Mining OXP

[Cody]

As a compromise between the simple and the complicated: an emancipated slave could demand passage somewhere. Freeing slaves might be a costly business.

I rather like that idea… but more along the lines of:
“Thanks for freeing me… if you take me home my family will pay a nice reward.”

[Disembodied]

As a compromise between the simple and the complicated: an emancipated slave could demand passage somewhere. Freeing slaves might be a costly business.

I rather like that idea… but more along the lines of:
“Thanks for freeing me… if you take me home my family will pay a nice reward.”

Although, again ... virtue should be its own reward, I think. Plus, you've got to imagine that a lot of the people who end up as slaves might not have rich (or even free) families. "I would be eternally grateful" might be better. Of course, given how often I seem to scoop up slaves, those of us not flying big cargo haulers might find ourselves weighed down with the number of emancipated slaves looking for a lift home!

However, a lot of the time the slaves are probably going to come from the system you're in. Maybe there would only be a 10% chance (or whatever) of the slave asking for a lift to somewhere else, which you could always turn down. You could always have an option to give the poor schmucks some money: 10Cr a ton maybe? That's quite a lot of cash for an individual, given the price of a ton of food. It could be a money-sink for the richer players, too.

It would be nice if you didn't have to have a passenger cabin, though: 5 tons is a lot to give up for 1 ton of slaves, and then what do you do if the cabin is already full? I can see the point of having one for paying passengers, but refugees could travel steerage. Of course, we'd need to alter the way "special cargo" behaves: make it workable on a ton-by-ton basis, rather than just filling the hold.

[Ganelon]

It might be simpler all around to emancipate them after docking. Many ships may not have the passenger berths to do it before then, and while the slave is still in the cargo pod they were picked up in, they obviously have adequate life support to survive till then.

It could work similarly to when you scoop an escape pod, but if it's a slave pod, you're asked when you dock if you wish to free them.

Virtue being it's own reward is a nice idea and all.. But if they're going to *demand* passage, and the commander also gets nothing for bringing their pod back, I think that may be heading into more a case of virtue being it's own punishment. LOL

The amount that providing free taxi service or giving them some cr would serve as a money sink for richer players would be nominal, but it might be discouraging to the struggling players in the early stages of the game. I would think a lot that would be freed would have been scooped up in spaceby the player rather than necessarily having been bought on the open market. Perhaps they were kidnapped and being taken off to be sold into slavery when you popped the hull of the ship carrying them and took them to a safe port and decided to be kind enough to release them rather than just selling them for a few quick creds.

Maybe as they're freed, random chance could give them a bit of personality. "Thank you, kind spacer. I have <random choice of> parents/children/wife/husband/etc on <random choice again> the surface/moon/station that I thought I'd never see again!" And then the choice would come up of whether you want to give them a ride or not. If you give them a ride, when you get them safely to their destination another random check could be done. Weight it so that most of the time any reward from their family/etc would be maybe equal to a cab fare, but with some chance of them saying "Oh, thank you for returning our son/daughter/whatever to us.. We are poor, but take this 1 cr, it is all we have. Bless you." or they could be the kidnapped family member of a local official and the reward might be substantial (maybe about like the insurance payment for an escape pod rescue) or even be the lead in to a short bounty mission to track down and deal with the criminal who kidnapped them (who, of course, wouldn't happen to be the one you blew to smithereens, they were just a hired goon).

There's a lot of potential to the concept of being able to free slaves, but I think any gain (on the average) should be kept equal to or below what would be made from selling them. Occasionally it could be an interesting adventure or a nice reward, but to keep the game balance if you did it a hundred times it should only be likely to average at what they could have been sold for or less. That way it's still reasonable as an activity for the folks who play pirates or engage in trafficking, since logically they wouldn't be doing it if "being nice" actually usually paid better?

[PhantorGorth]

Having a request from a freed slave to go to another place might occur but only rarely. It would add something more interesting to the whole idea as long as it is optional: either "Sure" and on delivery you get a random bonus or "Be grateful I am letting you go free" and he/she/it will get treated as a normal freed slave. These special freed slaves would be the last to be ejected if you did eject any machinery.

[PhantorGorth]

I would like it to be freed in space as it allows the introduction of police scanning your ship for contraband (depending on the system). If you free them as soon as you pick them up then you are safe if you are scanned.

The only problem with this is the treatment of scooped escape capsules. Currently there is no way to tell if that item you scooped was an escape pod which then appear as slaves. Oolite knows but there is no way to get at that piece of information in a script. You will also get the Arrival message when you deliver them anyway. This idea of emancipating slaves in flight interferes with this mechanism. If we knew now many escape pods were captured then those slaves could be unavailable for freeing. (and scanning could ignore them too)

As it stands it will have to be when you are docked only.

[Switeck]

Better yet, on docking have an option to free the slaves to reduce your offender status a couple points. It will only work if you're NOT a fugitive and will only knock off 1-5 points of offenses. Having 10 tons of slaves may make 5 more likely but not guarantee it. No credits earned, but value nonetheless!

Give the option even if "Clean", but of course then it does nothing...unless it seems ok for some "Amnesty Interstellar" group to pay 1 Credit per freed slave. This is supported by "Make donations to Amnesty Interstellar to free slaves, because after all...one day that slave might be you!"

[Disembodied]

I think it would definitely make sense to use the method Kaks suggested, and just check for slaves on docking and give the opportunity to free them (and maybe provide them with some cash – player's choice of how much) at that point. Then insert suitably grateful comments, blessings etc. Assuming this can be made to happen after any scooped escape pods are dealt with, this should be easy to do (I think).

The tricky bit would come with creating the occasional freed slave who asks for (not demands) a ride home, ideally without having to have a passenger cabin. This I think is a lot trickier, as it would require a change as to how "special cargoes" work. Perhaps once in a while one of these freed slaves could turn out to be from a wealthy family, and the player gets a nice financial reward (20g of gemstones or something like that), but personally I think it's important to keep this kind of activity strictly pro bono.

It's important though to remember that slaves, narcotics and firearms are not illegal. The only crime is transporting them out of a main system station (without, presumably, some sort of license). This, I think, is the only way it makes sense – otherwise why on earth are they listed as commodities at all? If the Co-operative has the power to criminalise these types of goods, why are they (I assume) on open sale in their stations? So freeing them shouldn't reduce your criminal rating. This is my own personal take on things but I don't see the Co-operative legal system as in any way concerned with being nice ...

This is all getting a bit OT for the Mining OXP though – perhaps we could get this split off into a new thread?

[Cmdr James]

No real need for a new thread this has been discussed numerous times before. I suggest either raise a feature request on Berlios, or find an old thread a post "hey, I am still interested, when will it be implemented".

[glenalec]

I actually came across this thread with "free the slaves" in mind. But having read and read, I realised that - for me at least - the problem is largely one of assumptions.

If I assume: Selling the slaves in a feudal or similar place, they are being sold into slavery. If I 'sell' them in a democracy, I am freeing them for a reward (or if some are scooped pirate pods, handing them over for legal processing, again for a reward).

Morally, I choose to 'sell' them where they will be dealt with fairly and feel good about it. The game mechanics doesn't change. Any 'slaves' I scoop can then be 'sold' with a clear conscience.

Fits with the game dynamic of 'slaves' in is okay, slaves out is not - bringing 'slaves' in is handing them over to the station to handle (whether that be freeing them, incarcerating them or on-selling them). The actuality moves beyond the game mechanics as all three look the same from the player's perspective (slaves are gone, money is gained). At the other end, the station won't appreciate you taking incarcerated people off whatever their reason for being locked up (real slaves, indentured labour or legal prisoners) hence it is universally illegal.

In the end, for me all it needs is codifying what types of systems free 'bought' slaves and what types keep them enslaved. No actual game changes.

That doesn't discount the use of an OXP. For example, whenever slaves are 'sold' in places known to free them, there may be extra paying-passenger missions generated, however it does remove the need to have extra screens asking what to do with slaves in the hold - what is done is implicit in the location in which the player unloads them.

Maybe when traveling in the more enlightened worlds, they should be renamed on the manifest from 'slaves' to 'sentient cargo' (still need to differentiate them from berthed passengers)

[Disembodied]

If I assume: Selling the slaves in a feudal or similar place, they are being sold into slavery. If I 'sell' them in a democracy, I am freeing them for a reward (or if some are scooped pirate pods, handing them over for legal processing, again for a reward).

Hi glenalec, welcome to the boards! Yours is one way around the problem in your head, although it does require quite a large assumption, i.e. in over 2,000 inhabited worlds, across a variety of species, all Democracies are anti-slavery and "nice" and all Feudal systems aren't. There can be many forms of slavery, and many forms of attitudes towards slavery – and may forms of Democracies, too. The USA in the 19th century was a lot more democratic than, for example, the UK, and yet (historical generalisation alert! ) the UK abolished slavery long before the USA did.

Basically, I think there's a problem with blanket homogeneity. I don't think we can assume that 12.5% of the planets in the Co-operative necessarily share the same progressive attitude towards slavery – if only because the eight government types are themselves bound to be crude generalisations. It's easily possible that you could have a Feudal society, with a strong honour code wherein it is beholden on the mighty to protect the weak, which is much more free and liberal than a Democracy where the right to vote is open to all but only after, say, a period of military service as per Starship Troopers.

[Arexack_Heretic]

It has been stated before: slavery is not a function of government type, it is an ethical value of the society.
It is similar to capital punishment; I could make a case that civilized nations don't use this practice and thus no bounties should be paid in rich systems (or someting equally irrelevant, like being a democracy).

In the NES version of elite slaves were renamed robots or androids in a misguided attempt to be PC...you could think bladerunner, but then importing would be illegal, not exporting.

Besides, background suggests that human colonials and galcoop are quite racist. Many humans would not care about alien slaves.

If we would rename slaves Thargoid workerdrones, now that would be interesting!
Thargoids are actually attacking Galcoop because of the lively trade of slave-workerdrones raided from Thargoid hiveworlds. We are in the wrong and the Thargoids are the goodguys.


I'd hate a game / atmosphere altering mechanic to be added to the trunk. An Amnesty.oxp that would be fine.
Something relatively simple would have my preference. Say, buy an Amnesty Interstellar membership and henceforward, slaves that find themselves in your hold will be transferred to cabins and freed on docking, AI will reimburse you for the cabinuse, without cabins all slaves are simply offloaded without reward. Launching with slaves cancels your AI member status.

But this is all quite off topic.

[Kaks]

You can always rename the 'slaves' commodity to 'thargoid worker drones' - or 'alien drones' perhaps (needs to be short in order to phisically fit on the trading screen, and 'alien items' only means 'tharglets').

You'll get the added bonus thatn captured pilots will temporarily become 'alien/thargoid whatever', until dropped at the first available station...

[glenalec]

Some fair points regarding assumptions about slavery attitudes in relation to government type. In the end, I am filing that under the same category as the relative sizes of space stations, planets and stars and the distances between them

A thought I had recently was an extra attribute for planets indicating their attitude to this sort of thing. Autogenerated with a formula that takes account of the government type possibly but isn't directly corelated (so you will get the occasional benign dictatorship and communist state that genuinely is for the people, and while democracies may lean more against slavery they won't all do so). While this value could be used to affect slave prices and availability for buy/sell, it could also be simply left up to the player or out-of-game lore to interpret what it means to sell slaves on such planets.

Basicly, I agree with a lot of other posters that a programatic solution to the slave trade is probably not worthwhile and may even adversely effect the game balance. But I like the idea of letting people feel good about their actions and providing a bit of in-game justification that doesn't necessarily change the actual game mechanics.

(bit of a delay on response was because I suddenly needed a new CPU and mainboard - had to find a planet with a sufficient tech level to order from)

[Kaks]

You could always use a modified pseudorandom number, we had a thread on that subject not too long ago, and you can add a line to the F7 screen to display the appropriate info, a bit like in the constrictor hunt mission...

[Switeck]

Basicly, I agree with a lot of other posters that a programatic solution to the slave trade is probably not worthwhile and may even adversely effect the game balance.

I wouldn't go as far as say it might affect the game's balance -- at least not in the sense of making the game considerably easier.

Your ship won't be more powerful, you probably won't be massively losing "bad karma" from fugitive to clean because of it, you won't be making money faster, (more like losing money or at least opportunity costs) but likewise it's unlikely you'll have to tie up much of your cargo bay with slave pods for a long time...nor were they typical big money-makers even for those that bought/sold slaves before. Maybe a large trade ship bought/sold them to finish filling up their cargo bays...after all the "better" items were sold out, but I cannot find much of a use for buying/selling slaves otherwise.

"Freeing" slave pods for a small reduction of your fugitive/offender status is almost trivial compared to just doing a few jumps or using an escape pod to remove fugitive/offender status.

If it's a special mission or (many?) missions to break the slave trade in an area, even if the payout were 100,000 credits it might not be a game balance issue if it was somewhat hard and time consuming. Be no more different than the ridiculous cargo contracts you can get if you're really pushing them hard. (I've seen them individually have >100k profit amounts, and I've delivered up to 5 typically "lesser" contracts that each paid about 5-60k profit to 1 system.)