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Prison Architect alpha 13 out now, adds escape tunnels

Prison Architect developer Introversion Software has released the game's 13th alpha update, which sees your pint-sized prisoners tunnelling their way out of the slammer. It's time to get tough wardens.

Watch on YouTube

As you can see from the video above, your prisoners can now burrow their way to freedom, so it's up to you to put safeguards in place to stop them. There's also a new punishment system in place.

Here's the full changelog:

= Escape tunnels
Prisoners can now dig escape tunnels when they are supposed to be sleeping
They will dig from the toilet in their cell outwards, avoiding buildings and walls as best they can
They will tend to dig along water pipes, especially large pipes, because these make the job much quicker
They require a digging tool stolen from somewhere in the prison, and will stash this in their cell
Searching a prisoner or his cell whilst he is tunnelling will reveal the tunnel
Prisoners are motivated to dig escape tunnels if they fear for their lives (dangerous prison AND non-violent inmate),
or if they have a very high Freedom need, meaning they've been locked up in their cell for days

- New material: Perimeter wall
This is an EXPENSIVE new wall type designed to prevent escape tunnels - a very high and very deep wall.
Tunnellers will do their best to dig around it. It can be tunnelled through, but it will take much longer than a normal wall.
Note: You cannot build utilies through a perimeter wall, and building one will sever any existing utilities in those squares.

- You can remove tunnels you have uncovered by using the new material "Remove Tunnels"

= Policy report
You can now control the punishments handed out to prisoners when they fight, escape, destroy things etc.
This is unlocked from Bureaucracy by the Chief, and gives you a new "Policy" report.
You can also request automatic searching of the prisoner and/or his cell when misconduct occurs.
Eg a prisoner caught with a tool may be digging escape tunnels, so you can auto-search his cell

- Needs system continued
- Prisoners now have an Environment need, representing the cleanliness of their surroundings. Hire Janitors!
- Prisoners now have a Privacy need. This can only be discharged by them spending time alone in their own cell.
- The previous "Defense" need is now called Safety. It charges up when they feel in danger.
As a result of these changes, all Prisoner Biographies will be re-generated when you load an alpha-12 or earlier save game.

- Cells, holding cells and solitary cells must now be "Enclosed", which means surrounded by walls and doors.
There will be no more building tons of open cells in a giant indoor area without any walls seperating them.

- You can now perform several different types of search on any object or prisoner:
- Search Prisoner/Object : Simply searches the prisoner/object and nothing else
- Search Cell : Searches the prisoner and his cell
- Search Cell Block : Searches all prisoners and hiding places within the current cell block

- Patrol system update
We are changing the patrol system to work differently and better.
Previously Guards would auto-follow any patrol within their own sector, but wouldn't go outside the sector
In this new system, you must assign guards to a patrol manually by clicking on an existing patrol square
The immediate advantage is that you can specify exactly which patrols are walked, and by how many guards
Patrols can now go through multiple sectors as they are no longer connected.

- Popup Markers have been disabled for Alpha 13, because we broke them really bad

- It now takes 50% longer to serve one year of a prison sentence

- Nav system changes: There should be a lot less failed routing, and entities should now perform better when cut off from the rest of the world.

- The deployment screen now highlights innaccessable areas of your prison in a flashing yellow colour. Build doors!

- The Steam Workshop window now produces the list of subscribed prisons much faster than before. Great for those of us with 50 odd subscriptions!

- Fixed: The starting Deliveries and Garbage zones were being defined wrongly (each square added several times to the room)

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