Cell grades

[Kitty]

I've always made my prisons with exactly the same cells for everyone. So was wondering: does it really matter if you follow the cell grades and make different ones or not?
Does it change the prisoners behavior alot? Do they riot/fight/misbehave less if they get a higher grade cell?
And how do you do this? Do you just keep a several different higher graded cells free for prisoners that are being nice or can you give them all a bigger cell to start with and just add more luxury items if they get to upgrade?

[lissa_981]

It can make quite differnce, if implemented correctly, but it can be a bit tricky to get right. SO the basics go likt this: As prisoners acculate more days w/o incendent they are intitled to a better cell, at the point that that cell becomes graded better then average you will see a reluctence to get into trouble (and as such lose thier nicer cells) they will definatly be less likly to riot or attack gaurds if thier needs are unmet. It was the only way to successfuly contain max sec prisoners in my no canteen prototype prisonl.. interesting expariment but I digress..

As to how tro make it work effectively, 1) you must have a good variey of cell grades, 2) Enough free gaurds to make the nessecary prisoner moves, 3) Use dorms for 'resets' (where prisoners can go post issues) NOT HOLDING CELLS -just say no to them they F*^k everything up. 3) enough prisoners paroled/geting into trouble to keep a steady flow of cells to be available.. too many cells open at once causes issues, I find anything less then 100 prosioners is not effective.

Here's my layout:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=678063862
its 5 3's, 3 5's, 2 7's and 1 9 on either side, and a 100 person dorm on the bottom.
BTW it's just the correct amount of squares wide to run hot water through it all if you so desire.

[belzebot]

Cell grades are broken. In my prison I have several prisoners who are "entitled" to grade 10 yet rot away in grade 2 cells while I have empty grade 5s available. In the meantime, other prisoners are stuck in the holding cell because all the available cells are too good for them...

I like the idea but really, how much thought was put into coding this?

[lissa_981]

There have been a few uptades and patches released to assist with this, but ther eiss also an option to disable it if you don't want to bother. I know this a common issue others have (I did too in the begining) so I am going to attempt to mention a few things that made the cycling go smoother for me.

1) plenty of gards free and some assigned to each cell section. Moving prisoners from cell to cell is a very low priority job, and gaurds won't do it if they have anything else that needs done. Also set all punishments to soolitery for quick turn around/ reassigning.

2) having large quanities of cells with out prisoners and prisoners with out cells messes with the AI's auto assign features. After Shake down/ mass escape attempts things can get kind of schetchy in very large prisons as there are just so many options. It works best with a continous stream of a few cells to a few prisoners, so try and automate the finding of contraband with smart patroling dogs and metal detector placements. That and a robust paroling system should get you a good variety of cells to choose from.

3) Time, and quanity of prisoners: It takes a bit for the system to settle out. I find that about 10-15 days into a new sec lvl (with atl least 100 prisoners-that seems the minumun number for it to work well, but the more you have the better (been runnning approx 600 per in my current prisons and it's workering very well)

The system IS helpful and DOES curb bad inmate behavior, Most noticably in inmates with the volitile trait. I have some that go almost a week between meltdown do to nice cells. The Extrealy are still a bit problematic, but they are ment to be, and they still often go 3 days in between freakouts. I belive they are coded to spoil for fights every day with out the deterent bonus.