Guards won't man security terminals (CCTV, remote doors) - instead cooks are doing their job?

[www.com.au]

So I have a security station that mans all the remote doors in the prison. During a couple of riots the guards left, so I put the security room as high priority in the deployment screen in the hopes guards would keep manning the CCTV and remote door terminals even during a riot.

Instead what happened is cooks started doing the job instead, so now prisoners aren't getting fed. I've tried restarting the game, restarting steam, firing and rehiring the cook and guards, assigning guards to the area, resetting the priority of the area - everything. Nothing works. If I get rid of all the cooks the guards just don't touch the terminals at all anymore. Then when I rehire cooks they come back to surveilling the prison.

I'm probably not going to be playing prison architect again until I can get this fixed, as this is a several million dollar prison that I spent days planning meticulously and this has just totally killed my interest in the game for the moment.

[www.com.au]

Yeah still no fix for this and absolutely nothing on google. No responses on here so I guess I'll give up for now and hope it's functioning better at a latter patch version.

[liamyangll]

This is just a rough guess (as I've never had this issue) and is entirely my speculation:

Guards only man security terminals if they are available, so during a riot, don't expect any guards to man them unless you have a bunch of them. It is theoretically impossible to change the "priority" of a security room, as then guards will only get stationed there. Only spare guards do that job.

I would suggest hiring more guards until you have at least five to ten guards available at all times. If you have already done this, then I have absolutely no idea. I, unfortunately, do not know why cooks are taking the guards' positions instead.

[www.com.au]

Yeah I do understand what you are saying, I thought the same at first too. Unfortunately though, even with no riot, low risk, and ~30 guards with no job to do, they won't man the terminals if they're free. If I fire all the cooks the terminals will stay unmanned, and there will 5-10 guards just wandering aimlessly around the security room. Then when I rehire more cooks, they run straight to the security room and take over. I've even noticed some helping with construction jobs now.

Maybe my cooks have just had enough and are trying to earn their way out of the kitchen by proving themselves useful?

[BelmontMIA]

I just had this happen to me and came here to see if it happened to anyone else. Check the Job Queue. In my game, cooks are being assigned all kinds of jobs like "Operate Workshop Press" in addition to manning the CCTV and Wire Taps that the guards have now abandoned. All I can remember doing before noticing this was calling guards over to deal with a legendary supermax prisoner, building some outdoor tables, and building a library + assigning prisoners to work in it. Tried what you tried above already as well and it didn't work for me either.

[pukeydwarf]

Often these buggy things seem to fix simply by starting over with the room. If you haven't tried it yet, worth just dezoning the security room and then redesignating it as a security room again. No idea if will work, but takes couple seconds so worth trying.

[MekaDovah]

What happens if you don't assign job priority? Do the guards man the stations then?

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

What happens if you don't assign job priority? Do the guards man the stations then?

They man them by themselves, but something I'm NOT seeing asked by ANYONE is if they have POWER.

[MekaDovah]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

They man them by themselves, but something I'm NOT seeing asked by ANYONE is if they have POWER.

Well, presumably, if they were unpowered - and thus inoperable - that would prevent anyone from using them, including cooks.

Though cooks using those things at all is weird in the first place. Didn't think that could even happen.

[www.com.au]

Yes, the stations have power. As BelmontMIA described, the cooks are doing a range of jobs, including also moving tree logs, dismantling trees, shifting cargo around, and the aforementioned manning the security room.

@pukeydwarf As I wrote in the OP I have already tried assigning/unassigning the area, even firing and rehiring all staff. This appears to be a full on glitch that may have begun with the new patch.

In order to continue I basically just have to hire an extra 30 to 40 cooks and let them continue doing the work like normal. But for now I've given up because like I said I spent days designing this prison and I cba redoing it all.

[fractalgem]

Originally posted by www.com.au:

Yes, the stations have power. As BelmontMIA described, the cooks are doing a range of jobs, including also moving tree logs, dismantling trees, shifting cargo around, and the aforementioned manning the security room.

@pukeydwarf As I wrote in the OP I have already tried assigning/unassigning the area, even firing and rehiring all staff. This appears to be a full on glitch that may have begun with the new patch.

In order to continue I basically just have to hire an extra 30 to 40 cooks and let them continue doing the work like normal. But for now I've given up because like I said I spent days designing this prison and I cba redoing it all.

Your cooks doing that is so bizzare I wonder if you've got a mod that lets them do that.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by fractalgem:

Originally posted by www.com.au:

Yes, the stations have power. As BelmontMIA described, the cooks are doing a range of jobs, including also moving tree logs, dismantling trees, shifting cargo around, and the aforementioned manning the security room.

@pukeydwarf As I wrote in the OP I have already tried assigning/unassigning the area, even firing and rehiring all staff. This appears to be a full on glitch that may have begun with the new patch.

In order to continue I basically just have to hire an extra 30 to 40 cooks and let them continue doing the work like normal. But for now I've given up because like I said I spent days designing this prison and I cba redoing it all.

Your cooks doing that is so bizzare I wonder if you've got a mod that lets them do that.

I would imagine it's the result of an out-of-date mod that isn't fully compatible with the current version.

[Kadzi]

Happened to me literally now as I was reading this, I disabled a load of mods and it suddenly worked. I reckon it was a reform mod, perhaps if you have greater reform / work mod then try deleting that.

[www.com.au]

Good suggestion, but it's a new install on a new (4 month old) laptop. Also, because I have the same issue launching that others are getting with the new patch, I can only launch in safe mode.. which means I actually can't have mods turned on. Soooooooooo not really sure what else to do lol

[www.com.au]

Yeah definitely agreed there.

[www.com.au]

I'll give this a shot soon, hopefully it works! Thankyou