Cell Quality Grading worth it or not?

[Vektor T]

So I get the basics of how it works: if a prisioner behave good, he get a good cell, if he behave bad, he get a bad cell. It seens fun at first and actually may give you a reason to build different types of cells and give some dynamics to your prison. But I see so many people recommending not to use it... I read AI balance the cell quality to slowly and the prisioners AI dont behave thinking it can move to a better or worse cell, etc. But most post I read about it are one or maybe even two years old, so I don't know if by this point Cell Quality Grading was improved by a patch.

So... any tips?

[RagingRumskullian]

I personally wouldn’t use it because it overcomplicates building cells. Why have to make several different cell designs when you can just make one with it disabled? It will also get in the way if you plan on making luxurious cells for your prisoners, so a prison murderer won’t be able to live in your nicer cell.

[Vektor T]

What I keep thinking is even with the AI problems I listed maybe if I have some nicer cells a prisioners near a parole may be way less likely to ♥♥♥♥ things up, so in the long run it can save me some money. And it would also adds to the game play building different wings for different prisioners with different danger leves. But again... so many people say the system doesn't work or is kinda broken that I don't know if it worths it.

[Valdar]

Don't bother, nothing has changed from what you've read (afaik). Prisoners don't aspire to have better cells, so they don’t modify their behaviour to get one, nor do they act out if they don't get it, so there's really no point. You'll just be wasting space and money.

[jason.goemaat]

Are you saying you're wasting money putting luxuries in their cells at all, or just the mutator?

[MeTaLAnGeR]

I wished prisioners would "aspire" to behave and move to better cells. Isn't a mod for that or could anyone mod it at all? :/
Plus, I find "planning" a prison before hand too difficult, and the different deployment zones also hard to balance out the flow of my prisons. In the end, I build "nice" prisons that start working, but as prisioners come everything goes to ♥♥♥♥ and I just sell the prison out. :/

Any help?

[Vektor T]

Well... I will try it anyway. It kinda become boring or repetitive build the same wings with the same cell over and over again. I want to try some high quality wings with low security to see if they behave better and some crappy wings with crowed cells just to see sh*t hits the fan. If I see my nicier wings dont behave better than that one with my single minuscule cells I may rethink it... but at less I think the overcrowed ones will be a garanteed sh*tstorm!

Also... would be nige if I could have different regimes for different behaviour level... if he behave well, he get a better regime and not only a cell. If he behave bad, he also get a worse regime.

[MekaDovah]

Depends on what you mean by "worth it." Sounds like you're willing to give it a go for the heck of it and to that I say, hope it turns out well for you.

A lot of us find it a nuisance and just uncheck it.

[RagingRumskullian]

The problem is... if you do what you are saying to do, making some nice cells and some not-nice cells, if the cell quality ends up bugging out and you disable it, you would have built all those luxurious wings for nothing.

[Vektor T]

Originally posted by simtom1500:

The problem is... if you do what you are saying to do, making some nice cells and some not-nice cells, if the cell quality ends up bugging out and you disable it, you would have built all those luxurious wings for nothing.

What you mean by "bugging out"? Is there a know problem or just unsure if it works?

[MekaDovah]

Originally posted by simtom1500:

The problem is... if you do what you are saying to do, making some nice cells and some not-nice cells, if the cell quality ends up bugging out and you disable it, you would have built all those luxurious wings for nothing.

True, but that's the risk one takes when trying things like that.

[RagingRumskullian]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

Originally posted by simtom1500:

The problem is... if you do what you are saying to do, making some nice cells and some not-nice cells, if the cell quality ends up bugging out and you disable it, you would have built all those luxurious wings for nothing.

True, but that's the risk one takes when trying things like that.

Good point.

[RagingRumskullian]

Originally posted by Vektor T:

Originally posted by simtom1500:

The problem is... if you do what you are saying to do, making some nice cells and some not-nice cells, if the cell quality ends up bugging out and you disable it, you would have built all those luxurious wings for nothing.

What you mean by "bugging out"? Is there a know problem or just unsure if it works?

I mean if it ends up working out poorly for your prison. "Bugging out" wasn't really a good term for it.

[alan85224]

I use it myself, usually anyway. Depends on the prison. If its a min/med sec prison i dont worry about it too much they dont stay long but in a med/max prison i usually build some zero quality cells, a handful of quality 4 or 5 and a small percentage of 8 or 9 quality. Even if it doesnt make a difference it adds a little "realism" to the game. Makes sense to me anyway.

[Vektor T]

Originally posted by alan85224:

I use it myself, usually anyway. Depends on the prison. If its a min/med sec prison i dont worry about it too much they dont stay long but in a med/max prison i usually build some zero quality cells, a handful of quality 4 or 5 and a small percentage of 8 or 9 quality. Even if it doesnt make a difference it adds a little "realism" to the game. Makes sense to me anyway.

Yeah... I'm doing it mainly for the realism and challenge. Anyway, my proper cell grading prison is almost over. I will have 4 categories of cells:

- High luxury: 32 cell. Individual. All of them level 10.
- Mid luxury: 60 cells. Individual. Level 6-7 (window or not).
- Poor: 126 cells. Individual. Level 3-4 (window or not).*
- Nazi: 6 cells. 20 inmates per cell. Level 0 (not even a window).

It's a total of 338 inmates. I will try to keep it 300 top so the AI have some room to move prisioners around. I will not assign a wing a security level and let the AI handle it. I will aim for 100 inmates of each danger level. High and Mid share jobs and rooms, Poor and Nazi job and rooms, the two groups only come in contact in the Canteen (so my psychos have the oportunity to kill some prison special snowflakes because I'm not all that evil with them).

After every some days I will come back here and share what I found out.

*Poor cells is my old prison with some items added to improve their level. Everything else is brand new. If everything go down I will just sell the prison and start again.

[Vektor T]

Ok, problem nº1: prisioners not being assigned to cells over higher quality than they deserves, so they are left in the holding cell waiting for a proper low quality cell even if there are avaible cells of higher quality.

It sounds kinda good but kinda breakes the system since there is not how to control exactly how much of each prisioner you will have, especially because the Security level doesn't seens to relate to their shirt colour at all, per example I have Maximum Security level prisioners of the three shirts color. I disable it because I had too many prisioners in the Holding Cell. The AI needs to improve.

Alternatively by editing sectors I made sure only low risk prisioners can reach my luxury cells and only high risk prisioners can reach my crap cells, better but still not ideal.