[MOD](Alpha 9) Slavers (v1.01) Initial release - easier starts

[Novellum]

I'm having trouble feeding the slaves for some reason. Once I click the "enslave option" and put those collars on them, they stopped eating and going to bed and just outright died. Did I do something wrong here?

Is your food supply behind slaver doors? Slaves can't go through those, only pirates.

[Wastelander]

I don't mind paying them however it's the amount cash we have available.

You know, I'm hitting about day 100 in my test colony with this mod and I'm having cash trouble too. I drop with enough money (1300 or so) to keep me going for four or so months, but after that I'm having cash trouble.

I'm used to Alpha 8, where degradation didn't happen and stuff you pulled off raiders sold for full price; I'd usually have $10k just sitting around. Now stuff sells for quite a bit less it seems.

For now, go ahead and shut off wages thoughts if they're obtrusive, and consider that feature a work in progress. Rather than continue to adjust the wages down, for now I want to focus on ways to make money, like the magnetic cannon I mentioned earlier, or maybe a repair bench so you can fix up the stuff you steal and sell for full price.

[rbm11]

Wages don't really make sense to me.  All of the pirates' needs are met using the labor of the slaves and food, weapons, and armor are all freely distributed.  Plus they're marooned on the world together and the only economy is trade with random ships which is handled collectively.

Perhaps instead there could be stacking penalties after x amount of days if they aren't living in luxury, or much harsher penalties for frayed clothes and other inconveniences.  This gives the player more of a reason to spend lots of time crafting large works of art and other things.

Since these are pirates we're talking about here, perhaps you could incorporate the tobacco and weed mods, and add your own drugs.  You could also add other forms of recreation.  I'm thinking video or arcade games, playing cards, and films that can be accessed from special "workbenches."  Really go crazy with it.

Once you reach a certain point in colony development where penalties will be at their highest, you risk mutiny if the slavers aren't having fun.  Also add mood boosts for beatings/torture to pirates.  Also, you could make slaves that receive access to select "luxuries" are less likely to mutiny.  Another idea is to make it that once the pirates reach a certain level of luxury, the slaves become harder and harder to control due to jealousy. 

How possible would it be to make it so that if the slaves successfully revolt and kill all the slavers, you get to play as them?

[Dragoon]

-snip-

Thanks for seeing it the way I do  . I think that you are right to focus on ways to make money. Oh will you add in what wrote in the front page (Temp until money issue is resolved so people don't have to dig to find it) ?

[CodyRex123]

The only thing hard about it is that the trade ships don't come often enough, i tend to start building art early and i am able to mass perduce, i only have my slavers to work on art and some crafting, everything else is for the slaves, And even though the art is bad, I can still get enough money from that.

[CodyRex123]

Also, Crashlanding and this don't work well, inless you want like 7 more slavers, Because otherwise you have the debuff of the "Colonists" being slavers then slaves... ugh, Damn pirates being sentimental.

[Wastelander]

For all the folks asking for the slave collar without the extra stuff, I just added it to the Prison Improvements mod: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=10069.0

[NephilimNexus]

Odd... I had already named one colony "Paradise Falls" as a joke.  Looks like now I'll have to start taking it more seriously.   

[tuefekci]

said nothing else than love it great idea

[BinaryBlackhole]

Just a comment how about if someone is passionate about a job they can do it without any penalty and if they have 1 flame then they get a smaller mood buff this way I can run my colony without having to depend on a select few slaves.

[Draxis]

With regards to the last point, is that actually true? I still saw the negative moodlet from my double flamed grower. Also, just wanted to chip in and say that I like the mod. I still get pretty frustrated with it at times because I feel like I am not making money quickly enough and it is hard to have your first three colonists become effectively useless for most things after two months' time. I get that and I understand it, but it can be hard to get enough money to pay them some times. I get that you are balancing that, so no worries.

Part of it is that it is now a lot harder to make cash from salvaging weapons and the like in the early game. I also suspect that I had trouble due to my biome which had many heat waves which caused my slaves to break a lot. Anyway, I'm planning on starting anew and hopefully it will work out better. I might also tone down the effects of seeing a turret on mood as a -10 mood drop is pretty significant. I don't know how much of the mental breakage is coming from my biome, so hard to say. Keep up the good work!

[Wastelander]

Thanks for the feedback!

I still saw the negative moodlet from my double flamed grower.

I think Binary was offering a suggestion - colonist passion for labor won't make them happier about doing it.

it can be hard to get enough money to pay them some times.
Part of it is that it is now a lot harder to make cash from salvaging weapons and the like in the early game.

Agreed, that's a work in progress; I did just release a small mod that adds a repair bench to the game, so you can repair items: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=10908.0. I'll be rolling that into this mod so you can fix up stuff before you sell it and get full price for it again.

I might also tone down the effects of seeing a turret on mood as a -10 mood drop is pretty significant.

Yup, that's a change that is already in v1.1 of the mod (it's -6 now). I think you might be running the old version, try redownloading

[Draxis]

I have the latest, just forgot the number. Anyway I'm enjoying the mod and you've done a good job. One thing I was thinking about is the fact that it's not really a benefit to have pirates. They don't do work and the fact that they are not bothered by things is of marginal difference if slaves still do all the work.  Not quite sure how to balance that out.

[Vexare]

I'm considering trying this mod, but in my perfect vision of a slave colony, not ALL the members are slaves with only a tiny number (the starter three?) as the slavers. I envision a social hierarchy... a class based system if you will, where *some* of the more favorable slaves can be promoted from slaves to slavers/pirates or whatever you want to call them (I prefer human trafficking engineers ).

Would you consider the payment system to be optional or at least add some other ways to pay the slavers (weapons, armor etc)?

It's already quite difficult in A9 to make money compared to previous builds so I really dislike the idea of all my silver and gold going into the paychecks for my slavers especially as I'd like to build a 'colony' of higher end citizens with the slaves as the manual labor so probably an 80/20 kind of scenario. I'm concerned with how to pay more slavers.

*Edit1: Noticed you added a repair bench so that's interesting and might help with income .... I will probably give this a try!

*EDIT2: I am also reading about your prisoner improvement mods. Do I also need to install that or is it standalone apart from this one? If I install this one, I don't need the improvement mod, correct?

*EDIT3: (sorry for so many questions!) - Does this mod work ok with EdB's Plan Carefully mod? It's really the only other one I was considering and is an interface mod.

*EDIT4 (LOL): Went back and read aaaall 5 pages of replies and noticed you backed off the income amounts and then recommended disabling the payment system since Alpha 9 is so rough for making money. I really like the idea of income for the slavers but I think you should make it an option that can be toggled off and on if that's possible and maybe a slider to decide what you pay them. Larger pay could increase morale for the slavers so it would be a goal you want to achieve but not penalize so much if you can't make the money every month. I do like the idea of it, just not sure how stable it is with Tynan's constant tweaks to his core system which often causes poverty like we're seeing in A9 haha!

[Vexare]

Hi Wastelander. I went ahead and downloaded your mod last night and put it through it's paces with a few months of a test colony. Here are some things I found as feedback:

1. Enslaving a colonist and then trying to 'release' them seems broken. It adds the slaver designator AND the slave designator both which confuses everyone. The colonists get the debuff for having an enslaved colonist friend and it doesn't go away after you 'release' them. Worse though is that in my test case the medic colonist kept attempting to 'free x' over and over even though she had already carried him out the door and set him down. She kept doing this in an infinite loop until she finally went to bed and he went right back to slave status. Might need some looking at the code to see how it removes that slave designation and whether or not the freed slave becomes a regular colonist again or just a released non faction NPC.

2. I think someone else mentioned this but there needs to be a distinction between slave jobs and colonist (slaver) approved jobs. If you intend to have a handful of colonist slavers who don't do much at all because they're lazy bum pirates, they still need at least something to occupy their time. There's currently no entertainment activities sadly, or else I'd assign them all to just enjoy that nonstop. I'd say there are a few jobs that pirates would still enjoy doing but should not give them the 'labored' debuff:

- Hunting: This one's pretty mandatory anyways since who's going to let the slaves run around the countryside unattended with guns? Pirates like to shoot things, so they should get a buff for hunting animals.

- Research: Bringing on the mad scientist to help your evil slave colony advance makes sense and wouldn't be a slave doing this job. Buff to the scientist / researcher for this job.

- (some) Crafting: There are a few jobs I could see pirates actually wanting to do such as weaponsmithing, maybe tailoring to make special armor because that's their focus and of course the whips and slave collars. Unfortunately there's no way to designate specific jobs in crafting yet (I think Tynan said next build he was adding that option).

- Artwork: This could be a slave job but also I could see psychotic pirates wanting to create bloody works of art as their hobby.

- Medic/Doctor: This should be a Pirate job primarily with minor medics in the slave ranks to heal their own. Again, there's no way to really designate who heals who, but a slave healer can only heal slaves if they can't get to the pirate's quarters anyways so separating medical rooms would help this separation. A high end surgeon only for your pirates should not get a debuff for healing and doing their job.

So I think that handful of jobs combined with guard/warden duties should at least give your pirates something to do instead of just constant idle and they shouldn't get the 'labored' debuff. Yes I get it slavers don't want to work but I think that should really apply to "hard labor" jobs such as farming, mining, hauling, chopping wood, cleaning, etc.... basically all the 'dumb labor' type things you often see the medieval nobles, midworld chefs, and criminal types lacking the ability to do anyways. Model your slavers after the 'classes' Tynan's created who hate that kind of work. Those are often very underplayed characters because players always want the perfect choices who do all work. Those are slaves!

I love the cranky ones who refuse to do specific jobs. They are why I thought the slaver idea was so great in the first place and started thinking up a slave colony long before I realized you were making this awesome mod. Kudos to you for putting it into action!

PS: I disabled the payment system for my slavers until we figure out a level that's acceptable for long-term A9 play because of item degradation and constantly needing to repair / sell stuff as a way to pay your slavers.