A good way to implement gangs

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LennyLeak
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A good way to implement gangs

Postby LennyLeak » Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:12 am

Okay, so I know this is a planned feature, but the devs have apparently had a hard time finding a mechanism that works. I realize that I'm new to the forum, so I've searched, but could not find a thread that discussed this in detail. I only found a single thread with a (good) idea but no detailed discussion. Personally it is one of my most wanted features, so I'll take a stab ( :wink: ) at it.

Here are my ideas for a way this could work and be an interesting game mechanic. Some of it may be very intuitive and self-evident, but I think that as a whole this could work.

Gang structure
There would obviously need to be a variety of gangs. For realism purpose I would prefer that each race was treated as a gang, with those (race) gangs having different sub-gangs ("sets"). Overall gangs would (read:could) be organized into: Black, white, latino and 'other'. Those would have gangs within them fx 'Crips' and 'Bloods' for blacks; 'AB' and 'Nazi Lowriders' for whites; 'Mexican Mafia' and 'La Nuestra Familia' for hispanics etc.. If using real names is to politically explosive, of course fictional names could be made up. (But it would be cool with real names imo). Every gang has 1 leader and a number of shotcallers depending of the size of the gang (say 1 shotcaller to every 10 members). When a member of statute is released or killed, after some time another member is promoted. The player will not know (initially) who are leaders or shotcallers.

Gang interaction
Different gangs have different standings with other gangs which changes, ideally depending on past incidents. This happens with race-gangs as well as sub-gangs. Race-gangs can be neutral, allied or at war with other race-gangs, and sub-gangs can be neutral, allied or at war with other sub-gangs even from their own race-gang. If a gang member encounters another gang member that his gang is at war with, he will attack that individual if there are no guards close by. Nearby gang members will aid in fights if they are allied with either side. Race gangs will override sub-gangs such that, gang members will attack or aid based on race-gang first, and sub-gang second. So if an individual is attacked by someone from another race-gang, an individual might aid a person from the same race, even if their sub-gangs might be at war with each other. That way you can have regular gang fights and all out race wars. The situation can be especially explosive in riots within mixed cell blocks.

Gang recruitment
A gang will have a chance of recruiting new members from the population (that are not already in a gang) in a given cell block/sector. The chance of recruitment depends on the gangs dominance in the sector. The gang which has the most members in a sector (e.g. a gen. pop. prison block) will in general have a bigger chance of recruiting than other gangs present in the sector. The gang needs to have at least one shotcaller in the sector to actively recruit (several present shot callers might multiply the effect), and if the leader is present in the sector the chance of recruitment will be even higher.

Gang identification
When prisoners first arrive at the prison you do not know what gang they are in (if any). As gang members are usually kept seperate with less privileges, they will pretend to not be gang bangers. At this point you will not know a persons gang affiliations before they are involved in a violent crime within the jail, at which time their gang affiliations have a chance of being revealed to you (because your CO's figure it out). Like many real prisons you can have a 'Gang Classification Unit' by hiring a Gang Classification Officer (he needs an office). When a "GCO" is employed he will try to uncover gang affiliations within the prison. When prisoners arrive, the GCO will try to figure out if they have gang affiliations (checking their rap-sheets, tats etc.). He has a certain chance of detecting their gang affiliation right away, but they might very well slip through the net, and start to cause trouble in gen. pop. With a GCO on staff the chance of discovering gang affiliation when a member is involved in a violent crime is much higher. With a GCO on staff, gang members will also be able to defect from gangs. If they do so they will reveal the leader and shotcallers in their sub-gang (the player can then isolate these). Drop-outs will of course be "green-lit" by gang members, and any gang member will then attack them if they are able to (snitches get stitches). Drop-outs should therefor be placed in Protective Custody / The Sensitive Needs Yard. Dead snitches should give a penalty, and decrease the chance of other gang members defecting.

Housing
Gangs members will be housed in different cell blocks/sectors if possible, but the influx of new prisoners will mean that some gang members will inevitably and continously get through to gen. pop., so your GCO needs to keep working to detect gang members. When gang members are detected they will be moved to a SHU (Secure Housing Unit), that is designated for members of that gang only. Ideally uniform colours can be specified on different criteria such that different gangs wear different colour uniforms, and ordinary inmates and those with sensitive needs (i.e. snitches) have their own colour too.

The bigger point
Gang members in gen. pop. will cause the ordinary (non-violent) prisoners to feel unsafe and be unhappy. Gang presence will also breed (by gangs recruiting), and the problem will thus become continously worse if not kept in check. This will result in more violent and general crime and in a higher chance of riots in the sector. Gang members would also generally be more violent, requiring a lot more staff in gang-specific Housing Units. So while the bulk of your officers are trying to keep gang-units under control, gen. pop. might see increasing gang activity that threatens regular prisoners.

Afterthoughts
These are my initial ideas for a gang-system that makes for an (imo) fun game mechanic that actually has an impact other than just locking people up in different buildings. With this approach you would have to stay on top of the gang situation to avoid a gang infested prison with gang bangers terrorizing the general population, making regular prisoners unruly and unhappy. You could also suddently have problems if two gangs you have housed together because they were neutral or allied suddently become enemies, and you have a serious housing crisis. You might be forced to have a heavy staff presence to curb gang violence within the sector (while making other housing arrangements), leaving other sectors less well guarded.

What do you guys think?
Am I on to something? Has all of this been discussed somewhere else? Any thoughts on improving the idea?

BTW: Sorry for bad spelling and language. English is not my native language, and I'm writting this kinda late at night.

Regards,
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Postby Playergamer » Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:17 am

I like your ideas. I don't have much else to say, honestly.
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Postby Carmelle » Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:47 am

Love it...only thing I'd add is that there needs to be checks in place to make sure that not EVERY person is always initiated into the gang. Even if there's a %age chance or whatever, I'd much rather see something along the lines of where you'd have a %age chance of becoming initiated into the gang and then some other %age of actually passing the initiation. So there might actually be this 'initiate' type of prisoner too.

Bonus points if the initiation is visual in nature...ex: steal a shiv, shank an enemy gang member, etc... :o that'd be kinda cool.
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Postby Saranis » Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:54 am

Good ideas, some may be a little over complex as this isnt a gang simulator. I don't really think they have trouble with developing gangs, I believe the feature just isnt complete (or possible even started) coding wise. They also have other things that they want to implement before that. Give it some time, they will have gangs implemented before release
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Postby LennyLeak » Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:57 am

Thanks guys.

Carmelle wrote:Love it...only thing I'd add is that there needs to be checks in place to make sure that not EVERY person is always initiated into the gang. Even if there's a %age chance or whatever, I'd much rather see something along the lines of where you'd have a %age chance of becoming initiated into the gang and then some other %age of actually passing the initiation. So there might actually be this 'initiate' type of prisoner too.

Bonus points if the initiation is visual in nature...ex: steal a shiv, shank an enemy gang member, etc... :o that'd be kinda cool.

Yeah your right. Maybe, once they have been recruited they are sent to do some form of violent crime, and wont be members until they do. That way gang recruitment could quickly become a serious problem as the amount of violent crime in gen. pop. would escalate in proportion to the gang population.
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Postby koshensky » Thu Nov 08, 2012 3:00 am

I very much liked these thoughts, although I think that some of them are already intended for the game (not that that devalues the fact that you said them as well :P)

For one, Zoning is a definite, and you'll be able to have different sections of your prison for different groups of inmates. Whether or not this means gang-x will be in zone 1, or the prisoners in zone 1 will end up forming gang-x I don't know, but I imagine that prisoners will eventually form / reform into gangs depending on their immediate neighbours.

I don't really think that the additional member of staff is necessary specifically for gangs. I don't see them playing such a huge role in the game that you couldn't just have your Chief research something to unlock the gang affiliation screen, or even have it as something extra for your Psychologist to do.

One other thing was that I don't think ANY gang member would beat on a snitch. Gangs allied with gang-x might, but gang-y would be much more likely to just ignore the guy rather than do gang-x a favour by taking our their trash.

Aside from that I really liked the detail involved :)
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Postby LennyLeak » Thu Nov 08, 2012 3:04 am

Saranis wrote:Good ideas, some may be a little over complex as this isnt a gang simulator. I don't really think they have trouble with developing gangs, I believe the feature just isnt complete (or possible even started) coding wise. They also have other things that they want to implement before that. Give it some time, they will have gangs implemented before release
Yeah it might be a little complex, but as gangs are certainly a vital part of any prison I know of - and most certainly in America - I think it is an aspect that deserves serious attention.
I saw an interview where Christ stated that they had already tried several methods of implementing gangs, but that they did not seem to work well as game mechanics, and they felt that gangs were just "put that gang in that building"-mechanics that did not add a lot to the gameplay. That's why I took some time to think it (more or less) through. I am confident that we will have some cool gangs at some point, but seeing as they seem to be listening to the community, I thought it might help to throw some thoughts out there for inspiration. :D

koshensky wrote:I very much liked these thoughts, although I think that some of them are already intended for the game (not that that devalues the fact that you said them as well :P)

For one, Zoning is a definite, and you'll be able to have different sections of your prison for different groups of inmates. Whether or not this means gang-x will be in zone 1, or the prisoners in zone 1 will end up forming gang-x I don't know, but I imagine that prisoners will eventually form / reform into gangs depending on their immediate neighbours.

I don't really think that the additional member of staff is necessary specifically for gangs. I don't see them playing such a huge role in the game that you couldn't just have your Chief research something to unlock the gang affiliation screen, or even have it as something extra for your Psychologist to do.

One other thing was that I don't think ANY gang member would beat on a snitch. Gangs allied with gang-x might, but gang-y would be much more likely to just ignore the guy rather than do gang-x a favour by taking our their trash.

Aside from that I really liked the detail involved :)

Thanks. Yeah, I know zoning and such is planned, and I figured that we would eventually have gen. pop., ad. seg., SHU, PC and such - so I kinda took that for granted. The bulk of the idea was mostly the idea that you wont know the prisoners gang affiliations, and that gang members will spread terror in gen. pop. so you need to find out. Having another staff member was just to add some spice with more stuff to do, since I saw Chris state that they needed it to be more of a defined game mechanic. I guess you could have the chief do it, but I know that many real prisons actually have gang-specific units, with people spending all their time to uncover gang relations (and related crime) within the prison.
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Postby Azarath » Fri Nov 09, 2012 12:56 am

As a sidenote, in the savefile, one of the lines for guards is "Gang.id", leading to the possibility that guards can and will affiliate to particular gangs as well.
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Postby LennyLeak » Fri Nov 09, 2012 2:47 pm

Azarath wrote:As a sidenote, in the savefile, one of the lines for guards is "Gang.id", leading to the possibility that guards can and will affiliate to particular gangs as well.
Interesting! Seems like a fun possibility that guards are assigned to certain gangs. Would also be cool if some of your guards were corrupt, and smuggled contraband into the prison for certain gangs. :D
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Postby Frede1012 » Fri Nov 09, 2012 3:19 pm

This really seems like a good way of doing the gangs :-)
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Postby BreadMurderer » Fri Nov 09, 2012 3:45 pm

I would imagine that the reason they are in jail in the first place is because of gang related crime? Therefore the prison would be informed before the prisoner arrived of their affiliation. A background check which I'm sure they all get. Not dismissing everything you have said though just poking at it. :)
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Postby christopher1006 » Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:34 am

BreadMurderer wrote:I would imagine that the reason they are in jail in the first place is because of gang related crime? Therefore the prison would be informed before the prisoner arrived of their affiliation. A background check which I'm sure they all get. Not dismissing everything you have said though just poking at it. :)

This is assuming that when they were caught the other gang members didn't run off or he was alone in the first place, heck he might have even tried to get into prison to gain recruits that would be ready when released.
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Postby LennyLeak » Sat Nov 10, 2012 3:03 am

BreadMurderer wrote:I would imagine that the reason they are in jail in the first place is because of gang related crime? Therefore the prison would be informed before the prisoner arrived of their affiliation. A background check which I'm sure they all get. Not dismissing everything you have said though just poking at it. :)
Well, the crime might be connected to gang activity, but they're not in prison for being gang members, they're in prison for theft, robbery, assault, murder or such. Gang affiliation might be relevant in court as a motive, but gang membership is hard to prove. I'm no expert but AFAIK many real prisons try hard to figure out who are gang bangers and which gang they belong to. A quick google search got me this: http://www.kanesheriff.com/agencyDivisions/giu.aspx
The unit's function is to identify street gang members that are confined in the Kane County Adult Justice Center. The identification of street gang members supports the detainee housing classification system. The proper classification and housing of detainees will prevent incidents and acts of violence among gang members, thereby enhancing the safety and security for everyone.


I think my suggestion is quite realistic, while also providing a fun gamemechanic. 8)
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Postby Lewis » Sat Nov 10, 2012 7:48 am

Good idea. I was thinking along the lines of gangs forming based one-on-one relationships; ie, get into fight with bob ( -10 bob), use television object with actors x,y,z (+5 x, +5 y, +5 z). etc. But I think the whole initiation process based on probability and demographics is more realistic.

I would suggest that the gang names be randomly generated instead of using real life contemporaries.
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Re: A good way to implement gangs

Postby Nibbles » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:48 am

LennyLeak wrote:What do you guys think?
Sound idea, I like it.

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