Robots!
I know it sounds code expensive. But it's basically a colonist with a different skin who instead of consuming food and having hunger consumes power and has a charge, must plug in and recharge (sleep) at a power socket (bed) but otherwise runs around like any other citizen with a fixed loyalty bar and no skill development. They can be purely combat or agriculture robots (same as nobles refusing to do other work) and can be a good source of labour for a one off payment that doesn't impinge on your food supply.
Then you can throw in a need for repairing and maintenance and malfunctions. From gaining sentience enabling the loyalty bar and negative positive effects like any other colonist, to disassembling stuff you've built, to helping the humans with all their malfunctioning flesh or hidden code which can be activated by raiding parties sneakily allied with the trader who sold you the bot, firmware hacks and upgrades to give your droid other skills and software upgrades to increase their skill.
Also probably already mentioned but can we have a non lethal weapon, minimal damage but higher chance to stun/incapacitate. I want to capture me some raiders
Ideas for weapons that fall into this category
- Shock sticks
- Tranqiliser rifle/rounds
- Gas grenade
- Riot foam launcher (just fires a projectile that if successful immobilises but still allows to fire or completely incapacitates an individual for x time)
- Riot foam mines (same as above but self explanatory)
