Colonists' thoughts about prisoners

[Thogapotomus]

The mood debuffs for dealing with prisoners is a little out of whack right now. Your colonists get so upset over selling prisoners, taking organs (even redundant ones), and killing them. Are all my colonists care bears or have they forgotten that these prisoners just attempted to brutally murder them?

I could understand the current implementation, if the prisoner was from a neutral or friendly group that just happened to be passing by. Doing those things to an innocent person is despicable, but its different when they are an enemy.

I ask you all, how many of you would be upset by this if you were a colonist? If every few days/weeks groups of people from a tribe showed up to kill you and all of your friends just because they don't like you and/or want your stuff? What if you were injured in the fight? Or your friend? Or worse yet, your fellow colonists killed while you watched them die an agonizing death? Would you still get upset over selling that murdering pirate to some slavers?

Maybe you would, but I'm betting you'd be in the minority. This is a colony where its survival is the utmost importance. The prisoner you just took in could help save a life with his generous organ donation or help pay for repairs with his life (selling him). Your colonist should be more upset if you just let them walk out like nothing happened.

Ideally there would be a difference in how your colonist react, depending on the prisoners prior actions. If they are neutral or friendly, the mood modifiers stay as is, but if they were from an enemy faction, they are eliminated or severely reduced. A "Sensitive" trait could always be made, where that person feels the current debuffs no matter what the prisoner's prior intentions were. Maybe that's not possible, but until then I'll just have to manually change them every update.

If this has been posted before, sorry. I looked through the top 10 pages and didn't come across any thread titles that conveyed the same message.

Edit: I also take issue with the only legitimate way of getting around this ingame as being a Psychopath lol. I'm not a psychopath, I promise >_>

[CodyRex123]

I agree, but it also makes the game easier, i don't know how to side on this seeing as its sorta a buff and debuff to remove it.

[Vexare]

I'm with you on this. I think there should be multiple ways to play the game rather than just the same "We're a good group of stranded colonists who don't harm others and are anxiously researching and building a ship to leave!"  ... I mean, why are we calling them 'colonists' in the first place? Why not call them 'survivors' or 'castaways' instead? But that's not the point of your thread, sorry - got sidetracked by my desire for long-term colonization dreams.

The problem seems to be that slave-traders are like IN. YOUR. FACE. non-stop in this game. The lure/temptation to sell your enemy captives is always there, always. And if you're desperate for medicine or weapons or clothing (now that it degrades) ...the lure can become too much and you're sucked into the slave-trade business.

I actually purposely rolled characters with despicable backstories (Vector the Crimeworld Kingpin) JUST so I can have a colony that blatantly sells and barters with human captives... is that wrong? Should I feel 'bad' for doing that? Should my "colonists-who-are-not-really-colonists" feel bad about that too? No. My decision is no they should not. Morals are fine and dandy but when you're forced into a corner non-stop by waves of raiders who want you dead and tribals who want you off their planet, you are left with few option sometimes. The negative debuffs nonstop for this behavior might be justified by certain specifically traited characters (the missionaries, the teachers, the diplomats and other goodie goodies for example) but what about the not-so-nice types? What if I purposely cultivate all those characters to create my own version of the "Loyal Killers" pirate band? Can I not play that way because I'm supposed to only do good and only strive to leave the planet?

I'd like to see a lot more versatility in playstyles.

[VictorD4444]

This is an interesting suggestion. Also, maybe there could be different mood buffs depending on what happens to the person after you sell/harvest organs?

Like if they die from a missing organ, it could harm the harvesters mental state. Or, maybe even there could be a penalty for who you sell your prisoner to. Like some could be crueler than others?

[Sartain]

I think the system works fine as is. It's certainly no stretch to assume people would have qualms about imprisoning and organ-harvesting other people. Even if the survival of the colony is important, there are still principles in the world. And, the game has people with the psychopath trait who don't actually care about stuff like this so it's not like they're not in the game. But the real point about the current system is that it imposes a dramatic narrative on what happens in the game which, from my impression, is what Tynan is going for. By default, he wants the colonist to care about how they treat their prisoners because it makes for a better story.

[Kegereneku]

The problem I see with that is the micro-management. But it got me thinking to an hypothetical case because some of us WANT evil colony.

"What if we could "ask ethical questions" to the colony as a whole ?"
Question like : How would the colony react to...
- Releasing X prisoner ?
- Exiling X colonist ?
- Betraying X Faction ?
- Leaving the planet without everybody ?

Using our omnisciences to know instantly with a graph how colonist would react.
OVERVIEW -> ETHIC

Exemple :
"How would the colony react to the execution of Enemy / Neutral / Friend prisoner ?"
I would compare the entire colonist trait and give us most of the time :
Colonist : slightly bad / bad / Horribly bad
But sometime it could be...
Colonist : good (X was killed) / neutral (food is scarce) / Very bad

Note : The answer WOULDN'T keep you from doing so, it would only tell you the reaction. (colonist left-behind becoming enemy and keeping the spaceship from launching would make a good tales)
And what if continuing to do "unethical thing" gradually got everybody to adjust ?

Also got me thinking if we go further on per-colonist basis and backstory it can get crazy.
Question : Would you harvest organ from Enemy / Neutral / Friend
Colonist 1 : No (how would we be better ?) / No (!) / No (How could you even ask ?!)
Colonist 2 : Yes (those are merely savage) / Neutral (Our need are greater) / No (Not if they behave)
Colonist 3 : Yes (because they killed Colonist 6) / Neutral (Only if he is brain-dead) / Neutral (if voluntary)
Colonist 4 : No (cause god say so) / No (cause god say so) / Yes (cause god said so)
Colonist 5 : Yes (psychopath) / Yes (psychopath) / Yes (psychopath)

The problem is it would ask to create a large database of compatible reaction, a lot of work even with guess-verb for N^n combination answer.

[JimmyAgnt007]

Edit: I also take issue with the only legitimate way of getting around this ingame as being a Psychopath lol. I'm not a psychopath, I promise >_>

I keep saying the same thing about being a cannibal...

I do like your idea though.  To keep it simple we can ask, who started it?  (did we try to arrest someone or kill them, or did they attack us) did any colonists die, did any get hurt.  was anything taken?

This results in a general feeling of the colony.  the prisoner can be
'hated' they attacked and killed someone
'disliked' they attacked and caused trouble
'neutral' we attacked them (maybe we were sick of constant visits, they could have been spying.)
'victim' recovered from a crash pod or a wanderer we arrested

now, the difficulty to recruit someone is a good basis that already exists for determining how we feel about the prisoners.  someone with a 99 is prolly not liked by the colony.  so selling them off might not be so bad.

[Thogapotomus]

I'm glad other people feel the same way. There's some good ideas here. If I knew enough about modding I'd do something about it, but as it is now, I'll just settle with being able to change the values.

I guess the biggest problem for me is, that in a game in which there are so many ways to play, it feels like prisoners should only be handled one way. Try to recruit them or release them. If it's for balance, then there needs to be some changes because it doesn't work. No one likes being rail-roaded into doing something in one set way.

The worst offender is the selling into slavery debuff. That should be the best possible outcome honestly. How is selling someone into slavery worse than taking 1 eye, 1 lung, 1 kidney, amputating an arm, and installing peg legs just to release the guy so he can be made an example for the rest of his tribe?

[Eleazar]

Maybe you would, but I'm betting you'd be in the minority. This is a colony where its survival is the utmost importance. The prisoner you just took in could help save a life with his generous organ donation or help pay for repairs with his life (selling him). Your colonist should be more upset if you just let them walk out like nothing happened.

Ideally there would be a difference in how your colonist react, depending on the prisoners prior actions. If they are neutral or friendly, the mood modifiers stay as is, but if they were from an enemy faction, they are eliminated or severely reduced. A "Sensitive" trait could always be made, where that person feels the current debuffs no matter what the prisoner's prior intentions were. Maybe that's not possible, but until then I'll just have to manually change them every update....

The games about unfolding interesting stories, not a realistic simulation of a colony.

However, the current system where everyone (except psychopaths and cannibals) responds in the same way to some of the ethical dilemmas of rim world isn't especially interesting.  I think there should a variety of ideological traits where the pawn responds very strongly to certain hot-buttons, instead of the current uniform reaction.  For instance the "Abolitionist" would strongly react if you sold anyone into slavery, captured any non-hostiles, and maybe if you traded with slavers.

With specific people reacting strongly the player has choices, maybe you want to do X, but your doctor would flip out?  Is it worth loosing the doctor?  Or maybe if you want to do X, you would never add the doctor to your colony since he objects to X.

[tommytom]

Well, the moodlets are for balancing purposes. It would have to be rebalanced in another way to to make it more viable and less tedious or something.

This sounds like another "cannibal colony" suggestion. Ability to get 3+ psychopaths at start and somehow recruit more psychopath to grow your colony and harvest organs and sell prisoners all you like.

It would be nice to take advantage of the traits besides that 1% that gets a small buff or debuff from actions.

All cannibal colony. All psychopath colony. All care bear colony (no one would play that).

Probably something much much later though like "scenarios" where you start with 10+ colonists, small base, and maybe get new colonists that crash land with similar traits that you can rescue.

I wouldn't even mind starting with just 3 and have drop pods with injured similar people from your "faction" (fleet of cannibals crashing to the planet).