This god damn event system...

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Lexx2k
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This god damn event system...

Postby Lexx2k » Mon Aug 31, 2015 6:12 am

... Yeah, the title says it. I love it, but... I just deactivated it for good, because it was driving me crazy. Precisely, the virus outbreak. After half a day of trying to deal with it (real time, not ingame time), I gave up, edited my savegame and then felt better than ever before.

I really tried to stop it, but it was spreading like crazy. The first few times I simply ignored it, until I thought "ok, let's deal with it." Tried a few things, like setting all infected prisoners to a different group with custom schedule, but that didn't work. Then (few hours later), I had researched permanent punishment and tried this. So... my prison isn't the biggest, but I soon noticed that it is a horrible thing of busy work to do for only 230 inmates. Find the prisoner, click him, set punishment, find the next prisoner,.... At some point I felt like I was finally finished, called all my doctors and the emergency team to try to handle the stuff. It worked! Yay! Started to release the first prisoners to the normal routine again, and then... It suddenly started to spread again... (probably prison workers going into the various cells for cleaning) ... I gave up. Such a huge waste of time.

The showers were the biggest problem. Shower time was instant mass-spreading. Or hey, I found a prisoner and send him into his cell- he walks extremely slow past 20 other inmates and infects half of them... ehw.

tl;dr - the virus event needs more hand holding. Give me something very expensive to buy or whatever, I'll take anything that won't force me to do 3 to 4 clicks on each prisoner in the hopes I'll stop the virus with it.

/Edit: I have 2 suggestions:
1. The easier one: Add a new grant that is unlocked if x are infected. You spend the money and the virus is gone. Lazy and cheap, but would help. Still feels like negotiating with terrorists...

2. The better idea would be something like a "mass containment" emergency button that becomes available when the virus event is running (or is always available to actually prevent the virus to spread that crazy at all). It would work like a combination of shakedown + bangup. Every (willing) prisoner goes into his cell, then the medical personal will walk from cell to cell and vaccinates the prisoners. IMO this would be better, because it usually would need a lot time, adds stress to prisoners which might create bad situations, and still fights the virus in a way that it doesn't become a simple win-for-money-button like the idea #1 above.


####

Oh, by the way. The very first event happening in my prison actually was the arrival of 33 new prisoners... and 32 of them were in the same gang. Yay. They caused so much trouble, I actually ended up telling my guards freefire, just to get rid of them- even after I finally gave in and placed them in permanent lockdown. Right now I am down to 12 gang members left. Makes me feel bad, but really- since their arrival, my death counter speeded up to over 70. In just a few hours. They made me tripple my armed guards and double my dog handlers...


This is not a rant, I just felt the need to express my thoughts. The event-system is really needed, but some of the events (like these two.. and I didn't even had the extreme version of the virus, which I now probably wouldn't feel so bad about, as I would now just send the inmates into the same room with all the remaining gang members..) are like a constant slap in the face. With a sledge hammer.
Pompier15
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby Pompier15 » Mon Aug 31, 2015 10:54 am

Personnaly I like this event system, it may be not balanced indeed but it makes a challenge and then you have to think different way to resolve it, you try and if you die, you reload.
For the virus, just after the event alert, I stop time and I search all infected prisonners (3), then I isolate them in solitary confinment and I call doctors and this work.
In your case, have you tried to activate the emergency buton for lockup to resolve the infection ?
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Lexx2k
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby Lexx2k » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:35 pm

Of course. But with 270 infected prisoners, it isn't that easy anymore. The lowest I had was 30, but from there on it was going up again fast, all the time. That's pretty much fighting against windmills.

The event itself isn't bad, neither is the idea of the event system (like I wrote, it is highly needed anyway for long-term fun), just that especially in the virus-case, it becomes very tedious and annoying to deal with. Having to manually search every prisoner, and doing up to 4 additional clicks as well, is simply not fun. :>
Karkadinn
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby Karkadinn » Mon Aug 31, 2015 5:13 pm

This seems like it could be solved pretty easily with hotkeys. Hold a button or two while you click on a prisoner to send them to lockup or solitary. It would keep the monitoring of individual prisoners aspect, but take away the tedium of having to navigate multiple steps through the UI every single time.

And I really think you should have to keep some level of individual monitoring in the system. Giving players a 'click this button to counteract this event' seems inherently OP no matter how much it costs to use. We still have to micro things like fire fighters and riot police, for comparison.
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Lexx2k
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby Lexx2k » Mon Aug 31, 2015 6:04 pm

It is still extremely tedious. Imagine a prison with 500 people and one or two moments of not being 100% on the edge... half the people infected. It's spreading extremely fast. You just have to miss one infected in the ant-farm and hit shower-time, that's it for your plan.

To your second point, that's why I like my above mentioned suggestion #2 the most. Right now I could send everyone to bangup and have medics run around, but this is a really shitty solution, as I cannot simply "free" the non-infected prisoners. Everyone would be locked up for a very long time, which drastically increases tension (and if it's bad timing, then also hunger, etc. etc. because they don't get any food to their cells).

tl;dr - Needed: A feature that sends everyone into their cells, that keeps guards delivering food to the cells and that lets you release individual prisoners.
Jazzy
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby Jazzy » Wed Sep 02, 2015 10:58 pm

A simple solution to this problem would be to have infected prisoners automatically start heading toward the infirmary for treatment. If they make it there, great, if not (and they pass out) then the doctors, or guards, would have to do some running to tend to the prisoners and get them transferred to the infirmary before they die.

Just allowing infected prisoners to roam around without a care in the world is silly for this type of event. People tend to see a doctor when they get sick right? Why shouldn't that apply in this situation.

One thing I would like to see added to the infection event is a level of severity that would influence who gets treated by the doctors first. Higher the severity, first on healing priority. And those that receive treatment for the current event should be considered "immune" for the remainder of that event but not for any following events.
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby lugaru » Thu Sep 03, 2015 7:07 pm

This sentiment may have been abandoned, but once upon a time Prison Architect was a game you could 'set and forget' and your guards would deal with prisoners, workmen with repairs, etc.

Now I do feel like there are excessive amounts of micromanagement required, and the virus is a good example. You should be able to get the regime option of maybe 'punishing' somebody for being sick, or practically speaking when a guard notices a sick prisoner they go to solitary. That way if you have the cells, guards and doctors the outbreak COULD possibly contain itself without your intervention.
YMS
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby YMS » Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:30 pm

lugaru wrote:This sentiment may have been abandoned, but once upon a time Prison Architect was a game you could 'set and forget' and your guards would deal with prisoners, workmen with repairs, etc.

Now I do feel like there are excessive amounts of micromanagement required, and the virus is a good example. You should be able to get the regime option of maybe 'punishing' somebody for being sick, or practically speaking when a guard notices a sick prisoner they go to solitary. That way if you have the cells, guards and doctors the outbreak COULD possibly contain itself without your intervention.


The events are meant to bring some variety and surprise in longtime games. If you were able to automate the solutions to them, they would be pointless. You can deactivate them if you don't want to handle them.
Robbedem
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby Robbedem » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:44 am

Prisoners that got infected and healed, should be immune to the infection.
WISD0MTREE
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby WISD0MTREE » Mon Sep 07, 2015 1:18 am

Sorry for the slight off topic post, but some other events are bad, too. The prisoners wanted 6 hours of free time. At first, I didn't give into their demands. Like 25 of my 30 guards died, and most of my prisoners were unconscious or dead.
stroberaver
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby stroberaver » Mon Sep 07, 2015 1:47 am

Thanks to the ridiculous virus outbreaks, I've just about had it with the events system too. What seems like a good idea in principle absolutely ruins a larger capacity prison, because it's virtually impossible to deal with. There aren't any tools or procedures in the game for dealing with a virus outbreak, other than manually searching for them and sending in doctors and locking them in their cells on an individual basis. Then when you've finally eliminated one outbreak for good, a new outbreak happens again two days later and it starts all over again. Then you load your save game and you've lost the indicator telling you how many infected prisoners you have. Prisoners also constantly get re-infected during the same outbreak which is all wrong.

Pausing the game and spending anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes of real time scrolling around your prison and taking the necessary actions is not fun or challenging - just tedious and frustrating.

This virus outbreak needs removing from the game until we're given some way of dealing with it without such ridiculous levels of micromanagement.

Solutions could include:
- The ability to initiate a prison-wide (or for a particular cell block) order to "go and get a checkup". This would obviously strain your medical facilities and if you only have a couple of doctors in a 500+ prison then the queues will be extensive and disorder would be a huge problem.
- Make sick prisoners automatically head for the infirmary during free time (or if they haven't got a job) to get themselves treated.
- Some tool / overlay to highlight the infected prisoners.
- Link it to prison conditions (saw this mentioned in another thread). If you have a filthy prison then you're more likely to outbreaks, yet mine is/was spotless and half my prisoners keep turning into little green men.
- The ability to make doctors patrol / attach themselves to a particular cell block until the infection is stamped out.

It's a shame, because the other events (what little I've seen of them, given that I'm constantly hunting for infected prisoners) seem quite fun, but this virus outbreak is a game- and fun-breaker in it's current format.
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby blackdwarf » Mon Sep 07, 2015 6:22 am

I've got to agree that the virus outbreak is currently too severe and tedious to respond to. I've got a sick mind and kind of get into tedium sometimes, but even I was about at my limit dealing with an outbreak.

I actually think the single biggest thing would be to make it impossible for a prisoner to get the virus more than once in an outbreak. Assume that each outbreak is a distinct strain of the virus, so all prisoners are susceptible to each outbreak, but recovering from the illness gives prisoners immunity to that strain.

That way, you could just let the virus work its way through the prison population. The player can take steps to lessen the impact of the outbreak, but it will eventually end.

That's generally how virus outbreaks work in the real world.
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby EhRor » Mon Sep 07, 2015 1:48 pm

stroberaver wrote:Thanks to the ridiculous virus outbreaks, I've just about had it with the events system too. What seems like a good idea in principle absolutely ruins a larger capacity prison, because it's virtually impossible to deal with. There aren't any tools or procedures in the game for dealing with a virus outbreak, other than manually searching for them and sending in doctors and locking them in their cells on an individual basis. Then when you've finally eliminated one outbreak for good, a new outbreak happens again two days later and it starts all over again. Then you load your save game and you've lost the indicator telling you how many infected prisoners you have. Prisoners also constantly get re-infected during the same outbreak which is all wrong.

Pausing the game and spending anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes of real time scrolling around your prison and taking the necessary actions is not fun or challenging - just tedious and frustrating.

This virus outbreak needs removing from the game until we're given some way of dealing with it without such ridiculous levels of micromanagement.

Solutions could include:
- The ability to initiate a prison-wide (or for a particular cell block) order to "go and get a checkup". This would obviously strain your medical facilities and if you only have a couple of doctors in a 500+ prison then the queues will be extensive and disorder would be a huge problem.
- Make sick prisoners automatically head for the infirmary during free time (or if they haven't got a job) to get themselves treated.
- Some tool / overlay to highlight the infected prisoners.
- Link it to prison conditions (saw this mentioned in another thread). If you have a filthy prison then you're more likely to outbreaks, yet mine is/was spotless and half my prisoners keep turning into little green men.
- The ability to make doctors patrol / attach themselves to a particular cell block until the infection is stamped out.

It's a shame, because the other events (what little I've seen of them, given that I'm constantly hunting for infected prisoners) seem quite fun, but this virus outbreak is a game- and fun-breaker in it's current format.


I Second this.. maybe these will be in the release.
GoneUp
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby GoneUp » Wed Sep 09, 2015 8:39 pm

Well. The virus outbreak. I had it on a prison with ~750 inmates.
My main problem was that the counter/the todo item was disappeared after saving/reloading. I could never tell if the virus is really dead.
Oh. And my solution was a prison wide bang-up for a few ingame days and hire some doctors in each cell block. They run to the prisoners to cure them. Sadly after they are back in infirmary I found no way to get them to cure sick ppl again. The only way was to fire and rehire them again.

With this Strategy it dosen't spread and the prisoners get a bit pissed off, but hey, it's a hard event. It was fun to deal with.
danibw0i
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Re: This god damn event system...

Postby danibw0i » Thu Sep 10, 2015 3:11 am

GoneUp wrote:And my solution was a prison wide bang-up for a few ingame days and hire some doctors in each cell block. They run to the prisoners to cure them. Sadly after they are back in infirmary I found no way to get them to cure sick ppl again. The only way was to fire and rehire them again.
With this Strategy it dosen't spread and the prisoners get a bit pissed off, but hey, it's a hard event. It was fun to deal with.


The BangUp + hiring doctors planted right next to a victim works. It's a bit stupid but I'm guessing it'll be improved forward.

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