Slave Labor

[Rasec]

@ Rasec - I've merged your new "Slavery" thread with the most recent topic about this subject. As mumblemumble says (and echoed many times before) this subject has been discussed many times and it doesn't need yet another separate thread for it.

Also, can you please use the search function before creating a new thread to check if the subject you are looking to discuss / suggest already exists or not. Thank you (edit - the advanced search functions allow you to limit searches to a particular sub forum. Meaning you can search just the suggestions forum for "slave" or "slavery" without getting forum wide results. This makes it easier to see if your suggestion has been made before).

okay, sorry for the inconvenience, I will search first in further suggestions.

problem is with slaves is distinguishing them from colonists in ways which isn't weird, unbalances, or 1 sided.

its also been suggested a million times. Doubt it will happen anytime soon.

I believe that could easily be solve by separating the Prisoners to a specific area to work(like a work table inside of his cell, or a prison hall where he can plant or mine), or as I suggest in my topic/post making small groups of Prisoners chained(or not) to another and being watch by a settler...

[Harold3456]

I get that, but the issue is how is it balanced?

ALL colonists and prisoners need to be fed, and cared for, to an extent, and they add up into your colony wealth for what determines raids

True. And good point about slaves contributing to colony wealth. But i think there are many ways to balance slaves. For this example I'm comparing them to pack animals, which would probably do the same stuff:

For one, they need food, and a degree of mood buffs like normal prisoners (nice prison, nice talk, good food) to keep them from going berserk, which makes them a bit harder to keep than animals who can haul. There's also the chance they could go berserk or rebel, and to this end they would NEED to be kept close. If they attempt escape when you send them to the opposite side of the map from you, they're gone.

On the other hand, they're better than animals because they're more readily available (a good pack animal requires a good handler/lucky trade event. Raids are certain), require no training to do dumb labour, and assuming you were going to keep them in your prison anyway, you're putting to work mouths which would otherwise just drain your resources.

And while they'll never be better than colonists, many colonies suffer from a dumb labour shortage at one time or another, so a slave or two to haul and clean would be invaluable. You would just need to disallow slaves in any areas where there are powerful weapons.

So in my opinion, slaves CAN be balanced if done right. I don't see how having a slave would ever be preferable to a full colonist or even a fully trained pack animal, but the point of them is to be able to fill a role in a pinch.

[Belgarion045]

Have prisoners do some real work while not being a real colonist. They could work slower and do much worse shit, but it will be free workers. They could rebels, and should, when they feel real bad, like other prisoners, just so that they don't stay in their cells jacking off while the free colonist work like mules to bring them free food.

I know their is mods to do that, but an official patch would be awesome

[Lord Of Darkness]

I agree, would help haling items to stock piles ect. since haling is the last thing a colonialist would actually do.

[Calahan]

@ Belgarion045 - Slaves, or some sort of slave system has been suggested many times, and a new thread for this idea is not required. As such I have merged your thread with an existing thread. (Tip - if you use the advanced search function you can limit searches to specific sub forums and to thread titles only, and searching for "slave" would have found you one of the previous threads).

[IronSquid501]

Some of my colonists are designated as slaves (Worse areas to get their food, worse clothing options, no weapons, worse medicine, and poorer quarters) so a "prison labour" mechanic is kind of redundant tbh

[hal98]

if you want slaves, try Rimslaves. It's pretty dark, but thats what you get :p

[Harold3456]

I had Rimslaves for a game or two. It was okay for the novelty factor of spawning armies of Unsullied, but other than that it's a very unbalanced, watered down version of this idea.

The fact that the slaves go in the animal tab already dilutes the idea of this suggestion.

[Penguinmanereikel]

This is a pretty neat idea! If they're managed like animals, then we can set up Slave Zones, much like the Animal Zones, to designate where slaves are allowed to be. This zone could automatically grow and shrink with prison cell/barrack designations.

Maybe prisoners won't automatically become slaves, but rather there could be an option of interaction with a prisoner like "Friendly Chat" and "Release," where you can select "Enslave."

But I think that maybe slaves should be initially limited to dumb labor (cleaning, hauling, plant cutting) if they can do them, and maybe have to be convinced by the Warden to use more valuable skills like mining, planting, and cooking. This would be like training an animal. Obviously, they won't be able to do skills like Warden, or Hunt. I highly doubt that skills like Doctor, Social or Intellectual would be allowed for slaves. I am fairly positive that allowing slaves to Craft or Construct would make them OP.

And, maybe there are still risks to slave labor. The mood of the slave will convince them to be disobedient. Disobedience could include the following actions by slaves:
-Refusal to work (player will be notified)
-Stealing items in their allowed slave area (of course, you wouldn't know if they did until you click on them and saw their inventory)
-Attacking colonists (player will be notified)
-Escape attempts (and because of this one, players will be discouraged to designate slave zones outside where they can escape much more easily) (also, player will be notified)

Since you can't know when someone's stealing stuff, you could give wardens the ability to beat down any slave at any time, and if they drop something, they'll be punished for stealing.

There could also be a policy system for punishing slaves, as well as a time restriction scheduling much like that of the colonists, except that, by default, slaves are restricted to the default slave zone, which is set up the moment a cell or prison barrack is designated.

This slave punishment policy system could be a lot like Prison Architect's system, where different acts of Disobedience will result in different punishments. Punishments could include beatings, meal restriction, lockup, or excecution. Multiple punishments can be dealt for the same disobedient act. Punishment could also forcefully improve the slave's mood for a period of time, and the harsher the punishment, the longer they'll go without disobedience.

Along with this, there could be more traits that can affect how the slave will act in prison, including reaction to punishments.

Or maybe instead of just being based on mood, slaves should have another meter labelled "Submission," which determines the likeliness of a slave's disobedience.

[Bakar]

Prison labour could be an incentive to keep prisoners, beacuse as A17, prisoners only eat food and you dont get anything valuable from them (excluding stealing their organs because its immoral) they could do things like cooking and making clothes which means that they can stay in their cells and be productive and just not walk around waiting for food.

[glob]

I have an idea - use captured pawns as actual slaves

- initial requitment: the fourth option "enslave by force", has much higher chance of success than standard recruitment option
- once a pawn turned into a slave it cannot be unslaved back
- can perform only low-skill jobs such as agriculture, cleaning, hauling, treecutting etc
- can be sold without mood penalty but for low price
- can be killed without mood penalty
- cannot use arms except when rebelling
- -10 mood debuff to all the non-slave pawns if any slave lives in good condition. So either slaves have mood debuff for living in ugly environments or non-slaves.
- besides standard mental breaks can mutiny and do group escapes
- mutiny: works similary to deceases. Discontent starts at 0%, is always hidden, grows with the time and then suddenly all the slaves run to weapons and become hostile. Non-slave pawns staying outside home area, good physical conditions of slaves and maybe some other parameters increase the chance of mutiny
- cannot marry non-slave pawns
- can be assigned to a non-slave "master"
- follows the master and doessome auxiliary work - hauls animal corpses when the master is hunting, hauls food when the master is cutting plants etc
- master is responsible for his slave and gets mood debuff when his slave does something wrong (gets a socially dangerous mental break and things like this)
- harvesting internal organs of a slave incurs the same debuff as of a non-slave
- slaves can defend themselves (with bare hands) when attacked by hostile mobs

[Calahan]

I have an idea - use captured pawns as actual slaves

So have n number of players before you. As such I'm merging your thread with one of the (many) threads about this particular suggestion.

Please can you use the search function next time to check for existing threads on a particular suggestion before creating a new thread for it. Thank you.