Ever want to release one of your prisoners disfigured in order to send their colony a message? Maybe you're tired of your friendly neighbors royally screwing you over on trade prices. Maybe you just want the satisfaction of others noticing your sadistic acts and reacting to them appropriately (besides your own colonists).
So my idea is this: Fear. Simple as that. Create a faction stat that allows other colonies to fear your colony and this will effect how they behave towards you. Like all things in this game there should be benefits and disadvantages to how you choose to use this feature, so allow me to elaborate on how those would work. But first I'll explain ways in which the fear stat functions.
First and foremost fear is contingent on prisoners making it home alive. They must survive to tell their tale, be it of horrors or of hospitality. How you treat your prisoners while they are with you will dictate how much fear the colony develops towards you. Fear also spreads via word of mouth and while the colony the prisoner is from is effected the most, other colonies will slowly increase in fear, too, as they hear about your sadism.
Mind you, if your prisoner dies in your custody then they will never get to tell anyone about what happened, and no effects will applied. However, if you let them go and you want to increase fear you can:
- Removing organs, eyes, body parts
- Not feed the prisoner
- Leaving him in a disgusting cramped blood soaked environment
- Keep the prisoner for overly long periods of time
- Strip them naked.
All these things will contribute to the horror story they'll tell when they get home. Meanwhile, if you want the prisoner to tell good stories of you you can do things like:
- Feed them well
- Use medicine to treat them
- Perform beneficial operations
- Give them a deluxe prison cell
- Release them promptly
- Engage them in friendly chat
So that's how to create and relieve fear, let me turn now to how it could effect the gameplay. As with everything in this game usually a balance is what you're striving for, too much in any on direction and you'll encounter problems. Everything has advantages and disadvantages so let me start off with advantages of being feared
- Colonies that are still willing to trade with you will give you better prices related to how much they fear you (social stat still has an effect, too)
- Raids may result in enemies fleeing sooner (before you've downed 50% of them)
- Colonies may send you "good will" packages to make sure they don't get on your bad side
And now some downsides to being feared. Most of these come from if people fear you too much, making managing the stat important.
- Friendly colonies that fear you may not want to send people your way, traders or otherwise, for fear of their safety
- If fear raises too high, there is a breaking point where even a friendly colony may attack you
- In certain situation where several factions fear you significantly, they may all mount a coordinate attack on you all at once. One colony sets up a siege, another sends in a direct assault, perhaps another sends sappers.
Not being feared would also have it's own set of pros and cons. Let's start with the cons this time
- Prices being jacked up because everyone thinks you're a pushover
- During raids when a friendly faction would normally just send help, they'll instead request money first
- If your fear dips in to the negatives friendlies may try to bully you. They'll start demanding payments that if you don't comply with will drop their friendliness towards you until eventually they become hostile
The pros are simple
- increased visitors
- increased traders
- increased friendly assistance (even if it's for a fee)
I think this adds an interesting feeling to the game that it lacks. Being sadistic now and poorly treating prisoners has no real major consequences aside from potentially a colonist having a bad mood, but even that is fairly limited. Having people actually react to the horrible things you do in a fearful way makes those things have more weight. Making you feel like your actions towards prisoners have a real effect beyond just being potential recruits, or forced organ donors. When a prisoner exits the map you'll get one of those box prompts to the right and if you choose to click on it you can read the factions reaction. Some flavor text here that would be selected based on how well or poorly the prisoner was treated could be added.
You'll have to think about what's best for the colony. Should others fear you so you get better trade prices and respect, but possibly may cause some friendlies to lash out or outright hide from you. Or treat everyone with goodwill and have the best relationships you can manage between you and other colonies but have them all think you're a pushover, jacking prices way up, and bullying you for money. Is it better to be loved or feared?
I'm sure this idea could be expanded on significantly to add all sorts of different benefits and disadvantages to each side of the spectrum that I wasn't able to think of while sitting down and writing this. I don't know if I have the know how to create something like this but I figured I'd throw the idea out there and see if it sparked the interest of anyone else or just to see if anyone likes it and wants to elaborate on the ideas I've presented.