Player-owned slaves

[kharmadillo]

I read somewhere else that apparently the devs are against allowing the player to actually own slaves, because "making slaves fight for you would be too OP". I think this is ridiculous. At the moment, besides selling slaves to slavers there is absolutely no purpose to them whatsoever in the game. I think it's a really great mechanic that we can heal downed enemies and then imprison them, but I feel this is wasted when there's nothing we can actually do with the captured enemies.

Couldn't slaves be implemented in a way that would give them big debuffs in combat (would make sense since they're not fighting of their own volition)? Personally I would like to see forced labour, where we can make slaves perform all the mundane industrial and agricultural tasks so that our actual squad-members can focus on crafting and training/combat. I think this would add a lot to the game, and would give an incentive to capture enemies and imprison them beyond just selling them off. It would also eventually allow us to focus more on training more combat-ready squaddies, as one thing I find really annoying at the moment is how I have to focus so much on labour with my squad that I simply don't have time to train them up and they get killed very quickly by stray bandits and animals.

Moreover, I don't think it would be particularly hard to implement. We could either be given direct control over slaves, or use interactions with player-controlled characters (such as "lead to stone mine") to direct them, while having to feed/heal them. For a game in which slavery has such a presence, I find it really confusing and frustrating that the devs would so strongly reject the idea of having player-owned slaves. It's like a space combat game not allowing you to buy guns. But this is just my opinion, I'd love to know what everyone else thinks.

[haunter12a]

The Devs say that its less they are op more a coding problem as they have to code multiple scenarios for the slaves escaping and not being fed ect and how people react to it.

but there is a mod which allows you to have slaves it a bit confusing at first but once you can get hang of it, it useful.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/233860/di ... 6055940799

[TCone]

There is definitely no problems with coding slaves escape, since it's already coded and working. My mod features escaping slaves since v1.2 (and it's pure vanilla feature), they will escape as soon as the see no masters nearby and if they are brave enough to dare.

The other possible issue has been mentioned is feeding. For now only those under direct player control actually needs food, but later on Devs will code feeding for everyone, I'm sure they will. Having such a big and alive world with NPC chatting with each other, going to work at daytime and to sleep at night, and not adding an AI for having a meal in midday? I don't believe so.

The actual problem is player control over his own slaves. If modders get access to 'AI Goals' something might be done to fix it, but for now slave will choose his worksite on his own, all I can do is to define what type of site he will look for - farming or mining.

[killerx243]

Either way if only the PC's have to eat or everyone needs to eat just make a "feeding trough" where people go find more food when they need it. I haven't let my characters get taken back to a slaver place so I am not sure if they feed you. There is a loading screen that says slaves get enough food to live but not enough to run. So if you don't provide food for your slaves they will die or revolt. Now for ordering them maybe allow the slaver to have access to giving their slaves jobs same way you do for your squads. If they will do the job would be based on same system TCone's mod has. No guards, no work.

[The first samurai]

Well... the prisoner shackles gives the slave -10 combat skill and if the slave wouldnt get shackles he would run away at n8 so a slave army would be difficult to manage but the slaves would be a good labourer with