Reference Need help with some designs for a SW campaign

.... and I don't know if there is already a thread out there where I can post my questions and hopefully get answers. If there is, can somebody please point me in that direction?

I'm trying to design a prison in a Star Wars game and I need to figure some things out for it.

1. How many admin, security, and other personal would be required for a privatized prison with 40,000 inmates and a really big prison farm?

2 How many standard levels would be in a hanger that can house the average medium freighter?

3 How many standard levels would be in a hanger that can house the average light freighter?

4. How much staff would be required to man a medical research facility at that prison?

More questions may follow....

 

Honestly I'd say your questions can be your own discretion, I would reference starwars.wikia.com though, search around for different ships and prison colonies. You'll likely be able to use something already in existence for your model.

 

I've already done some looking around the Wook. Star's End doesn't work as that the inmates aren't in stasis. I haven't found anything yet, and I've been looking for a while. I don't have an idea of what would be appropriate, so I don't want to understaff or overstaff it, and that's why I'm asking.

 

The fun thing about being GM... You decide, mate.
A lot depends on who is running the prison and what era it takes place in. 40,000 non-stasis inmates are gonna be a handful. Just find the average high security inmate-to-personnel ratio in reality and apply that to your prison. Maybe add a few. Of course you'll want to take into account if they are also expecting outward interference (attacks). A lot of factors.

 

I'm trying to flesh this out and I'm having difficulty finding numbers from real-world equivalents. I have no idea what the ratio of guards to inmates typically is, nor any of the other staff. I'm searching, and coming up with no answers. If I were to come up with a random number, I wouldn't be comfortable with it being so random. I'm still designing the prison, and I have to take in consideration how much staff there is.

I'm trying to be a thorough as possible with this design, because 1) the people I typically game with have a strong tendency to try and break the gamemaster's plans by testing for under-developed areas. I.E., if I'm not careful, they'll end up running the prison as warden and guards (the prison farm is very profitable) instead of escaping it. And if I go for overkill, their characters will all die before the game truly begins.... And then will come the arguments about logic that I want to avoid.

This is why I'm asking for the info that I can't seem to find. I need to find the right balance

 

What does it matter if the prisoners end up running the prison, as long as they don't escape.

Isn't that what happened at the most famous SW prison of all, Kessel? Apparent criminals were running the show, making lesser inmates, and captured guards, do all the mining. They had a bit of a spacefleet, but were not able to get beyond the system of black holes that formed the Maw, so they remained contained.

As the prison authorities, you only get in official trouble when there is a successful prison escape.

 

The other thing is that the staff don't all have to be human. Remember G-2RD droids?

 

As far as I read, the ideal ratio is one security personnel for every three or four prisoners. That's if we're working on a level plane, human to human, no Force powers or anything involved. So you'll probably want about ten to fifteen thousand guards. Other random staff (custodial, kitchen, what have you) not included.

 

Why are there 40,000 inmates?

That is
a) a very specific number;
b) a lot of inmates;

Are you expecting 40,000 players? Cos I tell you now, that's going to get unwieldy.

You know, you can have a massive prison without necessarily having the population to fill it.

Examples
The planetary penal colony in Alien 3, on Fiorina 161, was structurally MASSIVE, but only had a handful of prisoners, one guard, one administrator, one former prisoner-turned-medical officer remaining, to act as caretakers.

Horus, where the first Death Star was constructed, the prisoners pretty much had as much of the planet as they felt like walking to, while the Guards had a little fenced-off barracks where the only landing pad was. Oh, and the fauna and wildlife was hostile, so it was able to keep the prisoner numbers down.

So, like with Horus, you can let the environment itself act as the security.

For a while, actors Christopher Lambert and Thomas Jane, seemed to specialise in movies where the prison facility was underground, and each inmate had an explosive neck brace which detonated if you tried to breach the perimeter and get a certain distance away.

If you fire up a new browser window, and paste this link http://boards.theforce.net/threads/welcome-to-prison-now-accepting-new-players.30977906/ into the address bar, or if this magically becomes a hyperlink, it takes you to an archived game on here called "Welcome to PRISON". The theme escapes me, but that isn't important right now.

GMed by Coruscant, each player got to RP up to two prison inmates, literally any character or entity from any franchise; there were no guards, and as far as I recall, while you still could have powers, I don't think it made any difference to the environment, which might have been a remote island, or even another dimension.
Could give you ideas.

 

I didn't want to go into a lot of detail here, because I was trying not to bore anyone with details, but I may have to. The prison is just the beginning of a game epic and I don't want the players to get trapped in the prologue. The G-2RD droids might work...Before I get into it though, thanks you everybody for your input. I'm still not revealing everything about the prison, because I don't find it necessary at the moment. Here goes:

It's an underground privatized prison (partially owned by members of the Tagge family). where the prisoners are slave labor. The prisoners are all lifers with no chance for parole and are denied visitation. The hydroponic farming facility in which they work is the size of Rhode Island (if chopped to bits and stacked into levels). There is roughly 1 prisoner per 20 acres, as that there is plenty of automation.

The prison cells are at the bottom, the farm is just above it, then security, then production, r&d and the infirmary, then more security, then admin and admin housing, then the storehouse, then more security, then the hangers/spaceport/whatever you want to call it. and the surface of the planet is somewhere around the hangers. There will be upwards (or is that downwards?) to 215 levels.

The prison is mostly self sustaining, but is producing a new drug to sell on the black market (and that part is a secret). Sort of a cross between Heroin, Marijuana, and Ecstasy (or maybe LSD). There is another drug being produced at the prison. This second drug is being administered to the inmates. It modifies behavior in away that make the prisoner virtually emotionless although content (borderline happy) with their state of being.... I know that's contradictory, I'm working on that, too. The prisoners also become very susceptible to suggestion and their memories prior to them taking this second drug become very clouded. If they were to stop taking the drug, they'd go through withdrawals and eventually get their memories back.

So, you might be asking, what's the impetus for escape then? A disgruntled scientist on the admin staff who was forced into his/her contract wants to return home. This scientist goes over the prisoner records and selects some candidates from the prison population that fit the bill for what the scientist needs to escape. The scientist then organizes to have the pc's doses to be tampered with so that their start to become aware, their withdrawal symptoms are lessened, etc. Essentially, the scientist is weening them off. The scientist serves a purpose post-prison, leading the pc's to the next stages.

This prison will also be the galaxy's sole source for the 2 drugs.

I am not expecting 40k players, I'm expecting 5 or 6, and that number is an estimate of the population, not exact. I'm also basing that number off of other Star Wars prison populations, like Star's End (which has 24k).

All that being said, I know my players. I need to have every contingency planned out if this is going to work. If I don't have the minutiae figured out, they'll get hung up on it and the grand scheme will tank.

I think there was more info I was going to share, but my presence is needed elsewhere at the moment.

 

Sounds like a really fun one to play. It's definitely better to have too many details than not enough. Especially with players like that! I'm a detail nut. It gets monotonous without them.
I'd say go with the droids though, man. It being the kinda place that loves free labor, and that's what droids are all about.

On an off note, you running through your levels reminds me immensely of Tiny Death Star.

 

Consider stealing off Dan Simmons: in his otherwise controversial book Flashback the titular drug in question is one that allows the ingester to relive his or her memories in exquisite detail, as in, they are taken back to the moment they feel they want to remember and relive in in every detail: sight, sound, feel, touch, taste, all of it. The uses are manifold: who would not want to remember in intense detail their happy childhood, if they had one? Or consider the opposite: in the books, some gangs commit killings specifically so they can use Flashback to take themselves back and re-experience the killing again and again.

 

If you are asking how many standard levels high, one of these hangars would be, I would say, four levels. This is what I used for a hangar within an Immobiliser 418 interdictor, that housed AT-AT barges and Imperial shuttles.

Now, since you have IDed this place as an indoor plant farm, I'm not sure if you want the farms to be standard levels. At this point, I don't know what I am talking about, but I have concerns based on two reasons:
a) From episodes of NCIS that I have watched, the team have identified houses generating excess heat while searching for a bomb factory or something, and busted in, only to find an illicit marijuana farm. This suggests to me that the plants indoors generates heat, which would possibly impact your idea if you are using standard height levels. Of course, the heat might have been generated by the extra air-conditioning or lights that marijuana might need to grow, so I could be wrong there.

Does your drug need artificial sunlight to help it grow? Any special equipment.

b) Obviously, I cannot apply Earth biology to your space plant, but I do feel I should bring up the chlorphyll thing, where our green plants suck in air / oxygen, and generate carbon dioxide. Does your drug plant do anything like that? with an enclosed environment, it is another issue to consider.

2019 edit: Whoops, error! Green plants, generate oxygen, don't they?

 

how many standard levels do you think a medium transport would take up?

there will be artificial sunlight, yes.

also, the suck in CO2 and breathe out air.... and pollen.... well, at least the second drug does the pollen thing.

 

There are two ways to do an indoor plant farm, first is to have, well a literal level acting as a farm with a cleared rows and cross sections for the inmates to get to the plants as well at the equipment sustaining them. This would likely have just different light emitting bulbs in the ceiling so long as the plants don't grow too large.

Second way is one that is under development somewhat still here on earth, where you could have towers with the little plants coming out the side slots, stacked levels of growth, or even a round cylinder thingy's with light tubes in middle for growth across the floor or on rotating access machines. The last is hard to describe simply, so here is an image:


Also for second option, saw this diverse showing for indoor farms: http://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-future-14-high-tech-farms-where-veggies-gr-513129450

 

Oh, sweet link, Mitth. Great seeing all those futuristic ways to grow plants; really fires the imagination.

I don't really know what a medium transport looks like, how many decks on the ship, for instance, differences in size between a Corellian Engineering Corporation' YT-1300 like the 'Falcon, and an HT-2200.

Also, you haven't said whether the freighter flies out the front of the hangar, like...well, pretty much any hangar in the SW movies, or out the top, seeing as this base of yours is underground.

 

Hey! The Falcon in the first movie lifts out of a hanger vertically and the Blockade Runner enters a hanger from the underside, TIEs leave by dropping out of their hanger racks. So I think vertical (as in space there is no true up or down side to things) are well established for the movies.

 

I can't like this enough. i was thinking of the first way, but i may change it up now.

about the freighter sizes... that's what I'd like to know. *shrug*

5 hanger levels, top 3 sized large enough for medium freighters, bottom 2 are sized for light freighters and transports and smaller). each "level" is dodecagon shaped, with the center cut away for ships to be able to pass through. only bottom hanger level is not cut away. each cutaway is ray-shielded. there are 11 hangers per "level". each level held up by magnetic tensor columns and angled normal struts. the 12th spot has a cafe staffed by droids, a harbormaster, 2 cargo lifts. each hanger bay has a tractor beam to tug ships into place, load lifter droids, labor droids, refueling pumps, etc. so ships are vertical take off and landing with tractor beam tugs.



ANOTHER question. This one might be easier. I'm looking for an already established resort world, as far rimward as possible, in the vicinity of the Hydian Way. Any ideas?