Is it easy to increase population by buying slaves? Does bionics make sense?

[asanbr]

I have spent a lot of time and money calling in exotic traders and buying bionics to repair my pawns.

But I have never really explored buying slaves. I just came to think that maybe I would be better off calling in slavers and buying more people. If I remember correctly, a healthy pawn costs about 2000 from a slave trader, which is about the same as a bionic arm or leg.

So rather than repair my hurt people, it might make a lot more sense to just buy more people.

There are exceptions of course, like that 16 skill doctor who needs a bionic eye or arm, but many colonists aren't exceptional at anything and economically it might make more sense not to repair them, vs buying another colonist.

Thoughts?

I can't compare since I haven't really tried the slave caravans.

[Canute]

It is only worth if you find a very capable pawn who fit your colony well.
Like when you look for a very talented cook/crafter/animal handler.

Otherwhile if you just look for pawn, regular prisoners are cheaper. Just made comportable prison's to increase the recruit chance.

Bionics are allways a good thing, but increase the wealth of your colony too, which means stronger raids.
A hauling pawn with 2 bionic legs and spine are like 2 regular haulers. And if he is maybe a brawler he is faster at the enemy/cover too.
A crafter/cook can produce alot more with 2 bionic arms+spine. But if you want train a crafter you shouldn't install any bionics because he finish his work to fast and geting less XP for the resource.

[Toast]

It's not "easy" to increase population by buying slaves, no. Slavers will stop offering humans for sale once you get to a certain population and even before then they are very hit-or-miss about whether they offer any. Before the population cap, you can sometimes get lucky and find a few pawns well worth the asking price. But for an advanced colony it's not a viable replacement method, really.

[Limdood]

once you get to about 5 or 6 pawns, its INCREDIBLY rare for slave ships or caravans to have any slaves.

In fact, this is the base mechanic of the game...storytellers have 2 threshholds. 
The bottom threshold, which i think is 4 for all storytellers is the "minimum."  Below 4 pawns, the game will TRY to give you pawns.  wanderer events, most downed enemies not dying for no reason, slave traders, escape pod crashes, chased refugee events, etc.  The game will try to push your population to at least 4.

The top threshold is the "maximum."  For cassy and phoebe, its 12 i think.  Between 4 and 12, colonist-giving-situations will steadily decrease as you gain more pawns.  Recruit difficulty will slowly scale upwards, little to no wanderers, slave ships stop offering slaves, a few escape pods, and raiders start dying from having their leg shot off with no other injuries sometimes (chance to just....die, upon being downed).  Randy random is coded a bit differently, and his upper limit is 50.  it still gets pretty hard to recruit as you climb, but not as hard as cassandra past 12.

Once you pass that upper limit, you're looking at 95-99% prisoner recruit difficulties, no slaves in slave caravans ever, no wanderers, probably no escape pods or chased refugees, and an extremely high likelihood that every raider you fight will either be dead or escape...a very high chance upon downing raiders for them to die outright.

The game is "tuned" for 4-12 pawns, so it tries to keep you roughly in that range.  You CAN climb up and out of that range, but it goes slow after the limit.  You'll get almost all your recruits from huge raids where 1, maybe 2 raiders survive to be captured.  you'll have prisons full of high recruit difficulties and busy wardens.  But hey, 5 prisoners at 99% difficulty is still a fair chance to gain a new recruit within a few days.

[asanbr]

Thanks, this explains a lot.

I have never called in a slave caravan, and the ones that came naturally have surprised me by not having any slaves most of the time. I thought, what's the point of calling it a slave caravan, then?

This is related to me already being around 10-15 pawns before my economy is good enough to bother looking for slaves, so according to what you say, that's when they stop having any.


I find that good use of cryptos and emergency shelters help a lot with raiders though. Many raiders lie down with high blood loss and die fast but can be saved. Bring 1-2 stacks of wood/steel to the battlefield and build minimal rooms to imprison and patch up people, then once they're not bleeding, pull them back to the real prison and/or cryptos.

Even with this, I haven't been above 16, so I don't know from experience what it's like.

[Seriously Unserious]

I have a related question this just stirred up. What effect does having multiple colonies have on these numbers? Let's say I have 13 colonists in my original colony, but I move 10 of them out to form a new 2nd colony somewhere else, would the game still treat my colony as a 13 pop colony, or would it consider it a 3 pop colony and start spawning more "get a colonist" type events at the small colony?

[asanbr]

I played for a few years with one main colony of 6-12 people and 2-3 expansions / mining bases with 0-3 people at each at any given moment.

I got drop pods, wanderers and refugees in the expansions all the time, but not in the big main base. My conclusion is it probably spawns for each individually and so when they add up, the total number of events goes up.

So from my experience of 2 games over 2-4 years each, it seems each map is treated independently with regards to those events.

Raids also scale according to each base, but I think when it comes to raids, Randy and Cassandra behaved very differently.

As I remember it, Randy could spawn raids, manhunters etc on two maps at the same time more or less, which could be a real challenge. Just as he would on a single map, but all going on in parallel.

I had the impression that Cassandra raids were harder but less frequent and less likely to overlap. But I have played a lot less with Cassandra multi-base than with Randy, so not sure about this.

[Seriously Unserious]

My understanding is Cassandra ramps up the difficulty on a curve based on time passed and colony development, whereas Randy is completely random and he could spawn a huge mech raid even just days after the mandatory first single club wielder raid.

[asanbr]

My understanding is Cassandra ramps up the difficulty on a curve based on time passed and colony development, whereas Randy is completely random and he could spawn a huge mech raid even just days after the mandatory first single club wielder raid.

He is more random, but no, not a huge mech raid afaik.

Probably more capable of spawning an early mech raid or ship than Cassandra would, but it will be a soft one normally. I have had early psychic ships with 1 Centipede in them or 2 scythers, and I've had mech raids of 3 scythers (maybe even 2) early game when my base was quite weak. They are harder than human raids most of the time, but not completely out of balance.

[Slimy_Slider]

If I remember correctly, the storytellers affect the frequency and distribution of events throughout the game, while things such as raid scaling are determined by difficulty and colony strength. I.E. The storyteller chooses the events and the difficulty chooses the numbers.

[Limdood]

If I remember correctly, the storytellers affect the frequency and distribution of events throughout the game, while things such as raid scaling are determined by difficulty and colony strength. I.E. The storyteller chooses the events and the difficulty chooses the numbers.

Sort of....there is some definite power creep on cassandra that doesn't exist on robby...but it really just hits late game, when cassandra gives extra oomph to raids, while robby still just calculates them on the basics.