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)
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:
new definition
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.
