Overview
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 3×2 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 4×4 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
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 🙁
[link]
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.
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#1
Deliveries room is becoming clogged with staff meals (about 48 stacks of 3). my staff canteens are well stocked already. More keep coming in and I get charged for it every time.
staff (109 total):
— 40 guards
— 20 workers
— 4 Armed Guards
— 6 dogs
— 10 cooks
— 6 orderlies
— 3 docs
— 3 gardeners
— 9 janitors
— 5 farmers
— 1 warden
— 1 chief
— 1 Forman
— 1 phycologist
— 2 psychiatrist
— 1 accountant
ver: the_glasshouse_1.03 pc steam (mar 23 2021) | r5590 B:67
Mods: none
Expansions: — Cleared for transfer
— Psych Ward: wardens edition
— Going Green
other details:
staring new prison after selling previous,
large map, female prisoners, no mutators, gen. forest, gen building, CI inmates, Dynamic Reps, transfers, staff needs, weather and temp, gangs, escape attempts, The ecologist,
attempts to fix:
— deleting all of the meals resulted in most of them being rebought in the form of 6 stacks of 40 (over $2000) this clears up the deliveries, at least temporarily
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Last edited: May 24, 2021
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#2
Just curious, what is your % of staff allowed on break? I find the default value too low and when I allow a higher % of staff to go on break the food doesn’t clog up deliveries as badly.
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#3
Just curious, what is your % of staff allowed on break? I find the default value too low and when I allow a higher % of staff to go on break the food doesn’t clog up deliveries as badly.
it’s at 20%
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#4
adding a third staff canteen helped with this signicantly. Lack of in game feedback on weather or not this was something I needed to do. or just a coincidence.
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#5
Adding multiple staffrooms or canteens creates other issues, cause the AI gets confused or something. My guards who are in Pissed Off status due to food will hoof it to a staffroom on the other end of the prison, instead of walking into the attached staffroom to their security room(fully accessible by staff) that has a serving table full of staff meals, multiple sofas and tables to sit and eat at. And by the time they make their way to the other staffroom they were headed to, their break is over and they stay pissed off. Its aggravating. I was forced to use a centralized staffroom as a result and the staff meals thing is so annoying. I don’t know why they keep coming when the staff serving tables are full and there are 25+ boxes of them in deliveries. I have less than 30 staff members! And also, they keep coming 1 at a time on their own trucks and clog up the street because of it. It is very frustrating.
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#7
This bug seems to have been going on for a long time. (4+ years?)
I do know the latest update actually fixed a very similar nearly six-year-old bug where seeds would always be delivered one bag at a time in trucks and clog the queue.
I’m unsure if the «excessive» amount of food being delivered is actually a bug in of itself, (I dunno how the game calculates how many staff meals you need. Is it total number of staff period? How many staff are hungry? How much space you have to put the food on?) but them coming in trucks like 1 stack at a time doesn’t seem intended.
The Staff Room is an area where the staff members of your prison will go when they begin to tire.
A small green bar, symbolic of a staff member’s energy levels, will slowly diminish the longer a staff member works without rest. When the bar has depleted, a staff member will cease their activity and head to a nearby staff room in order to recover their energy to work again.
Staff Needs[]
This mechanic works slightly different when Staff Needs is enabled. Your staff rooms will hold a lot more importance and relevancy in these circumstances. Staff members will seek to satisfy their rest & comfort needs in a staff room. It would be of benefit to place other Objects in your staff rooms such as pool tables, radios, TVs, toilets and/or even a serving table as staff members who are «On Break» can satisfy more needs this way (e.g. food, bladder/bowels, recreation).
If you have «Temperature & Weather» enabled, it would be wise to place a radiator in your staff rooms too, as to satiate Warmth needs. Also build a Staff Canteen next to the staff room for efficiency, so your staff can eat while off-duty. The staff canteen must be set to staff only in the deployment tab. (If you are short on cash, a viable temporary solution is to simply put a serving table and benches in the Staff Room itself.
Contraband[]
The Staff Room is a source for multiple contraband so it is advised make sure prisoners can’t enter the room by setting it to staff only in the deployment tab.
Tips & Tricks[]
- Build multiple staff rooms around the prison to minimize the distance staff have to travel in order to reach a room; there is no limit on the number of staff rooms you can create.
- Build staff rooms close to areas where you have CCTV & Door Control Systems (Security) as well as other surveillance equipment. When Guards are relieved of duty, they do not need to travel far to recover. Usually, other guards can quickly re-assume surveillance duty.
- You cannot make staff rest, they will go only during their break.
- You can build an infirmary leading through to the staff room (along with security and armoury) so that any injured staff members can be healed before resting.
- It is wise to have a «staff area», in which all staff-related rooms are, minimizing movement times and increasing efficiency. (i.e having Security next to the staff room)
Gallery[]
V • D • E List of Rooms |
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Cells |
Cell • Holding Cell • Solitary • Dormitory • Family Cell • Padded Cell • Padded Holding Cell • Padded Solitary |
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Workmen |
Deliveries • Exports • Forestry • Garbage • Storage |
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Job rooms |
Bakery • Cleaning Cupboard • Kitchen • Laundry • Library • Mail Room • Restaurant • Shop • Workshop |
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Prisoner Rooms |
Canteen • Common Room • Shower• Visitation • Yard • Nursery • Gymnasium |
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Staff Rooms |
Armoury • Kennel • Office • Reception • Staff room • Security |
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Medical |
Infirmary • Morgue |
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Farming |
Vegetable Allotment • Fruit Orchard • Farming Field • Pantry • Flower Garden |
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Other |
Chapel • Classroom • Execution • Meeting Room • Parole Room • Psychiatrist’s Office |
This article contains outdated information. You can help by editing and updating this article with new information if possible. ( Posted: June 2018 Info about dog bowls and staff canteen needed. ) |
7/2022 | The Sneezer |
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Requirements: |
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Improvements: |
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Used by: |
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Contraband: |
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Other Information: |
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This room functions to re-energize your tired Staff members.
If staff needs are enabled, they visit the staff room during their breaks to fulfil various needs. They will rest and sit on sofas, use recreational objects, and they will also eat here if there is no staff canteen nearby and there is a Serving Table in the room.
Energy will recover much more quickly in this room. If staff needs are disabled, the staff will not actually use the objects in the room and will instead walk around until their energy bar is restored.
If staff needs are disabled most Staff members will rest here (Armed Guards and Snipers do so in the Armoury), a central place for the Staff Room keeps walk times short. It’s a good idea to build multi staff room so the distance they travel to a staff room would be reduce and they can get back what they’re doing faster.
Tired staff members will also recover Energy if no staff room is available, although this is a much slower process then, and they won’t restore their full Energy without it.
Staff Canteen[edit | edit source]
If Staff Needs are enabled, staff will also gain the Hunger need. To rectify this, one must build a canteen and designate it as «Staff Only» in the Deployment tab. This will receive regular deliveries of Staff Food (an expensive version of food which is prepared in advance) that staff will go and eat in to satisfy the need.
A kitchen that prepares food for prisoners will not prepare food for staff, so a separate kitchen will be needed to prepare your staff food.
Other staff only zoned areas and rooms[edit | edit source]
If Staff Needs are enabled, staff can make use of any facilities provided by any room or area, as long as it is zoned staff only in Deployment. A common use for this is for «staff toilets», for example if the player wants to build a toilet area with multiple privacy doors (staff rooms cant be zoned under doors).
Gallery[edit | edit source]
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The absolute minimum required for a fully functional and effective staffroom with staff needs off.
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A luxurious staffroom that can provide all the needs of a large amount of staff with staff needs on.
V • D • E List of Rooms |
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Cells |
Cell • Family Cell • Dormitory • Holding Cell • Solitary |
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Prisoner Activities |
Canteen • Kitchen • Shower • Yard • Workshop • Common Room • Laundry • Visitation • Cleaning Cupboard • Classroom • Library • Chapel • Shop • Mail Room • Nursery • Gymnasium |
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Resource Management |
Storage • Deliveries • Garbage • Forestry • Exports • Reception |
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Staff and Administration |
Security • Office • Kennel • Staff Room • Armoury |
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Miscellaneous |
Infirmary • Morgue • Parole Room • Execution |