Template:Prison Break

"Prisoners have staged a breakout! They've somehow defeated the door lock and are making their way out. They may seek weapons, fight, or try to escape."

Prisoners can escape via opened doors or gaps in the walls in their cell. In addition, prisoners also have a small chance to actively break out and escape. The time between escape attempts is affected by the following factors:

• The number and type of doors in their cell. Having all doors to a cell be security doors increases prison break interval compared to other doors, while having more than one door of any type for a cell decreases prison break interval.
• The Moving capacity of the individual prisoner. The effect varies by the capacity value and pawns with 0% moving will never attempt to escape.
• Genes relating to aggression.
• Number of prisoners. Prison break instances are rolled per prisoner, meaning that the more prisoners you have, the more likely a prison break is to happen in a given period, despite not directly affecting each individual prisoner's mean time between prison breaks.
• The map must have an exit for a prison break to occur. If there is no traditional exit- such as maps that are in orbit or underground- a prison break cannot occur.
• A prisoner after a bliss lobotomy surgery will have increased prison break interval

Once it happens, all rooms within 20 tiles of the prisoner who started the prison break have a chance to join it. The original room will always join. Other rooms have a 50% chance to join. If a room does join, all prisoners in that room are affected too.

During a prison break, prisoners are able to open all doors. They will attempt^{[Under what conditions?]} to equip and use weapons and weapon-like utility items such as orbital bombardment targeters.^[Which?] Because of this, it is recommended to set armories far away from your prisons and watch out for any weapon dropped by your own pawns. Additionally, placing the exits away from the edge of the map will increase the time it takes for the escapees to exit the map.

Since prisoners are technically part of an enemy faction, any friendlies^{[Same faction?]} on the map will engage them and your own pawns will react to them as specified by their threat response. While these reactions can be helpful if you need to contain a larger break, the use of higher-powered weapons means they have a higher chance of outright killing the escapees. Recapturing escaped prisoners from factions that have turned friendly since that prisoner was originally captured will not affect relations with that faction.

To contain a prison break while reducing the risk of killing the escaping prisoners, low damage weapons are recommended. Alternatively, brain implants that cause brain shock can be implanted in long term or particularly unruly prisoners, and EMP weapons used to down them instantly and safely.