Suggestion: change delivery/storage room mechanics

[Guts]

Hi all

First I want to say that I love this game very much, I'm spending most of my free time playing this (and it has been a while since a single game could do that).

Now, I have been tinkering with the new 'land expansion' system, and so far it looks and works great, but one (or actually 2) type of room is bugging me (or going to bug me as my prison grows) and that is the delivery (and storage) room: Having your goods in a central place is cool and all, but when your prison is going to get really large (with the expansions), you'll need more than 1 delivery/storage room to have everything close by every room of your (very large) prison. But newly arrived stuff that's not going to stay long in deliveries (like ingredients, sheet metal) are usually being picked up by the persons (chefs, ...) themselves from deliveries, and with a very big prison, this could be a very long trip, since having multiple delivery rooms doesn't quite work (everything is dumped in one room). When the trip becomes too long, certain kind of jobs in far away rooms (and there will be a few of those in a extremely large prison, no matter how you plan it) will fail (like cooking meals in time) and then things will hit certain fans very soon (riots,...).

What I like to suggest (if possible) is a system where a specific delivery (or storage) room can be assigned to rooms that requires (continuously) input from things delivered in trucks. The delivery room would be the most obviously choice, but requires a change in how trucks behave (not stopping on the same delivery room anymore). If that proves to be too complex somehow, the alternate would be the storage room, but then again, how would the goods be transported from the single delivery room to all those storage rooms (so this would just move the problem elsewhere)? My choice would still be the delivery room, since that way, you can also assign those to storage rooms themselves, so you could add features to that room (e.g. hold only food delivered in that particular delivery room).

Such a solution would create the possibility of creating a humongous prison for tens or hundreds of thousands of prisoners (just dreaming here). I hope this will be helpful for the game. Keep up the good job.

TL;DR: create a system where certain goods are delivered to certain rooms nearby the room that needs them, to cut the tranport (walk) time of those goods short in very large prisons.

[fidelio]

hopefully, since we have the material to make a road, eventually we'll be able to direct the trucks by making roadways to different destinations. this would be when a 'delivery route' would make sense. until you can move the trucks off the one road though, the materials would have to 'warp' to their destination.

[knightofthebroho]

I really want to see several different types of delivery (and garbage for that matter) rooms so that I can have more control over what arrives where. Rooms could be separated into the following groups:
-food
-building materials (and other items used to make things by the workmen)
-sheet metal (and other items for prison labor)
-if medical supplies ever become a thing that gets delivered, a separate room for that

Or what would be more flexible and probably easier to implement would be an ability to select a delivery room and select what types of goods get delivered there. For example, I could select the starting delivery room and turn off food deliveries and create a separate room where I turn off everything but food deliveries so that the two different rooms could could be used for different purposes. This would make an excellent bureaucracy item for the foreman to research.

Also, the ability to set truck routes so that they can be directed off the main road into delivery lanes would allow for some more interesting prison mechanics and allow for the creation of prisons where trucks don't have to wait for other trucks delivering different goods to move out of the way. And road gates that could open and close for trucks to allow a truck to enter an enclosed area so that prisoners can help with the unloading of objects (especially sheet metal) would be a nice addition.

[Lolloler]

hopefully, since we have the material to make a road, eventually we'll be able to direct the trucks by making roadways to different destinations. this would be when a 'delivery route' would make sense. until you can move the trucks off the one road though, the materials would have to 'warp' to their destination.

I really want to see several different types of delivery (and garbage for that matter) rooms so that I can have more control over what arrives where. Rooms could be separated into the following groups:
-food
-building materials (and other items used to make things by the workmen)
-sheet metal (and other items for prison labor)
-if medical supplies ever become a thing that gets delivered, a separate room for that

Both very good ideas! I hope Introversion picks this up for an alpha build in the near future.

[dc4bs]

I'd be happy with just having more efficient workmen...

I am currently fiddling with a large prison that has 128 saw/presses total.

After an 8 hour work shift, the workmen were still unloading sheet metal deliveries FOUR HOURS after all the prisoners headed off to dinner... Ugh.

So 8 workers get assigned to unload a truck. They unload and place the items in the delivery area.

I'd prefer direct delivery but I can easily think of at least one reason they SHOULD work using this behavior (even though it's inefficient). They need to behave this way in case you have less than 8 workers. They would need to make several trips to the truck to unload all of it and let the next truck move in. Once completely unloaded, then they begin to make the deliveries. And so on.

OK, back on topic: The 8 workers then begin to wander off towards the storage area. Woops! They realize they have a job! They run back, grab the metal and head for the empty saws in the shops.

Here's the part that is annoying to me. I have over 20 OTHER workers standing around in the storage area who do nothing while the next truck is waiting to unload. When the 8 workers get back from delivering the metal, they unload the next truck. Is there some limit of no more than 8 workers allowed to unload trucks and deliver supplies at a time? Sometimes I see a worker finish a delivery and return to the storage area allowing another out to help with the trucks.

Wanna build a foundation? Whooho! all 30 workers charge in and build it super quick.
Wanna unload trucks? Suddenly it's a union job. 8 workers and 22 managers on coffee break.

I think the game would be easily playable for large prisons without all the special delivery areas, etc (though I do like some of those ideas) if only the truck unloading/ item delivery inefficiency issues were worked out.