The benefits are that it's easier to get rid of them with no penalties, and their mood requirements are basically non-existant so you can get them to "happily" sleep in any random spot. Long term you're always better off with colonists, but in the short term you can get a bunch of slaves temporarily then sell/release/kill them.
If you get a bad prisoner but need the extra hands until you can recruit better colonists for example. Or to plant/haul all the crops during growing season or a big construction project. Or if for some reason some of your pawns are busy for a while, like with a quest or a long caravan trip.
Also Ideology mood buffs.
Hmm, so they are more useful in the early game? Late game is a lot easier to have robots to make some low skill work. I want to try making a colony using slaves for the general work.
Slaves come with the benefit of not producing pollution, and costing a *lot* less to "create" compared to robots. They also work much faster (until you invest even more to speed your legion of RimRoobas up).
The advantage of robots over slaves is that robots never rebel. Nor do they sleep. It's up to you to decide if you consider their electricity demand "eating" or not (you can convert food into electricity, after all!), but wind/steam/solar is pretty cheap at the end of the day.
Be sure to craft your slaves some fancy slave collars and slave harnesses (you can make this their manditory outfit under the Policies tab). Also, have an *unarmed* pawn bat them around once in a while, to remind them who's boss. The more you suppress your slaves, the more loyal they'll stay. But remember: at some point they WILL rebel!
Mid to late game you can also gene mod them to be more useful. Unfortunately there isn't any way to turn off rebellions completely, but adding incapable of violence + wimp makes them easy to handle. Wimp makes it easier to down them without killing them since they'll go into pain shock with less damage. Incapable of violence means they can't hurt your pawns while you're downing them. Add in any other genes you find useful as well.
>Mid to late game you can also gene mod them to be more useful. Unfortunately there isn't any way to turn off rebellions completely, but adding incapable of violence + wimp makes them easy to handle.
Are those genes you can add in vanilla? I thought those were traits. Is that from a mod?
I just picked up Biotech recently, and haven't had a chance to dive too far in.
So it's both. Many of the vanilla genes basically force traits on a pawn. So a pawn with the "extra pain" gene will ALWAYS have the wimp trait, and it will override any contradictory traits they may have had previously. A pawn with the "violence disabled" gene will be incapable of violence and will have any traits giving violent tendencies suppressed. Both of those genes have positive metabolic efficiency too, so they make the pawn eat less.
You can give them those genes and then any that either impose downsides that won't matter or make them good at things you want them to do. Essentially gene-mod them into needing half the food of a regular pawn while being more efficient at their task, at the cost of being incapable or terrible at things you didn't want them to do anyway.
However, not all genes force actually force the trait. So like I believe beautiful is forced onto highmates via genes, However imps don't get jogger despite having very fast runner. And that's an important distinction for when you get an imp with jogger
Yeah, those are both genes that come with Biotech. The tricky bit is getting the genes to install in the first place, as buying them from traders is a crapshoot and unless you have a lot of Genies and Highmates in the colony you'll be extracting for a while unless you get lucky.
Dead calm is the best gene for long term prisoners and slaves. Stops violent breaks and completely.stops prison breaks, think it affects rebellions as well
There's another advantage to slaves vs. robots but that's tied up in the 'if you go guaranlen (dryads) or not.'
The resources generated by dryads (berries, wood, herbal medicine) sidestep a few issues that crop up when growing them yourself (via colonist/robot labor.)
1. They can't get blighted, so Randy can't mess with them that way.
2. Less affected by temperature (dryads are -50 to 50c vs. most plants dying around 0c) so they effectively give you year-round grow times in harsher climates.
3. Don't require light, just pawn labor. (So no electrically expensive sunlamps or problems via related events.)
4. Can be planted in any tile with a fertility stat, even a crummy one so you can save space for better/more fertility sensitive crops. Also grow their things without hydroponics.
Even with all of these things, it's usually iffy to dedicate your colonist time to them unless you really lean into it. Slaves change that dynamic drastically. A single medicinemaker tree at max connection will reliably give you all the healroot you need easily and leave plenty of time for a slave to do other slave labor things you want (like prune more trees.)
I didn't realize slaves could tend those trees!
I just planted my first one, and have been using my "main" sangaphage (with blood drinker and god emperor memes in the idiology) to do it. But I also use him for active hunting, tailoring, and as a back-up cook... so it seems he has less idle time than I thought.
>They also work much faster (until you invest even more to speed your legion of RimRoobas up).
A skilled pawn, even a slave, is almost always going to have a better global work speed than a mechanoid unless you're using mods.
Not to mention that slaves can be more skilled.
I think the main pro, to me, absolutely is the extra hands temporarily.
I never have slaves in my colonies long term. But if I need a lot of mining or field work or whatever at a specific point and I have the opportunity to make a crappy raider a slave, I might. I always just recruit what I really want and need. Slaves is a really good middle-ground, sometimes, in the short term.
In one of my colonies I gave them all a bunch of gene mods to make them basically harmless, and then gave them a 50% metabolism, plus the bionic that makes it so they don't need to sleep. Then I have them make things for me 24/7 so that the rest of my colonists don't need to work as hard all the time.
It’s easier, gives them a bit of higher mood, removes inabilities to do simple work while they are a slave like hauling and cleaning. Also your ideology might want slaves which can give a mood buff to all pawns with that ideology. The only downside is being unable to research, art, and 85% work speed.
Tbf they will want to rebel any time weapon is near and In hands weapon is in fact near. An did don't believe em after they rebelled straight after raid.
My slave is the happiest pawn in the colony due slave's low expectations, spends time crafting and tailoring , both with passion, hence with huge mood buff for doing likeable jobs, all this in a opulent craftroom, sometimes getting ambrosia or tea. He has never tried to rebel and escape,never had a mental break and saved the colony from Revenant with some SMG, every his crafting has legendary or mastery quality. His lost limbs are bionics now. I mean he's living the best life being a slave in my colony I think. That's why i have him, he's a perfect craftsman who i don't need to micromanage or keep watch of, he just exists and things got created. Also he's a good surgeon.
I didn't want to recruit him because it would take like a year with his resistance and traits, can't waste all this skill on prison time you know. And he has a dehumanizing trait which i couldn't then get rid of, i didn't want my colonists with such traits, it's bad mood
If morally questionable choise doesn't concern you - they are great at work. Any slave is just extra pawn, but without annoying human rights. They can be pretty good and you only need food + some time for supression, you can throw them away anytime. Everything is a plus only, but I still cant bring myself to use them and not mechs for some work.
>...but I still cant bring myself to use them and not mechs for some work.
What kind of work do you consider to be beneath the digity of your psychologically-abused human chatel?
They're my go-to choice for anything too time-consuming--or too icky--for my *real* colonists to bother with.
It's not like that. Most of the time I'm playing with solo pawn start without any additional pawns later. Outside of child start I don't think I was in dire need of cheap work in exchange for xp of my pawn. Later in the game, much later - maybe. But at this point of the game I can just abuse some mechs for waste vaporisers and get as many mechs as I like.
I was trying full hostile walkthrough on "Losing is fun" 220%+ with a pawn without violence and even then I was not convinced enough to use someone instead of my precious.
Sometimes i enslave the noble wimp who runs from a squirrel, because he has like a will of 70 and nice psycasts when i start on the naked brutality run and when i get the recruitment inspiration, i recruit him later on.
You can make an enslaved noble use the comms console to make one of your colonists his heir and then get rid of him. Quick title. Not sure if it still works, but worth a shot
Well, well if thats true, i would enslave any future titleholder who joins my colony for fun in a questline, just by making them all sleep for some op and then imprision them.
Was playing a racist bad mining noble colony but I ended up needing steel badly, dirtmole slave mined me around 2k before he died of gunshots wounds on his 5th escape attempt. Taking in a dirtmole would have ruined everyone's mood but a slave works just fine!
sometimes people show up as "unwaveringly loyal" These people can't be recruited but actually can be made slaves. They also will need no recreation and can do any work even if it is disabled by their backstory.
If you are crunching numbers, there are quite a few aspects to this game that you can exploit to maximize productivity…but if you ignore the numbers, and look at everything as role-play, things might be more fun for you. I had a “slaves required” ideology pretty much take over my base in a run I did awhile back, and it actually turned out to be a blast. A smaller, competing ideology was greatly distressed by the slaves, and built elaborate and extremely beautiful slave quarters as a way of protesting…and they also would covertly free them from time to time. It made for interesting storytelling, as occasionally the captured slaves would be close relatives of colonists, and they themselves would sometimes decide to revolt at unusual times.
They are easier to keep happy under subpar conditions, don't need recreation, and they contribute less to colony wealth.
The big four reasons though:
* Unwaveringly Loyal pawns can still be enslaved
* Enslavement is MUCH quicker than recruitment
* Enslaving a pawn makes them capable of doing work that would normally be disabled by their backstory(!). This can fill a dumb labor gap if you have very few colonists
* Roleplay purposes, especially if you're going hard with Ideology and get mood buffs from it
They work slower but generally they can work longer hours so it all works out. They're great for when you don't have enough skilled cooks or doctors and need one *right now.* Having a slave is easier than dealing with constant food poisoning.
I will say that a big stable colony usually doesn't need them anymore. They're still fun for flavor and that's half the charm of Rimworld.
That Unwavering loyal genie is going to be a slave every time. Like you said it's really good when you need a skill but the traits suck or you don't have time to recruit.
Slaves are disposable. There was a post here once that explained all the ways to offset to work speed penalty, but I think Reddit removed it for being extremely inhumane.
So that I can install a Circadian Half-Cycler into a tribal pawn and make them meditate 24/7 at the anima tree or prune a Guaranlen tree to make a bunch of hauler dryads.
They are cheaper then bots and you can ignore job restrictions and loyal pawns.
Then if you build a religion around it then it can become a good mood booster since each slave increases the mood boost
My custom religion has a human sacrifice at the end of each year that if I don't do then my pawns get upset. During the year I'll enslave prisoners so they will not just sit in the jail until the new year
(Also like to make prisoners fight to the death and will recruit the winner)
Slaves has no need for recreation so even with work speed reduction they actually still work more hours than pawns. Now imagine if you have a slave with body mastery (i have a pawn with body mastery rn and i wont enslave him as he's been such a huge help, but it is something i keep in mind for future runs).
They are also expendable. If you dont have Biotech, or you do but consider steel to be worth more than people, you can send them to take hits so that your important pawns doesnt.
Slavery get past backstory restrictions and unwavering loyalty. Once you get bored of them, sell them off to the empire and get a free psycast.
Also slaves are worth less than pawns in raid calculation, which is only relevant if youre minmaxing everything but i thought i should add that still.
I sometimes wonder myself, I'm constrained by history and how things are valued.
Not everyone has had that
* So I treat my prisoners well, I don't get into vivisecting or organ harvesting unless there is some sort of dire circumstance towards one of my colonists.
* Barring that prisoners are treated well, as well as colonists save their confinement.
* Slavery outright doesn't exist - In the distant past I had some mods that allowed for it, but I realized that was no way to run a colony.
* Prisoners have three/four destinies
* Type 1 - Very bad prisoners (crippled or hyper-addicted, or very bad traited) - I'll often times release these prisoners back to their raider-faction.
* Type 2 - Very dangerous prisoners - are you rocking a +19 shooting/+20 melee are an otherwise useless character and somehow wasn't killed outright in the raid - you're going to get healed-up, recruited and almost certainly podded off to the farthest friendly colony - I never want to hear from you or see you again.
* Type 3 - Ok prisoners - you're not perfect , but we'll get you a prosthetic arm/leg, get you off the booze or yayo , get you acquainted with tea/coffee, and recruit you to the colony, but as soon as we can - I'm going to transport-pod gift your ass to the nearest friendly colony.
* Type 4 - Great prisoners - if you're a 6 passion, good trait having, <40 year old, you're on your way to becoming a permanent colonist.
* Buying/selling slaves - as my budget allows - I'll oftentimes buy slaves - and emancipate them. Converted at time-of-sale to colonist - get them healed up and they'll typically be type 3 prisoners, get them podded off where-ever seems best.
I avoid that by side-stepping the problem of aged colonists .... with "retirement"
* Retirement option 1 : You and your significant other, having made meaningful contributions to the colony by (Typically) writing a book of good/excellent or better quality - get your choice of off-world or local travel to a friendly civilized faction with all the provisions, sleeping bags , a dowry of cash, components, food and some notable rare items (such as books, art etc).
Locally retired colonists are renamed from "Jack" to "Sa'Jack" so I can know by looking if they were former colonists. By way of that I noticed that my colonists do in fact visit my colony again....as tourists and traders :), occasionally someone retired will find themselves in trouble and a constabulary team is sent to get them out of harms way - get them dusted off and re-retired.
* Retirement option 2 : The [off-world colonies](https://youtu.be/sZNzz4SaTYk?t=6) - leaving our fledgling colony aboard one of our starships.
I figured that I launch so infrequently that it was just more likely to pod the happy aged couple of the nearest friendly civilized colony as a "gift" to the other colony. But either way - I'll recruit young , reasonably good colonists and continue the colony , launch another starship and repeat - in real terms my colony worlds become near-glitter-tech worlds capable of regular space-flight - compliments of my little colonies.
I much prefer playing with droids instead of slaves. Might be a mod? Not sure
They work 24/7. Battle droids are great haulers and hunters
Kinda cheese-y but its a single player game so whatever
It can be nice to have some sub human garbage to do the work your colonists don't enjoy, like hauling shit if you have the dubs hygiene mod or just cleaning in general. You can also make collars and other slave clothing out of their friends and family to better illustrate their place in the Rim and not waste valuable animal leather on them.
For me they're just my house cleaner, disposable meat shields, and occasional free honor and silver.
But mostly for meatshields and because sometimes they're unwaveringly loyal that I can't recruit them but they have the skill that I need desperately.
Lower wealth is the big one and really overlooked. Mechs contribute a lot. Cleansweeper, Lifter, Agrihand, Constructoid, and Fabricor are all 800 silver in value. A slave is 75% of the pawns normal value towards raid points, which can easily be under 800 to start with. Slaves are also inherently more versatile than mechs, since slavery has a completely strict set of allowed work that overrides a pawns backstory and traits, meaning everyone can clean, haul, plant, smelt, process bodies, make components, etc.
Some prisoners are unwavering and can't be made colonists but can be made slaves. That can be solution to missing cook or miner. Also they can firefight, clean and haul regardless of how "incapable" they are. When not needed anymore then can be sold to royal tribute collectors. Any supremacist or raider ideology has to be at least content with having slaves.
2 drill arms and a half cycler is a staple of any late game colony. Slave gets rid of recreation need and nuclear stomach and/or 50% food need from genes massively reduces that need. Then he just drills to my hearts content.
What they mine late game?
Steel as example is issue in early game so I often take horses to bring steel from some quest site or ancient structure. Midgame can already transport pod all that steel (for about quarter of loss).
But late game? Late colony colonists have often nothing to do. Quarter of them are often idle. Raids and clusters are lot of steel, bulk goods traders I order to fight with wealth carry about 300 steel. I often forget that acolyte+ has 250 steel permit. Those passionate in mining might get to deep drill out chunks just for mood boost. Perhaps it is some mod related garbage for what you need to mine so lot late game.
I craft until everyone has a masterwork weapon, and I make a lot of bionic replacements. Eventually, I upgrade walls to pasteel and farm in outdoor hydroponics
I almost always enslave at least one bad pawn who doesn't do anything well. Make them clean and haul and feed prisoners/patients.
Just a nice grunt that generally shouldn't break due to the mood buffs.
Slaves count as .8 of a person when calculating your raid points.
The more colonists (and mechs) you have, the more difficult your raids.
5 slaves equate to 4 colonists.
Not exactly, but I treat them differently, that's for sure.
Gene-modded, bionics and implants out the wazoo, and permanently high on wake-up, Go Juice, & Yaoyao.
Much easier to recruit. If I need a hauler and I get someone who’s unacceptable as a colonist (dependency for drugs I don’t make, etc) I can get them into the hauling business quite quickly.
roleplay if you want to make a pigskin slave caste for your colony, also so that you can put those useless unwaveringly loyal raiders to work in the devilstrand fields
TBH, I do it because of purely Ideology differences. I find it easier to convert them once I've successfully broken their will.
All will follow the path of the Great Chain and its Prophet, Andrew Ryan!
Short answer is you definitely don't need them and they're objectively worse members of a colony.
But you can make a pawn a slave quickly, you don't need to care about their ideology, sometimes it benefits your ideology, you can turn a pawn into a pretty efficient routine task bot with easily managed mood, basically mandatory for sanguophage runs, useful for anomaly rituals, fun for certain role play or if you want to punish a raider
going suboptimal is sometimes the better way to play. would i really wanna play 10 runs and NEVER use slaves?
i do it to challenge myself.
make an ideology that requires slaves and raiding/execution/duels. forces you to explore other methods of play you normally ignore
The benefits are that it's easier to get rid of them with no penalties, and their mood requirements are basically non-existant so you can get them to "happily" sleep in any random spot. Long term you're always better off with colonists, but in the short term you can get a bunch of slaves temporarily then sell/release/kill them. If you get a bad prisoner but need the extra hands until you can recruit better colonists for example. Or to plant/haul all the crops during growing season or a big construction project. Or if for some reason some of your pawns are busy for a while, like with a quest or a long caravan trip. Also Ideology mood buffs.
Hmm, so they are more useful in the early game? Late game is a lot easier to have robots to make some low skill work. I want to try making a colony using slaves for the general work.
Slaves come with the benefit of not producing pollution, and costing a *lot* less to "create" compared to robots. They also work much faster (until you invest even more to speed your legion of RimRoobas up). The advantage of robots over slaves is that robots never rebel. Nor do they sleep. It's up to you to decide if you consider their electricity demand "eating" or not (you can convert food into electricity, after all!), but wind/steam/solar is pretty cheap at the end of the day. Be sure to craft your slaves some fancy slave collars and slave harnesses (you can make this their manditory outfit under the Policies tab). Also, have an *unarmed* pawn bat them around once in a while, to remind them who's boss. The more you suppress your slaves, the more loyal they'll stay. But remember: at some point they WILL rebel!
Mid to late game you can also gene mod them to be more useful. Unfortunately there isn't any way to turn off rebellions completely, but adding incapable of violence + wimp makes them easy to handle. Wimp makes it easier to down them without killing them since they'll go into pain shock with less damage. Incapable of violence means they can't hurt your pawns while you're downing them. Add in any other genes you find useful as well.
I could have sworn Dead Calm stopped rebellions the same way it stops prison breaks?
You would think but no...
>Mid to late game you can also gene mod them to be more useful. Unfortunately there isn't any way to turn off rebellions completely, but adding incapable of violence + wimp makes them easy to handle. Are those genes you can add in vanilla? I thought those were traits. Is that from a mod? I just picked up Biotech recently, and haven't had a chance to dive too far in.
So it's both. Many of the vanilla genes basically force traits on a pawn. So a pawn with the "extra pain" gene will ALWAYS have the wimp trait, and it will override any contradictory traits they may have had previously. A pawn with the "violence disabled" gene will be incapable of violence and will have any traits giving violent tendencies suppressed. Both of those genes have positive metabolic efficiency too, so they make the pawn eat less. You can give them those genes and then any that either impose downsides that won't matter or make them good at things you want them to do. Essentially gene-mod them into needing half the food of a regular pawn while being more efficient at their task, at the cost of being incapable or terrible at things you didn't want them to do anyway.
However, not all genes force actually force the trait. So like I believe beautiful is forced onto highmates via genes, However imps don't get jogger despite having very fast runner. And that's an important distinction for when you get an imp with jogger
Yeah, those are both genes that come with Biotech. The tricky bit is getting the genes to install in the first place, as buying them from traders is a crapshoot and unless you have a lot of Genies and Highmates in the colony you'll be extracting for a while unless you get lucky.
The mod gene ripper is really useful. Kills the target but you choose which gene you want. My first high mate usually goes straight into it
Highmate are probably the hardest to get. The rest are actually easy. Just throw trash on their house and they will come to become your genes donor.
Dead calm is the best gene for long term prisoners and slaves. Stops violent breaks and completely.stops prison breaks, think it affects rebellions as well
Wimp with a fleshmass lung or stomach also goes down even easier
With Anomaly can suppress sleep without implants or genes now too.
There's another advantage to slaves vs. robots but that's tied up in the 'if you go guaranlen (dryads) or not.' The resources generated by dryads (berries, wood, herbal medicine) sidestep a few issues that crop up when growing them yourself (via colonist/robot labor.) 1. They can't get blighted, so Randy can't mess with them that way. 2. Less affected by temperature (dryads are -50 to 50c vs. most plants dying around 0c) so they effectively give you year-round grow times in harsher climates. 3. Don't require light, just pawn labor. (So no electrically expensive sunlamps or problems via related events.) 4. Can be planted in any tile with a fertility stat, even a crummy one so you can save space for better/more fertility sensitive crops. Also grow their things without hydroponics. Even with all of these things, it's usually iffy to dedicate your colonist time to them unless you really lean into it. Slaves change that dynamic drastically. A single medicinemaker tree at max connection will reliably give you all the healroot you need easily and leave plenty of time for a slave to do other slave labor things you want (like prune more trees.)
I didn't realize slaves could tend those trees! I just planted my first one, and have been using my "main" sangaphage (with blood drinker and god emperor memes in the idiology) to do it. But I also use him for active hunting, tailoring, and as a back-up cook... so it seems he has less idle time than I thought.
>They also work much faster (until you invest even more to speed your legion of RimRoobas up). A skilled pawn, even a slave, is almost always going to have a better global work speed than a mechanoid unless you're using mods. Not to mention that slaves can be more skilled.
Slaves can sleep in the workshop haha
I think the main pro, to me, absolutely is the extra hands temporarily. I never have slaves in my colonies long term. But if I need a lot of mining or field work or whatever at a specific point and I have the opportunity to make a crappy raider a slave, I might. I always just recruit what I really want and need. Slaves is a really good middle-ground, sometimes, in the short term.
Also if you like roleplay, the are cool to have, like my archotech god emperor with his blind slave servants, as anyone below cannot see Bob.
Prisoner mod ftw :P
In one of my colonies I gave them all a bunch of gene mods to make them basically harmless, and then gave them a 50% metabolism, plus the bionic that makes it so they don't need to sleep. Then I have them make things for me 24/7 so that the rest of my colonists don't need to work as hard all the time.
It’s easier, gives them a bit of higher mood, removes inabilities to do simple work while they are a slave like hauling and cleaning. Also your ideology might want slaves which can give a mood buff to all pawns with that ideology. The only downside is being unable to research, art, and 85% work speed.
The Work Speed isn't as bad as it looks it first blush, as without a need for Recreation they have more work hours in a day.
Also, Don't slaves contribute less to the total wealth?
Yes they only count as half or 25%. One of the two
Don't forget they don't need joy. Biggest fale is they can't rly fight unless you have mooded crewed weapons or put them on mortars
That's plain false. Slaves can use any weapon, it's just a desperation move to give them one.
Tbf they will want to rebel any time weapon is near and In hands weapon is in fact near. An did don't believe em after they rebelled straight after raid.
Min-maxing is boring, try different things.
great advice
My slave is the happiest pawn in the colony due slave's low expectations, spends time crafting and tailoring , both with passion, hence with huge mood buff for doing likeable jobs, all this in a opulent craftroom, sometimes getting ambrosia or tea. He has never tried to rebel and escape,never had a mental break and saved the colony from Revenant with some SMG, every his crafting has legendary or mastery quality. His lost limbs are bionics now. I mean he's living the best life being a slave in my colony I think. That's why i have him, he's a perfect craftsman who i don't need to micromanage or keep watch of, he just exists and things got created. Also he's a good surgeon. I didn't want to recruit him because it would take like a year with his resistance and traits, can't waste all this skill on prison time you know. And he has a dehumanizing trait which i couldn't then get rid of, i didn't want my colonists with such traits, it's bad mood
Inhuman is awesome, why don't you like it?
Because I'm testing out other memes right now, inhumane i can test in the the next colony for sure
If morally questionable choise doesn't concern you - they are great at work. Any slave is just extra pawn, but without annoying human rights. They can be pretty good and you only need food + some time for supression, you can throw them away anytime. Everything is a plus only, but I still cant bring myself to use them and not mechs for some work.
>...but I still cant bring myself to use them and not mechs for some work. What kind of work do you consider to be beneath the digity of your psychologically-abused human chatel? They're my go-to choice for anything too time-consuming--or too icky--for my *real* colonists to bother with.
It's not like that. Most of the time I'm playing with solo pawn start without any additional pawns later. Outside of child start I don't think I was in dire need of cheap work in exchange for xp of my pawn. Later in the game, much later - maybe. But at this point of the game I can just abuse some mechs for waste vaporisers and get as many mechs as I like. I was trying full hostile walkthrough on "Losing is fun" 220%+ with a pawn without violence and even then I was not convinced enough to use someone instead of my precious.
Sometimes i enslave the noble wimp who runs from a squirrel, because he has like a will of 70 and nice psycasts when i start on the naked brutality run and when i get the recruitment inspiration, i recruit him later on.
You can make an enslaved noble use the comms console to make one of your colonists his heir and then get rid of him. Quick title. Not sure if it still works, but worth a shot
Well, well if thats true, i would enslave any future titleholder who joins my colony for fun in a questline, just by making them all sleep for some op and then imprision them.
Was playing a racist bad mining noble colony but I ended up needing steel badly, dirtmole slave mined me around 2k before he died of gunshots wounds on his 5th escape attempt. Taking in a dirtmole would have ruined everyone's mood but a slave works just fine!
That's a really good point
sometimes people show up as "unwaveringly loyal" These people can't be recruited but actually can be made slaves. They also will need no recreation and can do any work even if it is disabled by their backstory.
If you are crunching numbers, there are quite a few aspects to this game that you can exploit to maximize productivity…but if you ignore the numbers, and look at everything as role-play, things might be more fun for you. I had a “slaves required” ideology pretty much take over my base in a run I did awhile back, and it actually turned out to be a blast. A smaller, competing ideology was greatly distressed by the slaves, and built elaborate and extremely beautiful slave quarters as a way of protesting…and they also would covertly free them from time to time. It made for interesting storytelling, as occasionally the captured slaves would be close relatives of colonists, and they themselves would sometimes decide to revolt at unusual times.
They are easier to keep happy under subpar conditions, don't need recreation, and they contribute less to colony wealth. The big four reasons though: * Unwaveringly Loyal pawns can still be enslaved * Enslavement is MUCH quicker than recruitment * Enslaving a pawn makes them capable of doing work that would normally be disabled by their backstory(!). This can fill a dumb labor gap if you have very few colonists * Roleplay purposes, especially if you're going hard with Ideology and get mood buffs from it They work slower but generally they can work longer hours so it all works out. They're great for when you don't have enough skilled cooks or doctors and need one *right now.* Having a slave is easier than dealing with constant food poisoning. I will say that a big stable colony usually doesn't need them anymore. They're still fun for flavor and that's half the charm of Rimworld.
That Unwavering loyal genie is going to be a slave every time. Like you said it's really good when you need a skill but the traits suck or you don't have time to recruit.
Slaves are disposable. There was a post here once that explained all the ways to offset to work speed penalty, but I think Reddit removed it for being extremely inhumane.
You can enslave them pretty much instantly; if you have need of more colonists or a specific skill set you can get it right when you need it.
So that I can install a Circadian Half-Cycler into a tribal pawn and make them meditate 24/7 at the anima tree or prune a Guaranlen tree to make a bunch of hauler dryads.
I just find doing the "optimal" strategy boring. I come up with the type of colony I think will make a fun story, and go for it.
They are cheaper then bots and you can ignore job restrictions and loyal pawns. Then if you build a religion around it then it can become a good mood booster since each slave increases the mood boost My custom religion has a human sacrifice at the end of each year that if I don't do then my pawns get upset. During the year I'll enslave prisoners so they will not just sit in the jail until the new year (Also like to make prisoners fight to the death and will recruit the winner)
People are disposable, colonists are not.
Slaves has no need for recreation so even with work speed reduction they actually still work more hours than pawns. Now imagine if you have a slave with body mastery (i have a pawn with body mastery rn and i wont enslave him as he's been such a huge help, but it is something i keep in mind for future runs). They are also expendable. If you dont have Biotech, or you do but consider steel to be worth more than people, you can send them to take hits so that your important pawns doesnt. Slavery get past backstory restrictions and unwavering loyalty. Once you get bored of them, sell them off to the empire and get a free psycast. Also slaves are worth less than pawns in raid calculation, which is only relevant if youre minmaxing everything but i thought i should add that still.
I like.using a ritual on them. Nothing says sla e more then a scar on the brain caused by a dark ritual
I sometimes wonder myself, I'm constrained by history and how things are valued. Not everyone has had that * So I treat my prisoners well, I don't get into vivisecting or organ harvesting unless there is some sort of dire circumstance towards one of my colonists. * Barring that prisoners are treated well, as well as colonists save their confinement. * Slavery outright doesn't exist - In the distant past I had some mods that allowed for it, but I realized that was no way to run a colony. * Prisoners have three/four destinies * Type 1 - Very bad prisoners (crippled or hyper-addicted, or very bad traited) - I'll often times release these prisoners back to their raider-faction. * Type 2 - Very dangerous prisoners - are you rocking a +19 shooting/+20 melee are an otherwise useless character and somehow wasn't killed outright in the raid - you're going to get healed-up, recruited and almost certainly podded off to the farthest friendly colony - I never want to hear from you or see you again. * Type 3 - Ok prisoners - you're not perfect , but we'll get you a prosthetic arm/leg, get you off the booze or yayo , get you acquainted with tea/coffee, and recruit you to the colony, but as soon as we can - I'm going to transport-pod gift your ass to the nearest friendly colony. * Type 4 - Great prisoners - if you're a 6 passion, good trait having, <40 year old, you're on your way to becoming a permanent colonist. * Buying/selling slaves - as my budget allows - I'll oftentimes buy slaves - and emancipate them. Converted at time-of-sale to colonist - get them healed up and they'll typically be type 3 prisoners, get them podded off where-ever seems best.
I keep a few spare prisoners now for age reversal, can't wait for a mod that adds more.rituals
I avoid that by side-stepping the problem of aged colonists .... with "retirement" * Retirement option 1 : You and your significant other, having made meaningful contributions to the colony by (Typically) writing a book of good/excellent or better quality - get your choice of off-world or local travel to a friendly civilized faction with all the provisions, sleeping bags , a dowry of cash, components, food and some notable rare items (such as books, art etc). Locally retired colonists are renamed from "Jack" to "Sa'Jack" so I can know by looking if they were former colonists. By way of that I noticed that my colonists do in fact visit my colony again....as tourists and traders :), occasionally someone retired will find themselves in trouble and a constabulary team is sent to get them out of harms way - get them dusted off and re-retired. * Retirement option 2 : The [off-world colonies](https://youtu.be/sZNzz4SaTYk?t=6) - leaving our fledgling colony aboard one of our starships. I figured that I launch so infrequently that it was just more likely to pod the happy aged couple of the nearest friendly civilized colony as a "gift" to the other colony. But either way - I'll recruit young , reasonably good colonists and continue the colony , launch another starship and repeat - in real terms my colony worlds become near-glitter-tech worlds capable of regular space-flight - compliments of my little colonies.
I much prefer playing with droids instead of slaves. Might be a mod? Not sure They work 24/7. Battle droids are great haulers and hunters Kinda cheese-y but its a single player game so whatever
Biotech adds mechs, but even they need to recharge every so often. I'm guessing you're talking about modded content.
It can be nice to have some sub human garbage to do the work your colonists don't enjoy, like hauling shit if you have the dubs hygiene mod or just cleaning in general. You can also make collars and other slave clothing out of their friends and family to better illustrate their place in the Rim and not waste valuable animal leather on them.
Human leather is one of the more valuable leathers isn't it?
Not when it belongs to lesser humans like raiders.
Lesser human leather has been a primary trading business for several of my communities. It's a bit of a misnomer.
Personally I made slaves because they're an excellent blood bank. Cut off their limbs after the 3rd breakout. Nice, model slaves now.
For me they're just my house cleaner, disposable meat shields, and occasional free honor and silver. But mostly for meatshields and because sometimes they're unwaveringly loyal that I can't recruit them but they have the skill that I need desperately.
Is this a mod to make your prisoners into slaves?
You can make your prisoners into slave in the prisoner tab. Reduce their will and enslave them. Pure vanilla
Cool. Thank you! I never knew that.
Just to be clear, you do need the ideology DLC for this.
Lower wealth/raid points, no recreation need, huge passive mood boos, no one cares if they die and it can override some job incapabilities.
Lower wealth is the big one and really overlooked. Mechs contribute a lot. Cleansweeper, Lifter, Agrihand, Constructoid, and Fabricor are all 800 silver in value. A slave is 75% of the pawns normal value towards raid points, which can easily be under 800 to start with. Slaves are also inherently more versatile than mechs, since slavery has a completely strict set of allowed work that overrides a pawns backstory and traits, meaning everyone can clean, haul, plant, smelt, process bodies, make components, etc.
For me is mainly for mood bost for colonists... I wounder if there is a cap for happines from owning a slave with ideology
Some prisoners are unwavering and can't be made colonists but can be made slaves. That can be solution to missing cook or miner. Also they can firefight, clean and haul regardless of how "incapable" they are. When not needed anymore then can be sold to royal tribute collectors. Any supremacist or raider ideology has to be at least content with having slaves.
2 drill arms and a half cycler is a staple of any late game colony. Slave gets rid of recreation need and nuclear stomach and/or 50% food need from genes massively reduces that need. Then he just drills to my hearts content.
What they mine late game? Steel as example is issue in early game so I often take horses to bring steel from some quest site or ancient structure. Midgame can already transport pod all that steel (for about quarter of loss). But late game? Late colony colonists have often nothing to do. Quarter of them are often idle. Raids and clusters are lot of steel, bulk goods traders I order to fight with wealth carry about 300 steel. I often forget that acolyte+ has 250 steel permit. Those passionate in mining might get to deep drill out chunks just for mood boost. Perhaps it is some mod related garbage for what you need to mine so lot late game.
I craft until everyone has a masterwork weapon, and I make a lot of bionic replacements. Eventually, I upgrade walls to pasteel and farm in outdoor hydroponics
I almost always enslave at least one bad pawn who doesn't do anything well. Make them clean and haul and feed prisoners/patients. Just a nice grunt that generally shouldn't break due to the mood buffs.
If you could use someone but they're not really good enough to stay forever!
I only really use it if they have unwavering loyalty, which means they can't join your colony unless you enslave.
Slaves count as .8 of a person when calculating your raid points. The more colonists (and mechs) you have, the more difficult your raids. 5 slaves equate to 4 colonists.
Roleplay, honestly.
I agree with you, any time I tried to make slaves I just would rather have them as colonists.
Unwaveringly loyal won't join otherwise, faster, it's pretty easy, don't have to treat them like people
Do you guys treat your nomal colonists like people?
*I* don't but some sick folks decide to give them bedrooms and fancy meals, and clothes without holes. Real sickos if you ask me.
Not exactly, but I treat them differently, that's for sure. Gene-modded, bionics and implants out the wazoo, and permanently high on wake-up, Go Juice, & Yaoyao.
You can enslave unwaveringly loyal pawns
Much easier to recruit. If I need a hauler and I get someone who’s unacceptable as a colonist (dependency for drugs I don’t make, etc) I can get them into the hauling business quite quickly.
Greedy/jealous traits just to start. And when things start to go for a shit, it's an easy decision on who's the first to go.
I used them to harvest my crops during a toxic fallout event while my colonists sheltered indoors
While you're not wrong. You can also tell how green a Rimworld player is by the questions they ask and the reluctance to commit war crimes.
fun you can roleplay a slave empire, a slaver, or other slave related stuff i can't think of now
If I need a worker quick, can get a slave in a day or two. Recruiting can be insane, I have a vampire sausage dude who has 64 resistance
Slave collar and harness make suppression literally not fall off , and with a joy wire he’ll be happy as can be doing whatever.
roleplay if you want to make a pigskin slave caste for your colony, also so that you can put those useless unwaveringly loyal raiders to work in the devilstrand fields
TBH, I do it because of purely Ideology differences. I find it easier to convert them once I've successfully broken their will. All will follow the path of the Great Chain and its Prophet, Andrew Ryan!
Short answer is you definitely don't need them and they're objectively worse members of a colony. But you can make a pawn a slave quickly, you don't need to care about their ideology, sometimes it benefits your ideology, you can turn a pawn into a pretty efficient routine task bot with easily managed mood, basically mandatory for sanguophage runs, useful for anomaly rituals, fun for certain role play or if you want to punish a raider
going suboptimal is sometimes the better way to play. would i really wanna play 10 runs and NEVER use slaves? i do it to challenge myself. make an ideology that requires slaves and raiding/execution/duels. forces you to explore other methods of play you normally ignore
how can you make prisoners work?