Template:Infobox staffArmed Guards are staff of the prison in charge of keeping the most troublesome prisoners in line. They require an Armoury, in which each guard needs a weapons locker, and are far better equipped to prevent escapes and deadly riots.
Armed Guards were introduced in Alpha 17 as a means to further suppressprisoners. They will shout warnings at prisoners who are rebelling before firing their tazer or shotgun in the hopes that the prisoner will simply surrender, effectively rendering themselves practically, though not literally, unconscious. They may be equipped with tazers and body armor through research.
Armed guard with stab-proof vest and taser
Armed guards may only be assigned to patrol routes and can't deployed to wander in rooms like regular guards can. They also perform none of the routine tasks that normal guards do, meaning that they will not open doors for anyone else, they do not escort or otherwise process prisoners and they do not monitor cameras or door controls.
If you do not assign them a patrol route they will stand around doing nothing because they do not perform any of the other tasks normal guards do.
Guards equipped with tazers can end prisoner fights faster and without resorting to lethal force as often. A tazer fired by an Armed Guard has a 70% accuracy rate.
Any ranged weapons other than tazers fired by an Armed Guard has a 90% accuracy rate.
As of Alpha 30, when an armed guard fires a shotgun, the maximum range for prisoners to surrender has reduced from 6 squares to 4 squares, and a maximum of 10 prisoners will surrender per gunshot.
If an armed guard has no tazer, or the tazer is recharging, with freefire disabled, they will simply punch fighting prisoners, as, unlike regular guards, they have no backup baton.
The 'Deployment' program unlocks the deployment view in the main toolbar, and allows you to assign guards to the sectors of your Prison. As of alpha 28, the deployment view is also used to be able to assign more guards to a sector of your prison during a certain time period.
The 'Patrols' program allows you to create patrol routes around crucial parts of your prison (e.g. the perimeter), and assign guards to those patrol routes.
The 'Tazers' program allows your armed guards to carry tazers, a single-shot weapon that will render most targets unconscious for a set amount of time. Tazers can be fired once before they need a full hour to recharge. Tazer costs are separate from the armed guard hire cost, with each tazer costing $400. This will have to be paid once the guard is hired. Tazers can be found in the weapons rack in your armoury. Armoury needs to be unlocked first. For regular guards, they need to go to a class taught by the chief to use tasers.
The 'Body Armour' program equips all your armed guards, normal guards, and dog handlers with body armour. This helps absorb 50% damage. However, it will make your guards 30% slower. Body armour costs are separate from the guard hire cost, with each set of armour costing $100. The 'Armoury' needs to be unlocked first.
Tips & Tricks
Armed Guards add the "Suppressed" status effect to prisoners around them. This affects all prisoners around the Armed Guard, even if there is a wall between prisoner and Armed Guard. As such, they are useful for calming down unrest before a larger riot begins.
An example of Armed Guards holding shotguns
If prisoners are too heavily suppressed they will not show interest in classes or therapy. Balanced use of armed guards is needed. Too many and your prisoners will be overly suppressed . So use them sparingly and only in areas most prone to riots where prisoners need to see an armed patrol to keep them in line.
However, Armed Guards also increase the overall danger level of the prison.
Armed Guards are useless for the day to day tasks that normal guards must perform: moving prisoners, opening doors, monitoring cameras, etc.
Armed Guards will drop shotguns if they are killed. These are extremely dangerous, do not let your prisoners get a hold of them!
Riots: They are also the only ones who are able to enter areas captured by rioters (red areas), except for the Riot Guard.
Handle High Risk Prisoners by suppressing them.
Perimeter patrols to stop escaping prisoners.
Freefire button.
Pressing the red "Freefire" button in the bottom right corner allows ALL Armed Guards to shoot on sight.
Armed Guards WILL shoot a prisoner regardless of "Freefire" IF:
If the prisoner is attacking someone and the person is in critical condition.
If the Armed Guard has his/her gun out (usually from dismissing Freefire)
Armed Guards will sometimes just shout warnings/slurs instead of using a lethal weapon. Low risk are more likely to surrender than high risk or medium risk.
You can select an armed guard (left click) and then right click a location to order them to run there. This is sometimes the only way you can get them to act as backup to nearby fights that are not in their direct line of sight.
Trivia
Armed guards have lower base health than normal guards, however, they are equipped by body armor that increases their health to 25.
Armed guards do not go through taser training and spawn with one (Tasers must be unlocked in bureaucracy first)
Mods
Armed Guard with an Assault Rifle.
There is multiple mods where you can have Armed Guards with different guns like for example: an mac10, a revolver and even an Assault Rifle
There is a mod that allows certain locations to have freefire enabled. This can be helpful in areas where having armed guards are critical to be on freefire (Supermax cells, armourys, etc) and not have to have the whole prison go on freefire mode which can cause more problems such as the Guard Towers not giving warning shots anymore, etc.
