Interrogation/Prisoners

To capture an enemy alive, you handcuff him (new item #1625). Take handcuffs in your main hand, and click on a person. The handcuff cursor will indicate whether this is possible at all. You will be successful on unconscious enemies all the time. Other enemies will of course resist, in which case you might be unsuccessful.

By handcuffing, an enemy will be effectively out of combat. He will no act in combat anymore (apart from standing up after explosions etc. - so to speak, he still has reflexes, but that's about it). Once the battle finishes (any remaining enemies are dying or handcuffed), a small dialogue will pop up.

By selecting 'Let them go', you will release the prisoners. A percentage of them will return to the queen's army, the rest will decide they had enough of this conflict. If you select a sector, the prisoners will be sent to prison there (only sectors you control are shown). There are 5 prisons in Arulco: Tixa and Alma have the biggest, Chitzena, Cambria and San Mona have very small ones. Plus the not-so secret one near Meduna. Regardless of the option you choose, the captured enemies will drop their equipment according to the ini rules prior to going to prison.

Every hour it is checked whether the prisoners in your prisons will revolt. This happens when
 * Nobody guards this prison
 * The prison is overcrowded, and the prisoners vastly outnumber the guards. The higher the prisoner/guard ratio, the higher the chance of a riot. The 'guard value' depends on the number and quality of militia you have there, and the stats and traits of the mercs you have here. It is very wise to have someone at your prisons.

A riot causes ALL of the prisoners to arm themselves in this sector. So if you keep 50 prisoners in Tixa and have a riot there, a riot will cause 50 enemies to spawn there. You probably don't want that.

Now, why would you even take prisoners, apart from being human-friendly? Your mercs can interrogate prisoners in these prisons by using the correct facility. Every hour that they interrogate, they 'process' prisoners of war, and the following effects can happen:
 * A prisoner can join your cause and become a member of your militia
 * A prisoner might give you some helpful information about the army - he might tell you about patrols you do not yet know about, even about their exact number or the direction they might be traveling. Patrols with tanks take priority, static tanks aren't included. Rarely a general's location will be released.
 * A prisoner's family (or is it really the queen?) might pay ransom for his release.
 * A released prisoner that does not join your militia might still rejoin the army.

The prisoners of war you have caught and transferred to your prisons will actually appear in the tactical map.

For every prisoner we caught, one will appear on the map (provided there is still room in the civilian team there). They are divided on the prison cells. They will not go hostile, since they are totally defenseless, as you've already taken their gear earlier...

However, harming them has negative repercussions: Loyalty in he next town will slightly lowered, as it dawns to the local population that the so-called liberators of Arulco are as brutal as the army. Naturally, killing prisoners of war removes them from your 'prisoner pool'.

They also have fitting dialogue, where they mock you, plead for mercy, or offer something for their release.

How many prisoners a merc can interrogate every hour depends on his stats, experience, personality and even gear (waving a shotgun under their tongues might get some people to speak their mind more clearly.

Note that the AI will get alerted if you handcuff prisoners. So stealthily handcuffing an entire sector will not work easily.

What I still plan to do, but have not yet gotten around too, is to add boni to mercs with a prison guard (Bull, Bubba) or Law enforcement (Raider, Rudolf) background. These boni would make them superior at being a guard or interrogator. This would be used to determine a merc's 'background', so other mercs get boni for being veterans, lawyers, arms dealers, drug addicts, gang members, athletes, crazy people etc. The handcuffs currently have placeholder images, as I suck at pictures.

When talking to an enemy, the player can offer them the option to surrender, thus capturing all enemies and ending the battle. To demand surrender, you have to speak to the enemy. You will be asked whether you want to demand surrender. Click on 'Yes'.

Prisoners will appear in any sector with a prison facility and specified prison rooms if prisoners are present.

Adds a stun gun (needs batteries, a hit will deal no damage but knock out an enemy) and pepper spray (blinds target for a few turns if hit in the face from the front) to our non-lethal arsenal. This will make it easier to catch enemies alive.

Enemies can also be bound via 'stacks of binders'. Its basically a kit that degrades every time you capture an enemy with it. Pro: Lasts for more than one enemy. Con: You do not gt it back, contrary to handcuffs.

Also, a FacilityType assignment performance tag now influences the performance of your interrogators in that sector. By this you can build really (in-)efficient prisons.

Prisoner-type differentiation. There are admin/regular/elite prisoners. Advanced prisoners are harder to interrogate, but can become advanced militia, should they join you. PRISONER_INTERROGATION_POINTS_REGULAR  = 100 PRISONER_INTERROGATION_POINTS_ELITE    = 140 PRISONER_INTERROGATION_POINTS_SPECIAL  = 250 Previously, 100 points were used to interrogate a prisoner. You can see the interrogation points of your interrogators in strategic when they are on assignment, 145/7 means 145 points for 7 possible prisoners. Enemy soldiers can now free captured comrades.
 * If several types of prisoners are in your prison, the low-quality ones are interrogated first.
 * If you decide to massacre prisoners in tactical, the elite ones will be killed first, as there the most valuable ones to you. Along to awarding you a loyalty malus in a nearby town for being a total dick, that is.
 * If a prisoner joins you, there is a 20% chance that he will be demoted. So if an elite prisoner joins you, 80% chance of him becoming a veteran militia, 16% regular, and 4% green.
 * Interrogation points needed can now be set in the ini for each type PRISONER_INTERROGATION_POINTS_ADMIN = 80
 * Existing prisoners will be transformed into admin prisoners. Unless you have >255 of them in one prison, then they'll become regulars. And if more than 65535 elites. Though I doubt this is relevant to anyone.

When spotting a captured comrade, the AI will raise the alarm, and then try to free him. To free him it must be near him, and then spend some AP - no animation though. Note that it will be able to free a prisoner that was caught with binders, but not one that was caught with handcuffs.

Interrogation is closely related to the enemy generals feature.
 * Enemy officers now fill in the role of 'special' prisoners that was previously empty. They are rare and hard to take prisoner (they get a team bonus in surrender calculations) and very hard to interrogate. But they are your best chance if you ever want to uncover the locations of enemy generals.
 * If prisoners are taken in a sector that houses a prison, that prison can also be selected to house them. So if you take Tixa, you can immediately store the guards you captured right there.
 * One can now select what type of prisoners a merc should interrogate primarily. This allows you to interrogate an officer first, without having to empty all troops and elites first.
 * Generals are now a prisoner type of their own. They cannot defect to your team - they won't turn into militia or so - but they yield a substantial ransom, should you be lucky. They also have a high chance of telling you where other generals are, if they give you info.
 * Interrogation points both required and generated have been drastically reduced. simply because it allows me to cut the size of the required variables


 * Civilians can finally be captured. Either by handcuffing or by asking them to surrender. To remove an obvious exploit, this is only possible if they are hostile to you.
 * Civilians can be easily interrogated. They cannot give you info on the enemy (because how would they know anything?). They can defect, but we can't just allow any random inbred farmer to simply join the ranks of our most glorious revolution, can we now? They need at least a refreshing course - they will join as volunteers.


 * It should now be impossible to handcuff a profile-based NPC (basically anyone with a 'talking face' falls under this). These people cannot be captured.
 * If the enemy team has profile-based NPC members in combat then asking them to surrender won't work. These evil leaders simply wont allow it! So if you want to make prisoners, remove their leaders first.
 * Tanks cannot be captured as well. As long as a tank is present, the AI will never surrender.
 * If you have no prison, you have to let any prisoners go - but now up to a third of them might join your volunteers. Consider it a consolation prize.
 * if the number of prisoners in a prison exceeds that prison's  (from Map\FacilityTypes.xml), interrogation performance is lowered by up to 33%. This should serve as an incentive: if you have a lot of prisoners, using a big prison like Tixa or Alma is reasonable. Stacking 50 prisoners in a tiny cell isn't.
 * If we have no prison (or we just feel like it), we interrogate prisoners instantly. This happens, well, instantly, the downside is that the chances of getting anything (defectors/intel/money) are halved. Interrogating prisoners in a prison is still more effective. On the other hand, with luck, you can get your first militia very fast.