Prisoner Grants

[Sathreyn]

So I've just broken out this game, having not played it in quite some time, and it looks like prisoner grants now give you $150 a day regardless of security level of the prisoner. That really disadvantages max sec prisoners. Does anyone know why the developers did that and if it might change? I'll explain my point below - Skip to the end if you just want my conclusion.

I looked online and found the patch notes for Alpha 30 and, yes, it says that the daily grant is fixed at $150. The trouble, y'see, with that change, is that I'm not sure there's any point in getting max sec prisoners, which sort of takes some of the fun out of the game. Why should I bother building an expensive, extra secure wing to my prison to hold Max Secs when I get the same amount of cash out of medium and min security prisoners and don't need to invest as much money in extra guards?

I do realise that you get a grant on accepting a prisoner which is bigger the higher the security level - At $500 for Med but $1000 for Max - But max sec prisoners are often serving longer terms, ending up with max sec prisoners bringing in less then med sec ones. A med sec prisoner can serve, say, five years of a ten year term and then get shifted out on parole and you bring in a new med sec prisoner for $500 ( $1000 total ) while a max sec prisoner might have a 25 year term and no chance of parole because their reoffending risk is too high. Extrapolating out the med-sec profits, you could get, say, 4 med sec prisoners through ( That's assuming one serves their full term because they can't get parole, or two of them serve 3/4 of their term because their reoffending chance is too high first time, whatever. ) for $2000 in the same stretch of time that you get one max sec prisoner for just $1000. Plus you can get the parole bonus of $3000, which you're far more likely to get with min or med sec prisoners who have lower base chances of reoffending and are less likely to cause trouble in the prison, which would've increased reoffending chance.

So, in conclusion, bringing in min and med sec prisoners earns you more and costs you lest. So what's the point in max sec prisoners, other then a masochistic pursuit of total victory? Because I'm not sure I have the motivation to masochistically pursue total victory just now.

[Frazzledragøn the Trustworthy]

It's not about the game challenging you, it's about you challenging yourself.

Do you select easy mode and only select Min Sec for easy money and no trouble?
Or would you rather go for Max Sec and receive the same, small money for more trouble?

I would be confident to say that a great number of players would simply get bored by just collecting infinite money without any fights happening.

Also it solves the matter of manual security change abuse. Previously you could just let a lot of Min Sec into the prison, change them to Max Sec and receive a higher daily grant.

It honestly isn't even that much of a deal. In the early game you might run into some money troubles, but once you have 50 prisoners and maybe a workshop there's almost nothing you can do to still get into the negatives with just cashflow.

[AlexMBrennan]

So what's the point in max sec prisoners, other then a masochistic pursuit of total victory?

Yes, you'd probably have to have a desire to come up with ways of safely housing more dangerous prisoners instead of simply making easy money to fully enjoy this game. Sandboxy games tend to have this flaw.

If easy money is all you want, you could just set up a huge forestry and make loads of cash having gardeners plant trees, you know.

For what it's worth, I agree - dominant strategies are bad.

[Targa]

The game's not really about making money, since you can fairly easily get to the point of having more money than you can spend. The two previous posts covered it fairly well. For me, I only accept Max Sec inmates, as otherwise the game bores me to tears.