This guide is a work in progress so please forgive some details being missing and sections that are still under construction

Hello and welcome to IDED's Prison Architect Guide.
By now hopefully you have played the very uninformative intro and are wondering what you actually need to do to run a prison as there are a lot of options and pretty much no explanation.

Well let’s start at the beginning as it’s always the best place to start.
Once the games loaded press the "Esc" key to bring up the menu (by default it will always load the latest auto save... no idea why but still it does) and click "Create New Prison" and you will see the following screen...

You have a combo box to select your prison size which dictates the landmass you will have to create your prison in and also the total volume of prisoners you can receive at max each day
Small - 16
Medium - 24
Large - 32
And in addition you can choose to have fog of war on/off and continuous intake of prisoners on/off.
Fog of war means that if your guards or cctv cant see it wont be shown on the over head view but it's worth noting as of alpha 8 having fog of war off also render cctv cameras useless as they will not function with fog of war off.
Continuous intake I would only recommend for those that feel they have a good grip of the game as with it turned on you cannot stop new prisoners turning up at 8am each day which can lead to several problems including riots if you cannot get cells made quick enough due to lack of funding.

Now for this guide I will select fog of war off, continuous intake off and small for my prison size.
Once the game loads you should have a screen like the following...
Most likely you will be zoomed in but you can scroll your mouse wheel to zoom in or out on the map.

Along the top from left to right we have...

Your objectives/Todo List (you can click the read the CEO's letter to see it and delete it, it contains some useful tips so make sure you scan through it at least once then delete it).

How many days your prison has been in existance for.

Your current funds (for some reason everytime you start you get charged $10 for a non-existant food tray which means you start with 9,990 rather than the intended $10,000)

The current time and below that the currently active part of your reigem and time controls - Pause, Slow, Normal and Fast (which can cause issues with certain actions so keep an eye on your workers, etc when using fast)
This bar will change as the game goes on to also display details of your guards, cctv cameras and more but we will cover that as it becomes relevant.

Along the bottom of the screen you have...

Foundations - This tool section allows you to build/destroy sections of your prison, by clicking the building button that appears you can just click then drag to make your building.



Materials - This tool section allows you to put down floors inside and outside as well as add walls and fences.

I would add at this point that fences are free and as such are great place to start by drawing around the outskirts of your map to seal it in and stop early prison breaks that may occur.


Rooms - Maybe the most important tool section in the game, your rooms unlike theme hospital and other such titles do not create walls etc but do dictate the purpose of the floor section it is added to and also set the requirements of that space to be used in the way selected.

Each room has its own set of requirements and can be placed in the same way as buildings by clicking and dragging to the required size but unlike buildings and walls you can remove them by simply right clicking and dragging over the room/rooms to remove.


Objects - This tool section gives you all the items you will require to make your rooms work from beds to shower heads, its worth taking a minute to become familiar with what is available for use and what purpose they serve as even though some rooms have a minimum requirement you can add to them and some may not say they need set objects but really they should be present to make a room work correctly.

An example of this could be the canteen doesnt say it requires tables and benches but if you dont add them prisoners have no where to sit to eat, yards may have no requirements except being behind at least one door but if you dont add recreational objects for them to use the room gives no benefits and thus serves no purpose.


Staff - This tool is where you hire your prisons work force

You just click the person you want and then click them into the map to place them, but take note that some require certain requirements to be met to function and others require research to be done to unlock them for use.


Utilities - This is the tool section that allows you to power your prison and feed it water, upon clicking the utilities button you will be presented with the underground version of your map allowing you to see your buildings but also any pipe work or cables currently in place thusly keeping the map uncluttered and allowing you to quickly see which areas are currently being supplied or not.



Bureaucracy - Unlocked by Warden, The bureaucracy menu allows you to research and unlock additional staff and functions for your prison, including but not limited to finance, health, security and cctv plus many more.

Each requires research and some require the research to be done by a specific staff member normally dictated by the research tree.


Deployment - Unlocked by Security, The deployment tool allows you away to control your guards and prison. When selected you will be shown the deployment screen which gives access to ways to assign guards to sections of your prison and their patrol routes within that area, as well as being able to set sections for low, medium and high risk prisoners and staff only areas. Also contains the unlock tool that sets all door in the area to locked open state.



Emergencies - This tool at the moment only has one use, in the event that your prison catches fire you can call in fire trucks to deal with the blaze.



Clone - This tool allow you to copy any segment of a building into any other available space inside a building, great for quick construction of cells or other rooms as it not only copies the room layout but also selects the objects within and copies them to.
To use this tool you must unlock it in Bureaucracy, right click and drag to select and left click to place the copied area (which is in no way obvious).


Planning - This tool allows you to plan out buildings and walls within using left click and drag ing to place a room or wall as required.


The plan will stay displayed until built over or right clicking and dragging to remove.


Lockdown and Bangup - These two tools are useful depending on the situation and dependant on whats happening in your prison.
Lockdown shuts and locks all doors within your prison, great to prevent prisoners getting involved in riots happening outside their cells and other such issues.
Bangup sends all prisoners that are willing to, back to their cells. This means only well behaved prisoners or those currently not involved in a riot will go but if there is a problem in one section like the canteen area it will prevent further prisonners going to that location and becoming invovled.

Reports - By far the largest and most important tool in the game, so much so it
requires its own section in this guide to cover it all.

First up...
Staff

The staff section of reports displays your currently hired staff and allows you to fire them
easily by clicking them within the list also to locate them by hovering your mouse over them.
Staff are split into 4 sections
-Workers these are the builders of your prison who construct the walls, place the floors and
objects throughout your prison, when you start a game you already have 8 workers assigned to
you and you can hire more from the staff tool on the interface but until your prison reaches
a larger scale you will find that 8 will generally fulfil your needs.

-Guards a must have for any prison and these guys will escort prisoners from the drop off to
their cells and any other place they may be required to go, also guards are the only people
who can open cell doors or break up riots (as riot officers are not currently a working
element of the game).
I suggest a ratio of 1 guard to every 4 prisoners, its also why I suggest not having more
jail doors than needed as doing so will end up with them running back and forth to open them
and thus not doing other duties or leaving workers waiting while they attempt to break up
fights or escorting prisoners around the complex.

-Staff this covers all other staff types except administrators and will contain all your
chefs, janitors, gardeners and doctors. I suggest having around 2 chefs per 8 prisoners, 2
doctors per 16-24 prisoners and 1 janitor per 2 sections of prison, as for gardeners 0-2 per
outdoor area which I try to keep to a minimum but at the moment they aren’t needed to keep
anything running like janitors as cracks in the walls and floors are only visual and have no
effect on the game but I assume in future they will perform a vital function in ensuring that
walls not fall and holes are filled in to help prevent prisoner escape.

-Administrators maybe the most important staff members in your prison and the only ones that
allow you to research additional features in the bureaucracy tool.

Prisoners

The prisoners tab allows you to see how many and what type of prisoners are currently housed
within your walls and also if continuous intake is turned off then you can open or close your
prison to new prisoners arrivals of each type.
Like the staff tab you can also locate each prisoner by hovering your mouse over them.

Jobs

The jobs tab lists all staff activities currently going on or queued in your prison.
Green means the job is being done currently, Yellow its queued to be done and Red meaning the
job has either failed or cannot be performed currently.
By clicking any job you can see where it is located to inspect it or cancel it by right
clicking the item the job is queued on though right clicking it in the list has no effect.

Needs

Unlocked by hiring a psychologist the needs tab reveals what prisoners on the whole in your
prison currently need.
Green means they are currently happy, Yellow means how many currently want more ways to
fulfil the need and Orange/Red shows the amount that are currently dissatisfied or on the
verge of a riot because of that need not being fulfilled in anyway.
When prisoners are satisfying this need a blue bar will appear within the requirement and
become longer as they perform the action for a period of time thus reducing their own
requirement for the need and reducing the overall need for it.
Each need has its own specific outlet I will list them below to help you...
Bladder - Toilets
Bowels - Toilets
Sleep - Beds
Food - Chefs, Kitchens, Canteens
Hygiene - Shower
Comfort - Bench, Chair, Bed, Tv, Large Tv
Exercise - Weights Bench
Defense - Guards, CCTV
Freedom - Outside areas (Yards)
Family - Phone
Recreation - Pool Table, Tv, Large Tv, Bookshelf

Regime

Unlocked by hiring a Warden.
This tab can be confusing and important to get right, as you can see from the screen shot
above myself I have played around and found this to be the best regime set-up as most
activities prisoners will perform on their own without being told. In addition I find that
forcing certain activities actually causes more problems than it solves for example Shower by
setting a time for all your prisoners to do this at once you will find that everyone will try
to cram into the closest shower room and if there isn’t enough space it will almost certainly
break out into a brawl requiring you to risk your precious guards lives to go in there and
break it up.
Beyond eating which must be set for your chefs to prepare the food and sleep (which prisoner
will do on their own if beds are provided outside of the cells) which helps you contain your
prisoners during the darkness of night I give them almost constant free time so they can
fulfil their highest needs on their own without my interference.

Grants

Grants are your instant access to fund to expand your prison and come with two styles of
payment upfront and on completion.
The game comes with a set of grants available to help you get started and substitute for a
tutorial on building rooms by setting out some basic requirements for you to fulfil
I highly recommend getting a mod to expand these as you will often find that they will allow
you to expand so far and then leave you stranded waiting for fund before you can do much else
and to be honest I find this frustrating at best
The mod I recommend you can get at http://www.prison-exchange.com/browse/mods/new-grants-updated/

Finance

Pretty much does what it says on the tin, it allows you to see how much cash you have received from grants and prisoner funds from the govenment, how much your spending on wages and food and thus telling you how much you cash your earning or getting into debt by each day.

Valuation

Maybe the least important tab in the reports but gives an interesting insight into how much you have paid out on building and staffing your prison so far.
It also gives details of how long you have gone without a riot or attack on staff also penalties you have received for escaped prisoners, injuries and murders of staff members.

Building your first prison can be tricky but also it will help you lern the basics of the game and help you get to know it abit better. In this section i will describ to you what need to be put into your first prison and how the basic layout should look like.
As you can see to your left your basic prison needs to have most of these rooms found under the rooms tab.
The only thing is, if it’s your first time playing this game it can become hard to know what the best layout of the rooms can be and how to make it. So what I have done is I’ve created a few screen shots of the rooms all made up and how they should be laid out for a normal security prison.
The rooms I will be going over are:
- Small cell block,
- Holding cell,
- Solitary block,
- Kitchen,
- Shower,
- Canteen and
- Offices

The first thing you’re going to want to build in my option is a holding cell where all the prisoners will be keep whilst your still building your prison cells.
To build an holding cell the room has to have certain objects in for the room to become an holding cell. This is the same for every other room in prison architect except from Storage, Yard, Garbage and delivarys.