Prevent global debuff for organ harvest?

[Fruit loops]

I would like to keep the current system.

If your harvesting organs, its for 2 reasons, Self use, or business.
If your harvesting organs for self use its probably because one of your colonists is missing an organ. If I knew, I had A stranger die for me, I would feel more sick than while my organ was missing. the doctor who did the operation must have felt horrible as well. How would you feel if the person you've just captured, after killing his entire family, unwillingly was drugged, and either killed or left severely crippled?

Business wise, the organ market is A unreliable choice, and a sickening thing to do.

This isn't a broken mechanic. if it was a broken mechanic, you might as well remove or lower the cannibalism mood debuff. hell just make another google document and somewhere inside mention that moral choices have been long forgotten.

[Regret]

Seriously? You are all sociopaths.
If I knew my neighbour was in the habit of cutting organs out of our prisoners I would be pretty upset.
Upset enough to actually go berserk.

I can't believe all of you wouldn't mind being part of a community where every prisoner gets kept alive only long enough to harvest their organs.

Please tell me if any of your countries ever declares war on mine in real life, so I can tell my friends to take suicide-pills rather than be captured.

I... Regret to inform you, but I'm not among these people, Currently... Just helping out, Don't usually go the 'Harvest all the prisoners' route unless I need the parts, or drastically need the money, last resort. Unless I'm RPing a darker colony, then no holds barred.

Asides, our actions ingame are hardly reflective of our real selves. Lighten up.

I meant that as an example of how accepting this is not realistic behaviour, because they were using arguments like this:

...snip... Its strange that the colonists have THAT much empathy towards pirates who wanted to kill them just yesterday. ...snip...

OK, I can't find anymore examples, so I overreacted a bit. I apologize for calling all of you sociopaths but not for the point I tried to make: Thinking 'organ harvesting is horrible' is something that happens in real life.

Oh and I'm not even calling Lys a sociopath, a single comment does not a diagnosis make.

Also, nice wordplay Coenmcj

[asanbr]

One of the reasons I like to build plenty of cryptosleep caskets. Lets me freeze prisoners there so that I can spread out the debuff over time, taking them out to harvest when suitable according to colony mood levels. Without wasting food and time feeding them in the meantime.

[asanbr]

Well I would do something "more ethical" with my prisoners than cutting them open or selling them into slavery, I just don't know what really.
I always try to recruit them when the difficulty is 97 or below, else it just takes far too long and my prisons would get stuck. Also more often than not they are too picky about the work they can do (only available for fighting and research? That guy is pretty much useless to me...) or have really undesirable perks (I don't need 5 jealous guys or a bunch of people that get a mental break down at the slightest discomfort), or they already have some major organ (probably brain) damage, and I'm not really keen on starting a mental asylum in my colony.
So what else is there left to do if they wouldn't be a productive member of my colony...? Just release them back so they can attack me again (or raise my reputation so that I only get mechs at some point)?... naaah.

You can use them to practice shooting and medicine. Alternate between the two.

Aside, euthanizing a prisoner gives a global debuff too, but simply shooting them does not.

[asanbr]

It's a game. A single player game.
There are certain things I highly dislike even in a game. Like canibalism.
But I don't set real-world morale over fun in a sanboxy computer game. And I don't like beeing patronized by game developers.
If Tynan doesn't want us to take organs of prisoners or colonists, he could have left this feature out of the game entirely.
He did not, but applied a debuff to show the player that he (yes: he) disregards this action because it's immoral by real world standards.
Heck, I would be fine if a colonist (or raider) could free-willingly donate his organs upon death, based on a trait or something.
But currently you have no other chance than to take those organs by force while those guys are still alive and not willingly donating their left lung.
THATs the real issue here, because that's really sick.
So this game mechanic is flawed and to make things worse, we get punished hard for using this flawed game mechanic.
That's why I searched for a way to soften this punishment. Because I don't feel guilty here.

I disagree. I think it's a great game mechanic. I think it's about balance.
If there were no downside, given how easy it is to capture prisoners, it would be a super easy way to make lots of money. That could also be balanced by lowering the price of organs instead, but would you prefer having no debuff while a heart sells for the price of 10 potatoes? That looks worse to me at least. I like that they are worth a lot but hard to get.

There are many ways to make money and some play the mood game, some don't. I think global mood works fine as a way to balance a lot of things.

I usually keep a freezer full of corpses to butcher up and sell each time a bulk trader passed by. After playing a while I realised it was better to build a separate corpse freezer from the food & cooking freezer, since human corpses bring down the mood of everyone each day when they go to get lunch.

More effort & space required , resulting in better mood, which in the end means I can make more money somewhere else. It pays off.

[Limdood]

Personally I think that there should be some kind of mood loss like there currently is, but with the way it currently stacks it just gets too hard to deal with prisoners. Same with selling them to pirates.
There should be some kind of cap to the debuff, I mean, it's obvious that (normal) people are not happy with organs being harvested or people being sold into slavery, but at a certain point they should have gotten "used to it", as in "thats the way we gotta deal with them if we want to survive". Its strange that the colonists have THAT much empathy towards pirates who wanted to kill them just yesterday. The most ethical way from the way it currently stands is that incapacitated pirates should be left to bleed out and then... left to rot or chopped up. Seriously why should I create a graveyard for all those hundreds of assholes that tried to kill me already...

tl;dr, colonists should get used to the way the enemies are being treated, caps for the debuffs are necessary imo.

Actually it would be the opposite if anything.  Rather than "get used to it," human nature is to forgive one-off offenses more easily than repeated behavior.  Thus your colony harvesting an organ once would upset people, but hey, maybe it was vital for Bill to survive, right?  After they do it with 12 prisoners in a row, then maybe its the kind of place that your colonists really don't want to be around in?  What happens if the collective colony intellect (the player) decides that a certain colonist just isn't really worth the food he consumes?  Well!  lets harvest his organs and sell them off!  The POSSIBILITY of that happening to your colonists exists, and if you do it to your enemies, you might do it to your friends.  So colonists would be more and more upset until they become disillusioned and leave.

TL;DR - your conclusion is inaccurate because actions you can justify doing to your enemies need a good long look, because its not hard to rationalize making someone an "enemy."  Humans are more likely to forgive isolated incidents than repeated behavior.  Intolerable practices performed repeatedly and remorselessly should eventually cause all non-psychopaths to leave or snap.

[Lys]

Actually it would be the opposite if anything.  Rather than "get used to it," human nature is to forgive one-off offenses more easily than repeated behavior.  Thus your colony harvesting an organ once would upset people, but hey, maybe it was vital for Bill to survive, right?  After they do it with 12 prisoners in a row, then maybe its the kind of place that your colonists really don't want to be around in?  What happens if the collective colony intellect (the player) decides that a certain colonist just isn't really worth the food he consumes?  Well!  lets harvest his organs and sell them off!  The POSSIBILITY of that happening to your colonists exists, and if you do it to your enemies, you might do it to your friends.  So colonists would be more and more upset until they become disillusioned and leave.

TL;DR - your conclusion is inaccurate because actions you can justify doing to your enemies need a good long look, because its not hard to rationalize making someone an "enemy."  Humans are more likely to forgive isolated incidents than repeated behavior.  Intolerable practices performed repeatedly and remorselessly should eventually cause all non-psychopaths to leave or snap.

Hmm, maybe you're right, I don't know too much about human psychology in that regard. But I was under the assumption that the human mind adapts to what the status quo is. As an example, I think someone who has lived in a warzone for some years would have a hardened mind to certain things, such as seeing corpses or even having to shoot someone himself, as opposed to someone seeing/doing so for the first time. You know like, "I've done this once (or many times before), so why wouldn't I be able to do it again...".

Generally I don't have a problem with a mood debuff, but I feel more like there is a lack of options with your prisoners. Currently going the "ethical way" of just releasing them back doesn't feel rewarding at all, why should you go the effort of doctoring and feeding them healthy again? Harvesting organs or selling them is, in my opinion, the only thing which feels somewhat beneficial to your colony but comes at the great cost that is debated in this thread.
Killing them in non conventional ways (heat/freeze/"accidental shooting") feels like it is a bug currently, it should also give a mood debuff just like execution gives.
The best way, which I would preferably take, would be something like releasing them back to their home for a ransom. This should give a very minor reputation boost (maybe 5-10% of what the current "Release" gives) and maybe 50-75% of the silver which you would get from selling them to pirates.
The way it currently works, the least detrimental (for your colony) way to deal with would-be prisoners is to leave them bleeding to death on the battlefield or killing them for target practice as mentioned by asanbr, and that just doesn't feel right.

[Shurp]

The ransom idea is a good one.  Even better is a hostage idea.  "Hey, we have 5 of your guys, maybe you want to rethink attacking us."  Imagine chaining up the hostages in front of the turrets...

The way it is currently implemented is broken.  Prisoners are a serious liability and it is usually more worthwhile to use injured attackers as target practice than to capture them.    Being able to use them in negotiations or sell them back to their home tribe would be more fun.

[Limdood]

i wouldn't mind forced labor...with a minor mood penalty that keeps going as long as you have "slave labor"

limit it to cleaning, hauling and plant cutting, and make a chance to try to escape based on their mood (anything below max mood is a chance to try to flee...increasing the lower it gets)

Mood penalty could be something like -4 per "slave" for all non psychopath colonists...for as long as they're "slaves."

Alternatively, if you want to make it easy...how about a 5-day +8 mood bonus for releasing a prisoner...again, not applicable to psychopaths.

I don't agree with removing the organ harvest debuff.  I wouldn't mind seeing a "transplant" option for organs, that moves the organ straight to another patient...still a debuff, but a WAY smaller one.  Would allow organ removal for the direct benefit of your colonists (my colonists lose kidneys occasionally) without the severe penalty OR possibility of riskless profit.

[asanbr]

The ransom idea is a good one.  Even better is a hostage idea.  "Hey, we have 5 of your guys, maybe you want to rethink attacking us."  Imagine chaining up the hostages in front of the turrets...

The way it is currently implemented is broken.  Prisoners are a serious liability and it is usually more worthwhile to use injured attackers as target practice than to capture them.    Being able to use them in negotiations or sell them back to their home tribe would be more fun.

I would love to see more options too for how to use prisoners. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes in further updates.

However, people are complaining a lot and I think maybe they have the wrong view of it. There are good uses of prisoners, but it's not as simple as "capture everyone you can and feed them forever".
I developed a habit of doing so when I was starting out and learning the game, playing on Cassandra normal. I would capture everyone and try to convert them. Most of the time, I could afford to do so because there was lots of food and raids weren't too hard, so the time wasted on talking and feeding prisoners was affordable.

Recently, as I started playing on harder difficulties, I realised I had to play differently because margins are smaller and I can't afford neither the food nor the time to keep prisoners going. I always capture prisoners and heal them up, which gives some doctor practice and after capturing them I can see the convert % for each prisoner.

But if they are 97 difficulty and I already have another prisoner, I'm sometimes going to just let them starve. Or if I have a crypto casket, I'll put them in there for potential future harvesting / selling to pirates / converting when things calm down.

Butchering dead people and selling meat & leather is always profitable. But if you keep a prisoner fed for a few weeks, you will have spent more in the value of food than you would get back from selling their meat & leather. You need to capture them in the first place to be able to tell who is a 60% difficulty convert and who is a 99%.

I even killed some of my own colonists on purpose because they were moody and berserked all the time. And they consumed food while having no valuable production skills. There was no other way to keep things running. I felt bad for it, but ended up finishing that game, my first spaceship escape on Randy extreme.

[asanbr]

The ransom idea is a good one.  Even better is a hostage idea.  "Hey, we have 5 of your guys, maybe you want to rethink attacking us."  Imagine chaining up the hostages in front of the turrets...

The way it is currently implemented is broken.  Prisoners are a serious liability and it is usually more worthwhile to use injured attackers as target practice than to capture them.    Being able to use them in negotiations or sell them back to their home tribe would be more fun.

You can already effectively ransom people, just not with the pirates since you cannot get goodwill with them.
With tribals if you release a prisoner and they escape the map alive, you gain goodwill with their faction. Compare this to what it would cost you to buy the same goodwill through comms, and you have effectively gained 300-500 silver. This assumes that you want to get positive with them and would pay for it otherwise, which I always do to reduce the tribal raids.

You can't do it with pirates since you can't gain goodwill with them.

Another way to ransom is to sell the prisoners to pirate merchants, and iirc, this does not give bad will with the faction. Harvesting their organs does. So if you want money and don't care about getting goodwill, then sell tribal prisoners to the pirate merchants.

I have sometimes thought about releasing pirate prisoners as distraction for tribal raids and vice versa, but never pulled it off. Has someone else tried that?

[Lys]

You can already effectively ransom people, just not with the pirates since you cannot get goodwill with them.
With tribals if you release a prisoner and they escape the map alive, you gain goodwill with their faction. Compare this to what it would cost you to buy the same goodwill through comms, and you have effectively gained 300-500 silver. This assumes that you want to get positive with them and would pay for it otherwise, which I always do to reduce the tribal raids.

That's not effectively ransoming... That's just plain releasing, in which I have no interest. I don't care if those tribals don't like me, especially since (from what I read) if you have less hostile factions, if you get a raid the chances are higher that it will be mechs attacking you. And I prefer having humans attacking me instead of mechs. Especially tribals are usually the lesser evil for me.

Another way to ransom is to sell the prisoners to pirate merchants, and iirc, this does not give bad will with the faction. Harvesting their organs does. So if you want money and don't care about getting goodwill, then sell tribal prisoners to the pirate merchants.

As I had mentioned before, that also globally decreases the mood of your colonists by a very hefty rate, just like harvesting does. And that is the main discussion point of this thread, extreme mood loss which is barely counterable.

[anexiledone]

Maybe  a system of tracking relationships?

Say your original colonists all become very close. Harvest from them, then the others would get angry. A new colony member may not care as much.

This could be applied to prisoners too. Say someone was captured after wounding two colonists and setting fire to your crops. Every colonist would be angry with this person. They won't care much about harvesting organs or selling to slavery. After enough raids from a specific faction, your colony could just hate all of their members.

I think this could add an extra layer to the converting prisoners to colonists aspect of the game as well. Mood debuffs for being around a converted prisoner that has a bad history with the colony that would improve as time goes on.

[Regret]

euthanizing a prisoner only gives a tiny mood debuff, -3 I think.
So you could use that to ethically get rid of prisoners.
Or colonists, if you arrest them first.
What happens if you release a captured colonist? does he get banished or does he returns to your colony?

[Lys]

What happens if you release a captured colonist? does he get banished or does he returns to your colony?

Pretty sure they will just return to your colony as normal, as that is what happens if you arrest berserking colonists.