[suggestion] wake-up alarm

[Robbedem]

I want prisoners to wake up and use the toilet in their cell if needed, before going to the shower, yard or canteen.
Or even all stand in line before their cell so the guards can check if all prisoners are present. that would be cool

First i tried to put free time after sleep, so they could get up and use the toilet, but that didn't work since the prisoners just kept sleeping.
My suggestion is to have prisoners wake up when you put something besides sleep/nothing in the regime,
or have another way to wake up your prisoners. (for example have the lights turn on)


What do others think?

[maddguyy]

First i tried to put free time after sleep, so they could get up and use the toilet, but that didn't work since the prisoners just kept sleeping.
What do others think?

It kind of already is an alarm clock, I would assume your prisoners need more sleep, and thats their first need as the time clocks over into the designated 'free time'. I am doing the same, they wake up to 'free time', and do what they need to do before eating for an hour, then they get another 2 hrs of free time to bring up their other 'needs' before work. they get another one in the evening as well.

This ends up having them decide how to help themselves, which is kind of a loophole, but considering the alternative was if I had them say in the canteen before showering, there would be a huge rush of prisoners running into the showers and a riot would break out from the chaos. People that grew frustrated with being in the yard now don't have to be there, only helping calm an otherwise potentially volatile situation.

My suggestion is replacing all your designated time outside of sleeping, working and eating to 'free time' and let them shuffle around the prison sorting themselves out.

[Robbedem]

They didn't need more sleep (they were sleeping for 9h already) but perhaps it has to do with a bug.

I will try putting free time after sleep again, but put everything later in the day. (instead of free time at 7, i'll i'll put it at 9)

EDIT: I did some testing and they do wake-up with free-time at 8h. So it is clearly a bug that they keep sleeping with free time at 7h, even when the total sleeping time is the same.

[xander]

It isn't a bug. It may not be the way that you think that the game should work, but it isn't a bug. Prisoners are only able to sleep between 10 PM and 8 AM (if I recall correctly). If you have sleep in the regime and don't force prisoners to leave their rooms before 8 AM, they will sleep until 8 AM. They may not *need* more sleep, but if you are asleep, you are unlikely to wake up unless something forces you to. In the current model of the game, 8 AM is the thing that forces prisoners to wake up (pretend that this represents the sun coming up, or something).

Again, we can discuss whether or not this is a good implementation (personally, I have no problem with it, but am not overly attached one way or the other), but it isn't a bug.

xander

[Robbedem]

Ah, so thats how it works. If you know it, you can use it, but I don't think it's the right way to do since it restricts regime planning. Certainly when you want to use the same rooms (f.e. yard) for multiple security types at different types of the day (to keep them separated). Which I hope will be implemented later in game.

If there would be a way to set the sleep and wake-up time (which is now 22h - 8h), that would be fine for me. You could call it cell-lights off/on time or something. That way people (like me) won't be confused why prisoners aren't waking up or going to sleep.

[Medu_Salem]

Funny thing... I finally just created a Forum account after playing for several months on several different prisons just because I came across a similar/the same problem.

After having enough of the hell-hole prisons I decided to build one to satisfy as much needs as possible and to prevent prison-fights. So I build the Shower Heads+Drains inside each prisoners' cell. That works fine... they will use it if they have the Hygiene need and whenever they have "Free Time" scheduled. But one thing doesn't work out as good as intented... I'm used to put "Shower" in the Regime as wake-up call for the prisoners... But since I've not designated a room especial as showers some prisoners with a low boiling point start to get angry within the 1 hour they try to shower, but can't because I've put the Shower Heads into their cells. The AI is not smart enough to check if they could shower in their cells during the designated "Shower"-regime.

So I tried setting the "Shower"-hour instead to "Free Time" as well as "Nothing"... both of which didn't work out because the prisoners kept on sleeping until 8:00 or when my wake-up call was "Eating" and then they started to have fights in the Canteen because their hygiene isn't satisfied.

Wouldn't be too bad if there's a similar activity to "Nothing" where they are forced to stay in there cells and are able to perform any action in there but NOT sleep. So they would have their showers (if you placed one in the cell) and use the toilets and try to recreate if possible, but NOT sleep. Wouldn't mind if the "Nothing"-Activity would work this way by default, because if you really wanted them to sleep they can do so during "Free-Time" as well as when you force them to sleep with "Sleep"-Activity. So the "Nothing"-Activity could serve as a wake-up call where the prisoners have to stay in their cells while performing their morning stuff like going to the toilet and so on.

Until that matter is solved I will try to reschedule everything so everything starts later so they get up on their own on 8:00.

[xander]

--==<snip>==--

You misunderstand how the regimes work. This is a common and understandable problem, as it is not really spelled out in the game anywhere. Each "activity" sends prisoners to a given room where they go to fulfill any needs that they can while in that room. Specifically:

• Sleep/Nothing: prisoners go to their cells (this is, essentially, a regime slot that is equivalent to bang-up). Note that they may satisfy their requirement to sleep only if it is night.
• Eat: prisoners are sent to the canteen. Cooks will serve food only during this timeslot, and will work starting about three hours before this timeslot to prepare food.
• Shower: prisoners are sent to the shower.
• Yard: prisoners are sent to the yard.
• Freetime: prisoners are free to go wherever they like.
• Work: prisoners go to whatever room they are assigned to work in. This may be the kitchen, laundry, or workshop if they have been assigned to that room, or it may be the prison at-large if they have been assigned to a cleaning cupboard. Any prisoner that is not assigned to work is on freetime.

What this means is that if you put shower heads in cells, the prisoners can use them only during sleep, freetime, and nothing regime slots. However, if they are asleep, they can't shower. Alternatively, you can create a shower, and send prisoners there when you want them to wake up.

xander

[sherc]

take a showerhead, put a wall next to it, slap a door on it and designate it as a shower ... you do need a bigger cell of course but it will work

[Medu_Salem]

-snip-

Thanks for the explantion, but I mostly know how the other regimes work, I'm not all that new to the game.

I just experimented around with the "Shower"-activity because I've been curious if the AI would choose to use the shower in their cell too - given there's one - or if they only go to a dedicated shower room. So basically yes, turned out they only like to go to the shower room, like you stated.

Wouldn't be too bad when the "Shower"-Activity comes on if they would first check if they could use a shower in their own cell and if not then go to the common shower room. That's more realistic anyways... Would you prefer to use your own shower or to shower with 100 other people? This way they would save much travel time and leave the common shower for prisoners whose cells don't have their own shower heads.

Therefore as a workaround I've begun to create 1x1 showers within the 5x3 cells seperated with a normal door so the room requirements of enclosing for the cells are met... but that's hell of a tedious work if you already have finished 600 cells on a 200*320 map and found out that you've to work around some Regime-limitations, just because the prisoners won't get up from sleep when selecting "Nothing" or "Free Time". To be honest I'm somewhat lazy to do it for all 600 cells...

I would have thought of that beforehand, before cloning the cells, but I never used to put "Free Time" or "Nothing" after "Sleep" so I didn't know that they wouldn't wake up before 8:00.

Probably I will change my Regime to start stuff later, and then they will go later to bed, abusing the 8:00 default wake-up.

Still thinking that it would be better if the "Nothing"-Activity would condemn the prisoners to stay awake in their cells, because they are already able to sleep while "Free Time" if they need to and hard-forced through "Sleep".

[MFWIC]

Well, this explains some things. My usual regime has my prisoners waking up at 3 am to take a shower, breakfast from 4-5, 12 hours of work, two hours of free time, dinner, and then bed, and its always annoyed me that even if i put an hour of free time in before the shower to try to get them to unload they'd stay asleep. I worked around this by putting a row of toilets in the shower room, but it was kind of annoying.

I also tried making cushy cells with private showers in each one but had to rely on free time to get them to shower.. maybe if i give them an hour of lockup now from 8-9 they'll do it.. have to experiment.

[isit]

I remember a long time ago, actually, when I had an old shower that was only 6 heads in a really tiny room, now my cleaning closet. I had built a huge new shower facility for my 56 prisoners or so, but alot of them seemed to cram into my cleaning cupboard to shower since I didn't remove the showerheads when the regime was set to shower. I had the rooms set properly, but I eventually had to remove the shower heads and drains.