Military faction is promoting warcrimes

[Swato85]

I wrote about it months maybe years back, but it is still here and unfortunately bothers me enough to write about it again.

Military faction in game is promoting warcrimes in the form of slowly starving all prisoners to death.
I dont like this mechanic and would like to kindly ask devs if there is still no possibility to adress this? I will not cry about it if it will not get any attention, but with what all is going out in the world I kinda dont need to have this behaviour presented here.

From my perspective, there are few ways to adress this:

1. Military vessels without prison quarters should not accept any prisoners.

2. Military vessels should request from the player to deliver the prisoners to nearest Prison facility.
= If prison facility is full, a temporary "prison transport ship" should be generated somewhere and the player should deliver prisoners to it within a certain time limit, after which the prisoners transport leaves the sector/game.
= if prisons are approaching capacity a precaution quest could be given to player to construct new prisons.

3. Prisoners aboard military vessels should disappear from the game once ship or player leaves the sector. Lore being that the prisoners were moved to prisons (a cheap and easy way to resolve this).

4. Military vessels should run trials that could be seen with shared vission. Soldiers will line them up, then the officer will walk from one to another and those that will be identified as high level criminals will get executed on the spot, the rest taken to jail. At least it kinda makes some sense.

5. Military vessels and Prisons should convert prisoners to proper citizens with time.
= Once conversion is complete, the prisoner will be given a faction tag and moved to nearest leisure station. There the player can be able to hire him or take up his quest to be taken as refugee, or a quest to be delivered to a station of soecific faction to reinforce it.
= another option would be for the prison to accumulate converted NPCs and once a certain number is achieved - dice will be rolled for what faction will the converties be aligned to and depending on their count a new ship will be created with them as the crew (bigger crew =bigger ship) .
== in connection to what is written above the prison may call on player to come to prison location and BUILD A SHIP AND RELEASE it (ship type dependent on faction), the converties will then board the ship as its crew.

6. Kinda similar to one of the previous points but conditioned. If military ship cafries prisoners for example 2 days - prisoners will get erased from ship, or transfered to nearest prison automaticaly.

7. A penal colony POI could be added where the prisoners can be ofloaded and the colony will move them to shuttles and those will leave the sector, with the lore behind being that they were moved to the nearby planet or asteroid(per location) to work off their crines there.

8. Full prisons can undergo a Riot/prison overthrow attempt that will resolve in death of like 1/3 of prisoners and maybe some guards or even worse in case player is in area during the event.
= or maybe even allow the riot to be succesfull and player will get quest to retake the prison and help military seize control over it again.

[Death Approaches]

uhh... I'm big on sarcasm but I'm crap at detecting joke posts, and you put so much effort into this... am I just supposed to put up a LOL smiley?

cause I think maybe you're getting carried away here, man. love the motivation, but this is all just too much and doesn't fit with what's already existing. not that it's bad suggestions or anything, but I think you're at 9 or 10 when the game is at 3 or 4...

so, if I understand you, you want these accessory pixel people, ancillary to what you're doing, to have a fair trial you can watch? a coded, scripted mini-mission event where they, what, get sentenced, sent off to a protected, peaceful, prisoner-worker setup, perhaps a farm where these criminals who weren't summarily executed on the spot (why bring them to the prison in the first place? why not execute them in the field? why not assume anyone in custody is "redeemable"?) can rehabilitate themselves, grow food for themselves and MA, read some books, get some counselling, and eventually their freedom, as long as they don't rejoin their previous crew or resume their evil ways?

I mean, 5. so you want a player dock too, where you can visit and check on their mental state, the progress of their rehabilitation? maybe get a mission set up a recruitment job center so once they are fit to contribute to humanity again, after it's built, you can stop by and take some on as crew?

I mean, sure... but dude...

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

uhh... I'm big on sarcasm but I'm crap at detecting joke posts, and you put so much effort into this... am I just supposed to put up a LOL smiley?

cause I think maybe you're getting carried away here, man. love the motivation, but this is all just too much and doesn't fit with what's already existing. not that it's bad suggestions or anything, but I think you're at 9 or 10 when the game is at 3 or 4...

so, if I understand you, you want these accessory pixel people, ancillary to what you're doing, to have a fair trial you can watch? a coded, scripted mini-mission event where they, what, get sentenced, sent off to a protected, peaceful, prisoner-worker setup, perhaps a farm where these criminals who weren't summarily executed on the spot (why bring them to the prison in the first place? why not execute them in the field? why not assume anyone in custody is "redeemable"?) can rehabilitate themselves, grow food for themselves and MA, read some books, get some counselling, and eventually their freedom, as long as they don't rejoin their previous crew or resume their evil ways?

I mean, 5. so you want a player dock too, where you can visit and check on their mental state, the progress of their rehabilitation? maybe get a mission set up a recruitment job center so once they are fit to contribute to humanity again, after it's built, you can stop by and take some on as crew?

I mean, sure... but dude...

I said I would not cry if it wont get any attention, but I wanted to ask. To have them deleted after giving them away is kinda quite simple I think, in general all those ideas are just that, ideas, nothing mandatory.

[Death Approaches]

would make a hell of an immersive mod, anyway!

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

would make a hell of an immersive mod, anyway!

Yeah it would, but like you said that could be a hell a lot of coding that not many would be willing to immerse themselves into. Personaly I am allways in for any additional depth to the game, but would definitely not want devs to streatch their resources or divert from their goals, so its kinda just daydreaming.

[Stardustfire]

This Pirates are already better of with a Prison Sentence with bad basic need catering, compared to real ones. you know Piracy was a Death Penalty Crime, mostly carried out directly when catched as long it wasnt some Famous ones that needed a show process first?

[Lesandrya]

I mean, tbh, there's already an easy way to deal with it if you care about the well-being of prisoners. Just recruit them as crew members. That's what I'm doing as well. Also I use stun pistols against human/android attackers whenever I can, so that ideally I'll just imprison/convert the entire crew with no fatalities.

Doesn't always work out, especially in higher-level areas where the enemies start using laser/plasma weapons and stuff, but before going in with the real guns I always like to at least try a few times with stun pistols and reload whenever anyone dies. Then, if I get too frustrated, I can still reload a final time and switch my combat teams to using real weapons or just turn off my jammer and destroy the enemy ship/ships.

Really dislike doing either, cuz destroying their ship is a waste of salvageable resources and killing hostile crewmembers just means killing my own potential future crewmembers. We're all friends, the only issue is just that some of them still need a bit of convincing xP

[Death Approaches]

it's not just the prisoner well-being he wants, but the whole justice system, played out for us, levels of sentences, rehab, counselling, work release, career center/recruiting parolees, to make it more a "thing" .

me I just cut em loose, uncuff em all, while I'm murdering MAs... if they turn on me I murder them too, or they can find their own way out now that the prison is disassembled and there's no walls anymore. cause screw MA. they got to die. to the last man. a one ship crusade. nothing makes me happier than "freeing" a MA-controlled sector and making it uncontrolled.

with so many recruiting possibilities these days finding a whole crew with 9s and 10s for the skills you want their primary work in, isn't the effort it used to be, that's for sure, it used to take hundreds of days and you'd get mad if you lost even one.

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

it's not just the prisoner well-being he wants, but the whole justice system, played out for us, levels of sentences, rehab, counselling, work release, career center/recruiting parolees, to make it more a "thing" .

me I just cut em loose, uncuff em all, while I'm murdering MAs... if they turn on me I murder them too, or they can find their own way out now that the prison is disassembled and there's no walls anymore. cause screw MA. they got to die. to the last man. a one ship crusade. nothing makes me happier than "freeing" a MA-controlled sector and making it uncontrolled. :possession:

with so many recruiting possibilities these days finding a whole crew with 9s and 10s for the skills you want their primary work in, isn't the effort it used to be, that's for sure, it used to take hundreds of days and you'd get mad if you lost even one.

Interesting take on this space man. You have a point in that the space is missing a rebelous faction, one that promotes freedom above the byrocratic enslavement. Faction whos biggest enemy is military, while pirates and slavers are a kind of morale issue to fight them.

My general point is that there is no actual system that can handle prisoners in this game. Most of them are left to die of starvation or onboard of their wrecked ships what is a lost opportunity to add logic and resource circulation into the game. Secondly I dont like them just being left to die of starvation, execution per justice and judgement is ok, but starving to death everyone is quite a disgusting thing to do and makes me rethinky how I see the military faction. Not to mention their cheeky behaviour of scanning and boarding me without my approval, while if I do it then I am immediately at war.. Wtf? A very bad system logic.

Kinda am thinking for a while now on going full rebel on military if they piss me off enough.

Like prisoners in this game are not a critical problem, but I would surely welcome if the game had an actual use or a way to process prisoners in other ways then just the composter.

[Death Approaches]

well, it's a two-fold thing, one I just don't like them constantly scanning me when I'm weak and can't do anything about it, so it's a kind of retribution thing, but two, they get "cheater" crew, always good stat guys to convert to crew and make them fight their former faction buddies... oh three... the 3rd thing is going to war with Military Allance, you don't worry about hiding your contraband anymore, keep a slave barracks and collaring station opposite your prison. and well four, they're really tough, it's quite a challenge, they always got backup.

I'll stop now, it's starting to feel like a Monty Python skit.

(nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! our chief weapon is fear, surprise and fear... our two weapons... and a most ruthless... our three weapons... and an almost fanatical devotion.. damn! our four, no, amongst our weaponry are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again...)

[KingGeedorah]

I do think implementing a naval type of justice in space sims is a fantastic idea, but no small endeavor as others have mentioned. I'm currently reading some naval historical fiction (the Patrick O'Brian books) and he goes into exhaustive detail about things like punishment on board ship and the brutal justice system of English navy in the time period. Today's navies have comparatively gentle justice compared to our ancestors, but one has to imagine that once/if our civilization becomes space-faring, we'll require a justice system. Humanity can't really thrive without one after all.

Very few games touch on this subject matter at all (setting aside games that are explicitly about the legal fields). It's a bit late in the game development-wise for us to see anything of this nature in this particular game, but feasible or not in this game, I still think it would be very interesting.

[Cenotaph]

what you're saying is, the game is too close to reality. I can agree with you there. The world is a cruel place.

[KingGeedorah]

Cenotaph, I think you're misunderstanding a lot of things about how civilization holds itself together. While the world is certainly cruel, it's the rule of law, not cruelty that holds civilization together like glue. This remains as true today as it did during the time of Hammurabi. Internet users like to jocularly announce that violence or murder are the end-all-be-all to human endeavors, but it's an incredibly sophomoric point of view.

[Nebelbiber]

Originally posted by Swato85:

My general point is that there is no actual system that can handle prisoners in this game.

I've never seen sold prisoners starve to or being dead but I always wondered what happens to them gameplay-wise.

I totally agree that they should either disappear or being treated properly, e.g. having a cell and food. Why take prisoners only to starve them to death?

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Nebelbiber:

Originally posted by Swato85:

My general point is that there is no actual system that can handle prisoners in this game.

I've never seen sold prisoners starve to or being dead but I always wondered what happens to them gameplay-wise.

I totally agree that they should either disappear or being treated properly, e.g. having a cell and food. Why take prisoners only to starve them to death?

yep, that is my point too. Why not simply delete them from game at least when players hops out of the system. Deliberately keeping them and slowly starving them to dead is ... economic? you store cold bodies better then warm ones.... Kinda looks like unfinished mechanic. Originaly I would expect to immediately get a mission to bring them to prison, but since prison can not process prisoners to (they are there forever), it gets crammed very fast.

[starship]

I like the OP's point. You do bring your own morality to this game... like I've never eaten prisoners. And I don't like to execute them either.

I haven't played in a few months so can't speak to the mechanics now.. but it would be nice if the handover functioned without killing off prisoners. And this also goes for other situations where the crews die en masse. Like a karmic effect for letting crew starve on derelicts rather than imprisoning them. Like your own crewmembers start getting upset, except for the psychopaths.

Re: King's point about naval justice.. just so we're clear, the English were royal aholes historically, right? "Oh, we're just going to kidnap you and that's how we'll staff our navy as we conquer the world!" Justice? Gimme a break. :)

Though.. that is somewhat how we staff our ships. :P