How to fix the most common user error (design flaws etc) (mostly beginners)

This guide will provide the most common solutions when you get stuck somewhere and dont know what is false on your prisons.

im already working at this guide.

(screenshots will follow soon)

Prison Architect dont start

In this case i only can give general tipps, as im not such good in technical staff

but here the most common solutions

1. Check out if you have the latest drivers for your graphic card
2. Turn off streaming software, espacially play.tv seems to cause troubles
3. Verify installation via steam
4. Try to start without mods (for example in safe mode)

Cells/dormitories/holding cells not enclosed/working

Lots of beginners have problems zoning cells correctly.

To create a valid cell/dormitory you have to build following:

• You need a minimum size of 3x2 squares (if not small cells researched by lawyer) (this minimum counts also for dormitories)
  
• Your cell has to be complete surrounded by walls and doors
  
• You need a bed/bunkbed and toilet, Bunkbed only works for domitories
  
• It has to be indoor.
  
• on dormitories you need 4 squares per prisoner, except the minimum sized dorm, they can hold 2 prisons.

Now the most common user errors:

You've zoned the door also as cell
You've zoned not the complete cell (most likely showers are zoned as extra rooms)
You've zoned the entire cell block as one single cell

Screenshot of false zoned cells:

Screenshot of correct zoned cells

notes/hints/secrets

To unzone an area, you have to open the room menu. Then you can drag with your right mouse key to unzone the rooms.
You should build an indoor hallway in front of your cells, to connect several cells to a cell block.

prisoners are not escorted to cells/reception

This issue has several common user errors.

1. Not or false zoned cells:

To check this, please read the section above

2. No or to less available guards


The guards prioritize some jobs over others. The priority of the guard jobs is in following order: Resting, Utilities (CCTV-Monitor, Door Control, Phone Taps), guard patrols, guard station and at the last point escorting prisoners. So if you assign more guards to those jobs, than you guards have, no prisoner will be escorted anywhere. As lots of guards are also resting, i recommend to hire about 20% more guards, than you have jobs.

3. You have no/to less solitary cells

Sometimes your prisoners smuggel in contrabant in your prison. If you build an reception, every prisoner will be searched before entering your prison. If the guards find the contrabant, the prisoner will get punished to solitary. A solitary is just a room with a door. If you want you can also add things for satisfy the needs of the prisoners. But if you have no solitaries, the prisoners can sentence their punishment

4. Female prison - You have no/to less family cells

If You build a female prison, you get by chance some mothers with babies. This mothers needs family cells. A family cell is a 4x4 room, it needs a crib, toilet and bed. You can see if a prisoner is a mother, if you zoom in. A mother holds a small baby in her arms

5. Issues with mods

Sometimes a mod also can cause this issue


Known Mods causing this issue (incomplete)

Mod name	Date found	fixed
Clearer Needs Icons	07.07.2016	fixed at 10.07.2016, beware of copies
Cramped Rooms	19.07.2016
Canteen Tweak	21.07.2016
Extra Stuff Mod by Fishbus	23.07.2016

food logistic (canteen/kitchen/cells)

There are several you can produce with your food logistic. First you should look exactly whats wrong. There are a few different problems.

a) no canteens accessable by this cell
b) no canteens accesable by this kitchen
c) i can assign just one canteen to a kitchen
d) prisoners are in canteen and but refuse to eat



a) no canteens accesable by this cell

this is a pathing issue. The game cant find a valid route, for your prisoners to reach the destination. In most cases your prison isnt secure. So the prisoner would have to pass an area where there are no secure doors/fences between this area and edge of the map. So your prisoners simply could run away. To prevent this, the prisoners arent allowed to cross this area.

Just wood doors makes an area unsafe, as everybody can open it.

Another thing is, that you set a staff only or another security level between the cell block and the canteen, or the canteen itself doesnt meet the security level of the cell block

Also you could have misconfiguration in food logistic tab. You have to connect a cell block to the canteen. with a right click at the cell block, you can set the canteen deployment again to automatic. In most cases the automatic solution works, only change it, if you are sure what you are doing. If you havent research food logistic, there cant be errors in that.


b) no canteens accessable by this kitchen

This issue is to 95% a mod issue. There are several outdated mods in the workshop, that copied the canteen definition of an old Prison Architect version, that dont work anymore. With the update of female prison, they added a property DiningArea to the definition of the canteen in the materials.txt

for Mod Authors:

old definition:

BEGIN Room       
    Name                 Canteen  
    BEGIN Requirement Type Indoor  END
    BEGIN Requirement Type Object  Id ServingTable  END
    BEGIN Requirement Type Object  Id Table END
    BEGIN Requirement Type Object  Id Bench END
    BEGIN LikelyObject	Id		ServingTable	END
    BEGIN LikelyObject	Id		Bench			END
    BEGIN LikelyObject  Id      Table           END
    BEGIN Contraband    Id      Fork            END
    BEGIN Contraband    Id      Spoon           END
END

new definition

BEGIN Room       
    Name                 Canteen  
    BEGIN Requirement Type Indoor  END
    BEGIN Requirement Type Object  Id ServingTable  END
    BEGIN Requirement Type Object  Id Table END
    BEGIN Requirement Type Object  Id Bench END
    BEGIN LikelyObject	Id		ServingTable	END
    BEGIN LikelyObject	Id		Bench			END
    BEGIN LikelyObject  Id      Table           END
    BEGIN Contraband    Id      Fork            END
    BEGIN Contraband    Id      Spoon           END
    Property  DiningArea
END

in 5% of the cases, there is really no canteen availabe. This happens if you really have no canteens, or every canteen has already assigned to a kitchen. then you can select the kitchen and assign it manually, or set everything to auto again (right click in kitchen).

c) only 1 canteen can be assign to a kitchen

This is a simply user error. You have to hold the shift key, to assign multiple canteens to a kitchen.

hint: you also could assign multiple kitchen to 1 canteen, if you assign them manually

List of mods:

d) prisoners refuse to eat

This issue can have to reason:

Most likely your serving tables have no trays. This happens most likely if you have to less sinks. Also you should hire enough cooks, so that your cooks have time to clean up. if you have weather enabled, you should connect your sinks to cold and hot water. The hot water will give the sinks a boost of factor 2.

Sometimes it also happens, that the trays are transportet to the false kitchen and from there get to the false canteen. to fix this, you simply can dump some food trays. (my devtool mod, also can delete all food trays at once, so that the food tray logistic gets a full recet by the next hour)

The old version of the Clearer Need Mod does cause that the prisoners dont satisfy any needs. Make sure, that you will use the latest Version of the original Author. (there are some outdated clones in the workshop :(

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=208679449

Reform program doesnt work / Parole issues

Well this also can have several issue:

You need a block of 3 hours of worktime for your education programs. Check out your schedule

Prisoners need unlimited access to the room.

Your prisoners may not be suppressed by armed guard, snipers, punishment.

Your prisoners should be wel feed with a high quality/high quantity meal. Punishments and Meal Quality can be setup within your policies tabs. To access this, you have to research it by your warden.

Parole rooms need always seperate rooms. multiple tables in one Parole room dont work.

Power generator dont work

Well, a power generator in vanilla only uses capacitators at the next field to it. So a power station can hold 16 capacitators.

If you need more power, your power grids have to be seperated with each other, either with no connection or a power switch that is set to off.

[RedCloud53]

Whenever i start a program it just says: "ALL ROOM BOOKED" What does this mean?

[Shelby]

o'k

[Yaboisboi]

Would you happen to know why some rooms just never seem to be accesssed at all by prisoners? I notice sometimes for an unknown reason prisioners just wont enter commonrooms/librarys/classrooms. Is there a maximum distance to a cell that rooms can be or something?

[Anthracite]

look, no offence, but the grammar and spelling are all over the place... If english isn't your native language I get that, but many of these things could just be avoided by reading through it once or twice before you post everything. For example, in the power part you spelt switch correctly in the text but not in the image.

[Firestorm🗿]

Turns out some of those "not used capacitors where being used

[Firestorm🗿]

OH NVM I FIXED IT

[Firestorm🗿]

THIS POWER FIX BROKE MY PRISON

[Ruinfire Akharr]

finally i know why the doors never close i thought the game was broken thank you for this guide

[JoshuaCF]

This may come off as offensive, but I can hardly understand this guide. It's all messed up. I understood it enough though to get the power one, which is rather useful to know. Shame I had to reset my PC so my big 500k starting money prison is gone.

[Iced Lenin]

Can you add in how foundations are properly built? I used to overlap foundation while building so I would have to frantically replace the walls the restore function to other rooms, when All I had to do was just build beside the existing building