Check out our guide to learn how to set up an electric ground network using the Electrified Floors mod.
Electrified Materials Mod
This mod includes eight floor textures that can be electrified. Four of these are from the base game, and four are from the Future DLC. They all have equal stats, costs, and conductivities, so choose the one you think looks the best.
For this guide, I will be using the electrified white tiles, though everything explained here goes for other types, as well.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for additional materials to be added. I’d ask that these remain constricted to those in the base game/DLCs as to maintain compatibility with other mods.
Draw the Electrified Floor
Things to keep in mind
- There are some important things to keep in mind when drawing an electrified floor. If you want a 100% chance that every tile in the electrified floor will work, I strongly recommend that you draw the floor in the shape of a singular rectangle. This will ensure that the electrified floor receiver (discussed in the next section) recognizes all tiles in the floor. While the script can recognize weirdly-shaped floors, there may be some tiles that won’t be recognized. That doesn’t mean that you should never do a nonrectangular floor, but if you do, you must accept the risk that not every tile will work. My testing shows that, even with very odd floors, ~95% of the tiles will still work, so don’t let this stop you from making your electrified floors whatever shape you want–just keep this fact in mind while planning.
One-tile offshoots
The only pattern that the script consistently cannot detect is long offshoots with a width of 1 tile. An example of this is shown below.
Even though the region on the right is a nice rectangle, the script will probably not recognize the offshoot as part of the rest of the electrified floor. For this reason, I suggest that areas of a one-tile width be defended by electrified pressure pads instead. I’ll discuss these in detail in a later section.
Add an Electrified Floor Receiver
Place the receiver
- Assuming you have researched “Electrified Floors” in the Bureaucracy menu, you can find electrified floor receivers in the Objects menu. Place one down anywhere on the electrified floor. To reiterate, the receiver must be on top of an electrified material from this mod. Only place one receiver to make sure they don’t “fight” over which one is controlling the floor and cause unnecessary lag.
IMPORTANT: When you place the receiver, the game may briefly freeze. The duration of this freeze is dependent on the size of the floor. Do not panic: this is caused by the receiver recognizing the size of the floor you drew. When the game unfreezes, the receiver should have recognized every tile on the floor you just drew.
Any electrified floor tile, even one of a different material, that can be reached from the receiver without having to come into contact with a non-electrified material (i.e., a material from outside this mod) will be considered part of the network. Again, keep in mind the note from the previous section that the offshoots will generally not be recognized. If you try to connect two large rectangular areas by an offshoot, the receiver will probably only recognize the rectangle in which it is located.
Here is an example of a “good” electrified floor. It is a simple rectangle, and the receiver is placed on top of the floor:
How do I know that this worked?
Hover over each tile of the floor. Every tile should have an invisible object on top of it called “Electrified Floor”. If this is the case, the floor should work. This is what you should see over every tile:
If you don’t see this, review previous steps. You likely had either a weird shape, an offshoot, or didn’t place the receiver on top of the electrified floor.
Changing the Size of the Electrified Floor
If you expand the floor, the receiver will not automatically recognize the newly added tiles. The receiver updates its connected tiles at the following moments:
1. When the game is loaded
2. When the receiver is moved/placed
3. When the “Update Floor Size” button is clicked
When you change the floor size, you will want to hit the “Update Floor Size” button. To do this, simply click on the receiver of the floor you just expanded. The following options should pop up:
Click the button (this will cause a brief bit of lag, depending on the size of the floor). You can check that this worked by hovering your cursor over the newly added tiles and checking for the presence of the “Electrified Floor” object. Again, if the tiles aren’t recognized, your receiver is either a weird shape, contains an offshoot, or isn’t placed on top of the electrified floor.
I suggest that you make modifications in bulk so you aren’t constantly sitting around waiting for the receiver to import the floor. Be patient with the loading–I increased the quantity of computations done when the floor is imported as to minimize lag/stuttering every few seconds.
Electrified Floors Are Separable!
In case I didn’t already make it clear, electrified floors are considered separate if they are connected to two different receivers and are not connected via an electrified object. The image below shows two separate electrified floors. Activating one floor will not activate the other, and each receiver’s settings are independent of one another.
Auto Activation
Conditions
Various conditions must be met for the floor to activate automatically:
1. Auto Activate must be set to “On” in the Electrified Floor Control Panel (accessible via clicking on the connected receiver).
2. A guard must be standing on the floor. This guard will send a signal to the receiver to activate the floor, assuming that the other conditions for activation are met.
3. A number of prisoners greater than or equal to the number of prisoners specified in the Activation Threshold in the control panel must be misbehaving.
4. The receiver must have taken less than 70% damage.
If all of these conditions are met, after 1-8 seconds, a guard will send a signal to the receiver activating the floor, which shocks all prisoners standing on it. The strength of this shock depends on the “Power” setting given by the user.
Surrendering
When auto activation is enabled, prisoners have a chance to surrender before the floor is electrified. The chance to surrender is dependent on security level, with MinSec having the highest chance to surrender and SuperMax having the lowest. For some reason, the surrendering animation cannot be triggered using Lua scripts (to my knowledge–please contact me if this isn’t the case), but the prisoner will stop misbehaving if they choose to “surrender.”
Electrified Floor Control Panel Options
You probably noticed the other options available when clicking on the receiver. I’ll briefly explain each one below:
Activate Floor
This one is obvious. Press this button to immediately electrify the floor at the specified power setting.
Auto Activate: On/Off
Press the button to enable/disable auto activation. If you are having any problems with lag/stutter every few seconds, it might be a good idea to turn this off. I have done my best to optimize this system, however, so I doubt you will need to do this.
Note: disabling this will NOT decrease the time it takes to import the floor!
Power: Low/Medium/High
Click to adjust the power setting. The effects of each power setting are as follows:
- Low: prisoners are shocked and will probably stop misbehaving; some damage may be done
- Medium: prisoners are shocked and knocked unconscious
- High: prisoners are shocked and killed
The power setting is set to “Low” by default and will not change a prisoner’s chance to surrender.
Activation Threshold
Changes the number of prisoners required to be misbehaving on the floor for it to activate automatically.
Update Floor Size
Click to have the receiver recognize any changes in the floor’s structure. May cause the game to briefly freeze, depending on the size of the floor.
Electrified Pressure Pads
These can be found in the Objects menu and should be used for areas that either don’t work with a normal electrified floor (like offshoots) or are simply too small. Clicking on an electrified pressure pad allows you to customize its power setting, though be careful–these cannot be activated automatically! It generally takes ~5 seconds for an electrified pressure pad to electrocute a misbehaving prisoner.
Troubleshooting
Issues with receiver detecting the floor
1. If you recently modified the floor, saving and reloading the game will usually fix this issue.
2. If your floor isn’t a singular rectangle, remember that the receiver may not detect every tile to which it is connected.
3. Floors in the form of/connected via an offshoot generally will not be detected correctly. Use an electrified pressure pad here.
Issues with prison loading time
1. Just wait. The larger and the greater number of floors you have, the longer of a time it will take for each receiver to recognize each floor. This process is done automatically when the prison is loaded, so this will increase the loading time for the prison. After waiting 30-60 seconds, you should be able to play.
2. If this takes longer than 30-60 seconds, you probably have either too many floors or your floors are too large. I haven’t yet hit this point in my testing, and I have tested large electrified floors. Remember: if you want shorter loading times, use smaller/fewer electrified floors.
Issues with lag/stutter every few seconds
1. Reload the prison. Each ElectrifiedFloorObject checks for guard presence and prisoner misbehavior after a certain delay, which is defined by a pseudo-random number generator that generates a number from 4 to 8. This spreads out an otherwise arduous and process-intensive procedure for recognizing prisoner misbehavior and guard presence over a few seconds and many different objects, reducing a very noticeable stutter to (what is supposed to be) a small and barely/not noticeable lag. It may happen that you got really unlucky and had a lot of tiles generate numbers close to each other. Reloading the prison will cause these numbers to be re-evaluated.
2. Let me know. My computer isn’t extremely powerful, but I can run large floors with little to no lag. Send me a message or comment your specs and how often the lag/stutter happens.
Issue/solution isn’t listed here!
Let me know immediately. Comment below or on the mod page, and I’ll do my best to fix your issue.
