Laundry with Escape Plans

[Yumakooma]

Hey. After escape plans was first brought forward into the game I decided to sell my old prison and make something new - something hopefully even more successful than my last one was. As you can guess from my hours I'm pretty experienced with all the features the game has had - however there is things I haven't tried yet.

With escape plans I was finding two issues in my new prison, firstly even just a few ropes being made by prisoners was making a huge impact and meaning my cell blocks were only being half filled with clean laundry. Secondly, when new laundry was automatically purchased it was often being delivered to the incorrect laundry room by my staff, meaning my protective or supermax rooms often had dozens of uniforms they did not need stacking up on tables or in the baskets, whereas the laundry room which needed it stayed empty. I couldn't fix that, and any help/solutions to that would be appreciated because as my prison expands there will be more laundry rooms. Issue #1 is probably directly caused by the second issue.

My alternative is making my laundry rooms staff only. I am not sure how viable this is or how many janitors I am going to need but it seems in my brief testing that I would need quite a lot more than I could afford. Does anybody have experience or advice on staff only laundry?

I don't like to make huge forestry or anything like that to make profit, I rely mainly on good budgeting of my staff, grants when I have sold/remade my prisons as well as a small amount of exports being supplemented by a trickle of prisoners arriving each day or sometimes earning parole. Plus days without incident financial bonus, when possible.

Mods active in my game:-
No Size Requirements For Rooms
Buyable Uniforms (has been helpful in the past but not really an ideal solution to my issue)
Cheap Staff Food
Death Row Letter
Snitch Sorter

Thats all, thanks

[Marcuz]

I had a lot of problems with the laundry being staff only, the most annoying being that the janitors won't prioritize distributing the uniforms in the cells, but cleaning the floors. I have given every task related to uniforms in the production file properties of HighPriority. But the job to distribute the uniforms is not there.
When I tested it in a prison with 800 inmates, I had 40 janitors. After going to staff only in the laundry room, I went up to 100 and the inmates were still furious about the need for clean rags.

I wish there was two separate type of staff with the same sprite I don't care. One that will only the jobs related to the laundry, and one related to the cleaning cupboard. That would be the ultimate of mods for me.

[Marcuz]

Or maybe just add a high priority to the lines referred to clean uniform storage in the laundry basket and the distribution itself.

[badAim]

I posted this while ago: https://steamcommunity.com/app/233450/discussions/0/2572002906841741313/
Could not solve the issue. The worst part that I realized after a while was the effect of rainy weather. Rainy days and uniforms being stolen makes the clothing need impossible to fix. There's also some bug (as I said in my thread) I can't figure out which is about the way the unfiroms are distributed (happens when you have more than one laundry).
It's still not fixed I believe.

[Yumakooma]

Thanks for the replies. @Marcuz that is actually a decent idea about Janitors having split duties, some specifically hired for laundry and the others for cleaning. It is a shame that staff only laundry, especially for prisons with 200+ prisoners and beyond, is not really something we can do in a cost-effective way.

@BadAim I did actually read through your thread when I was searching and you seem to be the only other poster who noticed these issues with clothing, so at least we both know we aren't going crazy and this is an actual issue!! Multiple laundry rooms ultimately seems like the biggest part of the issue. I'll play around some more and see if I can manage to improve things... I'd be sure to post again if I find anything useful.

[Marcuz]

Multi Laundry should not be a problem, there's a mod for uniforms, just plop the uniforms in the laundry room with uniforms short supply, technically those uniforms will always remain in the linked cells.
As far as the scape plans, I believe the room itself provides inmates with the cloth contraband, so it should not be deleting uniforms as this happens. You could check this by having an eye on the laundry room that's being used to see if uniforms disappear, im 99% positive that is not the case. But it would be worth testing it.

[badAim]

Prisoners do steal the uniforms from the laundry. You can also see that whenever a rope is found. There's always a new delivery of uniforms right after or at the end of the hour/day.
If you checked the thread I posted, and read carefully through Yummi's post, you'd see that we tested a lot already and just know there is something wrong with how multiple laundries work.
It does not happen every time probably but I have it on my new save as well.
Weather + escape plans on + multiple laundries = huge clothing problems, impossible to fix. And that's just one issue. There is another one with distribution of the uniforms. I am not going to explain that one more time, just go and read if you are interested.
I probably will go and do some simple prisons will all of this and test it out again but since the devs do not give a crap, I will be probably a waste of time.

[Marcuz]

Maybe if you set the timers for Clothing double as they are, the need for it will be halved.

TimeToAction 8640.00
TimeToFailure 8640.00

I just did, will see.

[happyscrub]

Instead of just staff only you can just have on laundry room with just one SEC doing laundry.

[badAim]

Originally posted by Marcuz:

Maybe if you set the timers for Clothing double as they are, the need for it will be halved.

TimeToAction 8640.00
TimeToFailure 8640.00

I just did, will see.

Editing the game values, something set up by the devs or having a mod that fixes something is what you call a workaround. Game is supposed to be working in 100% without the need of those and currently, as I said - I tested a lot and I can say that it does not. At least Yummi who tested some of the stuff knows it too.

Originally posted by happyscrub:

Instead of just staff only you can just have on laundry room with just one SEC doing laundry.

Tested that as well.

[Marcuz]

Well if you don't want to at least do the minimum in order to make the problem a little better is up to you. GL

[MekaDovah]

Originally posted by Marcuz:

Well if you don't want to at least do the minimum in order to make the problem a little better is up to you. GL

Oddly enough, I ended up alleviating the problems I was having with this by...doing nothing. Like, literally nothing.

The walls in my main prison aren't climbable so ropes are not a danger and I noticed if I stopped cleaning up ropes every evening, they'll just hang onto them and seemingly not bother stealing as many clothes because...well they already have a rope.

I wouldn't call this an ideal or perfect solution by a long shot, but in this case it did allow my laundry system to go back to mostly normal. Importing only 2-3 stacks of unifroms a day instead of like, 20.

If you're wondering how my walls are rope proof, they're basically buildings. Two layers of perimeter wall with building foundation inbetween. I even made a test prison to see if they'd climb it and they seemed like they wouldn't even try. I had to rip it down to one layer of wall alone before they would attempt it.

Double layering your outer defenses without the extra building material might also do the trick. I just did it the way I did to slow down diggers.

[Yumakooma]

I decided to revisit my prison and see if anything worked, I haven't tested for too long but -

- I had a table in each of my laundry rooms (my shared, protective, and supermax laundries to be precise)

- All of my stolen laundry was being taken from the shared laundry, so this is where I needed the new ones to be delivered after I found ropes (each rope makes you lose 5 laundry/outfits which are automatically re-ordered to come in an hour or two on the game clock)

- The majority of the time new laundry was delivered they were being taken to the table in my supermax, the most recently build laundry. Occasionally they would go to another, but very rarely.

- I noticed that every time they were being taken by janitors from deliveries they were dropping them off at my tables in laundry. So I removed the tables from my protective and supermax laundry, since they don't 'need' a table there.

- It seems to have forced them to bring new laundry to my shared laundry, exactly where I was needing it.

As I said, not tested for long, but maybe if anybody has this issue is using tables, try removing them from the laundries you do not wish to have them delivered to or doesn't need them so badly. If you have the issue and don't use tables, try placing one... and with luck maybe it will force new laundry deliveries to be taken to that laundry room.