RimWorld

RimWorld

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All about the prisoners of RimWorld
By KKRLL
Everything you need to know about prisoners in Rimworld.
   
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Introduction
In RimWorld, the challenging lives of reclusive humans are revealed as a compelling and unpredictable story of survival. These people, often discarded on dangerous and uncharted planets, face not only the challenges of the environment, but also their own internal dramas and conflicts. The RimWorld universe provides them with a blank canvas on which they are forced to paint their destiny, encountering various threats, forming bonds and overcoming challenges along the way. In this world filled with the unknown and the struggle for survival, the prisoners gain strength and character, leaving their mark on the history of RimWorld.

Analysis
Prisoners are mere pawns who are kept under control. They have no need for rest, but all other needs and most moods apply to them. This includes the need for food and the ability to rest. They are confined in their cell and do no work. Prisoners remain loyal to their faction; released colonists immediately join the colony while other prisoners attempt to leave the map.






Prisoners may not open doors unless they make a prison break. While inside your colony, they will try to leave if there is an opening, such as a hole in a wall or an open door, including if it is open because of an object in it. A prisoner who can move will wear the most comfortable clothing placed in their cell. They eat food with the best mood buff they can reach, ignoring food restrictions. Mobile prisoners may use a nutritional paste dispenser facing the direction of their prison. Otherwise, wardens will bring whatever food their food restrictions allow. Inmate medical settings, as well as default settings for all inmates, can be customized on the Health tab.






Colonists assigned as wardens can interact with prisoners in a variety of ways, including food delivery and recruitment. Colonists assigned as wardens or doctors can feed an inmate during medical rest.




Unwaveringly Loyal.
Unwaveringly loyal prisoners cannot be recruited into your colony and have no resistance to demotion. Additionally, they cannot be converted to another ideology. Otherwise, they are the same as regular prisoners, including the ability to become a slave.






As of this writing, the only way to remove the "Unshakable Loyalty" tag is to enslave a pawn and then subject it to savage mental withdrawal. At that point, they can be tamed and attached to the colony as a full colonist. It is unknown if this is intentional behavior or a mistake.






Unwavering loyalty can be turned off in the narrator settings. Note that enabling unwaveringly loyal pawns reduces the percentage of raiders who are automatically killed when they fall, to almost completely offset the percentage of pawns that cannot now be recruited - this means that the number of captives recruited remains constant under either option, but the total number of captives increases when unwaveringly loyal is enabled. This is beneficial if the player intends to recruit captives only from random raiders, but if the player has been specifically selecting good pawns for safe descent and recruitment, such as through bloodletting or psychic shock lance, then some of those pawns that could previously be recruited will become unwaveringly loyal and thus unavailable.






Caravans
Captives can be loaded into a caravan. If they can walk, like your colonists, they can carry items weighing 35 kg. While in a caravan, a prisoner will never attempt to escape unless it is part of a mental breakdown.






If the caravan gets caught in a busy map (such as an ambush), the prisoner will hang around idly and may get caught in crossfire. Enemies will also attack captives if their factions are hostile.
Capturing prisoners
To capture any prisoner, you need a functioning prison that is fenced and has a vacant bed or sleeping space.


The game actions required to capture a pawn depend on its state:


  • Knocked down pawns can be captured with 100% success, without summoning a pawn. Select a colonist and right-click on the would-be captive.
  • Raiders, berserk pawns and former prisoners who escaped from prison cannot be captured directly. They must first be destroyed.
    NOTE
    Raiders, in particular, have a chance to die if they fall from pain - such as a wound. This does not apply if a pawn falls from other causes; some ways around this include:


    • Mental Shock Spear, though there is a risk of burning the brain.
    • Blood Loss
    • Toxic gas.




To arrest a colonist, guest, ally, or slave, you need to summon a colonist and select a target to capture. The colonist will then approach the target and attempt to capture it. The chance of success depends on the chance of arrest success and is displayed in the tooltip. The chance of arrest success depends heavily on social skill, but is negatively affected by manipulation penalties. If the arrest fails, the target goes into insanity. Pawns with the dead calm gene, always have a 100% chance of success, regardless of the stat of the arrestee, and therefore never go into insanity when arrested.


Colonists can be captured even during a mental breakdown, with the exception of berserk. This immediately ends most mental breakdowns without catharsis. When released, colonists take a mood penalty of -6 "Been imprisoned" for 12 days. This attunement penalty will not be imposed if the colonist is re-enlisted. Arrests do not result in the cessation of fleeing or catatonic breakdown.
If you attempt to capture a pawn from a neutral or allied faction, it will immediately become hostile. This also applies to transport pods if they belong to an existing faction.




If you need to capture a pawn, you can use sleeper pods to instantly create a prison and sleeper pod in any room. You can also turn a colonist's bedroom into a prison.




Reasons to imprison
  • To recruit raiders, guests, or transport pods to the colony.
  • To utilize raiders as human resources.
  • To stop most mental breakdowns. The colonists can then be immediately released.
  • To keep a colonist in a state of drug withdrawal.
  • To convert a colonist or slave to a desired ideology.
  • To serve as sources of blood nourishment or hemogen.
Prisons
Prisons are necessary to hold prisoners.


Building


A prison must be located in a completely enclosed room, walled off and other impenetrable objects such as doors, refrigerators, and nutritional paste dispensers. Prisoners cannot be captured if the prison is not enclosed, and mobile prisoners will move outside the map if there is an opening in the map.


To create a prison, you must place at least one bed or sleeping space. Once you select a bed, you can set the option to "For prisoners". Colonists and slaves cannot be in the same room as prisoners; when 1 bed is set for prisoners, all beds will be converted to prison beds. To signify this, the beds will be colored orange and the entire room will take on an orange outline when selected. To capture a prisoner, there must be an available bed in the room.


General Information


A prison is called a prison cell if it has 1 bed, or a prison barracks if it has multiple beds. Otherwise, a prison is treated as a dormitory or barracks, including the effects of mood on its Impressiveness.


Prisoners may only use items that are in their cell. Food, beds, and nutritional paste dispensers placed inside the prison are for inmate use only. Although a colonist can be ordered to eat food placed in the jail cell, they will not automatically do so. Colonists in a state of mental withdrawal from food, as well as animals, will ignore the jail for this purpose.




If you don't want your prisoners to die, make sure the prison is cozy. Regulate the temperature or give your inmates enough insulating clothing, such as tribal clothing. Make sure the inmate gets food (either through the holding area, warden delivery, or nutritional paste dispenser).
Interactions
Players can assign wardens to perform the following tasks:




  • Recruit - reduces the prisoner's resistance, then tries to recruit him.
  • Reduce Resistance - reduces the prisoner's resistance, does not recruit.
  • Release - frees the prisoner. The imprisoned colonists will return to the colony while other factions attempt to leave the map.
  • Execute - orders the wardens to kill the prisoner.
  • The following options have been added by DLC:
    • Enslave - reduces the prisoner's will and then forces them into slavery.
    • Reduce Will - Reduces the prisoner's will, but does not enslave him.
    • Convert - Attempts to convert the prisoner to the warden's ideology.
    • Bloodfeeder - Sangufags and other pawns with the Bloodfeeder gene will drink the prisoner's blood.
    • Hemogen Farm - Pawns given the "Doctor" job type will automatically extract packets of hemogen from the prisoner.








Resistance


Prisoners begin with resistance, or unwillingness to join the colony. This must be reduced to 0 to begin recruitment attempts. Unwaveringly loyal prisoners have no resistance score, and cannot be recruited.






On a "Recruit" or "Reduce Resistance" order, wardens will attempt to lower the resistance. How much it will be reduced depends on the prisoner's mood, the warden's ability to negotiate, and the prisoner's opinion of the warden. Wardens with greater social skill have a greater ability to negotiate. There is a delay between each conversation.






Once resistance reaches 0, wardens will attempt to convince the prisoner to join the colony, with the chance of success depending on each prisoner's recruitment difficulty percentage, current mood, faction, number of colonists in the colony, and your narrator. If the prisoner is assigned to the Resistance, the wardens will continue the conversation without actually recruiting them.






Will


Enslave, and Reduce Will, work similarly to Recruit and Reduce Resistance, except that the prisoner eventually becomes a slave. The prisoner starts out with much less will than resistance.






Tame


A wild person can be captured. They must be tamed according to normal animal mechanics, rather than hired as a captive. Once tamed, they will join the colony as colonists.






Release


The wardens will take the prisoner outside of your colony and release him. "Outside the colony" means beyond the edge line of connected walls, so this can be just out the door or across most of the map if your defenses extend that far.


Releasing a prisoner of another faction gives a +12 increase to goodwill. To count towards goodwill, the captive must successfully leave the map healthy, with wounds treated. Captives who cannot walk cannot be released. Pirates and wild tribes do not interact with goodwill, so releasing them has no effect.


Releasing a colonist will cause him to rejoin your colony. Slaves retain their native faction.


Execute.
The overseers will immediately slit the prisoner's neck, killing him without delay. This action is different from the ritual of executing prisoners.




Executing guilty prisoners - those who have caused harm to the colony within 24 hours - gives colonists who are not psychopaths a -2 Attitude. Executing an innocent prisoner increases the penalty to -5.




Colonists who follow an ideology with Execution: Respect if guilty gain +3 mood points for executing a guilty prisoner, and the executioner gains +10 mood points. Execution: A required commandment gains the same sentience (but shorter) for executing any person. If the execution was desired by the precept, liquid ideoligies gain a development point.
Additional Info
  • Prisoners may be escorted by a warden to a prisoner bed. If necessary, prisoners can be escorted to a medical bed without risk of escape.
  • Prisoners may initiate social fights with both colonists and other prisoners. Social fights with wardens are unlikely, as recruitment conversations quickly raise opinions.
  • Prisoners can undergo any number of medical procedures. These include injecting drugs, inserting artificial body parts, harvesting organs, and more.
    [Prisoners are suitable targets for gene extractor scanners.
  • Prisoners can be sold to a faction base or slave for silver, and for honor to a royal tribute collector. Colonists who dislike slavery will receive a -3 setting, modified by ideology.
  • If a prisoner dies, the attunement penalty depends on the cause of death. "Willful" causes, such as violent combat, count as an execution.
Recruitment
To start recruiting, the target pawn must first be captured and become a prisoner. Prisoners must then be set to "Recruit" (or "Reduce Resistance" and then "Recruit") on the "Prisoner" tab in the personal information window (in the lower left corner of the screen when the pawn is selected).




The colonists assigned to guard will then "socialize" with the prisoner. This procedure can be repeated every few hours, reducing resistance by a predictable amount each time (depending on the pawn's social skill and the target's mood).




Initial Resistance


Each prisoner has a different recruitment difficulty:


  • The maximum difficulty is 99% and the minimum is 10%. The average is 50% with a standard deviation of 15%.
  • For each level of technology between your faction and the enemy faction, the difficulty increases by 16%. For example, new tribes have a harder time recruiting outsiders.
  • The Storyteller will change the difficulty of recruiting captives depending on the available population.
  • The base resistance of a prisoner depends on its difficulty. At 10% difficulty, prisoners have no starting resistance. At 50% - 15. At 90% - 25. At 100% - 50.


This is multiplied by the narrator's "intent" factor - the larger the population, the less the narrator wants the population to increase, and therefore the higher the starting resistance. At an intention of -1, the resistance is multiplied by 2. At 0, the resistance is multiplied by 1.5. At 1, the resistance is multiplied by 1. At 2, the resistance is multiplied by 0.8.


Finally, the resistance is multiplied by a random factor between 0.8 and 1.2.


Resistance Reduction


The warden reduces base resistance by 1.0 per conversation. This is multiplied by:


the prisoner's opinion of the warden:.


  • At an opinion of -100, the resistance reduction factor is 50%.
  • At an opinion of 0, the resistance reduction factor is 100%.
  • With an opinion of 100, the resistance reduction factor is 150%.
  • Prisoner Mood:


At the current mood of 0%, the resistance reduction factor is 20%.
At a mood of 50%, the resistance reduction factor is 100%.
At 100% mood, the resistance reduction factor is 150%.
5 Comments
McLets 9 Nov, 2024 @ 12:24pm 
create a superheated room with switch coolers connected to the killbox, and have your pawns wear devilstrand to retrieve them.
KKRLL  [author] 25 Jan, 2024 @ 6:39am 
Thank you for your information. I will definitely consider this issue in more detail and add additional information to the guide.
Krystem 25 Jan, 2024 @ 5:55am 
To add to my previous comment, keep in mind that knocking them down the cold route may introduce various frostbites on different body parts. Knocking them down through heat means you would have to rush to capture them before their temperature stabilizes and they get up and walk away.

Another way of knocking pawns down albeit might take longer, is delaying them long enough for them to go hungry and either breakdown or collapse from weakness. Depending on the area you choose this is possible combining multiple strategies to heavily slow down the movement of raiders.

Lastly, another long and unorthodox method would be from having a super polluted environment and exposing the raiders long enough to be exposed to various sickness until they collapse.

*Honorable mentions include reducing the conciousness of raiders through the drug bongs (Ideology DLC) this makes it easier for them to get knocked out through the methods mentioned above.
Krystem 25 Jan, 2024 @ 5:54am 
I appreciate your guide very informative and concise. Thank you for this.

If you would allow to add to your guide, one of the other workarounds to raiders dying from pain is being knocked down by extreme heat or cold either naturally or intentionally through the environment, random temperature related events including mechanoids/events that increase or decrease temperature artificially such as the unique machines you need to go out of your way to destroy to stop them from changing the temperature. Intentionally you can make a kill box that superheats a room to knock down multiple pawns. Another option would be making a super elaborate maze for raiders to be forced to go through exposing them to the elements for longer periods than they should, on the ice sheet would be one of the obvious ways to do this. Delaying the raiders may also include, creating obstacles for them to go through such as having to go over fences, saddlebags, rock chunks, making them go through mud or deepwater.
Grayfang 9 Jan, 2024 @ 8:36pm 
As an additional tip: If you need to keep someone with low mood in prison for a long period of time (breaking drug addiction, for example) you can prevent the inevitable berserk from becoming a problem by building a wall in front of the door, and feeding them via a nutrient paste dispenser peeking into their cell.