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[GoblinCookie]

I had figured that prison sites weren't -just prisons-, but rather, nominally, a normal dwarven fortress, by gameplay and situation standards, however, with the exception of:
-Implicit specialization by the player to construct prison spaces and to buy/grow enough of their food to support prisons. This isn't strictly necessity, either way you cut it, but hinders the latter point if you don't do it.
-Contractual agreement with other civilizations or groups, or on your own auspicions (if applicable), to import prisoners.

If prison starting scenario means we are just going to get prisoner contracts, then why not just have us build the prisons ourselves in the normal fashion in a normal site and then have nearby sites respond to our large, spacious prisons by sending us prisoner contracts.  Having prison fortresses function in gameplay terms identically to regular fortresses makes the whole idea completely redundant, I think the idea of starting scenarios is that they have defined citizen statuses, so guard VS prisoner determining gameplay options. 

If your prison fails spectacularly, the consequences will simply be diplomatic and monetary ones as you don't get prisoners from anyone who isn't actively trying to simply get rid of them anymore, with the included side consequences of criminals roaming the countryside from any escapees and the danger it directly poses to your dwarves. However, your fortress, position, etc still exist.

That suggestion simply folds my 'prison failure' and 'we run out prisoners' fail condition into one single fail condition, you still have not explained what happens if the prisoners simply riot and take over our fortress.  You can't simply rely on market forces and no sane government would, if upon arriving all your prisoners simply get released into the wilderness this is undermining the whole legal system of the civ; the idea that the civ government would allow us to continue to function as a prison is just balmy. 

Because as you put it, some folks are just trying to get rid of their prisoners, their is thus no 'market disadvantage' to letting all your prisoners escape as long as they don't end up in the vicinity of your 'customers' sites.  Failure to keep a reasonable grip on your prisoners should definitely result in your being shut down because it is the legal system of the civ you are undermining.

The idea I'm trying to posit is that a fortress which keeps prisoners should do so in the same manner it keeps prisoners of war from sieges, only with the added diplomatic obligations for any re-compensation it gets from taking prisoners from other sites. Failing that diplomatic obligation should be considered on the same gameplay level as breaking elven treaties to not cut wood, for instance.

I can imagine an interesting scenario being that you take a large amount of prisoners, some being high-profile political or royalty that a group would rather not martyr. A particularly bad prison break makes the sites that made these agreements  with you severely doubt your competency to oversee, prisons, and for the high profile political prisoners, a site sends out a diplomat with armed escort to make demands, potentially deliver an ultimatum if the situation is -really- bad.

Yes the prison fortress prison should use similar mechanics to regular prisons in 'normal' sites and prisoners would exist with a special citizen status in regular sites as well.  However prison fortresses have a special citizen status of guard which among other things refuse to do non military work, in regular fortresses guards are potentially just regular folks with no particular restrictions that get assigned to be guards by the site government.  You assign your guard citizens to become actual guards in the game, using the same mechanics but unlike with regular dwarves that is the only thing you can do with them. 

In order to make the starting scenario system maximally modifiable instead of being a small number of hardcoded games it is best for the starting scenarios to be built around a particular citizen status which exists in general with it's criteria for membership  defined at civ level and THEN have (or not) a set of defined starting scenarios that 'belong' to the citizen status.  The ability to create a prison depends upon the availability of prisoners, just as the ability to create a mining colony would depend upon the availability of miners (the citizen status not the job skill).  The game moves where possible folks of that citizen status

Then we have a list of local citizen statuses that are found only in the starting scenario itself.  In this case the guard status has no requirements, save not being a prisoner, meaning that everybody who freely immigrates into a prison fortress automatically becomes a prison guard, even if they are not presently doing any guarding.  What makes the scenario a challenge is that the guards do not work as discussed above, forcing us to use the prisoners as labour; which means we cannot simply leave them in their cages.  However with non-civ level citizen statuses it would be possible to set a timer on their implementation, so it is 6 months into the starting scenario not immediately that our dwarves become officially guards and stop working, hence some of them can build the prison.

[iceball3]

Mind that i've been stating these in the context of the fact that dwarf mode, and sites in general, have personal sovereignty, and looking forward from the current framework, unless you made your site under the specific direct authority of another site (unlikely, Slaves to Armok and all).

I imagine there could be specific embark modes and scenarios, but what i'm stating is an actual outright functioning fortress could, at some point during their flourishing, decide to build mass-prison facilities and begin make diplomatic discussions with groups who need the prison space.
Saying that you "lose the fortress" outright in this instance because it's both illegal and unpleasing to your head civilization is completely out of question with how Dwarf Fortress is to be played, it's like getting an instant game over screen if you dump a dwarven caravan into a magma pool out of spite or whatnot.

If your parent civilization wants to shut down the site, I'd like to see them try. Actually try. Insurrection, siege, withdrawl of funding, etc. And whether they consider this in their interest to even bother due to outstanding wars is also another question, too, considering that with enough social isolation and management to prevent insurrections, careful or hermetic defense setups, and the like, the player generally is (and probably should be) capable of defending themselves for quite some time, even with new siege diggers, given enough preparation, and fortresses are often able to dig their heels in well enough with enough farming set up or large enough stockpiles.

If the prisoners riot, then your control of the fortress is basically considered by what dwarves you have alive. If all of your dwarves are captured, defect, or are killed, then you get a lose the game, practically like you normally would.

I had figured that prison sites weren't -just prisons-, but rather, nominally, a normal dwarven fortress, by gameplay and situation standards, however, with the exception of:
-Implicit specialization by the player to construct prison spaces and to buy/grow enough of their food to support prisons. This isn't strictly necessity, either way you cut it, but hinders the latter point if you don't do it.
-Contractual agreement with other civilizations or groups, or on your own auspicions (if applicable), to import prisoners.

If prison starting scenario means we are just going to get prisoner contracts, then why not just have us build the prisons ourselves in the normal fashion in a normal site and then have nearby sites respond to our large, spacious prisons by sending us prisoner contracts.  Having prison fortresses function in gameplay terms identically to regular fortresses makes the whole idea completely redundant, I think the idea of starting scenarios is that they have defined citizen statuses, so guard VS prisoner determining gameplay options. 

Like i've said, imprisonment offers would not be strictly scenario-only. You would be allowed to show off your prison spaces to diplomats, or diplomats could get the good idea of asking for said offer, and such agreements would be handled similar to how diplomacy currently works.

Then we have a list of local citizen statuses that are found only in the starting scenario itself.  In this case the guard status has no requirements, save not being a prisoner, meaning that everybody who freely immigrates into a prison fortress automatically becomes a prison guard, even if they are not presently doing any guarding.  What makes the scenario a challenge is that the guards do not work as discussed above, forcing us to use the prisoners as labour; which means we cannot simply leave them in their cages.  However with non-civ level citizen statuses it would be possible to set a timer on their implementation, so it is 6 months into the starting scenario not immediately that our dwarves become officially guards and stop working, hence some of them can build the prison.

Forcing statuses like this is particularly the reason why I'm suggesting against scenario-mode-locked prison fortresses. Normal player made fortresses can do the job well enough with less than half of their population being in the military, anyway, no?

[GoblinCookie]

Mind that i've been stating these in the context of the fact that dwarf mode, and sites in general, have personal sovereignty, and looking forward from the current framework, unless you made your site under the specific direct authority of another site (unlikely, Slaves to Armok and all).

I imagine there could be specific embark modes and scenarios, but what i'm stating is an actual outright functioning fortress could, at some point during their flourishing, decide to build mass-prison facilities and begin make diplomatic discussions with groups who need the prison space.
Saying that you "lose the fortress" outright in this instance because it's both illegal and unpleasing to your head civilization is completely out of question with how Dwarf Fortress is to be played, it's like getting an instant game over screen if you dump a dwarven caravan into a magma pool out of spite or whatnot.

If your parent civilization wants to shut down the site, I'd like to see them try. Actually try. Insurrection, siege, withdrawl of funding, etc. And whether they consider this in their interest to even bother due to outstanding wars is also another question, too, considering that with enough social isolation and management to prevent insurrections, careful or hermetic defense setups, and the like, the player generally is (and probably should be) capable of defending themselves for quite some time, even with new siege diggers, given enough preparation, and fortresses are often able to dig their heels in well enough with enough farming set up or large enough stockpiles.

If the prisoners riot, then your control of the fortress is basically considered by what dwarves you have alive. If all of your dwarves are captured, defect, or are killed, then you get a lose the game, practically like you normally would.

For regular sites everything you say is quite true and should remain so.  However in the case of all the starting scenarios we are no longer talking about regular sites in the normal; more what would normally be structures (so mine, inn, prison) scaled up to the scale of a site.  They are specifically *not* self-sufficient from the civs other sites, since they depend upon other sites in your civ for something.  A prison fortress is not a regular town prison but more a concentration camp, you are specifically created by your civ in order to centrally incarcerate all their prisoners that would otherwise be scattered about the place; autonomy from them is simply not part of the deal.

The site does not get shut down as such.  It is just that the starting scenario rules stop applying and the prison guards turn into regular dwarves with no specific citizen status, or into dwarves of some other citizen status.  It thus carries on, but not as a prison site; though it may still have a regular prison.

Like i've said, imprisonment offers would not be strictly scenario-only. You would be allowed to show off your prison spaces to diplomats, or diplomats could get the good idea of asking for said offer, and such agreements would be handled similar to how diplomacy currently works.

That would make the whole concept of having a specialized prison site an utter pointless waste of time.  They have to be the exclusive recipient of the prisoner transfers at least from high-level sites or else there is simply no point in having them, as opposed to simply having a whole batch of regular sites that have prisons as required.  Then again the whole starting scenario concept is quite a stupid one in general for precisely this reason, in order for the whole thing to work and make sense we have to force it too.  Why set up a prison fortress when we can set up a fortress WITH an prison, why set up a mining fortress when we can set up a fortress WITH a mine and why set up an inn fortress when we can set up a fortress WITH an inn. 

It all comes down the core inspiration problem that the devs have.  They is being inspired by traditional epic fantasy, which gets it's inspiration from the middle ages; except that the middle ages is not some kind of natural result of 'historical development' but the result of the Romans enslaving most of Europe and then somehow managing to get weak enough to be carved up by a raft of minor barbarian nations 100s of times weaker than they (should) be.  In order to have the middle ages we have to have the goblins win and conquer everybody else but then somehow get carved up by kobolds into warring microempires.

Without the whole insane process that created the kind of quasi-medieval society that is inspiring the devs with specialized semi-autonomous sites is never going to happen because everyone will simply rationally settle on the original quasi-tribal setup of DF, which closely resembles how things actually worked before the Romans turned up and conquered everyone.  The social order of the middle ages (and beyond) does not exist because it was the most rational or efficient system, it existed because it is the result of the victory of vast warmongering empires (of which the goblins are the only in-game example).  The results were neither rationally intended nor were did it to do them any good, owing to how easily they fell to foes that should have been far weaker than they were; the end result of the whole sorry process is the 'middle ages' and even the 'modern world'. 

However even the middle ages or romans got around to building concentration camps, that is more a modern thing. 

Forcing statuses like this is particularly the reason why I'm suggesting against scenario-mode-locked prison fortresses. Normal player made fortresses can do the job well enough with less than half of their population being in the military, anyway, no?

Here is the whole problem with being against scenario locking fortresses and citizen statuses, the whole dev page is built about just that idea. 

Fortress Starting Scenarios

    Framework
        Expand framework of law, custom, rights, property and status as needed to provide a variety of scenarios
        Foundation of laws, both natural and supernatural
        Explicit standing of different citizens vs. civilization authorities
        Possible expansion of religious and family concepts to provide sufficient scenarios
    Starting scenarios
        Various possiblities that guide or govern fortress activity: frontier settlement, religious site, prison colony, mining company, military citadel, roadside inn, secondary/future palace of the monarch
        Drastic changes to migrants based on starting scenario
        Caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario
        Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
        Generalize starting scenario relationships to every site foundation

The idea is clearly not to just give us some pretty fluff text and maybe a few extra props upon embark.  The idea is to have the whole game we play defined by the starting scenario which we choose to start off with, there is no way out of the box we signed up to play in since even the very migrants we get are going to be defined by the starting scenario.  I was not basing what I said upon my own opinions on the subject of starting scenarios, I was trying to formulate a non-broken way to implement it into the game that is moddable.