[Discussion] A future patch should cut back micromanaging.

[lugaru]

So my experience with the early game is that you could play the 'overnight' game where you would stop intake, go to bed and see how your prison was doing next day. Unfortunately I feel like a lot of elements require micromanaging:

Prisoner Escapes: guards should be a little better at searching toilets for tunnels so that a regime that searches the cells of prisoners who cause trouble finds tunnels more often. Also after an escape it should queue up a guard to search the exit hole revealing the tunnel and queuing up the workmen to fix the damage.

Intake Instructions: You should be able to set certain attributes to certain security levels, such as snitches automatically being set to protective custody or legendary and gangs automatically to supermax.

Snitching aint Easy: There should be a very low chance to convert a prisoner in solitary to a snitch without your intervention. That way every once in a while you find that you have one more snitch. Snitches passively reveal information about prisoners, but nowhere nearly as effective as calling them in.

Staff Levels You can set how many of each staff you want, so if one dies, another spawns at the top/bottom of the road a couple of hours later. Perhaps you can also set your prison capacity (100) and it will modify intake as prisoners are paroled, released or killed.

Quarantine Visibly sick prisoners can be sent to solitary. Very likely wont stop an outbreak, but gives you a little more of a fighting chance against an outbreak.

Panic Buttons: Fights and other emergencies will cause staff (and sometimes prisoners) to hit a button on the wall. This is usually connected to an alarm (which calls guards) but it can also trigger stuff like sprinklers, locking doors, shutting power or whatever a creative player connects it to.

[GC13]

If I had the ability to automatically set the guards to search the toilets in cells during a certain time every day, say from midnight to five in the morning, two things would happen: I'd be a lot less annoyed by tunnels, and tunnels would cease having any effect on the game at all unless they went back to being only discoverable by dismantling the toilet, in which case there would be little point in making the change. I hate tunnels: they mostly feel like the mandatory downside to having a workshop, since you can't have that extra income for free.

I definitely agree with a rule to automatically make vulnerable prisoner reputations into protective custody (I'd almost think this should be compulsory). That feels like needless busywork, having to change them each manually. To this I'd add the ability to set the changes to the prisoner's security level based on their actions; right now if a prisoner helps kill someone they're automatically busted up to maximum security. I'd like to automatically move anyone who attempts to escape to maximum security (where there is no workshop) as well. Obviously I can do this manually, but again it's busywork.

To your list I'd like to add the ability to set a zone as a freefire zone, so my armed guards in supermax will use their guns against the legendary prisoners if they start acting up without my intervention.

[eths2]

I am pretty sure that they are tying to purposely make the game like this and even mentioned in an alpha video that they want to keep the player guessing and the game difficult at all stages so that you can't leave the game running. I think that these are some good ideas however and probably should be a mod of some sort.

[5hifty]

See the problem with automatically bumping prisoners up or down a level, is that it doesn't do anything. A prisoner who has previously tried to escape/murdered someone/etc is no more likely to do it again then any other prisoner. Prisoners have no future or past knowledge. They won't NOT do something because they have been punished for it before. Punishment is only effective for the time that is active - no more no less, and even then it's only 'effective' because someone can't steal or kill in an empty cell, it isn't conditioning them either way. After stepping out of a 82 hour stink solitary for stealing a spoon, a prisoner is just, if not more likely (because needs weren't met in solitary) to steal the same spoon again.

[GC13]

I am pretty sure that they are tying to purposely make the game like this and even mentioned in an alpha video that they want to keep the player guessing and the game difficult at all stages so that you can't leave the game running. I think that these are some good ideas however and probably should be a mod of some sort.

Tedious is not difficult. Especially when tunnels are involved. If I'm doing the same thing every night (searching a cell block, then searching the toilets of any prisoners with a wooden pickaxe), then yes the game is preventing me from leaving it running overnight, but it's also aggravating me by making me tell it "yes I'm sure you should do the same thing you did the past fifteen nights!". We don't have to manually order sheet metal for the workshop, manually buy food, or set up servos and enough door control units so the prisoners can get out of their cells in the morning and back into them in the evening.

[eths2]

Yes I can agree with the fact that tunnels are annoying but the developers are fixing it and just changed it from having to dismantle the toilet to only searching it. I know it can seem tedious but at least now we only have to do a cell search and really you could just search the whole block when the prisoners are away.

[GC13]

Yes I can agree with the fact that tunnels are annoying but the developers are fixing it and just changed it from having to dismantle the toilet to only searching it. I know it can seem tedious but at least now we only have to do a cell search and really you could just search the whole block when the prisoners are away.

Yes, but you still have to check where the tools are found and manually order searches of the toilets since you only automatically find the tunnel if you search just the toilet; searching the toilet as part of a cell or cell block search will almost always miss the tunnel.

[eths2]

Understood, that is why I said this should probably be a mod as I just don't see them making the game "automatic". If tunnels were auto found then why have them? And shakedowns and searches are pretty easy to order anyway. I simply don't get why you would want to let the game play itself.

[GC13]

If tunnels were auto found then why have them?

I wonder that myself. Right now tunnels don't add good gameplay, they just add a layer of tedium. I mean, I enjoy the fact that they add a design constraint (keep cells away from exterior walls, or you won't have a fun time), but I don't think that the added nuisance of mandatory cell block searches (which you then must supervise) is worth it.

[blackdwarf]

I understand the fun of setting up a prison that will run well without user intervention. It certainly seems like the devs are heading away from that kind of game.

One possible way to allow the "set it up and watch it run" experience would be to have an option when constructing a new prison (like gangs are now).

Such a mode could:
* Either turn off tunneling or enable some sort of automated search or response to dog flags.
* Have some sort of automatic Confidential Informant recruiting and consulting.
* Have automatic Protective Custody identification.
* Have the ability to set intake based on a percent of capacity per category, or similar.
* Auto-hiring of lost staff.
* Disable the random events system.
* Automatic "promotion" and "demotion" of prisoners (minSec - medSec - maxSec - Supermax) based on criteria found on the prisoner sheet Character, Experience, and Grading tabs. An expansion on automatic PC identification.
* Probably some others I haven't mentioned...

[lugaru]

Well my main concern is not necessarily to be able to 'let the game play itself' but for my prison to be intelligent enough (If I put the effort into it) for it to take care of some of the smaller chores and allow me to focus on running the place. Sure, back when the game was simpler it was easy to leave running overnight but now I feel like I get caught up with so many tiny details.

Let's take the tunnel thing for example.. what I primarily want is for you to be able to explore the other end of a tunnel. There is no reason that your guards should not be able to reveal the whole tunnel by dismantling the 'hole' just like when you dismantle a toilet. They are not 1 way tunnels I'm guessing.

Also I do hope stuff like panic buttons eventually make it into the game... we have a nice set up with all these circuits controls, giving our actual staff a way to interact would be awesome.

[paule3000]

In my experience doing a shakedown every 2 or 3 nights is enough to uncover any tunneling activity before prisoners get do dig far enough to make an escape. I don't think this is very tedious. Additionally it helps to manually search the toilets in a single cell block when a tunnel is uncovered in this block, as tunnels tend to come in clusters.

Also preventing maxsec prisoners from going to the workshop does not seem to help much with tunneling activity, as minsec prisoners tend to tunnel most.

[Jailer]

So my experience with the early game is that you could play the 'overnight' game where you would stop intake, go to bed and see how your prison was doing next day.

You can still do that - probably game is stuck on the warden calling you relating to deaths/escapes.
But apart from that -
Why leave the game running and not watch/play unless you want cash? And cash is not the limiting factor here - devs have been generous in allowing you to rack up cash quite easily to not interfere with building to much.

If you want to know how your prison is doing without interference - let go of the mouse and watch. If you have a smooth 'auto-operating' prison then it will look the same after 8 hours of real time - except the clock has changed.

IMHO this is not one of those idle games..

[XxBoonexX]

I personally like what they did, being able to leave the game on all night and nothing bad happen was boring as hell.