Simple Slavery vs. Prison Labor

[fivehead]

I'm looking for a mod that has the functions programmed in by Simple Slavery/Prison Labor mods, but I'm wondering which one would be more fair/less "game-breaking" to use. Any opinions?

[Kirby23590]

It's kinda hard to get more Prisoners in vanilla game of Rimworld especially in late game... But here are some of the differences.

Simple Slavery:
i think you can have the door opened with the prisoner and he or she will not escape unless they are wearing Slave Collars. Where they can stroll around your colony with no walls surrounding the colony. They will also function similarly to your colonists where they can be drafted and work crafting and cooking in the colony... Though they will be very unhappy and will start to make repeated escape attempts until their willpower is broken...

Prison Labor:
It's more like in Prison Architect. However you can't have a door staying open to the outside world or all your Prisoners & Slaves will scream "Freedom!!" while trying to escape. So you're forced to have a wall around your colony to make sure they can't escape. Also a Nearby Drafted Colonist will boost their workspeed...
Compared to Simple Slavery, they have no ability to fight back manhunting animals or other raiders. They also have an slower move speed since they are still prisoners...

TBH I never used any of those mods. But i think Prison Labor might be more fair game here... But i heard that you can use both of those mods at the same time... Just make sure you have backups just in case...

[fivehead]

I think that's a pretty good overview of it. Both mods have qualities that I like, but I think in terms of playing for balance the prison labor mod is fairer. The work restrictions aren't as convenient but they make it more balanced in terms of gameplay.

[Wheatley]

I use simple slavery and I don't find it to be too game breaking. You're essentially skipping the recruitment stage of a prisoner with the downside that they repeatedly try to escape, have breakdowns, move at a slow speed (shackles) and shouldn't have weapons because they will use them against you in an escape attempt. In most ways it's worse than just simply recruiting the prisoner the normal way.

I mostly use it for flavour than any real advantage.

[BoogieMan]

I'd settle for something so simple as just letting prisoners cut stone blocks that are accessible from inside the prisoner area.

[Preechr]

I've been working on some prison ideas on the side of my normal run, experimenting with both mods and locks. For Prison Labor, you have the option to "motivate" the prisoners or just turn off that mechanic, and so far I've left it off just to see what was possible. With Simple Slavery, I've seen a slaves unhappiness lower but I've yet to have one get over it completely, so some slaves seem to want to run off pretty often... at least I think its variable.

For my purposes, I'd like the prisoners/slaves to be fully self-sufficient and my real colonists to function as guards/wardens only, doing no real labor. I can't seem to get prisoners to do construction jobs, though. I thought they were doing it, but then I noticed things were actually getting built by one of the guards. This may be a mod conflict or something, because the mod settings for PL have a switch to allow them to do construction, so it should work.

Additionally, I usually run with hauling/riding pets, which becomes problematic with the Locks mod, which is kind of important to have if you are using PL to make a big prison complex. I've also recently read that PL doesn't play nice with Rimefeller, which I'm trying to utilize in that run as well, so for me, I've decided to use SS, set permissions on locks and use zones/permissions/assignments for slaves to simulate prisoners and then just deal with them being on the colonist list.

It seems like the miserable slave/trying to escape mechanic is close enough to prison breaks to keep it interesting for the guards, and with SS I'll have full control of the prisoners. I'll see if releasing/re-enslaving the prisoners every once and a while resets their misery mechanic. If that works, I think SS will be the solution.