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[Gabeux]

I must ask, do medium prisoners just not take/have contraband in a15?  I know in a14, low prisoners were quite insistent on taking everything, repeat offenders, despite the multiple punishments.  Quite the tunnelers too...

Something be wrong with my game or is this normal?

Maybe I'm making everybody too happy, but no one tried anything once I fenced off all my prison and managed to satisfy (most) needs.
Rarely, after visits, dogs will sniff out cigs or drugs.

I had medium prisoners at the start, once I was settled they didn't do anything fun, so I changed to MaxSec prisoners and there was the occasionnal brawl at places where guards weren't stationed (had 3 showers and I just left cameras there).
After I stationed guards there too, some quick rare brawls would occur. I changed the food policy (more food/variety) - everything 100% peaceful, except for those new prisoners that may arrive already pissed off.

I think it's mandatory to have metal detectors on entrances to cell areas, so it guarantees that when prisoners go to their cells, they won't have tools or weapons with them.
This was enough to stop digging attempts since the beggining, I think.
One day there was no power for some hours, and a few days later a guy escaped through a tunnel.
Fences could have slowed that down but I forgot to build them at that point 

A screen of my third (first successful) prison. I didn't use the west area because I bought it by accident after I finished it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also - little security science:
Shakedowns: it's funny to start one on work hours, so guards will confiscate the tools people are using to work with as if they were up to something. And doing it every few days (I do it on sleep hours) is useful to prevent digging and nasty fights. On my prison above I'd find only one prison keys and maybe a fork, but it was rare.
Bangups is very useful when fights start and may get into riots. I also experimented leaving maxsecs 3 days in bangups and could maintain control of them, even after releasing them from the bangup. No deaths and riots, at least.
Lockdowns is just bad. Leave it for a some hours and riots will begin quickly, and you'll probably only fix it with riot police.

[Karlito]

Lockdown is what you do when the riot is already under way.

[Grendus]

The tutorial kind of needs work. I had a prison riot that resulted in the death of one of my builders, mostly caused by my not having enough "family" items. It should at least cover the reports menu, prison work, finances, and how to handle riots.

[Knight of Fools]

My guards can't seem to find any contraband in my High Risk prison. Kind of upsetting, since I went through all the trouble of setting up metal detectors and K9 patrols. It gets detected (Dogs bark, detector goes off), they just can't confiscate it and the prisoner gets off scott free.

[Yolan]

Yeah I have found last night that contraband just stopped appearing entirely. I know that they are fiddling with things between official updates, so I am guessing it was a tweaking downwards of contraband that went a bit too far, and they will adjust it again soon. Previously I was having too many forks and spoons stolen, which was stupid considering we wouldn't be giving them metal cutlery in the first place, but no contraband at all is also a bit boring.

Oh yeah. Had my first ever riot also. ;-) Nine casualties. Two of them guards. I had to bring in the riot police and ended up with forty injured prisoners or so. What kicked it off was that I combined two cell blocks into one larger cell block, without expanding the shower. Prisoners are always grumpy in the mornings when I troop them off to the showers (so I can then send them to work), and if they are just standing around all grumpy without a spare shower there is going to be a fight.

Thankfully the rioting was limited to the cell blocks. I have noticed prisoners don't tend to cause that much damage in such areas. Your biggest potential for seriously expensive riot damage seems to be the workshops, or laundry, or such places. Unfortunately after my riot everything was in a bit of a mess, and I left my laundry unsupervised. The next thing I know I had another dead (electrocuted) prisoner on my hands and three ruined washing machines.

It is also a shame that once you have one big riot your prison value is likely to be reduced to nothing. I have had a total of fourteen murders now, and I am in the minus-value zone. Lol.

Another interesting thing that happened was an isolated incident of murder. I made a new building for future use as a cell block, but left the door open and forgot to set it as a no-go area. The next thing I know two prisoners were inside and fighting, and before I could get a guard there in time one killed the other. Ouch. You have to keep your eye on them (my prison is fully maximum sec).

Moving on to some things I would like to see in the future ....

- Shower time wakes up prisoners to take a shower, but once they do they are free to shift to "free time". Having fully clothed prisoners milling around in the showers for half an hour looks stupid.

- Theme Hospital style staff. Individual staff have names and personalities. New hires come from a limited pool that updates now and then. Sometimes if you need to make a lot of hires, you may be pressed to get good quality staff.

- Relationships between individuals. Staff to staff, prisoners to prisoners, staff to prisoners, etc. Positive or negative relationships could impact on a variety of things already in game, or be linked to new features such as smuggling, gangs, murder, etc. Rather than a prisoner person losing their shit and just attacking a person who is nearby, it would be better if they have already developed an enemy. They might kill them in a fit of rage, or they might plan it carefully and do it in cold blood.

- Some kind of "wing" system. Currently I have no choice but to let all of my prisoners mingle in certain large areas like the canteen. I now have seventy max sec prisoners, and if I had a choice I would rather break things down into several, smaller scale canteens so as to make any riots more localised. The game needs to reward smart design more.

- Duty control. If I have one guy who is constantly causing trouble, I want to be able to ban him from work. I also want to be able to say, find a few well behaved prisoners and allow them to work in the kitchens. Also, as far as I know the game currently does not allow you to say, only have minimum sec people working in the workshop etc. The function is partially implemented but not fully yet.

[Knight of Fools]

I typically have my prisoners shower for an hour to wake up, and then go to free time. They take care of unhappy stuff sooner and are happier to work later in the day. I usually split their work shifts into four hour segments so they can take breaks. Maximum security, and no problems so far.

[Aklyon]

Part of the value is days without incident I think, ya? Eventually you might even back out In value, but a sign (staff room furniture perhaps?) that displays that would be more nifty.

[Gabeux]

-post

Ha, I thought about the same features you suggested.
I believe they might add those later on..

Random note: I just finished Uplink, that 2001 hacker game from Introversion.
I played it when I was 15 or so, I didn't understand english very well and gave up when LANs and stuff started to appear.
I remember how awesome I felt when robbing a bank "succesfully" for 1 million credits, and feeling like a pro, then getting busted some hours later. Oh, memories... 90's feels.
Now that I can actually understand everything, I finished the game so quickly it feels weird. Never got detected..
I'm in love with introversion 

[Grendus]

So I'm running into a serious problem with occupancy. After I hit about 24 prisoners, I need to take a few days to get everything locked down, get my income up high enough to build more cell blocs, etc. When I turn occupancy back on, I go from getting 8 prisoners to 18 in one go, and I literally cannot afford to build cells as fast as they keep shoving prisoners on me. Is this normal? A bug?

[BigD145]

Day to day prisoner allotment is different. Just keep trying and building until you hit a lower count or you have space.

[Yolan]

Making money can be a challenge. I recommend using the sell prison function a few times once you get tired of a certain prison, in order to get your starting cash up. With four hundred thousand in the bank or so you can really get the bulk of a nice prison built right at the start. That might sound like it ruins the challenge, but at least you can enjoy the design aspect.

Myself I have gone through quite a few evolutions in my prison design, but I seem to have settled now on something fairly stable that works nicely. It took about seven or eight prisons to get to my current design though.

[Zangi]

So I'm running into a serious problem with occupancy. After I hit about 24 prisoners, I need to take a few days to get everything locked down, get my income up high enough to build more cell blocs, etc. When I turn occupancy back on, I go from getting 8 prisoners to 18 in one go, and I literally cannot afford to build cells as fast as they keep shoving prisoners on me. Is this normal? A bug?

Holding cells are a godsend.  Throw enough beds, tvs and phone booths in there and the only thing they'd complain about is privacy if you got everything else set-up.  Use the rest of that grant money to set-up the license plate maker and maybe the first 15 cell block.  (Minimal approach on that cell block.)  The fun thing is, if people from the cell block get sent to solitary(many infractions get solitary in my set-up, lockdown is weaksauce), someone else from the holding cell gets the vacant cell.  So you end up getting a revolving door type thing.   With that, you can hold a nice number of vagrants.  I find that with normal security, once you get +60 prisoners, roughly 5 prisoners will be released each day, even up to 8.

[Grendus]

Yea, I have it working pretty well now. I have about 50 prisoners revolving through the prison and get about $10k a day in license plates. Once you have a good prison industry going (I have two workshops side by side with maxed out workers) the money comes in pretty quick. Now I just need to get my net worth back up from the murder and escapes I had early in my prison history. Sucks that those don't eventually drop off your record.

[Just Some Guy]

I have this game. I'm not exactly good at it though.

Has anyone here tried modding? I want to try, but I'm afraid I'll mess up the game by extracting the main.dat files wrong.

[forsaken1111]

I have this game. I'm not exactly good at it though.

Has anyone here tried modding? I want to try, but I'm afraid I'll mess up the game by extracting the main.dat files wrong.

Who cares if you mess it up? Just back up the folder and try it. If it breaks, delete and copy.