RimWorld needs a moderate punishment mecanic / justice system.

[Sion]

I had one colonist (O, Offender) slight another colonist (V, Victim) and when V slighted back at O it drew him O into a rage and O destroyed V's nose with a Marble Club.

For that I want to punish O, but there are no good mechanic to use for this, O wouldn't "understand" that he was imprisoned because of this offense, and I can't shoot/hit/hurt him in any meaningfull way, even if I let V do the punishment, it would just hurt the colony in the long run.

A reasonable punishment would be Latrine Duty for a week/month(?), or something like that, but that doesn't exist.
Half food rations for a week, but again, the colonist doesn't even "understand" that the starvation is a punishment.

I think RimWorld needs a justice system.

What's your thought on this?

[Shonin]

At that, not only there's not a justice system, as there isn't an "expel from colony" option. That way, if someone fights like that, or, let's say, some pyromaniac decides going on a fire starting spree right into your devilstrand farm or the colony food suplies (real story), not only you can't punish him, as also if he dies the rest of the colony still goes "oh, poor him. We liked him so much. Remember that time he put fire to our food stocks and we spent winter eating taht awfull berries, eventually leading to other three colonists starving to death? Oh man, that was a good prank".

Maybe the other colonists should at least have a stronger opinion about theese things (like, everyone should have a social negative opinion about someone who started a fight, with a special weight when it happens to someone they like) and also have some option for punishment (as said, maybe we could select one of such social interactions for a reason to go to prison for a day, and the other colonists could get a mood boost/penalty if they agreed or not with it) and for expelling (same thing for mood effect on rest of people, maybe the expelled colonist could randomly join a pirate band and cause future trouble XD).

[Toast]

It would sure make a lot more sense for everyone to hate the guy who set their food on fire than for everyone to hate the guy who has a scarred ear. 

I don't know how you would implement such a system, though, since pawns can't really judge "intent" of actions.

[AngleWyrm]

A reasonable punishment would be Latrine Duty for a week/month(?), or something like that, but that doesn't exist. Half food rations for a week, but again, the colonist doesn't even "understand" that the starvation is a punishment. Behavioral modification through reward & punishment Pawns would need to recognize reward/punishment Pawns would need to remember it, possibly with the useful ability to forget/replace Imagine that a pawn examines a ranked list of available behaviors, and selects the top one for it's next performance. The scoring and sorting of that ranked list is the act of a pawn thinking about what to do next.

The goal of a justice system would be to apply player-chosen nerfs/buffs to the score of available behaviors, preferably at the level of individual pawns. Their memory of punishments/rewards could be similar to the way pawns remember morale buffs/nerfs.

Player arbitration of law might be accomplished by presenting a list of things a pawn can do and a set of policy options that can be associated with each of those behaviors. Then the set of player-chosen policies could become the player's own unique governmental book of law.

Policy options in this context looks like a wide enough field to support modding in new punishments and rewards.

[Draconicrose]

I'm not sure how it would be implemented, but I would like to see some sort of punishment mechanic too.

[BetaSpectre]

You can imprison anyone you want, maybe if there's a guilty prisoner of going berzerk imprisoning them will mood buff all the others.

[Rimrue]

Currently all colonists get a -5 social hit if someone kills a colony animal, so it's already a mechanic in the game. Extending it to -5 for starting a fire or -5 for injuring a colonist in social fight or even higher for killing a colonist shouldn't be hard to add.

Then the next step would be giving pawns the guilty tag when arrested with the options of execute or banish. Again, already mostly implemented in the game.

I've long wanted a true justice system with the ability to do more than just imprison obnoxious colonists and let them out afterwards with a -10 mood.

[Limdood]

"banish" exists....sort of.

Arrest the pawn, deconstruct a wall, the arrested pawn will "escape" off the map.  If you instead release the pawn, they will just rejoin your colony.

[SpaceDorf]

"banish" exists....sort of.

Arrest the pawn, deconstruct a wall, the arrested pawn will "escape" off the map.  If you instead release the pawn, they will just rejoin your colony.

I always forget to do this ..

[Sion]

@AngleWyrm I like your idea, I think it can work, I will give it a rating of: Yay.

The rest, I'm not looking for a punishment that will hurt the entire colony, only the offending individual, banishment, pet killing, and other colony wide mood de-buffs are not the right way.
Maybe with the modification from @Rimrue where the offending colonist get a "guilty"-tag, and the mood de-buff only affect "guilty" colonists, but it still wouldn't really connect the cause & effect, it's more of a "I'm punished by god, and I don't know why" kind of thing.

I don't want to banish the colonist, he is still useful for the colony, I just want to punish him in a meaningful way.

I'm kind of thinking of a system like the old Black & White (1 & 2) games had for your pet minion, where the God rewarded / punished actions, in this case the God would be the colonists law enforcers that was flowing the rules created by someone (magically appear in a law book (internet connected?) or something)

[AngleWyrm]

I'm kind of thinking of a system like the old Black & White (1 & 2) games had for your pet minion, where the God rewarded / punished actions, in this case the God would be the colonists law enforcers that was flowing the rules created by someone (magically appear in a law book (internet connected?) or something) And what if it were you who got to put those laws in the book, to say which ones you want and which ones you'd rather not have them live by. Wouldn't that be a fun exercise?

[Sion]

Yeah, that's what I mean by "(magically appear in a law book (internet connected?) or something)" but I try to not break the 4th wall like that
Maybe the rule book can be pre-populated by the ai story teller, or that might also be annoying?

[Limdood]

The rest, I'm not looking for a punishment that will hurt the entire colony, only the offending individual, banishment, pet killing, and other colony wide mood de-buffs are not the right way.

anything that hurts ANY member of the colony hurts the entire colony by that reasoning.

If banishment hurts the whole colony, then ANY lost productivity, time, mood, or health on any colonist hurts the whole colony.

[AngleWyrm]

The rest, I'm not looking for a punishment that will hurt the entire colony, only the offending individual, banishment, pet killing, and other colony wide mood de-buffs are not the right way. anything that hurts ANY member of the colony hurts the entire colony by that reasoning. If banishment hurts the whole colony, then ANY lost productivity, time, mood, or health on any colonist hurts the whole colony.

That tale has been told so many times that they came up with a name for it: Opportunity Cost

Is it true that the nature of cost is a choice between taking one path at the expense of another?

[AngleWyrm]

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.