Let's Talk Slaves / Prisoner Work Camps

[Vexare]

So I've been playing the 'good' colony for awhile and having fun, but there's a part of me would like to explore the darker aspects of the game which are already quite prevalent in the Rimworld culture - slavery. Obviously there's a healthy slave trade happening in the Rim-verse as the trade ships sure do radio my colony often enough with candidates and various body parts.   

Is it possible in the current game's structure to actually build and run a slave colony? I haven't thought about locking doors and creating slave quarters with work areas, sleep areas and eating areas but is this possible?

After two save-games on the same planet, I'm heartily sick of one of my colony's nosy neighbors and have considered going to war with them and capturing all of their visiting members as they sit eating a meal at my tables... is this possible and how do you keep them contained? Obviously you will become their faction's enemy and they'll start throwing themselves at you so you'll have to make larger containment areas for them. Has anyone tried this? On an easier (casual) setting how nutty does this escalate?

Will there ever be a future option to keep slaves as slaves or prisoners as prisoners rather than recruiting them?

Would love to hear thoughts and experiences of long-time players who have done this successfully or any problems you encountered by playing 'bad guys' in your colony. I'm thinking of rolling a Noble who decides to start a slave colony with all those pirates and slave trader offerings.

[cultist]

You know you can sell prisoners to passing slave trader ships right?

Or are you looking for something more along the lines of a concentration camp?
Running a large-ish prison is not especially hard if you have enough wardens that can keep the prisoners happy, but it's a pretty big drain on resources and your colonists' time.

Slightly off-topic, the wiki mentions a thought prisoners can get from being beaten by a warden. Is this possible in the current version of the game and how?

[christhekiller]

Well. There's no way to keep them prisoners and have them do work atm.

But if you recruit them you could theoretically lock the door behind them and not let them out. Food can be grown indoors or surrounded by walls, production and mining can be done behind closed doors. However this raises the issue that your original 3 colonists won't really be able to defend from all the attacks after a few months... Unless you're all for giving your slaves weapons... Which really doesn't end well for the slavers.

[Vexare]

You know you can sell prisoners to passing slave trader ships right?

Or are you looking for something more along the lines of a concentration camp?
Running a large-ish prison is not especially hard if you have enough wardens that can keep the prisoners happy, but it's a pretty big drain on resources and your colonists' time.

Slightly off-topic, the wiki mentions a thought prisoners can get from being beaten by a warden. Is this possible in the current version of the game and how?

Yes I understand how slave trading works, and would be using that mechanic to gain new colonists both in acquiring them and getting rid of unwanted ones I get by taking pirates and neighboring colonists prisoner.

But what I'm wondering about is how feasible is it to actually keep a number of colonists as slaves/captives within the colony? Is there a way to block off portions of the colony for use by the prisoners and to make them work? I know there's currently no mechanic in place to force prisoners to work or do anything but pace back and forth in their cells and be fed daily. That's not what I'm interested in doing. So far the only thing I've thought of doing was recruiting them (which takes a lot of social skill to get pirates to join) and then just RP designating them 'slaves' with different quarters (Smaller, shared, and right next to work spaces) and locking doors to prevent them leaving. Has anyone tried this? The idea of mental breaks happening (and one going crazy) has some appeal for RP reasons (a rebellion happens against the evil Noble keeping them prisoner) ... but the micromanagement necessary for locking doors and moving food around seems a bit daunting.

[Vexare]

Well. There's no way to keep them prisoners and have them do work atm.

But if you recruit them you could theoretically lock the door behind them and not let them out. Food can be grown indoors or surrounded by walls, production and mining can be done behind closed doors. However this raises the issue that your original 3 colonists won't really be able to defend from all the attacks after a few months... Unless you're all for giving your slaves weapons... Which really doesn't end well for the slavers.

Right! This is sort of the direction I'm leaning ... how to set up the colony so that the prisoners work and produce food but aren't a part of the outer colony's social life and interactions. But the more 'prisoners' I have, the more enemy attention I'm going to get because obviously I'm going to be stealing neighbors colonists as part of the deal and so the prisoners will have to be armed to defend the colony from attacks which then seems to contradict the whole point of prisoners in the first place.

I realize at this point the only way to really make it work is to fully recruit (there's no way to make prisoners work) the prisoners into the colony but then just RP designate them 'slaves' of the colony to do the hard labor, food production, construction etc...which is basically the regular game-play anyways hehe.

[Kagemusha]

Yeah. Basically it's the standard gameplay.
Roleplaying that your new colonist is a slave but having to use them like a standard colonist in order to not die tends to make the disbelief stop being suspended.

The older versions did have a Fear vs Happiness set up and many people did run their colony through fear. Whichever was higher, fear or happiness, would basically be what we see now as morale or sanity. It might re-appear later. I think it's been cut down to one aspect to simplify things during development.

Personally I don't think we should want to take the 'evil' route. There's one thing to be said for giving people options but it's a whole other consideration when it would halve the production potential but splitting resources into two different methods of colony maintenance.

Pretty sure somebody will eventually mod it in but I wouldn't want to see it in vanilla myself.

[Vexare]

Personally I don't think we should want to take the 'evil' route. There's one thing to be said for giving people options but it's a whole other consideration when it would halve the production potential but splitting resources into two different methods of colony maintenance.

Taking captives and keeping them as workers (slaves) must benefit the colony by increasing production / resources if it's to work at all is my idea.

I think in an ideal scenario (game mechanics) the production value would not be halved ... otherwise what's the point of keeping slaves in the first place? Colony maintenance with 'slaves' or 'captives' or whatever you want to call them (to keep this from devolving too far into human moral issues hehe) would be the same as it is with colonists - the only difference would be their ID tag (AI) which indicates their 'rank' as below the threshold to leave the colony's designated slave areas (same as you set up prisoner rooms / areas).

You would still manage their priorities list for jobs... which of course are going to be those jobs suited to their skills. A highly skilled 'slave' could be 'promoted' into colonist status with the right performance. A captive with a very high crafting skill is going to become valuable to the colony as will a highly skilled researcher, shooter, etc. The "peons" (those with negative traits or no good skills) will remain slaves/grunts or even cannon fodder during battles. The Romans used a similar system in which many high-skilled and educated people were slaves who eventually bought their freedom because they could earn money or favor through performance. I guess this is more of an 'indentured servant' type scenario that I could see working to the benefit of the colony in RimWorld.

Now I don't consider it particularly 'evil' to decide to take slaves (as laborers and crafters) in RimWorld. The culture is rife with it ... and you're given the option to buy and sell people and body parts so it's already an accepted (if somewhat shady) custom. "Evil" would be some of the things players are describing doing to their colonists over in that other thread, haha. 

No, I have not explored extensive capturing and bartering / human trafficking in RimWorld yet and was wondering if any players do this routinely and if it made the game more difficult or more interesting for them.

As for suspension of disbelief ... well that's pretty much what the game is all about anyways if you think about it. You're playing with tiny 'pawns' with no real distinguishing features other than hair and body shape... weebles if you will. They have very rich character sheets and personalities which requires you to roleplay it out similar to pen and paper in order to get your 'group' to survive and thrive. It's a story you make-believe from the start unless you just want to ignore all that and play for the RTS factor in which point my entire post has no relevance in the first place unless owning and operating a slave trade operation offered some monetary and tactical advantage.

[Wastelander]

Will there ever be a future option to keep slaves as slaves or prisoners as prisoners rather than recruiting them?

I'm building a mod that will do this.

In broad strokes, it changes the colonists to become badass pirates who are OK with slavery and murder, but who hate working for a living. They also draw wages. Prisoners become slaves, who are able to pick up work in the colony. Over time, they become subversive and will do things like carve shanks or graffiti the prison when you aren't looking. You can curb this by instilling fear.

I'm mostly done with the mod, just fixing bugs now, but since it looks like Alpha 9 is on the way shortly I think I'll wait until that drops to release it.

[Vexare]

I will be watching your mod's progress after Alpha 9 with much interest, thanks for letting me know about it!

It sounds like an interesting concept and puts an entirely new spin on the story that will appeal to some players most definitely. I'm curious to see how you will handle the slave work progress and queue to differentiate them from the pirates.

[Andy Herod]

Taking captives and keeping them as workers (slaves) must benefit the colony by increasing production / resources if it's to work at all is my idea.

I think this is the biggest factor. It would be a really interesting idea, because prisoners are such a large mechanic of the game. However, it takes a lot of resources just to keep them alive and happy. Ideally it would be best to just recruit them and have them do normal duties. The only way I can think of implementing it is to have them less affected by bad moods/rely less on sleep and food and limit them to laborious work. You'd have to "break" them to get these benefits, instead of trying to recruit them.

[Vexare]

I think this is the biggest factor. It would be a really interesting idea, because prisoners are such a large mechanic of the game. However, it takes a lot of resources just to keep them alive and happy. Ideally it would be best to just recruit them and have them do normal duties. The only way I can think of implementing it is to have them less affected by bad moods/rely less on sleep and food and limit them to laborious work. You'd have to "break" them to get these benefits, instead of trying to recruit them.

Yes that's exactly why I started the idea in my head as I played through a couple of different games in different locations and with random / different types of characters. In one random I had a noble, who pretty much does nothing. Rather than 're-rolling' away from non-useful traits as many do, I thought "how can I make this work as a story?" - and that's when I started toying with the idea of keeping captives or 'servants' as it would be for a noble from some medieval world. I wondered if there was a way to keep enemies I've taken captive as workers instead of just dead space eating up my food while I either try to recruit them or execute them. Seems like such a black or white kind of decision, why not have a third option?

A lot of characters in the game are ideal for running a slave operation. I have had fun just going through the random button reading the backstories which also gave me the idea for running a pirate/slave trade operation. I found a great "Criminal Kingpin" with high Social but not much else. I mean what's this guy going to do all day other than put pressure on prisoners to conform to his sweatshop operation to make money?

I think many players are really limiting themselves by just rolling 'ideal' traits and skills so that their first three out of the box are doing all the work and spending all their time dividing up that work with not much time for anything else. A clever character (with the right traits of course) would hire or force others to do the work for them, right? If you're going to get attacked by pirates, tribals and hostile neighbors you accidentally (or not) antagonized ... why not make the most of it?

[Sartain]

Will there ever be a future option to keep slaves as slaves or prisoners as prisoners rather than recruiting them?

I'm building a mod that will do this.

In broad strokes, it changes the colonists to become badass pirates who are OK with slavery and murder, but who hate working for a living. They also draw wages. Prisoners become slaves, who are able to pick up work in the colony. Over time, they become subversive and will do things like carve shanks or graffiti the prison when you aren't looking. You can curb this by instilling fear.

I'm mostly done with the mod, just fixing bugs now, but since it looks like Alpha 9 is on the way shortly I think I'll wait until that drops to release it.

What are badass space pirates without space booze, anyway?