Assigning Cells - Some mechanics of this game confound me.

You designate an area as Min Sec, but the game doesn't bother to assign Min Sec prisoners to the Min Sec area (except the odd few), not even newcomers to the prison. Instead it seems you have to tediously, manually go through a clunky list of prisoners, and force them to move to a new cell... one by one. And then, sometimes after doing this they are arbitrarily moved out of that cell and back into the rest of the population again. AHHH. Why!? Stop being a dick, Prison Architect. I am trying to use the tools you give me to do the things you'd expect them to do.

What? Honestly, you're overcomplicating something there. Sure enough, PA has a wide range of issues; from poor optimization to algorithmic problems to UI issues and everything in between. But, having to manually assign prisoners to a cell? No.

The thing is, particularly about mixing security levels -- You have to be very specific about it. So, as opposed to just everything being Shared, if you have just 1 security level in your prison you'd completely stop using Shared if you have multiple levels present. Just be literal about it, tell PA exactly what level you want where and avoid using Shared areas.

And, additionally... ignore the Cell Quality mechanic, completely. Not only is it somewhat broken or at least not entirely working as one would expect, it is also a completely pointless mechanic. Because it's in reverse of what logic would dictate. Prisoners behaving badly because they're in shitty cells? I'd have imagined that the other way around, prisoners behaving better in hopes of landing a better cell.

Personally, I've just decided to always have every cell at the exact same level and I'm not experiencing any issues such as the first one you're describing.

Regarding the second one -- How many prisoners is a Federal Witness event? I've seen it go as high as 9. That's not so much work. And you can make it easier on yourself by installing Phone Taps and using Visitation Booths instead of Visitor Tables and also Phone Tapping those. Lots of information there. No need to completely rely on CIs. Although, you would indeed need that CI tab to actually find the Witnesses. It's an Event, you're not supposed to automatically sail through it.

You're not automatically going to sail through the Subsidence event either; or the Outbreak event. Or any of them. If they bother you so much, disable them.

/r/prisonarchitect Thread