Since this is semi-relevant to the current development, wanted to post these thoughts. Although this sort of thing may be more of a future thing (i.e around when investigation mechanics are developed).
Prison in FoM suffered from prison mechanics that a lot of player-driven games struggle with. The prison was designed not as a place of content, but as a place of player punishment.
You have to approach prison mechanics in the mindset that someone who winds up in prison is adequately playing the game as intended, and so being sent to prison is a natural outcome of their play. They are not being sent to prison as punishment for playing the game per se, but as the result of a combination of their actions & the goals of CPC.
To do this, you have to design mechanics that create content and opportunity for someone who winds up in prison, and reason for them to engage in it. You have to allow them to still have progression even when they are serving time in prison as a result of their other actions. Shooting a mining gun at a rock wall or other menial tasks is not it. These are boring tasks to try to allow someone to speed up their release, but they aren't engaging.
I think you can make prison have engaging content and progression.
The prison should have some kind of territories system. Not the same exact with TCs, and not in the sense that opposition can destroy, but that opposition can takeover. Groups, particularly clans or SYN/FoE should be able to control territory inside the prison. And not to do this just for the sake of owning territory, but because there are viable reasons to actually own it. For instance:
- Having a territory where the owner can produce something that people outside the prison want, particularly something that cannot be produced outside of prison. Make that production process have active mechanics, in the way we've previously discussed with drugs/guns/food.
- Grant CPC various administration abilities for the prison, such as the ability to do lockdowns in the case of a serious problem/emergency, and of course the ability to search things. Particularly some system in which crime occurring inside the prison can boost ones PP. Various ways for CPC to manage the prison and its functions/inmates.
- Have open-world accessible containers for items strewn about the prison, some hidden, that inmates can use. Ideally, have it be something dynamic so that the groups/gangs inside the prison can have stashes hidden from other groups/gangs and CPC, because they choose the location.
- Provide ways to smuggle both in and out of the prison.
These are the ways I think you can make prison a viable destination. Let me give you an example of how these work together:
My son Poeb returns to NotBoS and joins The Food Council. On the outside he's putting in work and he's racked up a decent amount of PP. He gets caught and gets sent to prison. So, he links up with me and the other TFC boys who are locked up as well, in which we are in control of a territory. For example sake, let's say that this territory lets us produce 'DeMorgans Dew', a toilet-based booster drink that has a viable purpose outside of prison (lower stam cost on melee or something, idk). This is the only place it's made in the entire game.
We produce as much DMD as we can inside the prison, using materials we source inside the prison, i.e stuff from mining and other tasks, that normally would go to funding CPC but we use it for this instead. The trade-off being that we're not getting better PP reduction for the mining, we're instead using it to profit.
We then have a smuggler who gets the DMD out of the prison where the outside gang can sell it for huge profit on the outside. But this doesn't come without threat of opposition, because the Watu Accord also have a beefy group inside the prison, with territory, and are always attempting to seize control over the DMD production. Thus, our smuggler isn't just responsible for smuggling the DMD out, he's responsible for smuggling weapons in. Particularly weapons we can conceal easily. We then use those weapons to defend against Watu's attempts to seize control over DMD.
All the while, CPC is trying to curb smuggling, inside the prison gang violence, and reduce the amount of contraband inside the prison. Running searching, investigation smuggling routes and methods, and so on.
When you do this, now Poeb going to jail isn't so bad. He can still aid in TFC's efforts and has personal progression. With his actions in the prison, he's ultimately going to wind up making money and reputation inside TFC. This may lead to his progression within the gang. Sure, he may wind up doing more time inside than intended, but it'll be engaging in content and he'll be doing something to progress despite the fact that he's locked up on a moon somewhere. And if he chooses not to involve, he is more than free to do that and just do the tasks and whatever and wait his time out.
Now this isn't foolproof, because while this is great for SYN gangs and FoE, I'm not sure what to do to make prison engaging for GOTC and the corps. I know that for one thing, gangs inside the prison are not going to want to be xenophobic to letting outsiders participate in their activities, because it will be hard to manage territories inside without outside assistance. If there are only 2-3 TFC doing long sentences inside but Watu just got raided and have 8, it's going to be in our best interest to recruit GOTC prisoners to help us defend and split profits with them just to maintain our operation.
But still, there may need to be other engaging ways for those factions inside the prison, and I do not have the same perspective they do so it's hard for me to suggest. I would say that it would be beneficial for those factions to describe how prison could be engaging from their factional perspective.
Ultimately, the original sentiment remains. The end goal should be that prison is not a punishment and a time out, but an evolution and another source of content to engage in. Going to prison shouldn't inherently always be a bad thing, at least from an OOC/player perspective. Sometimes it will just by the nature of it being a bad time to be in jail, but not because jail is just a boring content-lacking place.