How do I arm my guards?

[Gold♥Shield]

Just started and it's telling me to deploy armed guards around the prison. I built an armory and everyone piled in for their new armor, but when I assigned armed patrols, the little icon is still grey and it says I have none. I've read previous threads and people were told to arm their guards before assigning patrol routes, but I'm a bit lost on how I manually arm my guards.

[NL_208]

Build an armory from the Rooms menu, then hire armed guards from the Staff menu. If it's not there, make sure you researched the armory.

[Gold♥Shield]

Thanks. I didn't know I had to hire the armed guards. I thought my guards would go equip themselves.

[Russian Sly]

Those are different kind of guards. Makes sense, since they carry firearms and therefore require more training.
But you are actually able to arm your regular guards with tazers if you research tazer rollout and put up a program educating your guards on use of such deadly weaponry. If they pass - they will go to armory and arm themselves with one.

[Gold♥Shield]

I'll probably just ask all my random newbie questions here rather than make 25 different topics a week.

I researched snipers but I can't find where to build my guard towers. Where do I get guard towers?

Also, is there any way to speed up putting inmates through workshops? Maybe better room layout or more objects in the room?

[Russian Sly]

I think it is materials for snipers, not entirely sure though.
Search for "tower".

No, not really.
You can try having multiple work hours and setting up multiple programs per day.
But no real need for that - most prisoners are going to stay for quite a while and you accumulate a workforce fairly quick.

[Kunovega]

in the items menu, hit the plus sign and expand your items list to display everything. sniper tower is down near the bottom somewhere

[Gold♥Shield]

Oh damn. Thanks a lot. Playing at 2k resolution makes the UI rather small and I didn't even see that little plus sign.

[Gold♥Shield]

So what's up with the fog of war. Sometimes it will reveal a room when prisoners or staff are inside and sometimes it will just go dark. I have lights and a power source and in some instances, I even have windows but it seems to randomly go dark on me.

What am I missing here?

[Jet City Gambler]

If you don't have any CCTVs, the guards have an area of awareness that illuminates cells within their range. I don't think staff counts, just guards. Put some cameras in there, they're cheap and one guard can monitor 8 at once.

[Russian Sly]

Windows help too. I, myself, often build low-priority rooms like Mailroom, Library and whatnot adjasent to security room (which is always populated by at least two guards) and put windows in walls between them, thus ensuring vision of said rooms.

[Gold♥Shield]

For the CCTVs, why do I need a return wire on some and others I don't? I've connected a camer with a single wire and the wire stayed blue and the camera inactive for two whole days until I connected a second wire to the camera. Others I've set a single cable between the camera and monitor and it turned red/active instantly.

[Frazzledragøn the Trustworthy]

You need to connect from monitor to camera.

[Russian Sly]

^Because that makes sense for whatever reason, yes.

[Gold♥Shield]

Thanks. My monitor system looked like a spiderweb until I cleared the connections and made them properly. The campaign was fun since it gave us little scenarios to play out as it reminded me of old Sim City scenarios for the SNES.

Are there any other scenario type maps/campaigns to play? I saw we can download other people's creations, but I was wondering if there was a specific way to locate maps with objectives. I don't mind building my own prison just to build it, but it's not necessarily my cup of tea.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Gold♥Shield:

For the CCTVs, why do I need a return wire on some and others I don't? I've connected a camer with a single wire and the wire stayed blue and the camera inactive for two whole days until I connected a second wire to the camera. Others I've set a single cable between the camera and monitor and it turned red/active instantly.

You don't need a return wire. All CCTV connections are from the monitor out to the camera

Hold down shift to make multiple connections at once (and they won't show up while you are paused ~ you can make them while paused, but they won't show up until you unpause)

If you have more than 8 cameras connected to a station it will rotate which ones are being viewed (wire color changes will show this)

Also they won't show up as viewed unless a guard is actually at the station, if the gaurds walked away none of the wires will be lit up until another comes to work there. So even if you've done it correctly nothings going to light up when the station isn't manned

Fog of war is pretty easy to figure out, either a camera has to be viewing the area (while it's connected properly and has a guard at the station) or a guard needs to be in the area and able to see the location (they can see through windows and jail doors, but not walls)

Workers will not report on prisoners, so they do not dispel fog of war