Alpha 19

Links

You can download this build here. Read the forum post or watch the update video.

Grants

• More grants are now available.
• The player can only select two at a time, unless Extra Grant is researched through the Accountant which allows three grants at a time.

Financial System Improvements

• Cash-flow is now visible from the very start, without needing an Accountant to unlock it.
• Cash-flow is now paid hourly, instead of at midnight as before.
• The starting bank balance has been increased from $10,000 to $30,000.
• The daily federal grant has been increased from $1,500 to $2,000.
• You now receive more daily money for the max security prisoners.

Cash Bonus: Days Without Incident

• You now receive a bonus to your cash-flow based on the number of days without incident.
• The bonus accumulates at a rate of $1,000 per day without incident.
• So after 1 day you get a $1,000 bonus, but after 2 days you get a $2,000 bonus.
• The maximum daily bonus is $10,000 for 10 days straight without incident.
• The amount received resets immediately to zero after a death, serious injury, or escape.

Corporation Taxes

• You must now pay tax - 30% of all profits, directly out of your daily cash-flow.
• Once you have a profitable prison you can use your accountant to reduce this to 15%.
• You can also unlock an offshore tax haven for a whopping $50,000, that reduces your Corporation Taxes to 1%.

Note: This is only recommended for prisons with massive daily profits.

Bank Loans

• You can now borrow lump sums of money from the bank, and pay interest on the amount borrowed.
• Interest payments are made hourly, and each successful payment increases your credit rating.
• As your credit rating increases, so does the amount you can borrow, up to a max of $250,000.

Prison Share Scheme

• You can choose to sell shares in your prison to private investors and venture capitalists.
• They will pay you 10% of the current prison value, in exchange for 10% ownership of your prison.
• You can sell up to 50% of your prison this way, and you can buy back at any time, although the price may have gone up.
• However if you've sold 30% of your prison to investors, you will only receive 70% of the price when you come to sell the entire prison.

Game Rebalancing

• The prison 'temperature' now increases quite a bit slower, taking much longer to reach dangerous levels.
• The temperature falls much quicker once the causes of frustration have been resolved.
• A prisoner's "time served" now counts up much more slowly, meaning they will spend longer in your jail before release.
  • Previously one year sentence = 36 game hours (1.5 days). Now one year sentence = 120 game hours (5 days).

• The Workshop Safety Induction can now be taught to 10 prisoners at once (up from 5 previously), and prisoners can use a workshop saw OR a workshop press whilst learning.

New Room/Zone: Exports

• Finished items are taken from the workshop to the new exports zone. Workmen will do the hauling.
• If the exports zone is 'secure' then your prisoners will also do the hauling.
• Items in the Exports zone will be loaded onto passing delivery trucks and taken away.
• You will be paid as they leave the prison site.
  • Note: Logs will be auto-sold if there are no workshop Saws on site.
  • Note: Wood will be auto-sold if there are no carpenter's tables, or no qualified carpenters on site.

SDL 2.0

• The game is now using SDL 2.0 for windowing, mouse/keyboard input, and sound. (Previously SDL 1.2)
• This should help with hardware compatibility and reliability.
• Also provides better support for high dpi displays, joypads, tablets etc.
• High DPI mode is now supported on certain displays - e.g. the Macbook Pro Retina display.
  • Enable it from the Graphics menu. This will make the game look significantly sharper on high DPI displays. For Example, Retina Mac previously ran the game at 1280x800 - now it runs at 2560x1600 on a 13" screen!

Miscellaneous Changes

• Greatly improved the display of Jobs in the deployment screen.
• You must now keep your Administrators employed if you wish to continue using the facilities they have unlocked.
• Prisoners with 'Qualifications' gained from reform programs will now strongly prefer to work in jobs that use those qualifications.
  • This fixes a problem where all your qualified workshop prisoners went off to do the cleaning.
• Tazers are no longer flagged as 'Metal' and wont set off metal detectors.
• Trees will no longer leave a stump if they are felled indoors. For example, after building new foundations over a forest.
• The Emergency Services toolbar now shows tooltips for each service type, including the cost of callout.
• The Rooms toolbar now highlights rooms you are likely to want to build, due to grants/objectives.
• The Bureaucracy screen has been laid out in a new arrangement to make room for all the new unlocks.
• The Lawyer has been removed from the game, as he currently serves no purpose. He may return at a later date.
• New graphics for the Teacher.
• Fixed: The reform program 'Scheduler' now ensures there will be a teacher available when picking a time slot.
  • This fixes a bug with the foreman being expected to teach multiple workshop induction classes at once.
  • Note: You may need to manually click "Reschedule" if your prison has this problem after loading.
• Fixed: Prisoners working as janitors would stand around in the cleaning cupboard doing nothing, unless you had at least one janitor hired, or if you had very few janitors in a large jail.
• Fixed: Cutting down a tree near a wall square will no longer demolish that wall square.
• Fixed: Experience will no longer tick up on dead prisoners.
• Fixed: You can no longer place rooms over lakes.
• Fixed: Stolen contraband would still be counted if the prisoner responsible had left the jail.
  • This counted towards the overall 'Supply' level, but could never be found by searching.