Only guards can open doors A7

[phoenixca]

Easiest solution would be to allow the designation of some doors that staff could open by themselves. It leaves the whole worker opening the front door for an escapee issue solved, solves this nagging annoyance for players, and adds some depth to the dynamic of ease vs. security.

Until then, remember that you can manually open any door with a right-click.

[ryanv09]

The reason i'm a bit grumpy isn't because I'm resistant to change, it because i cant make it work.
For example i have lots of guards around the kitchen but the guard who gets the job of opening the door is never the closest one so the guards are just running around disorientated opening doors at the other end of the prison.

My prison that i've worked on for a week just went to shit because i only managed to serve 5% of 100 prisoners who then try'd to eat each other.

Exactly. It's frustrating. Whenever someone needs a door opened, it seems like the guard is chosen entirely at random. A guard will be a few squares away, but a guard from all the way across the prison will come to open the door instead. It slows down every aspect of the prison.

[christopher1006]

That's where two things come in, right clicking the door to get it open and for my kitchen, attach it to the storage area with a wooden door and attach it to the canteen with a wooden door but make the only ways to leave the canteen/kitchen/storage area a jail door that's guarded.

[BL4DE]

My design puts kitchen and storage to an edge with a coridor just for the workers and cooks that comes out at the solitary door of the security room.
There always is one guard, and the security room is small enough i don't lose connection to my cctv cameras when the guard opens the door, which he does 95% of the time. The door costs some seconds for the workers and cooks to get material, but nothing major. Another corridor links the kitchen to the cantine and is staff only with a jail door at the cantine side. One guard patroling the cantine constantly goes through the door (1 dot of patrol) so noone need to open it, but in case of a riot the guard gets there and the door is shut.

The kitchen/storage has only this two entrances. There is another exit point before the corridor hits the security room for the workers needing to fix something. When something bigger needs to be done (new building etc.) i put a guard there with a single dot of patrol also.
So far this design has proven itself. There have been quite a few escape attempts, but noone made it past the first door.

I just HOPE for a 'Stationary fix' so these guards don't go hunting prisoners to search them (I recently had a guard running after a prisoner who was exercising for 4 ingame hours... ) or haul in new prisoners from the deliveries.

[priced4evil]

I think you'll find that if you put a serving table in your canteen along the length of a wall that is next to your kitchen, the cooks will pass food right through the wall, onto the serving table like a 'service window'. Then they only need the door unlocked to clean up.

Mind...BLOWN!

I never even thought to try that and OMG it works like a charm. Great suggestion!

Edit: I assumed it would treat the serving tables like objects and not dividers/walls so when I built an easy way to the outside for my cooks I had about 10 prisoners dash for the exit, lol

[TheXWolf]

Quite honestly I understand the change, so if they could either add the staff only option back, or
at least set it up so that the work crew has keys. Idc if a guard is needed to open a door for janitors etc.
But I'm sick of having a guard from across the prison run to open a door cus I need a light put in someplace.

[Parker22]

Quite honestly I understand the change, so if they could either add the staff only option back, or
at least set it up so that the work crew has keys. Idc if a guard is needed to open a door for janitors etc.
But I'm sick of having a guard from across the prison run to open a door cus I need a light put in someplace.

Yeah, I know what you are saying, it does hangs the flow of the game.
But - wouldn't want the workmen to a be target for a thuggish prisoner now, as they would just get the keys.

I know - give the workers guns. That would sort it. No, wait...

[jlevous]

The new feature has forced me to rethink traffic and flow.

I've decided that although doors are aesthetically pleasing and provide a sense of security, they are not always necessary for good prison operations.

I'm currently experimenting with prison designs with minimal doors and guards.

So far I've been able to keep 180 maxsec prisoners behind a single wooden door with only 13 guards.

I've still got 18 cooks, but I'm slowly downsizing the kitchen...

At the end of the day, its mostly a question of what you want to get out of the game and how you want to play it.

Feature changes are either improvements, or challenges - it all depends upon how you choose to frame it.

[Andrei Boros]

Honestly, this new feature is great, but like others have stated, the AI is not reworked to handle this new requirement. I changed up my prison a lot with this change, I now have sets of doors arranged in a [Door] [Metal Detector] [Door] pattern, with a guard stationed in the 'room' between them. This would work PERFECTLY if the AI just got the guard closest to the door to open it. Instead, that guard will just sit there for 30 minutes while another guard from half way across the prison runs to open it.

In summation, just tweak the AI to get the CLOSEST guard to open doors and the feature will work perfectly.

[VoiD88]

In summation, just tweak the AI to get the CLOSEST guard to open doors and the feature will work perfectly.

I guess prisoners using toilets at the other end of the prison instead of the one right there in their own cell during free time is a symptom of the same problem and I agree that it should be one of the things that get fixed in a soonish future update. However, I fear that it might be an inherent part of the dreaded pathfinding algorithm and if that is the case, its optimization (and thus the fixing of these problems) will probably not be done until Beta.

[Diplo]

Honestly, this new feature is great, but like others have stated, the AI is not reworked to handle this new requirement. I changed up my prison a lot with this change, I now have sets of doors arranged in a [Door] [Metal Detector] [Door] pattern, with a guard stationed in the 'room' between them. This would work PERFECTLY if the AI just got the guard closest to the door to open it. Instead, that guard will just sit there for 30 minutes while another guard from half way across the prison runs to open it.

In summation, just tweak the AI to get the CLOSEST guard to open doors and the feature will work perfectly.

I totally agree with you.

[KaspeR32]

I agree with improving the guard AI to open the door closest to him.

I had one entry point for my workers and cooks (everything behind entry point was wooden doors, so free movement was possible) And I had a guard patrolling between 2 doors. 80% of the time, the guard would ignore the door with my cooks and workers.

I had to manually move my guard through it, although, now that I know I can right click to open doors, that should save me some trouble, although I'd still rather have it working behind the scenes.

[s1rr34l]

Quite honestly I understand the change, so if they could either add the staff only option back, or
at least set it up so that the work crew has keys. Idc if a guard is needed to open a door for janitors etc.
But I'm sick of having a guard from across the prison run to open a door cus I need a light put in someplace.

Totally agree. Could be interesting though, if we got the option to select which groups has keys to which doors.

[JFSOCC]

Could there be automated doors which are only controlled by guards in the security office?

[TimberTon]

I like the update and managed to quickly adapt to it. I only have 2 secure doors, all others are wooden.

I do agree, though, that it seems odd that the delivery area where prisoners come in, and where stuff comes in, is the same

I agree.