40d Talk:Jail

I understand how to have happy prisoners with chains, but it does not mention the fate of unhappy prisoners in cages. Maybe someone can clarify about tis.--Rusty Mcloon 00:52, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

Completely pointless tangent: Does anyone know if dwarves get a happy thought from escaping prison? I certainly would. RomeoFalling 14:23, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

Yes, according to thought, they're just as happy as if they made an artifact. Gairabad 21:53, 18 November 2008 (EST)

One of my dwarves died of thirst in jail. There were two other injured dwarves right next to him that were getting water regularly. The only explanation I can come up with is that the alcohol in his personal stockpile ran out, and he never requested water out of hope it would be filled again. Can anyone confirm this? If so there should be a warning some where. In the mean time I'm going to try to figure out a way to get my dwarves to fill the damn jail-house ale stockpiles. DaWarMage 11:37, 6 November 2008 (EST)

Personal stockpile? Do you mean the one he's personally in reach of? Was he chained or caged? Injured dwarves receive water from those with the Health Care task turned on. I dunno about prisoners. --RomeoFalling 18:15, 6 November 2008 (EST)

I just had a dwarf die of thirst as well. It was really a strange thing. The noble had bad thoughts (no mandate met, no one punished) even though this guy got put in jail! He was in a cage, though, and I thought things in cages didn't need water/food. Funny the other dwarfs wouldn't have feed him either. Also, in the jail screen, it shows a dead dwarf. Is that a bug?Kwieland 20:47, 6 February 2009 (EST)

If you put your prisoners within reach of each other, is it possible that they would make friends? Gairabad 21:53, 18 November 2008 (EST)

Yes. I had two dwarves in prison become friends.--Wpatton 15:13, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

do prisoners need to be fed, like injured dwarves? or do they happily go without for their sentance (i.e. not die from starvation if no-one brings them any food)? i have micro stockpiles of each liquor, so they'll be happy to swig their personal choice, but will i need a prepared food one too? also, do i need to designate one chain/rope for the whole room? or are lots of 3x3 individual 'rooms' all inside one big room preferable? – unsigned comment by User:DJ_Devil

Dwarves need both food and drink. If there's some within reach, they'll use that, but if not, they'll be brought food and water. Booze stockpiles by the chains help keep dwarves happy, but aren't strictly necessary. Same goes for beds. Food stockpiles are convenient, but also not necessary. As for rooms, you can make a bunch of little rooms if you want, but one big room designated from a single chain works just fine. --LegacyCWAL 11:56, 6 March 2009 (EST)

okay, thanks :] oh! do prisoners pay for food? 'cause i only have, basically, roasts and stews. and if they're not earning, they cant afford them long-term :/ – unsigned comment by User:DJ_Devil

I'm not sure if they do or not, but I do know that dwarves will still eat or drink what's available even if they can't afford it anymore. --Edward 12:43, 6 March 2009 (EST)

So! Wrestler gave birth, and goblins ambushed her at the same time. Baby died, she was rendered unconscious for three days. Nobody carried her to a bed, despite everyone having health care enabled, and many of them being jobless. Upon waking up, her injuries vanished. Though the thoughts "witnessed death", "lost a child to tragedy recently", and "was forced to witness the decay of a loved one" were in her profile page, she as still ecstatic for another month before finally tantruming, disassembling a depot, freeing a dog and killing it. When she was thrown in jail, she'd normalized to content due to a rather nice chain and a good drink. However, at this point, she doesn't seem to realize that her baby is dead, and has been trying frantically to pick up her child for the last four months. My message list is spammed with "'2-3 Spr2' Nishmuzish, Guard cancels Seek Infant: Infant inaccessible x735" Why is she still trying to seek an infant, who's body has decayed to practically nothing, even though her thoughts claim she knows it's dead, from prison, where she's unable to move more than nine steps? Is it just a bug of some sort? Is she going to tantrum again when she gets out of jail and re-realizes her baby is, indeed, dead? --Kydo 00:04, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so, she's out of jail now. As far as I can tell, her tantrum had interrupted picking up her baby, so the task had never been completed. So when her tantrum was over, she kept trying to complete it, even though there was no more baby to complete it with. Once freed, she walked to the location where the baby was, flashed a red question mark, suddenly became ecstatic and finally went for a drink and a nap. No more message spam! Perhaps I should have just deconstructed her chain, let her do her thing, and then re-jailed her. --Kydo 04:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there confirmation as to whether an imprisoned dwarf is able to re-tantrum while in prison? Like, if more horrible things keep happening to him while he's in there? Now that I have a fortress with enough stuff happening to actually use the prison at all, I really want to experiment, and see if a terrifying prison can cause dwarves to flip out into endless tantrums... --Kydo 06:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Prisoners and beds

I had a dwarf chained up with a bed next to his restraint but he wouldn't use it. He came out all right anyway (he had food and booze) but it made me wonder, is there any trick to getting prisoners to use a bed? --FunkyWaltDogg 18:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

If he already had a bedroom assigned or claimed, you could have freed that room. He may have been avoiding the constructed bed because he was trying to sleep in his own bed but couldn't. Also, you could have made the bed a single-tile room and assigned it to him speciffically, then freed it when his sentence was up. Also, by setting restricted traffic halls between your prison and the rest of your fortress, you can somewhat control the number of dwarves stealing a drink/food/bed from your prisoners. --Kydo 23:24, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Jail Design

I've been looking at better ways of designing prisons in such a way as to more effectively rehabilitate prisoners and catch tantrumers before they cause too much damage. Some things I've noticed...

1. A restraint allows a dwarf a 3x3x3 cube of movement. This means you can have your jail "cells" have 3 rooms on three levels, increasing the number of nice things you can put around your prisoners.
2. Building a well somewhere in your prison complex will decrease the time it takes for water to be delivered to any tantrumers who may have been hurt prior to or during the imprisonment process.
3. Putting a barracks full of soldiers between your prison and the rest of your fortress may help. There are ways of escaping, and I like to be careful.
4. If a dwarf is unhappy for long enough, they'll go insane. Nearing the end of a fortress, dwarves tend to stay sad for a fair while. Any imprisoned dwarves who go nuts can be locked away (somewhat) safely if you put each restraint in it's own chamber with a door.
5. Expanding on the insanity thing, trapping your prison may be helpful, as could guard dogs. Although, I did that more because I had too much of everything. Mostly overkill by that point.
6. Expanding on the "too much of everything" tangent, I also designed my prison with a COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOCKDOWN lever. Just in case of an inmate uprising the game isn't normally capable of generating.
7. Just for the hell of it, I have been thinking about making a specific execution chamber for prisoners I particularly dislike. Is there any way to control what cell a prisoner is placed in? Aside from locking all but one?
8. To reduce the number of dwarves grabbing food/drink/bedding from your prisoners, you can put long hallways with restricted traffic designations. Then only dwarves who are way closer than (random large number) steps from the normal stockpiles or beds will go into the prison.
9. Another surefire way to prevent beds from being inappropriately occupied, is to assign a single low-value bed to all of your dwarves. This, of course, becomes a little silly when the economy activates, but it'll help until then.
10. If you want to be SUPER accurate, you could simply lock the prisoner's cell until he's free to go, but you'll have to keep track of the sentence, or you may find yourself with a pile of miasmiating dwarf-jerky.

Anyways, any other ideas? Not sure if it should really be added to the wiki proper, as this doesn't really talk about game mechanics so much.--Kydo 04:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Added 8-10--Kydo 23:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

You may want to add in a new section on how to make advanced jails for the dwarfiness and to increase your gain from the game. Most topics in the wiki simply deal with whats barely necessary to keep the for running and whats recommended to maximise profit, not what is recommended to make you keep wanting to run the fort. Perhaps a simple paragraph in a new section which expounds a simple "individual cell" design, say a chain in a 2x2 room with a bed and a booze stockpile in it, with the chain in the corner furthest away from the door to prevent the dwarf from leaving. --Overspeculated 11:47, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

K', it may look like I did a LOT, but really I just elaborated on what was already there and added a couple of my own things. I also separated different elements of designing the prison and cells into separate paragraphs, rather than having it all slurred together in a single lump of text. --Kydo 00:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you know roughly how much of a happiness boost dwarves get when released from jail, in 40d? The current thoughts article is mainly about the 2d version, and +1000 happiness would make fancy jails completely unnecessary (especially since they don't seem to be able to escape from a cage). But that seems to no longer be the case. Might be helpful to figure out some sort of minimum unhappiness to get prisoners to, so that their "happy to be free" thought takes them back up to at least content. --Arrkhal 03:37, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure on the numbers. As far as I know, he hasn't made any particular changes to thoughts, as people have been asking about it on the thoughts-related pages and nobody's really given a definite response. I do have some knowledge, though. After a pack of wolves ripped through a hunter and the hauler who wanted his shoes, I had a couple of other dwarves become rather unhappy. Being in my prison brought them up to content, (mind you, I did not use any artifacts or masterpieces in my prison, as I didn't have any useful ones yet) and being released kicked them up to being happy. My one dwarf got really screwed up with her baby being killed, and went to being happy from being released, and then when she discovered her baby had not only died, but had also been entombed and rotted away into bones, she skipped up to ecstatic, though why, I have no idea. And none of my imprisoned dwarves ever actually got the "Is happy to be free" thought.

On a different note, I also discovered that if I temporarily assign an unhappy dwarf to my prison as his room, he very quickly moves away from the tantrum threshold, faster than being confined after a tantrum in fact, and moving them back to their old room doesn't seem to have any negative effects yet, by what I've seen. --Kydo 05:40, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. Men and women are completely equal, all clothing is unisex, animal abuse is punished the same as criminal assault/murder, and the best jail design rehabilitates dwarves rather than punishing them... :P --Arrkhal 14:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to re-do my prison design in a new fortress, so it has a proper layout with what I've learned, and I'm going to upload it to the DF Map Archive, to give an example of what I've done. I think they only get the "Is happy to be free" thought if they escape from prison, like if they break their rope, or you have someone deconstruct their restraint. Because I have yet to get a dwarf who has had that thought. Also, tantruming dwarves can deconstruct any item they see, including restraints. (One of mine freed a war dog, which promptly crippled him) So why can't they deconstruct the restraint they're attached to? --Kydo 01:17, 28 January 2010 (UTC)