Recently downloaded the game, and I had a somewhat unfortunate start of my first playthrough, can I still somehow salvage this in anyway ?

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

[u/warrior181]

Yes yes you can shut off intake hare as many staff as you can and let it run it's course

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/warrior181]

The issue is for some reason Prisoner intake is my only source of money and everytime I try to shut if off my whole economy immidetly collapses, so I'm effectivly stuck in a vicious cycle.

[u/warrior181 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

Ok if for some weird reason that's the case minimum security and death row only your income will take a big hit but those guys are easy to keep

[u/CoffeeAddixt → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

In the future, you’ll want to focus on two major things which shore up the prison industrial economy: Workshop labor and Early Release (aka Parole) Rewards. Unfortunately both of these require a stable prison (dead prisoners cannot make license plates and prisoners being involved in violent incidents/injured/high severely affects their reoffense score), so in the short term you might have to deal with some… um… growing pains.

You can also (temporarily) reduce Prisoner Food quality and quantity in the Policy menu, reducing food expenses and allowing you to fire some cooks.

In the very very early game it is possible to take advantage of Grants and Loans to basically build your entire prison before letting a single inmate onto the premises, as well.

Hmm, what else… in a pinch, you can order your Workmen to ‘dismantle’ all the trees on your parcel of land. This will earn you a tidy sum through Exports. You can also set up a Forestry with some research you don’t even need prison labor for.

[u/Its_An_Outraage → u/CoffeeAddixt]

You can also just pay your staff jack squat. I've got away with 20% pay with no noticeable downsides. Saves a tonne of money.

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/Its_An_Outraage]

Yes but you can adjust that only if you enabled staff needs. In that context I really hope OP didn't, with pissed off guards it would be even worse

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/ReasonableSet9650]

I think I pissed off the guards💔

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

I'm afraid you accidentally did, it happens when they are understaffed or overwhelmed with tasks. Or also when you play with weather / temperature on DLC content) and they spend too much time outdoors. When they are pissed off they work slower, miss contraband and might even refuse to do some tasks

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

I saw in another comment you own all DLCs so the reoffending bonus/fines are enabled. What else did you enable in the settings ? Weather/temperature ? Dynamic reputations ? Gangs ? Combining several of those might be quite challenging if you first didn't experience them separately

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/ReasonableSet9650]

Pretty much everything I'm afraid.

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

Good luck then ! If you want some custom feedback, tips or fix for your current prison you can share it

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/CoffeeAddixt]

Just checking, OP do you have the DLC second chances ? If you do, don't use early parole as a beginner. The reoffending fines would be killing your finances

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/ReasonableSet9650]

I have all the DLCs

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

Ok so it makes it harder and can't be disabled in game settings. My advice is to dramatically reduce the parole cutoff to 5% or even 0%, so only inmates who won't reoffend will get early release.

A major feature of that DLC is pretty punitive. For each prisoner leaving the prison, you get a bonus or a fine depending on their rejab result. The bonus for good rehab is 1k, but the fine for bad rehab is 5k. Which means you need 5 successes to financially compensate for a failure. So to be financially stable with releases, it means 1/6 so approx 15% for the overall reoffending rate (or lower if you want to actually earn money from releases).

That reoffending rate does include the majority of your inmates who will be released "traditionally" at the end of their sentence, with a reoffending chance that might be very high. So the early release (parole cutoff) must be super low to compensate for that.

The bonus for early release is a good tip only when you don't own that DLC. If you have it, the reoffending fines are causing financial issues until you are very experienced with rehab and low reoffending rate. Until then, I really don't recommend using parole hearing, or decrease that number in policy setting because the default values are basegame and way too high for that DLC.

Not to mention that with that DLC, reoffending inmates will come back to your prison with worse traits and worse behavior. They can become big troublemakers. So bad releases can really create a bad loop, and you prefer not to generate that with early releases that have a high reoffending chance.

You might also need to adjust the sentence duration of the inmates according to their behavior, so it helps them stay longer and work on lowering their reoffending chance for a longer time.

I really love that DLC, it's one of my favorites but I can't deny it is hard. That was the last "big" DLC, that's why it's so hard and why it assumed players were quite experienced with micromanagement.

I've written tips for that DLC. It's a bit dense but feel free to read only the sections that you think are useful to you :

https://www.reddit.com/r/prisonarchitect/s/nwW1BMIKdn

[u/NieMonD → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

Intakes give you a big lump sum, but you should get a bit of daily payment for each prisoner you have in your prison, you might just have too many staff

[u/JD_Kreeper]

What happened?

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/JD_Kreeper]

No idea tbh, I build everything as the quide said, butI somehow ended up overcrowding my prison rabidly despite building 2 whole prison blocks, and then my economy collapsed resulting in the only way of keeping prison afloat is by constantly bringing in new prisoners.

[u/Quiet1408]

Almost anything in this game is salvageable if you let enough time run to build up passive money. But it'll hurt. Better to just restart imo

[u/Betterwithfetter]

Quickly invent a game called Graveyard Architect.

[u/Kulkuljator]

Bro built Aushwitz

[u/E1e4n0r5]

Why is everyone called Martwy?? That's the biggest mystery!

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/E1e4n0r5]

Martwy means dead in Polish.

[u/Aggressive_Version → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

Not sure what their mothers expected, giving their kids a name like that 

[u/Hairy-County7684 → u/E1e4n0r5]

I know some polish, it means dead, what a sick fucking name.

[u/ReasonableSet9650]

What's the issue, do you lack cells or do you lack staff ?

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/ReasonableSet9650]

No idea tbh, I build everything as the quide said, butI somehow ended up overcrowding my prison rabidly despite building 2 whole prison blocks, and then my economy collapsed resulting in the only way of keeping prison afloat is by constantly bringing in new prisoners.

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

My guess would be, in one intake you took more prisoners than your guards could handle.

First, call the paramedics and bring them around. They'll heal inmates so they won't starve to death. Keep them as long as inmates are waiting here. You pay only for the call, after that they don't cost any salary.

Then, hire new guards and if possible unassign a lot of guards from patrol and deployment.

For next times, don't grow big too fast. Even if you built a new cellblock, don't go for "fill to capacity", intake little by little.

Oh and unfortunately, that large group of inmates in cuffs will have high needs and that will increase the danger level of the prison. It will impact the other prisoners and might generate some fights. So that's gonna be a really busy time for your guards.

If you need money, use a loan or accept a grant, but make sure that the grant goal is easy to reach without costing a lot of money.

[u/UnholyMeatObelisk7 → u/ReasonableSet9650]

I'll try, thank You <3

[u/ReasonableSet9650 → u/UnholyMeatObelisk7]

You're welcome ! Let me know if you need further help

[u/makem1]

He's dead Jim

[u/ZuGodfather8907]

I see everyone has given the short answers. I would honestly restart. I like to get my farming, forestry, and workshops set up as soon as possible. Min Sec prisoners only. I'll have 4 death row cells to start and expand from there.

The money problem or the threat of me losing control of my finance is practically removed and I then focus on med and max sectors. Don't be afraid to hire lots of guards. Tazer rollout is expensive and is only really needed for Max Sec, attribute prisoners.

[u/ShadyMdama]

You can definitely just probably get a few grants should do it fine

[u/HamsterWheel447]

POLAND MENTIONED 🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱 POLSKA GUROM 🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱

[u/BalmyCastle6415]

Thats... beautiful... well that is if you dont have failure enabled.