then that would make him 83 when he became eligible for parole the first time. While it is certainly possible that he could still be living then (I believe the shortest-lived of my great-grandparents died at 88, my longest-lived at 99), it's also quite possible that he might have died of natural causes by then, and he certainly would by the next time he was eligible for parole if he didn't get paroled the first time.

One idea I've had for implementing this would be to give all prisoners a chance of encountering a serious (non-drug-related) medical issue, with that chance increasing as the prisoner ages. For example, an 18-year-old might have a 0.25% (a quarter of a percent) chance of having a medical emergency, increasing by a quarter of a percentage point every year until age 70, after which point it would increase by 1% each year thereafter. So a 70-year-old would have a 13% chance of a medical event, while an 80-year-old would have a 23% chance. Every so often (perhaps once per in-game hour), the game would select a certain number of your prisoners. For the sake of performance, especially on laptops and older computers trying to run medium-large prisons, we'll just say it's a low percentage of the prison population. Perhaps it'll select them based on prisoner ID number, the order in which they entered your prison, or just completely randomly. Anyway, however they're selected, the game will then compute their odds of a medical emergency based on their age, and then do a dice-roll to determine whether or not to give them one. If it does, and the prisoner is in a public place, then the game will treat it similarly to a drug overdose, with the prisoner being hauled off to the nearest infirmary. If they do not make it in time, they will die. If they do make it in time, they are either cured or given first-aid and then evacuated to a hospital for specialized treatment. The countdown for how long they have to receive treatment could be random--though weighted to give younger, stronger prisoners without active addictions a better chance of pulling through and older, weaker, drug-addicted prisoners a higher chance of instant or near-instant death. If the prisoner is sleeping at the time of the emergency, then perhaps the guards won't come escort them unless one of them happens to pass that cell and notice that something is wrong with the prisoner inside, resulting in the prisoner dying in their sleep.

If the devs really wanted to go in-depth with this, they could also add a random chance, again increasing with the prisoner's age, that even if they do receive prompt medical attention, they could still not pull through; and they could add another program for the infirmary, where prisoners could go to the infirmary to receive "preventative care" which could either decrease the chances of the prisoner having a medical emergency (or of them not pulling through if they do), add/change reputation (I liked the earlier suggestion about either downgrading reputation traits with age or adding new ones such as "weak" or "bad heart"), or there could be a rare case where it could result in a prisoner being diagnosed with a serious medical condition and sent to a hospital. Another in-depth optional extra could be to have the chance of a medical emergency be increased by addictions, such as a smoker developing lung cancer or an alcoholic developing liver problems, so they're not just running the risk of an overdose but also increasing their chances of dying by natural causes.

Excellent ideas here.

[RMJ1984]

Prison graveyard, thus also giving us more jobs for prisoners. I think that would be kinda neat.

[MMZ>Torak]

Prison graveyard, thus also giving us more jobs for prisoners. I think that would be kinda neat.

What regime slot teaches Necromancy?

[Jailer]

Prison graveyard, thus also giving us more jobs for prisoners. I think that would be kinda neat.

Question: would tunneling through the graveyard be more of a deterrent than the perimeter wall?

* Prisoner A spoons through soil
* Prisoner B spoons through soil
>Prisoner A: "Making good progress here, guys!"
>Prisoner B: "Yeah, we'll soon....wait, my spoon is stuck..."
>Prisoner A: "Hmm, let me see - Is that a...a....an eyesocket?"
* Prisoner A&B scurrying back to cell and curling up in fetal position

[PrisonerJoe]

Prison graveyard, thus also giving us more jobs for prisoners. I think that would be kinda neat.

Question: would tunneling through the graveyard be more of a deterrent than the perimeter wall?

* Prisoner A spoons through soil
* Prisoner B spoons through soil
>Prisoner A: "Making good progress here, guys!"
>Prisoner B: "Yeah, we'll soon....wait, my spoon is stuck..."
>Prisoner A: "Hmm, let me see - Is that a...a....an eyesocket?"
* Prisoner A&B scurrying back to cell and curling up in fetal position

As weird as it sounds, it actually would if it was like a commercial cemetery. Most commercial cemeteries require the burial to be enclosed in concrete. That would make it a little difficult for the prisoners to dig through if this is also how prison cemeteries work; however, I feel like the standards probably aren't as high. Although for balance issues i'd say no to making it more difficult for tunneling. Otherwise people would just put a giant moat-like cemetery around their prison...

Although the gardening tools used by prison workers at the cemetery that could be snuck back into the prison would indirectly make tunneling easier.

[Pogmothoin]

tools used by prison workers at the cemetery that could be snuck back into the prison would indirectly make tunneling easier.

Yeah, I've seen how far a prisoner can get with just spoons from the canteen, imagine if they had a JCB too!

On a serious note, prisoners don't actually age at the moment, they come in on a 100 year sentence at aged 18 and they'll still be 18 in when they get paroled or serve the time.

[PrisonerJoe]

tools used by prison workers at the cemetery that could be snuck back into the prison would indirectly make tunneling easier.

Yeah, I've seen how far a prisoner can get with just spoons from the canteen, imagine if they had a JCB too!

On a serious note, prisoners don't actually age at the moment, they come in on a 100 year sentence at aged 18 and they'll still be 18 in when they get paroled or serve the time.

Huh, to be honest i'd never noticed that. Does the age of the prisoner seriously never advance or are you just saying that they don't show signs of aging?