Is there a limit to the number of rooms of a given type in Prison Architect?

Question

Background Information

I've been experimenting with making a separate "prison unit" for each inmate type (Minimum Security, Medium Security, Max Security, Protective Custody, etc.). I am trying to make each prison unit to be as independent of the others as possible so that they don't mix. To this end, I am giving each prison unit its own of each of the following rooms (listed roughly in descending order of importance to me):

• Cell block (or more than one for larger population groups)
• Shower
• Kitchen
• Canteen
• Common Room
• Yard
• Holding Cell
• Chapel
• Classroom(s)
• Laundry
• Infirmary
• Staff Room
• Morgue
• Kennel
• Security
• Psychologist's Office or two.

Observed Problems

I have noticed that certain rooms get buggy when there is more than one of them. In particular, the following rooms have some issues.

• Holding Cell: complains that a 5x7 room doesn't meet the 5x5 minimum size requirement.
• Security: Some objects (e.g. Office Desk) get dropped off in a box (though it looks like an Office Desk--the sprite is a desk rather than a box), but doesn't install it, for a while.
• Reception areas also seem to never be big enough if there are more than one. (Not sure why you'd want more than one, but the point stands.)

I've had some other issues when building Parole rooms and Common Rooms, but they've usually gone away after a while.

I realize that the game is still in alpha, but since there are so many bugs (most of which are minor or easily avoided), it's hard for me to know what's a bug and what's a poorly-understood feature.

Answer 1

I think it's fixed as of now. I have two holding cells and three security rooms and they all work correctly.

Answer 2

Building many instances of these rooms is known to still have (some) problems associated with them:

Workshop

While you can have more than one functional workshop, you can only ever have one Construction Foreman. Depending on the length of prisoners' sentences, the maximum amount of useful workshops is limited based around this bottleneck. In addition, only 1 'exports' truck will ever be on the map at the same time, providing another bottleneck.

Staff Room // Staff Canteen

While you can have more than one of these rooms, the game will not evenly distribute staff meals very well until you have a very large prison; so using more than one can lead to (more) hungry staff. If you play with staff needs, it's recommended that you have one central staffroom/canteen combination.

Execution

When this room is in use, your entire prison goes into lockdown. Unless you want the entire prison kept in lockdown forever, building more than one of these is never really useful.

Answer 3

I have a super large prison (have purchased several land expansions) and have separate areas for all of the different inmate types, and even extras for overflow (8+ kitchens/canteens, 4 or 5 workshops, probably 10 different shower areas, multiple mail rooms, cleaning closets, etc., and no issues. You just have to make sure the logistics are correct in that the right class of inmates are going to the right rooms (canteens, etc).