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Prison Architect update brings rehabilitation reforms. Also, tazers

prison architect Introversion Software

You might have been happy with a hopeless prison. Happy to pummel your inmates into submission by cracking their will in solitary confinement. Happy to suppress their freedom of thought with armed guards. And happy to deprive them of dignity with your sniffer dogs. I’m not judging you. Much. But with the latest update to Prison Architect – which Steve said “wait” in his Prison Architect review – you can now run your prison in a whole new way, rehabilitating and reforming your prisoners instead.

Introversion have introduced a number of new features to reform prisoners, instead of simply sending violent offenders to solitary. For a start you can set the prison to rule that any violent outburst from a prisoner results in a week’s therapy with the prison psychologist.

But behavioural therapy is a costly business. You’ll need to pay $200 each time you send a prisoner for a session with the facility’s psychologist and it takes a full course of five sessions for the therapy to be complete. So you’re looking at $1,000 for each prisoner you refer and a full week of sessions. On top of that, it might not do a thing. That’s the risk of running a reform prison.

The therapy, if it does work, doesn’t change the prisoner’s traits. They’re still prone to violence, drug use, and so on but their capacity to cope is increased. Their boiling point increases.

Another big new addition is education. “All prisoners must now complete a workshop safety induction, or a kitchen hygiene program, before they are permitted to work in the workshop and kitchen,” write Introversion. “We felt it was unrealistic that you could just dump 20 brand new prisoners into a dangerous workshop with heavy machinery and have them start stamping out number plates.

“Once prisoners are trained and working in the workshop, you can put the most skilled of them through a carpentry apprenticeship. Once completed these prisoners will be able to make high quality wooden furniture on the new carpenters table. This furniture can be sold for increased profits on the raw materials.”

The reforms extend beyond qualifications and therapy. There are now non-lethal weapons in the armoury, too. “You can now unlock tazers for your armed guards, and eventually issue them to all the guards and dog handlers in your prison. These are non lethal weapons that instantly incapacitate a prisoner without causing any damage, however they can only be fired once before needing a full hour to recharge. Perfect when a prisoner is smashing up his cell, not so great when outnumbered in a riot.”

Here’s the full change list:

= Reform and training programs

You can now run daily programs to train, educate and reform your prisoners

These are administered from the new “Programs” tab in the reports interface

Each program runs during a scheduled time during the day, and costs money per session

Different programs provide different benefits to you and the prisoner

Prisoners may only take part in one program at a time, and may only attend one session in that program per day

Most programs are voluntary. Prisoners will be less likely to volunteer for programs if they are badly treated

Available reform programs:

– Foundation education program

– General Education qualification

– Workshop Safety Induction

– Carpentry Apprenticeship

– Kitchen Safety and Hygiene

– Behavioural Therapy

– Prisoners must now complete the workshop safety / kitchen safety courses before they can work in those rooms

– New : Classroom / School desk / Teacher

You require a functioning classroom before you can begin educating your prisoners

The teacher is an external freelancer who will enter your jail to teach his class, then will leave when done

Some prisoners have more affinity for academic topics than others.

In addition, the level of concentration of your prisoners is a major factor on their chances of success

(Prisoners concentrate best when all of their needs have been taken care of)

– New : Carpenters table

Prisoners who have a natural afinity for practical work can attempt the Carpentry Apprentiship.

If successful they will be able to use the new carpenters table in the workshop

They will use stacks of Wood to produce high quality furniture (currently a high quality wooden bed)

Full production chain : [Gardener] -> Tree -> [Cutdown] -> Logs -> [Saw] -> Wood -> [Carpenters table] -> Furniture

– Behavioural Therapy is run by the prison psychologist

Prisoners are automatically referred to this program if they behave violently within your jail

Prisoners who successfully complete the Behavioural Therapy program are less likely to cause trouble in future

= Prisoner experience

Experience is now being recorded for all prisoners during their stay in your prison

You can view this data by clicking on them to bring up their rap sheet, then click the new “Experience” tab

– Activity : Shows the breakdown of their time within your prison, and what they were doing during that time

– Mood : Shows the amount of time spent in a good / bad / neutral mood. This is a simplification but a useful one.

– Condition : Shows how long the prisoner has been suppressed, injured etc.

– You can also see the progress of their current reform program – their attendance and chance of “passing” the program

– All programs completed are listed at the bottom of this page, showing if they passed of failed the program

= Armoury upgrades

You can now purchase additional weapons and equipment once you have an armoury on site.

Your guards must return to the armoury to pick up their new equipment as you unlock it,

and there is a cost to pay per item equipped.

– Body Armour : Available to all guards, armed guards and dog handlers.

Absorbs 50% of all damage taken, but slows down your guards by 30%

You must pay an additional $100 per guard for body armour.

– Tazers : Available for all Armed Guards.

This is a non lethal weapon which instantly incapacitates the target, without causing any damage.

Can only be fired once, then the battery must recharge before it can be used again (1 hour recharge time)

There is a cost of $400 per tazer to be paid as the armed guards collect their new equipment.

Note: Armed guards will use their shotguns instead as soon as you give the “weapons free” order

– Tazer Rollout : Equips all guards and dog handlers with Tazers as well as your armed guards.

There is a cost of $400 per tazer to be paid as the guards collect their new equipment.

– User Interface scaling

Work continues to make the game scale correctly to any resolution and any size of display

The is now a ‘UI Scale’ override setting to adjust the size of all onscreen elements to your taste

Use the PLUS and MINUS keys to adjust this value in game, or edit it directly in preferences.txt

– The rooms toolbar now shows the number of each room type that already exist

– The fog of war effect is no longer rendered into timelapse videos

– Status effects like Suppression no longer cause such massive drops in walking speed

– Visitation will now come to an end immediately during a riot or a bangup

– You can now build utilities under the road : Electrical cable, Small pipes, Large pipes

– Tweaked the routing system – entities should get stuck on walls much less frequently

– Fixed : Sometimes very small Laundries / Cleaning Cupboards would not show up in the Deployment/Jobs screen,

meaning you could not assign prisoners to them even though they were perfectly valid rooms

– Fixed : Armed guards now (sometimes) shout warnings at inmates before firing,

unless those inmates are attacking staff or about to escape

– Fixed : Face-in-the-game entries are now sorted to the top of the community biographies list

– Fixed : Sun shadows on trees were sometimes rendered much too large

– Fixed : Dogs were unwilling/unable to enter staff only zones

– Fixed : You can no longer build road gates over lakes, or at the edge of the map

– Fixed : Actors no longer get tired (Eg edward, his guards etc)