Overview
Do you want to build an impossible escape mode prison but don’t want to be cheesy like all the other badly made escape mode prisons? Do you want to contribute to the community a valuable and well made piece of work that others will enjoy playing? Are you an escape mode player that is tired of all of the other mediocrity on steam? If that is the case well than do I have a guide for you! This guide will help give a better understanding of what a difficult and well made escape mode prison should look like.*As I play more escape mode I will add more comments in the bottom section of new things I have learned/noticed.
Getting started…..
This guide is strictly for difficult escape mode prisons. There are no shortage of easy prisons on steam and you don’t need a guide to make one. This is a general guide giving basic tips. A proper understanding of the game and its mechanics are going to be necessary as well. I can only cover so much and I won’t be able to hit everything.
To build a proper escape mode prison you need to understand escape mode. Just because your prison is successful and no one has ever escaped doesn’t mean it will be hard for escape mode. To get a better understanding you should play a decent amount of escape mode. Learn the different methods of escaping. Once you are decent at escape mode you can better test your own prison yourself. You should always test your own prison before posting it. Especially if you are going to label it as a hard/difficult prison.
Here is a guide made by another escape mode player that covers an introduction to playing escape mode- [link] Also this guide in itself can help you become a better escape mode player as you better understand escape mode prison designs.
Building your prison.
So you understand the basics of escape mode and how players will try to escape. To reduce possibilities of easy escape you need to design your entire prison around that (without being too cheesy but I will cover that later). The ways people commonly try to escape are, tunneling, fighting/rioting, burning, and cheesing. So you have to keep those in mind as the prison is built.
Start off with your outer walls, perimeter walls are pretty essential as they take quite some time to dig through. 2+ perimeter walls will deter most players from attempting to dig to freedom as it is quite boring and time consuming. Perimeter walls are also immune to fire. They are essential in my opinion for a good prison. Reduce your entrances as much as possible. One entrance is the easiest as you reduce the amount of heavy security needed to one point.
Now for the prison layout, you want to build your prisoner facilities and housing as far from the front entrance as possible. Make them run as far as possible to get to the exit. It will buy your guards more time to stop their escape attempts. Include vital facilities, like a workshop, visitation, and the basics. You shouldn’t restrict access to weapons/facilities. You will need to be able to stop their escapes even when they have firearms. Still put metal detectors and the like on those buildings. Atleast give your guards a chance to catch them.
Try to put your armory and staff rooms well away from the prison side. Sounds silly as well but I have been in multiple “hard/impossible” prisons where I was able to run into the armory and cause absolute havoc. Don’t give prisoners easy access and keep roaming snipers away from the prison population.
Not my prison just a basic example of a setup, not necessarily a good escape mode prison design.
Making it difficult
So you have a good design going. Now you need to make it hard to escape from. Fire and tunneling risks are reduced by those perimeter walls. So you need to prevent cheese and fighting their ways out. Cheese is just walking out or abusing a small loophole in your prison. Best way to check for this is to test your prison multiple times. In deployment make sure to make all outdoor areas staff only. Mark all areas near the entrance staff only. Mark all staff buildings staff only. A lot of this sounds obvious but it is one of the most common mistakes and honestly one of the main ways I escape from prisons sadly.
So your deployment is good. Staff only in all the vital spots. Now time for guard placements. This is where an escape mode prison largely starts to differ from a standard prison. Who cares if prisoner infighting is happening? You aren’t trying to run a clean prison you are trying to prevent escapes. You can concentrate the majority of your guards near the weak points of your prison (the entrance). Have enough wandering the rest of your prison to open doors and the like but you really don’t need to stuff every building with guards.
Armed guards are essential, especially near the entrance and outside areas. A full rep prisoner can outrun and outfight any guard so you need range to take them down. Multiple patrolling armed guards near the entrance will act as a proper barrier that will require a larger fighting force to break through. I focus most of my armed guards on staff restricted areas and the entrance. Regular guards and prisoners can get killed in other parts of the prison. Make them work to get ahold of a shotgun. Armed guards that patrol near cells will get their shotguns taken and stashed in toilets. Than a whole gang will attempt to escape armed with a dozen shotguns and the rage of a 1000 suns. You don’t want to just hand that to them.
Snipers are one of your greatest weapons against a run for freedom. Prisoners can’t outrun them. Although they can hide behind walls and some objects to avoid being taken out by them. Placing sniper towers in strategic positions is essential to preventing escapes. Snipers need open ground to work properly if near walls or objects a prisoner can break line of sight and reset the time for the sniper to take a shot. Tight sniper corridors are made ineffective because of this. The more open ground someone has to cover the more time the sniper has to work with. Sniper rifles are also incredibly powerful weapons for prisoners as well. Try to make sure all break rooms and armories are well away from your prisoners. Making your sniper walk alongside prisoners is practically giving them a rifle to play with. Snipers can be shot out of towers. A shotgun takes a couple shots and needs to be close but if the player has a rifle they can do it safely at a range.
Now for snipers best friend. Snipers need time to work and one thing will give them lots of that. Sand, sand in outdoor areas that people will attempt to run away in. It will reduce the efficiency of your workforce but you don’t need to worry about that. If a prisoner can’t dodge and run as fast they are much less likely to avoid being wiped out by snipers. It is one of the least used tools and I highly recommend you make use of it.
A proper escape mode prison. Avoiding the cheese (or abusing it)
There is a balance of how cheesy to make your prison. Everyone has different standards for what is cheesy and what isn’t. Cheese has a broad definition but roughly it is abusing a mechanic that vanilla prisons wouldn’t use. I absolutely despise excessive use of cheesy tactics as it is lazy and anyone can do it. Anyone can build a single cell prison with 50 armed guards and 30 solitary doors to get to some outside hellhole surrounded by snipers
In my opinion this is what I think is a well made escape mode prison, something that shows the designer isn’t being lazy. A prison that is somewhat functional, it doesn’t need to be efficient but it has to function close to a standard prison. A prison that has more prisoners than guards. One that functions right after subscribing and isn’t problematic due to zoning, moding, or events.
With that being said I will list some cheesy tactics that are abused in escape mode. Some are acceptable in moderation but abuse of multiple just makes for a bad time.
-More guards than prisoners. Should be obvious yeah? What prison would have more guards than prisoners it isn’t practical.
-Using water around 99% of prison. I am not a fan of water prisons, since you can’t swim it is a barrier you can’t pass. It gives the players less options to play with even if you have 5 perimeter walls atleast the player has the option to dig out still. * I have become a bigger fan of water prisons as tunneling out is quite easy even with multiple perimeter walls. It is optional still but sadly the AI doesn’t counter tunneling well on its own.
-Sniper tower spam/sniper corridor. I am guilty of this one in my most recent prison. It is brutal and really hard to counter if the rest of your prison is designed well.
-Leaving out vital facilities. Building a prison without a workshop, visitation, etc… You reduce access to melee weapons which is annoying. Makes the prison not really functional and leaves out a lot of “fun” tools.
-Permanent lockdown. Also kinda obvious, preventing prisoners from moving freely isn’t a feature of a functioning prison.
-Unlimited funding. I don’t fully agree with this one as it is very time consuming to build a strictly escape mode prison the legit way. Although it is easily abused that is always a concern.
This is my “impossible” prison. It abused unlimited funding and a sniper corridor. In hindsight it is kinda cheesy and I would reduce the snipers. Was able to crack it by tunneling out fairly easily. Made a new updated version with a ring of water to try to prevent tunneling.
Make it functioning upon download.
This is a big one. Test your prison before and after submitting it to steam! Make sure it is fully functioning, no lockdown, enough open cells for new intake, no massive bus/truck buildup, no mods limiting play, no event making it go haywire. The worst is when someone uploads a prison specifically titled for escape mode and it isn’t ready to go for the average player. If you are going to put in the time and effort make it functional.
Try to make the time from spawning to getting to your cell as fast as possible. You don’t need a reception room in escape mode prisons. It just adds time and requires extra staff. It is boring to sit in shackles so let the player get to playing!
Edit added tips and tricks realized during additional play.
Snipers are an essential part of preventing escapes. Snipers in tight corridors are less effective and are easier to dodge away from. If a sniper is shot out of a tower they can not be replaced until their body is removed from the tower. If the prisoner gets ahold of a ranged weapon and can disable snipers this will make escaping much easier.
Tunneling is hard to counter without use of water or preventing access to tools. Even with water someone determined can still tunnel through the main entrance and make a run for it. Sadly there are very few options to prevent tunneling otherwise. It is up to you how you want to try to prevent tunneling.
Only so many guards can aggro on a prisoner at one time. This is why spamming tons of guards doesn’t make a prison harder.
Keep cells of any type, holding, regular, dormitory, as far from snipers and the exit as possible. Weapons can be reloaded by stashing them in a toilet/bed and than reequiping it. Letting someone reload near a critical point or stash an important weapon will make it easier to escape. The object has to be in some type of cell for someone to stash something in it.
Useless things, barbed wire, reception, and dogs (mostly). I find all of them to be a waste, barbed wire and the reception room don’t do any good in escape mode and dog handlers typically do little against a leveled prisoner. They don’t typically detect tunnels and any decent escape mode prisoner will save scum in case they do get discovered. An extra tazer or shotgun is more effective vs a leveled prisoner.
This can be considered cheesy use it as you will. As a person causes chaos and other prisoners join in those prisoners will be locked up while the player and their gang will be able to skip their punishments. If the punishment times are extremely long(24+ hours for any misconduct) The player may suffer from prisoner fatigue. Too many prisoners are in lockdown to cause severe riots and in a way your guards will outnumber the number of unshackled prisoners. This can be made worse by making solitary in a very remote staff only part of the prison. This prevents players from recruiting people in solitary. This is a rather small extra tip and I don’t think abusing this really makes a prison that much harder. Riots in my opinion are overrated as they don’t really help with escapes in any decent prison.
Conclusion
Hope you enjoyed the guide and learned something. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message if you have advice/tips/questions. Good luck with your designs and I hope to see some well designed prisons out here soon!