Thinking some more about the society we have here, whatever it is, its already well established, so Crystal has to decide what it is, who is in charge (I am sure someone would be the queen and have lieutenants and soldiers presumably that's an NPC), what the rules and structure is like and then we have to fit the characters who have been on-planet a while into it. I can't see how we can create and begin our own society here and besides as others have said there's likely millions of inmates and probably more than one prison if the planet has rich veins of whatever ore is being mined, each one over a high value field.<br/><br/>The new arrivals get thrown into this society but the existing inmates will have to agree relationships between them all beforehand and positions in the heirarchy.<br/><br/>Without wanting to appear to argue with anyone, I don't see there being much scope for outsiders to live beyond the cubes (or whatever they live in) because the prisons are built around the ore being retrieved and supplies being dropped so whoever has control in the prison controls the food source and anyone not accepting their rule will simply starve very quickly.<br/><br/>Likewise I can't see there being alliances and such since there is no need if the prisons are not close and a prisoners transponder would be linked to her prison only.<br/><br/>On the other hand I do like the idea that has been suggested that the suits have a built in transponder that identifies the wearer and thus the wearer can be seen to be mining their quota. Maybe prison sentences are measured in mined ore quotas and either an individual must produce so much mass per week or a total mass in order to be given their freedom (the amount varying with the sentence). Failure to meet quotas will result in a suits transponder not granting access to, say, certain food dispensers, the showers, your own cube and finally even the main gate (aka death sentence).<br/><br/>This means the suit signals are monitored from far away and the controlling entity could even send a signal to the suit to alter its functions, so a warer could be less warm, less protected and even locked in place.<br/><br/>This mechanism could effectively end any queen-led society because we could make it impossible to tamper with the suits so absolutely everyone must do the forced labour.<br/><br/>Not a big fan of personal posessions especially computers as this is simply expense for the Empire and giving hardened criminals anything without any supervision is going to end in trouble (Murphy's Law).<br/><br/>Question - do suits come off for sleeping and showering? Otherwise sex is going to be very limited.