RimWorld needs a moderate punishment mecanic / justice system.

[dStreamline]

Lawfulness and Morale Are there no happy criminals? And what of miserable law-abiding citizenry? The beauty of a snowflake is that it's every intricate detail is an expression of structure, the joy of order that we discover and sometimes choose to walk with. And so it appears to me that coupling morale to law would create a shadow of distortions from the loss of a dimension. How then can we consider the buffs and nerfs to the scoring of items on a pawn's to-do list? The action taking place is "After considering input from several sources, I (the pawn) think this is a great/good/bad/terrible idea," so perhaps that evaluation might bear a closer resemblence to being described as judgement.

Poetic as always...

One of the grand issues with a mood-affecting punishment system (part of which you hinted at in your introduction) is that are inherently biased towards the player, and whatever their motivations may be. In reality there is never a unanimous agreement on the subject of guilty vs innocent, let alone the scale and severity of punishment.

If there was some kind of baseline for what was acceptable punishment, then the player could choose to either relax the regulations (less deterrent for unwanted activities, in exchange for a mood bonus), or tighten the regulations (more deterrent, in exchange for a mood malus). If this were determined by character traits, then the player would truly have to engineer their laws to suit both their desires, and the needs of their subjects (similar to drug policy currently in-game).

[AngleWyrm]

One of the grand issues with a mood-affecting punishment system (part of which you hinted at in your introduction) is that are inherently biased towards the player, and whatever their motivations may be. The word justice is sometimes used as a euphemism for vengeance, and can also be entangled with issues of subjugation, empowerment, dominion. Where those ideas are less resolved into specifics, they tend to leave the play-field of the game and promote into a meta-game conflict between player and developer. There is a difference between the thirst for blood & harm and the desire to alter colonial destiny. I do like the idea of satisfying our primal hungers and it would be fun to do so without excuse or pretense. Or to put it another way, I want to feel the quiet sting of the sin of excuse and pretense.