The mood penality for selling prisoners

[Zombra]

Agreed.  Get on the comms, and "ransom back" would be fun, but it would need to be more than just "free money"  Maybe prisoner exchanges would be cool.  A chance they might have prisoner you can get and try to recruit instead or another faction to release for goodwill.  Perhaps instead of silver, some sort of non aggression pact.  Days in exchange for a temporary non violent faction standing meaning the pirates might wander through.  It also means that you just got hit hard, and will send back their wounded in exchange for a bit of a reprieve from the AI.

These are cool ideas.  My first thought was a little simpler - instead of hundreds of silver, the faction might offer to trade you X silver in whatever goods that faction normally has a surplus of.  They might not be able to snap their fingers and make 800 silver appear, but they could bring medicine or whatnot.  Maybe they'd send a trader to make the exchange, like any other.

[Vaporisor]

Oh.... sending a trader would be interesting.... an armed group comes in as a negotiation team only buying their faction, but offering a spattering of goods.  You can attack the negotiator, but then you are in a firefight and risking who knows what for of goods.  At the same time you never know if another faction will show and they start a firefight right in your front door!

Armed escorts cause they are approaching a hostile compound.

Edit cause accidental posting before done:  Armed, but not flagged hostile.  It is fitting with the game in that you don't know when or what they offer so holding onto them hoping that the will bring some nice guns or other thing is at the same time potentially draining your resources, plus escape risks, etc.  Some humor in it as well.

Sure, you can take back armless Dan for that crate of beer!

It also means the organ harvest or peglegging.... it drops their value significantly, vs sending back somebody mobile.... now I am imagining the pirates installing bionics onto those peeps.  Armless Dan coming back with a good personal shield, superior plasteel gladius and fully bionic to shred your guys, ignoring your turrets.

[Zombra]

Yeah ... and of course since you drove them away last time, their armed trading party would still be kind of weakened, a tempting target for you to just kill them all.  Of course then your faction would absolutely plummet and you could never call them again.

Or they might be confident enough to offer the ransom as a ruse, and then end up attacking you again instead of going through with the trade.

Lots of possibilities

[ttc]

I think your existing colonists should get a mood debuff if you successfully recruit someone who was only recently trying to kill them. They should be filled with suspicion and distrust and it should wear off over a period of days/weeks.

Selling someone who only recently tried to kill you should be a mood buff - justice!! - Except for people who have a high sensitivity/caring.

[Too-DAMN-Much]

honestly, i say it depends on the colony, why would a group of cannibals care about slavery or killing? simple fact: they wouldn't, it's literally how they eat, daily, normal activities, i do get sick of the "psychic morality" this game imposes sometimes and there is still a LOT of room for improvement.

[SuperCaffeineDude]

Completely agree tcc, in a small community impartiality would be hard to maintain for the colonists who are both the victims and the jury come judge. Using the social system seems like the simplest way of simulating the reactions these people would have.
And yeah Too-DAMN-Much, I think the current template people react with is pretty idealized, especially lacking those ties to relationship.

I'm selling slavers as slaves! Not random crash victims and passersby. If it was tied to the social system, with a negative disposition towards attackers, and maybe a positive caring towards crashed spacers and visitors, it would go a long way towards allowing colonists to react far more naturally than is currently simulated.

[Zombra]

honestly, i say it depends on the colony, why would a group of cannibals care about slavery or killing? simple fact: they wouldn't, it's literally how they eat, daily, normal activities, i do get sick of the "psychic morality" this game imposes sometimes and there is still a LOT of room for improvement.

A colonist is assumed to be a normal, reasonably moral individual unless he has a Trait or Traits that dictate otherwise.  I don't see what's hard to understand about that.

[Jorlem]

honestly, i say it depends on the colony, why would a group of cannibals care about slavery or killing? simple fact: they wouldn't, it's literally how they eat, daily, normal activities, i do get sick of the "psychic morality" this game imposes sometimes and there is still a LOT of room for improvement.

A colonist is assumed to be a normal, reasonably moral individual unless he has a Trait or Traits that dictate otherwise.  I don't see what's hard to understand about that.

That should mean that they'd be more or less fine with harming outsiders that attempt to harm them though.  It's a very simple and common "us vs. them" mentality, in a life or death survival situation like in the game.  Sadly, this is the normal, not empathizing with those bent on your in-group's destruction.  That empathy is something that would be worthy of a trait, I believe.

If the penalty for selling enemy prisoners is kept, I think that at the very least, it shouldn't stack, only that it should be renewed when the latest one is sold.  Once your characters have made the jump to selling prisoners, selling more shouldn't make them feel worse, unless a character has a relationship with a prisoner. (Family, for example.)

[Zombra]

You people are monsters.