Deployment

Deployment is a menu that allows you to deploy your guards to specific stations/rooms, set up patrols and designate areas as minimum/medium/maximum security or staff only.  When opening the deployment menu an overlay is activated that shows the designations, patrols and stations.

Each area closed in by walls or doors can be separately assigned guard stations or a designation. Patrols are set up on grid scale. Multiple guards can be stationed in the same area.

When using the overlay if a guard is stationed a blue line is visible to the station marker he is currently stationed. Un-populated station markers are greyed out.

Deployment Schedule

The Deployment Schedule is a feature added in Alpha 28 to allow different deployments and patrols per time of day. A bar now appears indicating times of day and patrol settings. A player can assign up to seven settings (plus the default setting), each of which has its own guard and patrol assignments. The setting for a non-current time can be set by clicking on the time above the desired schedule. Right or left click to cycle through deployment numbers in the white zone below the numbers.

This functionality is intended to be used to have guards in different locations at different times of day (e.g. so guards only patrol the canteens during meals and freetime) to free up guards for specific "to-do" jobs.

As of Alpha 28, the deployment schedule for plain guard controls often fails to save. If unchecked, this can lead to unguarded areas during dangerous times of day. Guard patrols, armed guard patrols, and dog patrols, however, save properly. If you will be saving and loading your prison frequently and wish to use the deployment schedule, use patrols instead of standard deployment to ensure proper guarding after loading your save. This bug may not apply, as it appears to be fixed in Alpha 33

Requirements

• Chief staff member. (Unlocks via Bureaucracy)

Tips, Tricks and Hints

• Do not station all of your guards when the stations can not cover the entire prison. If something happens too far out of range from any guard, there will be no one to respond to it. By leaving a few guards un-stationed they will generally respond to problems.
• By designating areas such as the kitchen, and the corridors leading up to it as staff only, you can greatly reduce the amount of knives stolen. The same principle applies to storage.
• If you have fenced off your entire prison, you could designate the entire area inside and outside the fence as staff only to isolate cell blocks from each other. Do remember to provide passage to canteens and showers if these are in a separate building.
• Unlocked areas have all doors Locked Open. This can of course be overridden by placing the prison in Lockdown.
• Prisoners can be escorted into Staff Only areas by a Guard.
• Shared areas are accessible by all prisoners, guards, staff, and visitors.
• Min Sec Only, Med Sec Only, and Max Sec Only areas limit access to their respective class of prisoner only.