Gang Recruitment Mod?

[Sverd]

So here's the things: I like gangs. I liked the idea of them in development, I like turf wars, I like having to deal with organized prisoners with a complex leadership structure. To get that complex leadership structure, you need gang leaders. And that's all well and good - until you get to gang recruitment.

Obviously, gangs need to recruit to grow and maintain a strong prescence, because the rate of intake means you'll get about ~30 prisoners in a maximum security prison of 200 with gangs. In other words, a mere 15% of the population being gangs. When gang leaders come, they recruit about 30 people a DAY. Since bringing in three gang leaders, my prison has gone from 30 gang members 2 days ago to 80 gang members today. In another few days, the entire prison is going to be gangs.

For pretty obvious reasons, that's unacceptable. A game where literally the entire prison (or most of it) is gangs means that every single time a fight starts, it will immediately turn into a riot across the entire prison. That isn't 'difficult to deal with' - it's downright unplayable, to the point where save editing is needed just to continue playing the game, since you've now got a prison that does no jobs or reform programs and riots when any prisoner - any prisoner at all - becomes unhappy enough to start a fight. Worse still, it's horribly unrealistic. In what prison do gangs make up one hundred percent of the population?

This question's been asked before, and the soltuion has always been the same: Move all gang leaders and lieutenants into private supermax areas so that they can't recruit or do anything. In other words, remove gangs. I could do that - but then what the hell is the point of gangs? If they're so broken that the only way to have them enabled and still have a playable save is to literally remove most of their mechanics, why enable gangs at all?

With all this in mind, my actual question is if there's some way to cap gang recruitment without disabling gangs altogether (i.e. removing all gang leaders from the general population). Ideally, I'd like to find a way to make gang recruitment capped at a certain percent of the prison - as it should have been originally, IMO. Failing that if there's some way to stop gang leaders from recruiting constantly or slow down the rate significantly, I'd appreciate it. If there isn't I'll just disable gangs altogether, because the solution to their broken ass mechanics at the moment seems to be 'disable them'.

[way2co0l_2003]

Really I think your best hope is to compartmentalize your prison. Have entire wings that are self suffecient where they can fulfill their needs without mingling with the rest of the prison. An entire wing might be taken over by a gang, but if you don't have them mingling with the other wings, eatting at different times and things like that then it should minimize it. This way gangs can still exist and even grow to an extent, but it's limited to their section of the prison. I've read that gang members can leave their gangs too, but I'm uncertain what exactly contributes to this. I do wish there was a better way to supress gangs from spreading.

[MekaDovah]

Yeah, unfortunately prevention and containment are the only real options and if you're successful at that, the gang is basically neutralized and thus their presence can feel pointless.

Gang leaders generally being volatile and inevitably getting themselves into trouble did always have the risk that even a small gang could cause a large prison to riot because they drive up the danger level. I've experimented with ways to deal with that without prematurely ending the leader's punishment, such as throwing the entire gang into solitary, but it doesn't really help the risen danger level so that remains a constant issue until the leader's punishment ends.

But yeah it would still be nice to have something a bit more inbetween "nothing" and "mass chaos."

I wonder what gangs would do if they had no access to capturable areas and therefore no reason to engage in turf wars? Would they find other ways to pick fights with each other or would they be neutralized because a key aspect of their routine was removed?

Be kinda nice if gang leaders, while contained away in super max, might still have some sneaky way of working through their members. It would be generally more interesting as well if they did more than just completely take over the prison and then fight everyone else to the death. That was cool at first, but kinda boring the tenth time around. You'd think they'd have other objectives in mind.

[Sverd]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

Yeah, unfortunately prevention and containment are the only real options and if you're successful at that, the gang is basically neutralized and thus their presence can feel pointless.

Gang leaders generally being volatile and inevitably getting themselves into trouble did always have the risk that even a small gang could cause a large prison to riot because they drive up the danger level. I've experimented with ways to deal with that without prematurely ending the leader's punishment, such as throwing the entire gang into solitary, but it doesn't really help the risen danger level so that remains a constant issue until the leader's punishment ends.

But yeah it would still be nice to have something a bit more inbetween "nothing" and "mass chaos."

I wonder what gangs would do if they had no access to capturable areas and therefore no reason to engage in turf wars? Would they find other ways to pick fights with each other or would they be neutralized because a key aspect of their routine was removed?

Be kinda nice if gang leaders, while contained away in super max, might still have some sneaky way of working through their members. It would be generally more interesting as well if they did more than just completely take over the prison and then fight everyone else to the death. That was cool at first, but kinda boring the tenth time around. You'd think they'd have other objectives in mind.

As a note on this: Gangs do fight each other even without gang leaders/lieutenants/turf, the gang leaders just make it organized and purposeful. Occassionally, rival gangs will start fights if there's a few of them in close proximity; if multiple members of one gang are near a lone member of another gang and there's no guards nearby, the larger gang will attempt to murder the smaller gang member. And yeah, my problem is pretty much that I like some gang mechanics a lot (organized leadership structures, turf wars, protectiveness of the gang leaders and lieutenants by soldiers) while others (gang recruitment) make the former mechanics quite literally unusable without ruining your entire save.

This really needs a hotfix, IMO. It seems very poorly thought out - gang mechanics that require gang leaders and lieutenants to be in gen pop or at least a larger wing result in that entire wing being converted in a matter of days, which makes your game unplayable due to the organized nature of gangs.

[MekaDovah]

More like the automatic aspect of it.

Maybe it was never supposed to be too involved, but yeah it does seem to be one of the game's more half-baked ideas. Though I personally generally enjoy having them around, I do admit it's too easy to defang them, but if I didn't they'd ruin everything.

[RagingRumskullian]

This mod has features that can help manage gangs within your prison:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=496092460&searchtext=dev+utility
If you still don't want to use mods, isolate the gang leaders and liutenents to supermax as soon as possible to prevent the gang from getting massive and overly violent. I did that with one prison I built with 1000 prisoners and each gang only ended up having 30-40 members instead of 200.

[Jimbo]

Yes gangs can be a nightmare to deal with, especially if your guards attacks one of their members and then all the rest of them gang up on them. In my opinion I think, is to make gang members gang up on your guards, but ONLY if the leader or lietenants get into a fight with your guards and they see it happen and then step in to help out.

I would also like to see gangs much more organised and much smarter when a riot occurs and attempt to take over the entire prison, such as....

First, all the gang members gather up in one place and then they all head to the armory together (if one is available). This can only happen if theres at least one lietenant around.

Then second, they should take out all the rival gang members all over the prison, and then head for the turfs and wait until the riot guards come to end the riot.