Prison Gardens?

[milon]

Hey all, I'm at work right now, so I can't test this.  I did a quick search, and didn't find any discussion about this either.  Has anyone ever made a prison garden that grows berries?  The idea is that your colonists will automatically plant and harvest the berries, but they can't carry them away (socially impolite, yo!).  The berries stay put, and the prisoners eat them at will (no mood penalty!).  Throw in a few roses if you like to keep the buggers happy.

Is that feasible?  How many squares of berries would you need per prisoner?  Also, when you have no prisoners, your colonists will gather them.  Maybe it would be best to plant it over the course of a few days so the crops rotate when they're ready to harvest.

[Darkfirephoenix]

I think it's a waste of raw-food because a colonist/prisoner has to eat more raw-food than cooked food (more than 10-15 / has to eat more often because of low nutrient amount).
Best way is cooking or nutrient paste dispenser. And you shouldn't forget: Incapped prisoners and prisoners in med beds won't take the food on their own (and let's not forget the poor prisoners who can only eat nutrient paste because of missing parts )

[milon]

Darn, good points.  Ah well, it was worth a shot.

[NephilimNexus]

Still, it would be interesting to be able to assign prisoners as labor for farming.  Make a ring-shaped prison with a farm at the center and make them work it for you.  If nothing else it would offset the food/labor cost of having a lot of prisoners.

[Elros22]

Ok, real quick and slightly related (maybe not). Would this alleviate cabin fever? How do you create a prisoner garden and still have indoor beds? Just remove the doors from the cells?

[harpo99999]

I have noticed that visitors tend to visit parts of the base that are NOT roofed over, so the visitors might visit inside the prison and KILL your prisoners if you have an unroofed garden inside your prison

[milon]

Interesting.  An unroofed area with food to attract visitors, which is then sealed off.  You'd have to have your prison in a different location, though.

[Dr. Z]

If you would roof your prison half, I don't think it would count as sleeping outside. On the problem of food amounts, one strawberrie plant gives 3 berries, they need like 18 per meal and I think they eat two times a day, no guarantee. A plant needs roughly 4.5 ingame days to grow, so you would need at least 3*6*2*4.5=162 squares per prisoner, probably more.

I have to admit that it's a great idea, but there's this thing with the numbers...

[StorymasterQ]

IIRC, cabin fever is only alleviated by a clear path to the map edge. So it won't be affected merely by having no roof. I think this is to encourage a city-like base design as opposed to castle-like?

[milon]

I don't remember if this was an A7 or A8 thing, but doesn't a big enough area prevent the Cabin Fever debuff?

[harpo99999]

in a7 the cabin fever fix NEEDED a clear path to the edge of the map, not just outdoors growing area, so long term prisoners got the cabin fever, as did any colonist that did not go outside the colony

[milon]

Okay, just checked:

Sept 25... (Started work on Alpha 8 branch during A7 testing.)
Sept 29... Cabin fever now considers giant unroofed areas to be ‘outdoors’ even if they can’t touch the map edge (small skylights are still not sufficient).

So as of Alpha 8, an large unroofed area counts as outside! 

[StorymasterQ]

Oh, cool. Now, how large is 'large'? 5x5? 6x6? 10x10?

[Ink.]

I so hope we get the ability to set up guard spots and the ability to turn prisoners into slave workers xD