Prison Architect Discussion

Dothehustle

wnolan1992 wrote: »

Question: Is there a more efficient way to get people through doors? At the moment my cooks have to go through 4 jail doors to get to the delivery area (door from the kitchen to canteen, canteen to corridor, corridor to outside, then through the main gate of the prison. Each time a guard has to leave where he is to open it up for them, which adds about 5 seconds to each door.

I usually have all doors open bar the front door and have had two guards deployed there. Anyone tries to escape hit the lock down button the guards should catch anyone who gets out

Anyone having trouble trying to make money I have the workshop but only making around 2 grand a day

MiskyBoyy

If you just want to have the craic and make a big ass prison without worrying about money;

You can open your saves folder, open your save file using notepad, hit CTRL + F to open the search box, search for 'FINANCE' and change the number beside it to whatever you want. Then load up your prison and you'll have all the money you want.

You could just give yourself enough to build your prison and then earn money the legit way to keep it running or to add improvements.

gavmcg92

McSasquatch wrote: »

How do you set up patrols for guards? I have deployment enabled through the Bureaucracy screen, and I'm able to drag out paths made of square dots that "should" be their patrol route, but no guards follow it. Do I have to have a guard selected before drawing up the patrol route or what?

Doors separate out areas. There has to guards assigned to the area in order for them to patrol it. You can see this if you go onto deployment and there should be a blue circle symbol in the area. I think you right click to station a guard in that area and left click to unassign.

gavmcg92

Starting a new prison tonight. Have come up with a new plan. I have a 8x4 area in the centre of the map, this is the hub of the prison. Then I have 4 square areas at each corner of that inner hub. The two squares to the left are going to be my two cell blocks. The upper right square is going to be for the kitchen and the canteen (close to the deliveries area) and the lower front square is going to be for everything else (hospital, Offices, power, water laundry, holding cell etc).
Still not sure where I'm going to put the yard. Might do it in-between the two cell blocks.

The whole idea of this plan is to funnel the prisoners through the centre so as to have metal detectors there. Will hopefully prevent a lot of fatalities when I get a big riot :P

wnolan1992

DaLad wrote: »

If you just want to have the craic and make a big ass prison without worrying about money;

You can open your saves folder, open your save file using notepad, hit CTRL + F to open the search box, search for 'FINANCE' and change the number beside it to whatever you want. Then load up your prison and you'll have all the money you want.

You could just give yourself enough to build your prison and then earn money the legit way to keep it running or to add improvements.

I *may* avail of this later...



I just had my first riot. Apparently keeping 8 men locked up in a holding cell isn't a good idea... No deaths, but 2 escapes and 3 people unconscious...

If they'd just waited a day the new cellblock would've been finished...


Lads, the showers... mine keep flooding for some reason. I've more drains than shower heads and it's still flooding every morning...

shaneb92

Whats a good guard to prisoner ratio?

Dothehustle

shaneb92 wrote: »

Whats a good guard to prisoner ratio?

Well so far I have 5 guards and 25 inmates and no riots since the start
i think its more always having guards in the same room and happy inmates

gavmcg92

wnolan1992 wrote: »

Lads, the showers... mine keep flooding for some reason. I've more drains than shower heads and it's still flooding every morning...

You're probably using the drains wrong. You only put them before the door out of the shower. The shower room "floods" when the prisoners are taking a shower but if you have 2 drains in front of the double door to the room then the water is contained.

As for the previous comment about the price. I was reluctant to get it during the sales because I felt like the price should have been dropped further but I'm glad I didn't leave it. It is a great game and well worth the price. You really feel like part of the process playing the game at this early stage. Like when I bought Minecraft when it just went into Beta.

gavmcg92

shaneb92 wrote: »

Whats a good guard to prisoner ratio?

My last prison, before I tore up the cables and pipes causing a riot, I had 8/9 guards and 60/70 prisoners. Could have had less because they were doing little to nothing. I had no fights what so ever and the only point I actively used them was when I saw a prisoner hiding a weapon.

noisenotmusic

Did you guys know you can download a map of Limerick Prison through the Steam Workshop? Nearly died laughing when I found out.

Starts at 09:25

*cough*If someone could send me on the files for it, it'd be appreciated as I have Prison Architect through "other means" than Steam*cough*

SeantheMan

Arrrrr, I not be able to help ya thar matey,
They must have been hard at it to fit a whole city into a mod :P

Elessar

And the price is gone up again! Are discounts ever done on this game apart from the steam sale?

Gummy Panda

Elessar wrote: »

And the price is gone up again! Are discounts ever done on this game apart from the steam sale?

Only during sale. In the community page, people were saying the devs said they set that price to deter people who wouldn't accept it's alpha state, wouldn't provide feedback and would flood the forums with complaint threads.

Not sure how true any of that is

gavmcg92

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Only during sale. In the community page, people were saying the devs said they set that price to deter people who wouldn't accept it's alpha state, wouldn't provide feedback and would flood the forums with complaint threads.

Not sure how true any of that is

shaneb92

One thing about the game is that its hard to get more large amounts of money when your funds are low. Maybe if you could more money if you raise ur cell capacity ? Or would this make it too easy :P

Gummy Panda

gavmcg92 wrote: »

Charming guy lol

Genghiz Cohen

shaneb92 wrote: »

One thing about the game is that its hard to get more large amounts of money when your funds are low. Maybe if you could more money if you raise ur cell capacity ? Or would this make it too easy :P

You could save your grants until you need the money.
But yeah there needs to be grants that scale with your prison.

So like extend your prison to holds 10/20/40/60/100 prisoners.
Create enough jobs to employ 10/20/...
Keep inmate satisfaction high for X days.

That kind of thing.

gavmcg92

shaneb92 wrote: »

One thing about the game is that its hard to get more large amounts of money when your funds are low. Maybe if you could more money if you raise ur cell capacity ? Or would this make it too easy :P

It's all about the workshop really. It takes a couple of hard hours to get a 20 person workshop, but when you do you earn 10 grand a day. For this prison I'm going to have a considerably large area for my workshops. Build them 240 squared blocks each. That's the cap for the workers. (every 12 blocks allows you to add a new worker). So I'm going to have 3 x 240 squared spaces which will allow me to employ 3/4s of the prison there and the rest spread across the kitchen and laundry.

MiskyBoyy

There is a mod for Alpha 11 that gives access to more grants which add more interest & variation to the game whilst giving you access to the funds to improve and expand your prison!

Download here: New Grants Mod

Here is a video showing it:

Wooden Jesus

gavmcg92 wrote: »

It's all about the workshop really. It takes a couple of hard hours to get a 20 person workshop, but when you do you earn 10 grand a day. For this prison I'm going to have a considerably large area for my workshops. Build them 240 squared blocks each. That's the cap for the workers. (every 12 blocks allows you to add a new worker). So I'm going to have 3 x 240 squared spaces which will allow me to employ 3/4s of the prison there and the rest spread across the kitchen and laundry.

Sweatshop architect
How long per day can you make prisoners work before they get angry and stabby?

gavmcg92

Wooden Jesus wrote: »

Sweatshop architect
How long per day can you make prisoners work before they get angry and stabby?

I think I had mine working 5 hours a day and that was fine. Probably could have pushed it to 6. 5 hours sleep, 1/2 hours eating time, an hour to shower and a couple of hours of free time.

wnolan1992

Screw it, I'm just gonna cheat and give myself a million quid starting budget and build the best damn prison in the world! TV's in every cell, jacuzzis, conjugal visits, the odd torture dungeon...

Dothehustle

gavmcg92 wrote: »

I think I had mine working 5 hours a day and that was fine. Probably could have pushed it to 6. 5 hours sleep, 1/2 hours eating time, an hour to shower and a couple of hours of free time.

:o so far I have them working 8 hours a day but I keep changing the regime if needed.. Once you get the workshops up and running it gets very easy to take in money. i get around 10k a day with them working 8 hours a day

oh and if yea don't want you trading cards for prison architect i'll gladly trade yea for them
Does anyone know what the laundery does ???

MiskyBoyy

Dothehustle wrote: »

Does anyone know what the laundry does ???

The prisoners will start to complain about dirty clothes and the orange slowly fades from a darker shade to a lighter shade as they get dirty. If you set up a laundry, this will provide the prisoners with fresh clothes and keep them happy.

You can set them to work in the laundry to do the clothes themselves. The guards also seem to move the laundry baskets sometimes.

wnolan1992

It seems like the max amount of money you can have is $100,000...

I blew through $50,000 just building a basic detention centre! :pac:

MiskyBoyy

wnolan1992 wrote: »

It seems like the max amount of money you can have is $100,000...

I blew through $50,000 just building a basic detention centre! :pac:

No it's not. I gave myself a million like you said you were going to do :P

That prison I wrote the 'boards.ie' in grass on cost $950,000 including labour costs :P

wnolan1992

DaLad wrote: »

No it's not. I gave myself a million like you said you were going to do :P

That prison I wrote the 'boards.ie' in grass on cost $950,000 including labour costs :P

Hmmm... must have another tinker around, maybe I just forgot to put in the extra zero... :P

I did make a balls of it though, I spent a day putting up perimeter walls, and totally forget to stop the arrival of prisoners. So just as I lay the foundations for the main building, a truckload arrive on the scene, and me without a single guard hired yet. :pac:

Luckily, a few guards managed to keep them all in check in the deliveries area and it only took 15 or so hours to build and fit out a place for them.:)



Question: Is it possible to get my guards to patrol different areas at different times other than manually sending them there? For example, when all my prisoners are out in the yard, the guard in the holding cell is just faffing around doing nothing...

gavmcg92

wnolan1992 wrote: »

Question: Is it possible to get my guards to patrol different areas at different times other than manually sending them there? For example, when all my prisoners are out in the yard, the guard in the holding cell is just faffing around doing nothing...

Not yet no. There is a lot of talk in the community about this so I'm not sure if it will be added by the developers or not

Had another problem with foundations on my recent build. For some reason it always seems to be the foundation for the office space that causes me problems. Anyway, thankfully it was at the start.

Have moved onto a new build. Have it all planned out. Here it is.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I have my cell blocks on the left. Think it works out just short of 100 prisoners. 3 workshops in the top right. All max 20 workers. Kitchen/canteen just below that and then all the other gubbins down the bottom right.

Have any of you managed to get riot guards yet? I've seen videos of people using them but for me they say they have yet to be introduced?

wnolan1992

Just FYI, if you go into your saves folder you can get a .png of your "canvas" that shows the whole prison without the UI. (at least it does for a small prison, not sure if it works as well with the large ones, but there's no reason it shouldn't)

Genghiz Cohen

gavmcg92 wrote: »

Have any of you managed to get riot guards yet? I've seen videos of people using them but for me they say they have yet to be introduced?

I got them in the emergency tab.
Quite effective at stomping people into mush.