Slave labor

[LordMunchkin]

Judging from the heavy-handed mood penalties the dev tacked on to what used to be common practices (harvesting prisoners for organs, killing them, butchering them, and selling the organs/meat/skin for loads of silver) I wouldn't hold my breather for slave labor being implemented anytime soon. Nor rape but that won't stop some people for asking for them both regularly! 

On the other hand, you used to recruit people by beating them up repeatedly in a dark room so maybe the dev will implement slavery. Still, I think we've moved away from the days when gibbets with rotting corpses used to adorn what were likely slave colonies.

[keylocke]

yep. as lordmunchkin elaborated.

when it comes to bias, the main important ones are the bias of the developer and the bias of the majority. (bias of the developer being heavier than than the bias of the supporters) so no amount of logic can change that, regardless of how well anyone presents their arguments.

gist is : if your bias does not conform to the same bias of the developer or the majority, then your only recourse is to mod it yourself or wait for someone else to mod it.

so i just thought of stating that coz it's gonna end up as another prolonged argument leading towards the same conclusion.

[Bozobub]

Frankly, part of what makes running a band of cannibalistic freaks fun, for me, is how hard it can be to make it work, at least in the vanilla game (which is what I play).  If I don't farm the RNG pretty hard at the beginning, I'm doomed .  But that's cuz I also play that they were driven to cannibalism, so I don't actually insist on the cannibal trait.

[Zombra]

For one, there's already slavery scenarios in game.

This is true.  People can be bought and sold ... again, as an extension of the systems that are already in the game for other reasons ... because buying and selling are systems already in the game.  There's no special reason to eliminate that system for one object - people can use the system or not as they see fit.  There's a big difference between than and asking for development effort to make special slave administration systems.  Right now the game has slavery but is not about slavery.  It's an important difference.

Secondly, slave labor has been a MONUMENTAL (literally) factor in human history.

... So what?  Is this a historical simulation now or a survival/colony building game?  Why are people always asking for stuff like this, but never for complex economic or political systems?  Politics and economics are even bigger factors in human history, but just like slavery, they're not in the scope of the game.

And, most importantly, you're reallyyyy imposing your interpretation of things and neglecting to understand other people's opinions. It's almost like you're assuming anyone that would consider the possibility of slave labor is some sort of sadist and would by default demand some sort of graphic rape/torture scenarios are implemented. C'mon. You gotta admit that's taking it far.

You decry my assumptions about other people's motivations while making assumptions about my motivations, eh?  Interesting. 

So far, you're the only person who has defended slavery on any other basis than "But it's an atrocity, and there are already atrocities in the game, so it's perfectly normal to want more!"  You haven't threatened to burn me in your furnace like the guy upthread*, so that's a start.  Of course I'm not saying that every person interested is an edgelord - but there do seem to be a lot of them out there.

I was interested in this thread because I had been thinking of doing a tribal, aggressive, human-sacrificing, slavery-orientated, worshipping sort of playthrough, ie: Aztec. I find it and that culture/time interesting.  I think it'd be a great mechanic and open up a lot of possibility as far as playthrough theme goes. I find the moral discussion off-topic. I'd love to have, if not an accepted vanilla mechanic, at least a mod that could achieve this. Don't know if it's possible myself, might not be able to be modded in.

I sincerely wish you luck on your endeavors in creating fascinating stories.  I bet yours will be much more interesting than these shock kids who are all "Nazi experiments and human leather, lol".

*Oh wait, that WAS you.  Haha.   

[MikeLemmer]

Moral arguments about slavery aside, I would also argue that properly implementing a slavery system would require a lot of work to the game for the result of... actually reducing the complexity that matters.

The two advantages of slavery in the past were that you didn't have to pay them and they couldn't switch jobs. And in RimWorld, your colonists... don't get paid and can't switch colonies. So what advantage is left? You don't have to persuade them to join you? That's bypassing a gameplay mechanic. You don't have to worry about how happy they are? That's another gameplay mechanic ignored. You get to house them in substandard rooms and feed them gruel and kibble all day? Sounds like the usual treatment at some of the other colonies made in RimWorld.

You still need to set their work schedules and priorities like regular colonists, and you have to put in a new worktype for the colonist(s) that are watching them as they work, and it has to be separate from the existing Warden job because God help you if one of your Wardens can't actually fight, and then you have to set up entirely new gameplay events (slaves rioting or escaping on the job) and balance keeping slaves against having free colonists so the optimal solution isn't always to turn everyone who can't fight or do advanced work into a slave...

And what advantage do we get for all this? We can turn some colonists into (occasionally rebellious) animals instead of demanding, quirky (occasionally berserking) people. It's a lot of work to essentially let players ignore existing mechanics and strip the personalities off most of their colonists.

It'd be easier to make genetically-engineered slave monkeys for colonists to buy and put to work. And more entertaining. ("The monkeys are rebelling.")

[vampiresoap]

We already have cannibalism and we can conduct science and surgery experiments on prisoners nazi-style.

Yes yes yes.  Right on schedule.  "We can do some bad things in the game, therefore we must be able to do ALL bad things in the game!"  I was waiting for that.  You're also needed in the "I want my colonists to be rapists" thread ... and I assume an upcoming "put child pornography in the game" thread.  Looking forward to it.   

As a matter of fact, it would be SUPER UNREALISTIC for a fringe colony to keep prisoners who sit on their ass all day doing nothing. They would normally be put to work on latrines, trenches or simply carry stuff from point A to point B. Some might consider that slavery, but I don't...cuz well, those guys did just try to shoot you in the face. Think of it as reeducation before they become proper citizens of your glorious republic. And seriously it's nowhere near as bad as rape or child pornography, which in turn are actually nowhere near as bad as harvesting human organs by force or straight up murder.

[Mekhet]

First off, this discussion reminds me of the hilarious "sexist coding" accusations that occured lately. That aside, what argument is there to not allow "slave labor" ? the guys you control are SURVIVORS, not colonists. And if you feel better about it don´t picture it as slave labor but as letting prisoners work - like it is the case in basically every prison in the world. Prisoners voluntarily work because it´s a means to escape their cells for a few hours. If i remember correctly there are even professions like prison guard or the such as background stories. And noone talked about letting your captives work until they collapse and then kill them or guards armed with whips following the prisoners.

Letting prisoners work could for example increase the chances for a breakout and a prison break after long periods of prison labor and it could even justify the fact that every escapee somehow has the keys to every room of your base. And of course any yield prisoners produce should be reduced, and every item they craft should basically be crap. they could also start going after your colonists when they are facing a raid etc etc. In my opinion there´s a whole bunch of events fitting well into the context of rimworld. We shouldn´t abandon such thoughts just because it offends some dandelions - rimworld depicts what people would do in an extreme situation. What is more natural than forcing people who tried to kill you to make your life easier as a punishment. Is killing them off really more humane

[Don-Cooper]

Moral arguments about slavery aside, I would also argue that properly implementing a slavery system would require a lot of work to the game for the result of... actually reducing the complexity that matters.

The two advantages of slavery in the past were that you didn't have to pay them and they couldn't switch jobs. And in RimWorld, your colonists... don't get paid and can't switch colonies. So what advantage is left? You don't have to persuade them to join you? That's bypassing a gameplay mechanic. You don't have to worry about how happy they are? That's another gameplay mechanic ignored. You get to house them in substandard rooms and feed them gruel and kibble all day? Sounds like the usual treatment at some of the other colonies made in RimWorld.

You still need to set their work schedules and priorities like regular colonists, and you have to put in a new worktype for the colonist(s) that are watching them as they work, and it has to be separate from the existing Warden job because God help you if one of your Wardens can't actually fight, and then you have to set up entirely new gameplay events (slaves rioting or escaping on the job) and balance keeping slaves against having free colonists so the optimal solution isn't always to turn everyone who can't fight or do advanced work into a slave...

And what advantage do we get for all this? We can turn some colonists into (occasionally rebellious) animals instead of demanding, quirky (occasionally berserking) people. It's a lot of work to essentially let players ignore existing mechanics and strip the personalities off most of their colonists.

This here, has got to be the most convincing argument on here. In fact, it has convinced me entirely that a proper slave system isn't required, so I'm happy with the outcome of this thread!!!

[Blastoderm]

Slavery should be in the game. You can hunt people for organs, process them to kibble, eat them raw. That's a goddamn survival among slaver tribes, pirates and barbarians. At least you should be able to force slaves to work on the fields and haul stuff.

[Headshotkill]

To be clear, when I play Rimworld I'm very peacefull and Geneva-like.

You cannot be a good person if there isn't a choice for evil, if you give someone a drug that makes him imcapable of doing evil things that doesn't make him a good person.
There should be a slavery system, so we can CHOOSE, NOT to conduct slavery.
There are so many deep story lines to explore surrounding just the topic of good vs evil, colonist can have sadistic traits, others can have empathic traits, these can collide, rivalries,... It's not just the practical side of evil things like slavery and evil science experiments, it's the stories that develop around them.


I imagine a slavery system would be very interesting to ad, along with an entire market system between outposts and factions dealing slaves, and yes I think the current communist-style way that colonies behave in Rimworld should change to a more capitalist style when they're stable.
I don't expect people to work for free in a good functioning colony, once you cross a certain wealth limit they should get a mood penalty for not being individually rewarded for their work. Be it being payed or getting better bedrooms/food/..., this is already partially implemented through the "low expectation/high expectation" mood buffs but should be further expanded.
This would be where slavery comes in, they do the dirty work for free while the rest of the colony chills, although some colonists might get mood penalties for having slaves working.

Besides that, Zombra, when you're faced with the most dark and desperate situations imaginable, you will take steps nescessary to survive.
Under that façade of Western liberal values there still lurks an evil sadistic animal, I encourage you to read books of philosophers who explored things like why people murder or why Hitler was so evil.

[Catastrophy]

Why call it "slavery" when you can name it "correctional facility"?

[Bozobub]

{Silliness}

No one threatened to do a thing to you, drama queen, much less throw you in a furnace.  I merely mentioned that anyone as annoying as you would be kibble (or chemfuel, in A16) and a hat within hours, in any of my Rimworld games.

Repeat 10 times slowly, while thoroughly soaking your head: "It's only a video game."

No one is forcing you to employ slaves.  No one is forcing you to have your colonists eat people and/or make them into fashionable eveningwear.  No one, in fact, is forcing you to play at all, for that matter.  And that's the bottom line:  You're kvetching about completely optional systems.  In other words, you're pissed because people have the ability to do things you find immoral in the game.

And?  You forgot to explain why anyone at all should give even the most infinitesimal fragment of a gnat turd.

[Astasia]

So lets stop and look at how prisoners are treated today in America. Private prisons are the name of the game, prisoners are "enticed" into doing menial labor for virtually no reward while the prison earns a large profit. For all intents and purposes it's a slave labor business, and business is booming. If corporations in America can do it and nobody bats an eye at it, why would it bother or surprise anyone if it was possible in Rimworld? If I want to capture a bunch of murdering raiders, then offer to keep them alive with a bed and food in exchange for doing basic tasks, that's generous, not evil. Or I could just have my pawns walk over to any downed raider and shoot them in the face, because that's what it comes down to when they have no other use. Slaughter, or the option to live and serve.

Make prisons and prisoners useful in Rimworld, IMO.

[Zombra]

You cannot be a good person if there isn't a choice for evil, if you give someone a drug that makes him imcapable of doing evil things that doesn't make him a good person.
There should be a slavery system, so we can CHOOSE, NOT to conduct slavery.

By that logic, there should also be a rape system, a torture system, a domestic abuse system, and a child pornography system in the game, so we can choose not to use them.  I'm sure Tynan would agree that that's development time well spent.

Besides that, Zombra, when you're faced with the most dark and desperate situations imaginable, you will take steps nescessary to survive.

Agreed, and that's interesting ... but slavery is not a matter of survival for slavers; it's a matter of profit.  "I'm starving, I'm going to go enslave someone and make them cook for me"?  Doesn't ring true somehow.

Repeat 10 times slowly, while thoroughly soaking your head: "It's only a video game."

lol.  So I'm not allowed to argue my side of the case because you think I'm upset?  What was that you were saying about not making assumptions about people's motivations?   

And?  You forgot to explain why anyone at all should give even the most infinitesimal fragment of a gnat turd.

For about the 5th time, slavery is out of scope for the game, would reflect badly on the game and the dev as a "bullet point" on the box, and it would be a waste of development time better spent on the game the dev actually wants to make.

[Thirite]

We already have cannibalism and we can conduct science and surgery experiments on prisoners nazi-style.

Yes yes yes.  Right on schedule.  "We can do some bad things in the game, therefore we must be able to do ALL bad things in the game!"  I was waiting for that.  You're also needed in the "I want my colonists to be rapists" thread ... and I assume an upcoming "put child pornography in the game" thread.  Looking forward to it.   

Oh fuck off back to whatever Tumblr/Salon/SRS hugbox you crawled out of you transparent social justice goon.

Moderator's edit - User was warned for this post.