[Suggestion] - Snitch/Ex Law Enforcement NOT hidden

[PrisonerJoe]

This is pretty simple in my opinion. I feel like not telling us who the snitches/ex law enforcement officers are is completely unrealistic. There would be no way that the administration would not be aware of the past history of the prisoner, especially if they were ex law enforcement.

I realize it could be argued that this takes some difficulty away but this isn't the good type of difficulty, in my opinion. Good difficulty is when the AI outsmarts you or resources are stretched thin and you have to make hard choices. This just makes it a game of chance as to whether or not you figure out somebody used to be a cop before the inmates can knife him.

All i'm suggesting is that the snitch/ex law enforcement traits always show up in the informant screen. I can't imagine this being difficult to implement in terms of coding.

[czar mohab]

The player should always know ex-law and ex-guard. But perhaps this is something that the prison population doesn't know right away? Perhaps a star or other indicator that either is present or goes away when another prisoner finds out? Another idea for another thread, perhaps.

Snitches on the other hand - this one has been discussed before, and I am of the opinion that they should have a better reveal chance to the player (because, let's face it, even in Min Sec only prisons they are not really 100% safe) but not necessarily every time all the time. Again, this should be a trait that can be seen by the player but hidden from the prisoners until revealed.

Doesn't make sense that as soon as Joseph Snitch, formerly a deputy in the county constabulary 2000 large generic measuring units away, walks in the door everyone knows his history except the player.

The Czar

[Themias]

I agree it is annoying to have to activate confidential informants every time you intake, to make sure there are no snitches or ex-cops. Perhaps there could be research by security that gives a higher chance of revealing prisoners' reputations upon intake? At the very least, it should take a while, one or two in-game days, before other prisoners discover a snitch or ex-cop's reputation.

[Araxiel]

I'm pretty much on board with what you guys have said so far.

In general, there should be a chance to learn about someone's history (aka traits) when they are being processed in the reception. In real-life, prisoners are asked questions and to fill out questionnaires. Of course, that is far from perfect since people are lying (what a shock!) but in-game, there should be a small chance that traits are actually discovered like that. Now of course, the ex-law will not blurt out he's an ex-law while in the room with 20 criminals.

Thus, I'm thinking about interrogation. You need an interrogation room with two chairs/an interrogation table (sort of like the visitor table just smaller with 1v2 or 1v1 seats instead of the 1v3) and interrogation specialists/investigators. Interrogation would be like the search and cell search. You can add it as another automatic punishment for committing certain crimes (just like the search and cell search) or you can manually send people to interrogation. You can also force every single inmate going through reception to be exposed to interrogation. The downside to this is that A) interrogation creates a decent amount of anger and this means having people enter your prison in an angry state (instaead of the neutral one) and B) it takes time. If 30 inmates arrive, unless you have a dozen well-placed interrogation rooms with staff, your reception will back-up, which can further increase tensions. This wouldn't be the only use for interrogations but you get my point and I don't want to go on a massive tangent.

What should also happen is that individuals (e.g not gangbangers and such) that feel in danger from an attack seeking out an audience/interrogation and asking for protective custody. To add some spice to that, some very few asking for protective custody might not actually be in any danger. This means that you're not sure if that one guy asking for protective custody actually needs it, However, in the current system, every inmate that is special already has [???], hence you know who is special and who is not. Not only is showing the [???] making that last little quagmire of uncertainty that I proposed entire pointless ("Does the guy asking for protection have the three question marks? No? Well, if not he's lying/only a wimp and therefore not in danger"), but I already find it a bit...weird. "So, you don't know how this newly arrived inmate is special, but you know THAT he's special? He might be ex-law OR he might be though, but it's one of them." In my opinion, traits should at first be completely hidden, then revealed as [???] and THEN you get to know the actual trait.

Eh, went a bit on a tangent here, but that's what I do.

[CuppaJoe]

I like the interrogation idea - someone would be more likely to speak up once you isolated them. I've always felt that's what the CI recruiting mechanic represented - once you isolated a prisoner you had a chance to break them and then recruit them. Although an interrogation room would be nice, if you could just put ??? prisoners in solitary for a chance to find out their what that trait was (including ex-law), it might meet that requirement. It does already have a disadvantage built in as needs decay. This could represent "breaking" their resolve to keep a secret. I don't know how realistic it is.

[solid84]

I agree with you. The player should know.
Thumbs up.

[Gangrene]

Eh, just stick the ??? prisoners in a isolation wing away from the other prisoners. Have phones available that are tapped. When they use the phone you'll know their background and your problem will be solved. If they are a snitch or ex-law enforcement, move them to protective custody or put them into a permanent punishment.

When you get a few prisoners that don't have any family to call just activate your informants.

Problem... solved.

[Charles the Bald]

Activate CI's just after 8am. If they give you 100% coverage you'll know who's who before they get off the bus.

[czar mohab]

Eh, just stick the ??? prisoners in a isolation wing away from the other prisoners. Have phones available that are tapped. When they use the phone you'll know their background and your problem will be solved. If they are a snitch or ex-law enforcement, move them to protective custody or put them into a permanent punishment.

When you get a few prisoners that don't have any family to call just activate your informants.

Problem... solved.

No. Far from solved. There's no way that this solves the problem of keeping the snitch or ex law safe. If you don't care about that then so be it. I get that. sometimes I let them get shanked. Sometimes... sometimes I'll CI a particularly nasty legendary just to blow his cover and release him into gen pop and let the other prisoners deal with him for me. So I get that aspect of this. Saying that this segregation as you describe is the end all be all solution - no. Not buying it. Problem =/= solved. Shanky McShankerson, the legendary cop killer from down south could just as easily be in that ??? group with the Ex Law McGraw who is also ???. Let's lock them in the same wing and see how well that works out...

My normal prisons run all 6 security levels. I can't segregate the ??? into PC because one likely could be McShankerson and I can't segregate them into SM (or any others, really) because one's likely to be McGraw. These type of prisons run super smooth, so long as the McGraws are found and dealt with fast. CIs take a long time to build up both in number and in knowledge, and it is dammed inconvenient to have to stop every morning between 0600 and 0700 and call in the right number of them to reach 100% (or as close to it as possible in early days) without blowing their cover just to see how many of the new prisoners are requiring PC status. Every other ??? prisoner I don't care about - they'll do something eventually to get noticed and segregated accordingly. McShankerson won't hide his traits for as long as a snitch, and he'll be dealt with.

Look, point is that when someone needs to be in PC they should be speaking up to the right people. That's what is being asked for with this thread, the ability to better find and segregate them as early and as often as possible, for those players that want to do that.

Whatever gets done, if anything, to help reduce snitch and ex law death will be welcomed.

The Czar

[ryacko]

I segregate my prison into three security levels: minimum, max, and death row.

Maybe I should have supermax, but the added complexity takes up space.

[PrisonerJoe]

bump

[dapullia]

I have said this before.....some traits should be known to the player from the get go. Think about it. All of these guys have been in jail before they were transferred in. I give you that you may not know all their traits but any dangerous ones such as a known snitch or ex-leo, ex-guard, cop-killer would be in their prisoner file you get from the court system. You should know the dangerous (to the prisoner) traits right off the bat (simulating receiving their background information from the courts in their prisoner file). Also, there should be a chance other traits would be revealed as well because maybe old Shanky McShankerson there knocked off two guards while in jail in which case the justice system would be 100% likely to note how dangerous that guy is in his records. I don't know if there should be a block of some kind so you cannot learn all their traits this way but maybe a general evaluation by your psychologist of every prisoner's file is done right before intake and he would assign a danger level to each of the unknown traits as it related to the guards so you could make an educated guess about whether you want to SM that guy at least until you figure out his traits or not.