[Suggestion] Hire more than 1 Foreman (like Psychologist)

[dsmith77]

I have multiple workshop that are color-coded by inmate type. Unfortunately, we can only hire one foreman so he can't teach all the programs I want to assign. The one Foreman teaches ALL the Workshop Safety Induction and Carpentry Apprenticeship programs.

[Pogmothoin]

Please use the search function for solutions, the system is designed that way for you to overcome the challenge. Multiple different graded workshops aren't required, in fact all of mine are shared and used by every prisoner that isn't in deathrow/supermax or protected (why? because you don't want those people in a workshop, all they do is steal weapons all the time). I only have my foreman running 4/5 classes a day (for 1000 prisoners), but I could have him doing 6 easily, or 8 with a slight regime change. You don't need to run any more than that regardless of how big your prison is.

[5hifty]

Completely agree - I find the "one foreman" challaged to be completely unscalable. Limiting the player like that doesn't really work. For example - if I don't have enough power in a area I can get more there by cafefully routing power, thus scaling with a prison as it grows, but with the foreman it limits how large a prison can be due to travel time, an unscalable commodity. Since you can't route people, you can't really force them to improve their route times, and since you can't control where they take breaks, they can very easily end up walking for ages to sit down.

This means that there IS a single optimum placement for a foreland office, and that is what dictates how I build a prison, which means their is a single optimum prison design. I don't like that.

Anyway tl;dr I 100% agree that the artificial cap on foremen isn't a great game element.

[Pogmothoin]

Not true 5hifty, the foreman's office need not be anywhere near anything in your prison.

Only the training workshop need be fairly centralised, and accessible by those you want to learn those courses. Travel time is an issue for every aspect of the game, and that's one of the biggest challenges of the game, but you can still use multiple options as a solution. Like I say, I can train all I want to, and still be able to teach even more classes if I wanted to, but that isn't required in a prison with 1000 inmates. I can't imagine that your's is much bigger.

Yes you are limited to exactly how many courses he can run a day, 12 being the maximum. But that's still 120 workshop inductions or 60 carpentry places per day (or any combination). More than sufficient for any prison we can currently build. The only time it might be an issue, is if you sandbox build the entire prison and then intake everyone who was waiting, in which case you'll just have to wait for places for the prisoners to learn, but that's your choice to do that, and it won't take long for it to resolve.

You can route people (via deployment/doors, and regime), you can force them to improve their route times (via efficient planning), and you can almost ensure where they take their breaks (through prison design, deployment, regime)(more so if my yard logistics suggestion gets implemented http://bugs.introversion.co.uk/view.php?id=9350 , so please add support for that). Yes you will always get the odd person who might have to walk a long way because they wanted to be on the other side of the prison for no other reason other than they could, much in the same way you'll always have non attendee's because they just don't feel like it that day, but in general it can be controlled.

The workshop training system is designed so that you are required to think about how you design your prison. It does restrict your design a little, but not so much that you don't have options. Certainly not if you are skilled at efficient prison designing, and that's what this game is at it's core (a management/strategy/simulator).

The only reason that you can hire multiple Psych's is because both those courses are repeatable and long, and a prisoner may be required to undertake them several times. Which could not be handled by a single teacher.

[5hifty]

I find it just breaks the flow of the game - there is no other point in the game where you are 'forced' to do something, especially such an arbitrary one. I can organise my prisoners eating, working and popping in pretty much any aspect. I can have med sec chow time staggered with MS's while PC use the yard and min sec take classes etc etc. the game offers you choices on how to achieve a goal. Being limited to only one foreman is a random and pointless hurdle. Why can I hire 500 lawyers, 80 nurses 10000 guards, but only one guy who knows how to teach shop class?

It also is a real design thorn when designing facility's on different sides of the road, or independent side by side ones.

[Pogmothoin]

Well my point all a long is that you don't need to have more than one foreman, you reach a finite point where you can only intake so many prisoners, only a small percentage of them want to learn, and they only need to learn it once. You are restricted in how many prisoners you can have in total due to CPU processing restrictions. The single foreman is capable of teaching all of those prisoners that want to learn within a reasonable time frame, the only reason for needing to hire more is because of bad design/management. The foreman is easily capable of doing 6 classes a day, one of each for each of the main 3 sec grades (if you have them segregated) and that is excessive for the teaching needs of the largest prisons. If you intake 200 prisoners and expect them all to pass the workshop induction within a couple of days, then that's an unreasonable expectation and is unlikely to ever happen.

It's not arbitrary or random, a long time ago I think it was initially restricted to prevent having too many prisoners working in the workshop and making too much profit. The finance system is kinda borked so that's a moot point. But if/when it's rebalanced then how you maximise the efficiency of the foreman could be more crucial to turning a profit.

There are lots of things the game forces you to do, this is just one example, but it doesn't dictate how you do them, there are multiple solutions to every problem the game throws up. Likewise there are lots of bottlenecks if you don't plan for will break the flow of the prison. Nobody said the game would be easy, but it's not impossible.

FYI, the road runs directly through the middle of my current prison, and in most of my prison designs, because I prefer it that way, and because I tend to find that's the most efficient way to run a prison. My 2xkitchens/8xworkshops/4xholdingcells/reception/deliveries/exports/garbage are all within 10-30 tiles of each other and the road, and I even have space for other rooms too like security/kennel/laundry/cleaning/offices/deathrow.

[Kizu]

Well if you dont mind cheating you can do it by editing your save file

[Araxiel]

"You have to design your prison around your Foreman"
Are even hearing what you're saying? That's like saying "You have to design your prison around the janitor." For most people, that is a completely arbitrary and silly notion, especially in a game that tries to simulate on how a real prison runs. And look at how Introvision handled parole: Initially it was all done by the Warden, but they realised how limiting that is and changed it to an outside-lawyer and parole officer.

Last but not least; what harm does it do to have the option to get multiple Foremen? If you like the challlenge to design a prison around your Foreman, that you can continue playing with only one Foreman and impose a restriction on yourself to never get more than one. Everyone else on the other hand will be able to play the game they want. And really, if Introvision will not change it, mods will.

[Pogmothoin]

"You have to design your prison around your Foreman" /snip

Nobody said that

[5hifty]

"You have to design your prison around your Foreman" /snip

Nobody said that

Currently you have to.

[Jailer]

Well my point all a long is that you don't need to have more than one foreman, [......] the only reason for needing to hire more is because of bad design/management.

So make the foreman more expensive (eg. each needs an office; wages go up), but please allow us to have a badly designed prison.

[Pogmothoin]

Don't know if this bug has been fixed yet (It isn't closed), but it may help out those that can't work out how to design a prison properly.

http://bugs.introversion.co.uk/view.php?id=8297

And there is a feature request for this that has been up there for a while already.

http://bugs.introversion.co.uk/view.php?id=8642

And a much older request here, which considering the age of it, if the devs thought it necessary they would have done it by now.

http://bugs.introversion.co.uk/view.php?id=3635

[MMZ>Torak]

Pogmothoin,

Just because you enjoy the challenge and hoop jumping to make this, by many people's opinion broken, mechanic to work does not mean it is not broken.

Just because the devs have not changed it does not mean it is working as intended; this is an alpha.

Your supercilious comments and "works for me" attitude is quite off putting.

I probably should have expected it, based on your username.

[Pogmothoin]

Well excuse me for enjoying challenging games, I certainly wouldn't have played it as much if it didn't have obstacles to overcome, but by all means petition the devs to turn PA into another facebook clone game that 5 year olds can play with their mammy.

I'm not the only one that finds this system easy to deal with, the dev's clearly haven't had an issue with it otherwise it would have been changed at some point in the last year in and a half (it would only take seconds to increase the value of foremen to be hired by 1 or more), despite numerous requests asking them to. As I said, the single foreman was by deliberate design to prevent having too many people working in a 100 workshops earning warden's billions of dollars. The game is still in alpha and that may change, but it is working as intended at the moment.

Just because I'm the only one in this thread that has said that it isn't required to have more than one foreman doesn't mean I am alone in thinking that, at least I took my time to try to explain why. The others are probably just sick of responding to this request, if you wish that I just ignore posts like this in the future then I can comply with that, but don't blame me if the game becomes ludicrously simple and no fun.

The fact is that you can train every single prisoner with just one foreman faster than you can release prisoners even with the newish parole feature. If you aren't willing to alter your prison design to accommodate this restriction then you have made the choice to restrict the amount of prisoners you can teach.

PS: Don't judge a book by it's cover, my username is more than 20 years old. I've never claimed to be superior to anyone, I may occasionally be curt or dismissive, but that happens when you see the same thing repeatedly. If you don't like it then you know what you can do

[MMZ>Torak]

Well excuse me for enjoying challenging games, I certainly wouldn't have played it as much if it didn't have obstacles to overcome, but by all means petition the devs to turn PA into another facebook clone game that 5 year olds can play with their mammy.

So there is nothing between a single foreman and "game that 5 year olds can play"? Argumentum ad absurdum is not the way to go.

The rest of your post is argumentum ad populum and not really worth addressing.