Working Prisoners

[GhostPower]

 I've had the times where my colonoys can have several prisoners at once, and then they all end up being crap so then I have to either release or execute them since they would just waste my precious food, so thus this makes me want to propose to option to have a colonist act as a full time warden and guiding/watching the prisonors forcing them to do manual labor such as hauling or building stuff, perhaps even growing food.

If this is implemented it could open up things such as crop poisoning and perhaps more intelligent prison breaks and more. Although forcing your slaves prisoners to work would come with a debuff to them, making them harder to recruit... And you'd have to make sure you have more then one warden if there's enough prisoners so that no one gets hurt if something does happen. And make sure your wardens aren't abusive and such.

[joaonunes]

I've had the times where my colonoys can have several prisoners at once, and then they all end up being crap so then I have to either release or execute them since they would just waste my precious food, so thus this makes me want to propose to option to have a colonist act as a full time warden and guiding/watching the prisonors forcing them to do manual labor such as hauling or building stuff, perhaps even growing food.

If this is implemented it could open up things such as crop poisoning and perhaps more intelligent prison breaks and more. Although forcing your slaves prisoners to work would come with a debuff to them, making them harder to recruit... And you'd have to make sure you have more then one warden if there's enough prisoners so that no one gets hurt if something does happen. And make sure your wardens aren't abusive and such.

+1

[9ofSpades]

I would love to see an addition where I can put my prisoners to work. It would be nice to get some use out of them besides just having them as a liability and constant drain on my resources.

[Herumarath]

As an alternative, add a faction or trader that basically represents law enforcement to whom you may sell unwanted prisoners for a bounty while avoiding the mood penalty.  They pay you less than slavers, but your bleeding heart colonists don't irrationally go apeshit over the fate of someone that tried to kill them yesterday.  You could also add an option to ransom them back to their old faction, but that might be harder to implement.

[Ninjakitty66]

I'd love to see this in the game, in all honestly set up a certain workzone (Mining, growing, etc..) with a special kind of zone or work that separates prisoners and normal pawns. Have the Warden(s) followed them and do a small patrol with their weapon out. I can see a few different things happening, prisoners get injured working, try to revolt, etc...

With Alpha 16, think massive prison colony somewhere remote. A place for all the other colonies to send their prisoners, sell them, ransom them, harvest organs, and work them! Maybe even in some people's minds they can work for their freedom after some time, releasing them. I can see a lot of fun in it.

[bechtoldn]

This would be a great addition to the game, considering that if you play as a colony then tribal people are always really annoying to try and recruit. The same goes for if you play as a tribe the pirates are much harder to recruit. I think this would really help this issue because then you would have a better option than just killing them or letting them go.

[mcreed]

I like this suggestion but the dilemma is that it creates imbalance when you can just have work slaves and eliminates the point of recruiting people. There has to be some very harsh consequences to balance out the reward. And no, a risk of a prison break doesnt satisfy the balance issue. Im thinking the only way is to make it so that 1 warden is required per 1 prisoner. So basically, all your doing is trading skills by allowing the less-skilled warden to have a surrogate who can perform functions that he doesnt have the skillset for. I'm imagining this can work in a similar fashion to the animal obedience menu. If you could enslave every prisoner that you get then the game would be too easy, but it would be fun though wouldnt it.

[minakurafto]

about balance, 1 warden = 2 prisoner minimum(less risk), if 1 warden = 1 prisoner then it would pointless because it roughly the same asif the warden work alone. 3 prisoner = (risky), 4 (more risky), 5 (very risky), or we can later review it to adjust the difficulty

more prisoner ratio vs warden means more conspiracy so they will more active to prison break. example scenario :if some one want to have 20 slave with 4 warden then the prisoner would more often revolt, after revolt warden + some prisoner would be wounded or even dead and need treatment and it means no work to be done so even with huge work force when revolt break out the effeciency will fall and it will balance it out.

plus in this game as long as u dont pick harmless storyteller it can be disaster like when your forces is spent after internal strife, raider come then it possible to be wipe out because of that.

AI revolt must have some tweak like prioritize taking down power source and equip dropped weapon/swap a better one when possible
prisoner has debuff restraint so it should apply on their work as it make them slower. roughly make 2 prisoner more/less 150% normal colonist so with 3, you get roughly 2times and 4 prisoner 3 times.
at the end large prisoner camp can get you huge boss in workforce but if they revolt then it will be crippled for some time plus if prisoner depressed it will lower their global speed work hence lower effecieny
with the problem like that sometime it has beneficial to recruit normal colonist rather than forced labor

[Ninjakitty66]

I think it can be balanced, I mean at some point if you have nothing but prisoners working it's likely they will out number you. I'd picture Prisoners still get annoyed and debuffs to the point they will attempt to overpower you, so either way you might up losing the colony or having to kill all your workers. On the other hand with normal colonists, you don't have much to worry about such unless they go berserk.

Prison labor can be useful for new colonies or caravans, maybe add some events where prisoners side with raiders attacking your settlements/caravans. There a good few creative events that can be added for this feature. 

[MikeLemmer]

I like this suggestion but the dilemma is that it creates imbalance when you can just have work slaves and eliminates the point of recruiting people. There has to be some very harsh consequences to balance out the reward. And no, a risk of a prison break doesnt satisfy the balance issue. Im thinking the only way is to make it so that 1 warden is required per 1 prisoner. So basically, all your doing is trading skills by allowing the less-skilled warden to have a surrogate who can perform functions that he doesnt have the skillset for. I'm imagining this can work in a similar fashion to the animal obedience menu. If you could enslave every prisoner that you get then the game would be too easy, but it would be fun though wouldnt it.

Agreed. As I mentioned in another thread, it's a lot of work to implement for an end result of letting the player bypass a game mechanic. Prisoners consuming resources while you try to recruit them is the balancing mechanism; if they produce more than they consume, there's little reason to ever give up on trying to recruit them.

Although rereading the original post... if the prisoners are so crappy you don't want to recruit them into your colony, then why do you want to put them into forced labor? Do you think they'd be more productive as prisoners rather than recruited colonists? Are you trying to avoid the difficulty spikes from reaching X colonists? Or are you trying to avoid the demands full-fledged colonists would make?

[mcreed]

I like this suggestion but the dilemma is that it creates imbalance when you can just have work slaves and eliminates the point of recruiting people. There has to be some very harsh consequences to balance out the reward. And no, a risk of a prison break doesnt satisfy the balance issue. Im thinking the only way is to make it so that 1 warden is required per 1 prisoner. So basically, all your doing is trading skills by allowing the less-skilled warden to have a surrogate who can perform functions that he doesnt have the skillset for. I'm imagining this can work in a similar fashion to the animal obedience menu. If you could enslave every prisoner that you get then the game would be too easy, but it would be fun though wouldnt it.

Agreed. As I mentioned in another thread, it's a lot of work to implement for an end result of letting the player bypass a game mechanic. Prisoners consuming resources while you try to recruit them is the balancing mechanism; if they produce more than they consume, there's little reason to ever give up on trying to recruit them.

Although rereading the original post... if the prisoners are so crappy you don't want to recruit them into your colony, then why do you want to put them into forced labor? Do you think they'd be more productive as prisoners rather than recruited colonists? Are you trying to avoid the difficulty spikes from reaching X colonists? Or are you trying to avoid the demands full-fledged colonists would make?

Everything you bring up is a valid point. Under a system of slave labor than the benefit of recruiting is almost non-existent. Aside from that, advanced prisoner plots and attempting to kick up the risk factor requires intense programming and would be incredibly difficult to implement for a game where that is not even its main focus. Anything to do with AI is very time-consuming and difficult even for skilled programmers.

But the main point is in skill trading. Example; the warden has a zero skill in crafting. Maybe Social is the only stat the warden is strong, but yet prisoner A has a 10 in crafting. Or maybe the Warden is incapable of certain types of labor. He can use the prisoner as a craft slave or to plant or to do a SINGLE high-rating skill like Art that the colony may be lacking. The only way I can see this working is if the reward is only moderate. This would not require as intense programming as trying to factor in high-risk prison breaks which would be very costly, and I think could be similar to how the animal-master system works.

To be able to put 2 prisoners to work per warden is also way too overpowered. In this system, you'd be able to double your colony output with slave labor only which completely mitigates the challenge of recruiting.

This is why I think using prisoners should only be a skill-trade game for strategy and resource management and not to reap the benefits of full-on slave labor.

[Lerin]

About imbalance:

Prisoners won't fight for you during Raids, or they can try rebel (factor risk), prisoners are in restraints and shackled, so their moving and manipulation can be reduced. Using prisoner as a haulers for long distance still is risk, cause they are slow and can just flee.

WE Cant directly use prisoner, only assign from Labor TAB.


So, if you got more prisoners than colonist, propably their break locks, steal some weapons and stab in back..

Balance can be reach