Escape plans won't work well for your prison if you have more than one laundry!

[badAim]

I decided to post this as a warning for those who spend hours on designing prisons and run the game with new Escape Plans option enabled.

I am kinda experienced player, I understand the game and how it works pretty well. Two days ago I ran into a problem with Laundries which is very hard or even impossible to solve.

The issue is about how the new uniforms are distributed over the whole prison complex I believe.

Escape Plans option adds a posibility for prisoners to make ropes from 5 uniforms. They steal them and make a rope. This could result in the lack of uniforms after some time but the devs implemented a solution for this which is obviously resupplying with a new uniforms, once:
- a rope is found
- or once the number of uniforms is just low/not enough.
I do not know which one of those rules is correct, I think the first one or even both and there might be something else - it does not matter.

Everything sounds fine but not when you have a multiple laundries which are zoned for each of the security levels (Low Sec laundry, Med Sec laundry etc.).

The new uniforms are taken only to one laundry. They never go to the other ones unless you make it possible for all security level prisoner to work in that one or make the laundry to work for all the blocks in your prison (which completely makes no sense when you want to use multiple laundires).

I was investigating the issue for more than one hour yesterday and today, looking at the laundry distribution screen, trying default and custom, different combinations to fix the issue with clothing in my prison and all for nothing.

Take a look (almost default laundry distribution assignment): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1439034460 Two Minimum Sec blocks on top (B and C), administration block in the middle (with protective custody security section (A) and Medium Security block (D) on the bottom.

Each block has it's own laundry. Laundry in block D (Med Sec) is the biggest one and it's where they move all the new uniforms. As you can see, there's a lot of janitors and prisoners working there. It never runs out of uniforms.

In the meantime, block B and C (blue, low sec on top) - they have only around 25% of the uniforms that are needed to satisfy everyone. Where's the rest? In the block D (orange).

I also have the feeling that there's just not enough of the uniforms in the whole prison.


As I said, I was trying a different combinations and the one that works the best is this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1439034354 All the laundries are shared and connected with a shared "corridor" on the left where prisoners can move baskets between laundies (rip the whole idea of isolating each sec lev). Also you can see that all laundies are working for each block.

After one day the problem with Clothing was getting smaller but still, remained on kinda high level. Here you can see that there's much more of the uniforms in the Min Sec blocks now but still, not enough, far from perfection. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1439071281 I had a very nice and successful prisons on Update 13 version and older and never ran into problem like this.

I know that it's janitors job to move baskets between security level zones where prisoners can't access, bring them back or even finish delivering uniforms to the cells. It oes not work that well in here unless you connect all the laundies and make them to work like a one huge.

I am 95% sure it's some nasty bug. 5% that I forgot about something silly and obvious but honestly, I think I tried everything.

Btw.
- I know about the uniforms in the holding cell and reception. I tried dumping those as well as most of the uniforms in the whole prison. Restoring the distribution paths back to default, rezoning the laundries - it does not work.
- Prisoners can access the rooms, they are there with status "working" but doing nothing since there's no uniforms.
- Also, worth of mention is that everything was fine before I built the med sec block (D). Min Sec laundries were working fine til then.

TL;DR: This post is just a warning that if you have multiple laundies designated to specific security levels, you might run into problems with lack of the uniforms which will be very hard to fix.

[DingBatz]

I might make my laundry one big room now haha, it'd be a pretty cool distribution setup security wise. I've got around the same number of prisoners as you, but i've got 2 laundries and everyone working at different times (I've never isolated security lvls, just supermax, instead they're isolated w the regime). The third laundry I have is supermax only which will probably cause me security problems with this new update (I'm in it for the challenge tho). I use to have issues similar w clothes not being supplied at all a long time ago (there wasn't enough and it was before the janitors were able to use laundry rooms). Supply gets low > Angry over no clothes > Won't work for fresh clothes....but that was definitely a different cause. I reckon time'll tell w this one, laundries and clothes have always been a pain in the arse tho

[badAim]

Well, to be honest, that was my new prison I was building after selling the old one that was worth over 2 million bucks. I planned to have around 500-600 prisoners.
I kinda lost motivation to play now because of that bug. I was thinking about making one huge laundry but it would be hard with my prison design. I'd have to make one narrow, super long building on the left side, from the top to the bottom so there's access to the building from each block and the route to the cells would not be that long.
I don't really want to do that, I messaged the devs. There's more bugs than just this one and we need a patch, I hope they release one soon.

I remember there was something in the past with distribution of food (could be clothes), that's why they added a possibility to set up it manually, however after this upded it's just broken.

Haven't checked yet but I might mess with the save file, copy just the map with buildings I built, cheat a lil bit by re-adding my current money to the new save and play with no Escape Plans enabled.

[DingBatz]

That's epic! Lol a lot better than how I do in PA. Never been up to $2 Million in value. I've had the same prison for maybe 3 years at least, can't remember exactly (It was when guard dogs were fresh out) but the same prison has lived through a lot of updates (Day 300 coming up), I find myself micromanaging a lot more tho. I stuck with the game through the bugs, even when they were gamebreakingly annoying, a lot of them had a way to workaround or odd fixes in game + patches come at godspeed. Hope it all goes well for you, thanks sharing the warning abt annoying laundry bugs

[badAim]

I am kinda surprised how you were able to run the same prison through all the updates and not encounter any incompatibility bugs, wow.
I am one of those guys who is kinda too lazy to rebuild 50% of the prison and who always want to make a better one even tho the last one was not that bad, lol.

I disabled Escape Plans through the save file and removed ropes from it as well. Also gave someone a little bit of work: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1439293518 Added one zero to 15 and made it 150 dirty uniforms. One dude picked it up, placed on the table and left lmao. Dunno if everything is fixed now, I hope so, we will see.

[MekaDovah]

Hm. My main prison has two laundries and while I have been noticing Escape Plans resulting in a ton of new uniform deliveries every day, I have not yet seen an issue of them all being taken to one side. I will be keeping an eye out for it from now on though so thanks for the heads up.

[badAim]

My laundries (2) worked fine when they were designated for the same sec level. The problem started when I built a third block for med sec block.

Also, after yesterday's tests and attempts to fix it by adding some uniforms, I was hoping the problem will be gone but nah. My prisoners just chill in the laundries, they have everything, baskets, machines etc. and even fresh uniforms ready to be taken to the cells. They just do not work.

I gave up, gonna start a new prison and probably investigate a little bit more. In my opinion, the game assigned baskets/prisoners/uniforms to specific laundy and since they are for different security levels now, prisoners can't find a path to them. Janitors move baskets all around the prison however but still, it does nothing.

The only thing that would work now imo is just making one huge, shared laundry but honestly, that's something I don't want to do.

[MekaDovah]

I see prisoners hang out in my laundry rooms all the time just drifting aimlessly, usually due to a lack of work to go with all the people working there, but it doesn't stop any laundry from getting done. That was before escape plans too.

My main prison as a Prot/Min section and a Med/Max section. Each with their own laundry. Again, haven't noticed a problem...yet.