Capture or rescue?

[paul.r.byrne]

Which is best for trying to recruit?

[Vintorez]

Capture since it's guaranteed, but requires the long recruitment process and will anger the faction they're from if they're friendly.

Rescue is only a chance they will join you, but will happen as soon as they've healed.

[Hoki]

allied should be rescued first. if they dont join on their own you'll get a prompt that they decided to leave. this is usually before they are good enough to leave.

[War Pig Wizard]

Hospitably mod, its allows you to recruit from guests, advantage is you can pick and choose who you want from a large pool of pawns. Plus the income you make off renting beds and selling items in the shop is a nice bump in income.

[Kittenpox]

If its someone you absolutely want, definitely choose to capture. It's a slower process but basically guaranteed.

If you don't mind whether you get them or not, a rescue is still a nice thing to do + doesn't cause other factions to be unhappy with you.

[Astasia]

Something to consider, spacers are pretty easy to recruit, don't anger anyone by capturing them, and are a decent opportunity for a bit of social training. You can often recruit them before they fully heal.

[paul.r.byrne]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Something to consider, spacers are pretty easy to recruit, don't anger anyone by capturing them, and are a decent opportunity for a bit of social training. You can often recruit them before they fully heal.

Any advice for a newbie on recruitment?

[Astasia]

Originally posted by paul.r.byrne:

Any advice for a newbie on recruitment?

Recruitment is one of those areas that very much comes down to personal preference and playstyle. I tend to only recruit prisoners with very specific traits that align with the gameplay theme I am going for, and I usually throw them into a full bedroom which will be assigned to them after they are recruited.

Recruiting everyone you come across and having a large prison to do so, in some ways makes the game easier, in other ways more difficult, a lot of traits can be annoying and with too many in your colony things can become chaotic. Then again that's something some people enjoy as well.

The game scales pretty well with what you are doing, so there's usually no rush for more bodies.

As for the actual recruitment process, I would say don't pay too much attention to recruitment difficulty or prisoner mood. If they are in a good mood they are easier to recruit so it's something you can lean toward when you are able, but the difference isn't huge and not worth spending early resources on that could be better used elsewhere. Prisoners with high recruitment difficulty just means more skill training for social, and eventually you will recruit them with an inspiration probably sooner than you would expect. I see people abandon good prisoners all the time because the recruitment difficulty is high, but the only cost of keeping a prisoner is food and a few bruises when they try to escape. Food is infinite, bruises are medical training. Back in the day I used to capture some enemies and remove their legs and just keep them as permanent prisoners for social training, can't do that anymore, so high recruitment difficulty prisoners are a boon.

[SereneK]

If you're talking about pawns from a crashed spaceship, rescue may allow you to recruit faster if you get lucky, but if they don't want to join then you can always capture them afterwards.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by paul.r.byrne:

Originally posted by Astasia:

Something to consider, spacers are pretty easy to recruit, don't anger anyone by capturing them, and are a decent opportunity for a bit of social training. You can often recruit them before they fully heal.

Any advice for a newbie on recruitment?

In addition to what Astasia said, if you can afford to keep prisoners in separate cells you won’t have mass breakouts, just single pawns. Nice rooms help if you can afford them. Include a table and chair (prisoners can’t do recreation). Especially in the early game you don’t want to damage your new recruits more than necessary and leave them with missing body parts or scars. Keeping their mood up speeds the recruitment time and reduces the number of breakouts (by speeding recruitment, happy prisoners can still jailbreak).

Animals can be good guards if they don’t do too much dps and you’re not worried about losing them. You can put animal sleeping spots outside the door, or cheese it by zoning the animals to the door during a prison break.

For wardening don’t forget that prisoners get grumpy when they’re hungry (so keep them fed), and wardening is a high-priority job so try to choose wardens who aren’t going to walk across the map to hunt a raccoon, then realize they need to feed the prisoner and walk all the way back.

If you’re not opposed to mods Fluffy’s Work Tab allows you to separate the core jobs into their constituent tasks. For wardening this means you can have a low-social pawn who’s usually near the prison (like a cook) prioritize feeding prisoners but not recruiting, and a high-social pawn do the recruiting. What you don’t want is some shlub with 2 social doing the recruiting instead of your level 15 social pawn because the shlub happens to check for tasks more quickly. On the other hand you don’t want to rely on a single pawn who’s too busy to keep them fed, even if they have great social.

Finally, the pawns who chat with the prisoners build relationships with them, and in addition prisoners will get a +15 or +25 relationship bonus (forget which) to the one who recruited them. This can work in your favor, if, for example, you want to recruit a spouse for someone, or against you, by building a relationship that you don’t want. This is one reason why using “reduce resistance” instead of “recruit” is a good idea.

[paul.r.byrne]

Thanks for all the helpful replies

[VoiD]

Keep in mind the game's theme is warcrimes.

Even if you don't want to recruit a prisoner you can:

-Keep them in bed forever if you remove their legs or spine
-Feed them raw human or bug meat, if they can't stand up they won't cause problems
-Practice operation by adding and removing a proesthetic jaw over and over again
-Practice melee by doing UFC with prisoners
-Sell them off into slavery, if they are damaged the price will drop, but the imperial tribute guy will accept them just the same, just make sure they can stand up

[Watereaters]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Keep in mind the game's theme is warcrimes.

Even if you don't want to recruit a prisoner you can:

-Keep them in bed forever if you remove their legs or spine
-Feed them raw human or bug meat, if they can't stand up they won't cause problems
-Practice operation by adding and removing a proesthetic jaw over and over again
-Practice melee by doing UFC with prisoners
-Sell them off into slavery, if they are damaged the price will drop, but the imperial tribute guy will accept them just the same, just make sure they can stand up

These list of deeds is good

but

YOU FORGOT THE ORGAN HARVESTING

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Keep in mind the game's theme is warcrimes.

^ OP, do not feel obligated to follow that 'suggestion'. Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean you should (and nor are you expected to be awful to the people in your colony.) ^_^

Yes, this game has the equivalent of removing a Sim's pool ladder. But the game is certainly not built around the idea of doing that.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by Watereaters:

Originally posted by VoiD:

-snip-

These list of deeds is good

but

YOU FORGOT THE ORGAN HARVESTING

Spiffing Brit didn't. :-p
https://youtu.be/Y4S3-S1pkpQ

[Raymond]

if you have a high wealth, decent colony, there is a very high chance they will join you Instantly. Otherwise, you can reroll their joining chance by indirectly get them knocked down again when they choose to leave your colony, and rescue them once again.