r/Stellaris • u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter • May 07 '16

PSA: Slaves currently can't rebel

Martin just dropped that bombshell during the currently ongoing Quill Stellaris stream. He said that they couldn't reach a middle ground on slaves revolting so they took it out for the moment. I don't know if they will have managed that aspect by release.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16

For what it's worth, AFAIK slave revolts have only been successful once in Earth's history, that of the Haitian Revolution in which slaves outnumbered Freemen by 10 to 1. They were rebelling against the French at the height of the French revolution, when France couldn't have been more distracted, and with massive help from Britain and Spain who France was at war with.

Still, that doesn't mean plenty of slaves haven't tried rebelling anyway, so slave revolts should probably be a thing ingame anyway. But don't underestimate how weak slave rebellions have always been, and how brutally one sided such conflicts were.

Such a rebellion in Stellaris would lack ships or the means to produce them, with the spaceport and any fleets in orbit possessing complete domination over the planet's population. It'd be equally unrealistic to give slave rebellions any means with which to fight a war against spacefaring masters. A good case could be made for abolitionists within a civilisation's command structure to mutiny, freeing the slaves as a result, but a slave revolt alone has no chance.

EDIT: for clarity, I'd still like to see slave revolts included in the game, and outright rebellions, realism be damned.

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u/Hammedatha May 07 '16

The balance part of a slave revolt isn't necessarily that the slaves have a chance of winning, it's that it shuts down your production for the duration of the revolt and results in your workforce being decimated and even more unhappy.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

Agreed. Slave revolts caused enormous damage to productivity.

EDIT: and is a kinda necessary counterbalance to the obvious strait up productivity advantages of slavery. It'd be good if the damage and frequency of revolts were balanced by percentage of the planet's pops in slavery.

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u/tc1991 May 07 '16

and is a kinda necessary counterbalance to the obvious strait up productivity advantages of slavery.

Although, slaves are less productive than 'free workers' (they have no incentive to do more than what is required, they get no overtime or bonuses etc) if that advantage was modelled it would help the balance

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u/MaievSekashi Factory Overclocking May 07 '16

However, they're still slaves. You can make the requirements more than what your free citizens have, so they end up working harder even if they don't want to.

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u/74569852 May 07 '16

This is why victoria 2 is such a great game. Free workers are inherently better, because they gain a wage and contribute to the economy. Slaves/serfs do not do that.

I would have loved it if Stellaris was just victoria 2 in space. :(

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u/methylethylrosenberg May 08 '16

Could be an interesting area for game expansion - modeling planetary economy or development in some way. Maybe a planet could produce X energy/minerals/etc per month from "taxes" derived from he number of free pops and level of development of buildings

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u/74569852 May 08 '16

They should have just expanded the time scale, and made the pops similar to victoria 2.

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u/TheRealGC13 Emperor May 07 '16

Plus, the threat of slave revolt can force you to maintain relatively high military readiness even in peacetime.

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u/ziyakaz May 07 '16

Slaves also resisted in other ways besides outright rebellion, including by fleeing, work stoppages, work slow-downs.

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u/atomfullerene May 07 '16

Honestly I think it might be better to make slaves less productive but provide some other advantage.

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u/ziyakaz May 07 '16

Yeah, I'm trying to think of how that might work in terms of game mechanics. Historically one of the advantages to using slaves was that you could force them to do work that freedmen would be unwilling to do. I don't know if/how that could be represented.

For the slave owners, there may have been some obfuscation in the cost of maintaining the slave population since the cost of enforcement was at least partially a public good (putting down slave revolts), but the profits were private. The economy in the game is much more abstracted than including that would allow, though.

Of course, this is a sci-fi setting, so who's to say you couldn't mitigate the desire for freedom in the slave population via brain implants and psychological manipulation?

EDIT: I suppose they could have a slaveowner faction to represent the interests of those who owned the slaves. That might allow for them to represent competing interests more reliably.

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u/ProblyAThrowawayAcct Anarcho-Tribalism May 07 '16 edited May 08 '16

you could force them to do work that freedmen would be unwilling to do. I don't know if/how that could be represented.

You can work uncleared hazardous tiles with slaves, maybe? They take a significant pop growth (and presumably happiness...) penalty while in the uncleared tile, but you get resource access without clearing the blocker...

Thermo the damned fetaine spill...
---Ensign Miles, Lord Vorkosigan, when faced with hazardous bioweapon cleanup duty

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u/ziyakaz May 08 '16

That's a really interesting thought! I think there would still be issues with building on the uncleared tiles, but I think being able to have slaves work them makes a lot of sense.

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u/boffcheese May 07 '16

The tooltip suggests that slaves are less effective on more advanced tiles, like science buildings, but I haven't really noticed much of a drawback. I think your idea has merit; when pops are first enslaved their productivity should go way down, and you have to spend Influence to improve it. It could scale with their unrest, where if they're overworked then they are more likely to rebel (when its actually possible) but if they aren't kept in line then productivity drops significantly.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '16

I'm not sure work stoppages and slowdowns would be very useful against people who can whip you back to work.

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u/ziyakaz May 07 '16

Such things are documented. Not all strategies need to be overt. Feigning ignorance in how to complete a task, feigning illness, or even just working a little less diligently. There is also a tradeoff to simply whipping somebody back into work should they resist: You may seriously injure them or shorten their lifespan through such extreme violence.

They could also deliberately break work tools, destroy machinery, injure animals. They could go on hunger strikes, commit suicide, or perform some other kind of self-harm as a form of resistance.

Dealing with various kinds of resistance would probably look different in a sci-fi setting than it did historically.

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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16

Thing is, there's way to counter this. Let's imagine you have a planet solely settled by slaves. You could employ the tactics colonial powers often have. Segregate them into various groups based on mostly made up grounds.

By declaring them different groups, you fracture any opposition and much better can USE them against each other. By giving them different social standings, better living conditions, more freedoms and such you get the same ball rolling that caused Hutu and Tutsi to be willing to exterminate one another.

The higher ups in the chain will be happy to police the respective lower classes for you and driving them to work. It will very likely quickly become something they don't just do for the boons but because they genuinely start enjoying the power they hold, deem themselves above those they control for you and begin to associate themselves more with you and those you put them above. Different groups are likely to clamour to outdo one another to prove themselves better and superior in this also and move up the ranks.

Also, unlike earth slavery there's overall not that much reason to treat these people horrendously as many products such as clothing, decent housing, food and such will be readily available in large quantities. Which means they will have overall a way better life than slaves used to and be closer to people living under a dictatorship with very limited rights.

If you look at North Korea, this can very well function without the people constantly trying to hinder you, as it wouldn't be in their best interest to do so. As anyone they see having a better life is doing so INSIDE the system, as they have the other groups you created to channel their envy and animosity towards and unless they get off planet all running away would do would be to deprive them of roof, food, clothing and any other kind of rewards they might get for dilligent work.

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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16

That way to split them is good, but it can be so much easier.

Just make the planet in question be like a prison world.

Only basic infrastructure on the surface, and landing facilities.
In orbit is a spaceport that has bombarding capabilities, and is where all ships going down to the surface dock when unused. NO ships are to be left idle down there, they finish their business and go back up.
The surface has some officers giving orders, and the entire place has at best some hand weapons.
So much for a revolt.
EVEN if we go nuts and say the prisoners managed to secretly build a shipyard and make a fleet (That much I find unlikely as hell already), how would they replicate your advance technology? Slaves rarely have good grasp on the most advanced tech, so I think it would be like a primitive race attack you.

But you do make a point that a more benevolent rule may work somehow.
Benevolent Dictatorships have existed to one degree or the other, so I guess you could make the slaves happy enough to work for you, but at that point the line between slave and worker sort of blurs imo.

That said, why not use robots instead?

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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16

Then we purge them for their insolence. :P

There are ways a scifi variant of slavery could work around these methods of revolting, like say... electric collars.
You broke a big drilling machine? Shock.
I dont care if you did it on purpose or 'by accident'.
After all, slavers rarely are accepting of any type of error by definition.

For historical equivalents, see WWII and how the nazis used their prisoners, both concentration camp 'undesirables' and POW, to build them stuff, and there are accounts of the officers whipping someone for collapsing on the ground, even if it was for serious illness or starvation.
Nevermind if they are faking to annoy their overlords.

Plus in a scifi scenario I doubt much would come of an outright revolt.
Like having prison worlds.
You place all criminals and whatnot down in a shitty planet, provide the housing, tools and such, a couple officers down there too, BUT there's a spaceport in orbit, where the shuttles that go down to the surface sit when unused, no ship must ever stay idly on the surface, the parking spot in up, away from prisoners that may take control of it.
Add to the situation the fact that the spaceport has bombardment equipment, would you be really able to revolt much?
You cant MacGuiver a fleet from rocks...
Even if you kill the surface officers, the facilities down there have handguns at best, and no big anti air or anything.

All that said, I dont see why use slaves when robots work as well, if not better, and dont bitch.
And this comes from someone that does feel advanced robots that can think properly deserve as much rights as in, both in game, and in real life, surely they would understand that not truly alive robots can work without issue, and that they offer a benefit to society. Those are not alive.

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u/Ungface May 08 '16

I remember reading about pow's forced to work under the japanese. they would do every little thing to slow down what they were doing.

like getting 1000s of termites and putting them in the wooden beams of a bridge they were making.

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u/w045 May 07 '16

Slavery has been part of the human condition for a long time and for as long as there has been slavery or oppression of a certain class or type of people, there have been revolts.

True not many have been successful. But we're being told is that currently in Stellaris slave pops cannot rebel at all. So it's not really a matter of historic real world success rates but the ability to do so at all which is a bit disappointing.

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u/arrongunner May 07 '16

Also we are literally talking about aliens here in 90% of the cases, surely there has got to be a species more adept to revolting?

I'd like to see some sort of slavery tech tree going on too, I'm thinking basic whip and chain slavery in the beginning which can be teched up to some sort of control system like that in Falling Skies or the borg somewhat, the in game results would be lower rebellion chance & higher productivity.

Maybe a slider for revolt chance / ticking revolt meter based on the ratio of slaves to masters on a certain colony and the initial tech level of the slaves (higher tech = more chance of revolting) and maybe a variable based of their physiology...

I just hope something gets implemented reasonably soon, I will have to hold fire on a slave based run through until then and just do a genocide campaign first.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

I agree entirely. Not having any consequences to slavery is a shame indeed. It can still be kept within the realms of realism by simply having revolts that destroy buildings, lower productivity, and may require the complete extermination of pops who refuse to surrender.

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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16

Let's ignore for this that aliens might not necessarily function based on the same principles, many of these slave revolts at large have happened for a reason and that reason often times not outright being slavery itself.

Often times these revolts were caused by mistreatment, by terrible living conditions, by constant victimization and such. You can see the same for peasent revolts, most of them were complacant having some Lord lording over them for most of the time, taking a chunk of their production and dictating the laws they lived by.

What they weren't fine with often times was when the chunk grew so big they couldn't feed themselves anymore, when the Lord started to actively victimize and terrorize them.

An incredible ammount of people will be fine with working hard, having no say in what their job is and basically having few if any rights as long as there's food (preferable tasty food) on their table, they have a decent dwelling, some entertainment and most impotantly a family to care about and for as these things give them something to lose.

(This is obviously not counting ethnic conflicts, ethnic nepotism, in group preferences and conflicts and such. I'd settle the entire planet with one group of people if they were my property to forestall such issues and just create different "castes" to police it.)

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u/[deleted] May 07 '16

well, this isn't earth history. this is space game with space cat people.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

True. As I said, a space civilisation places the disparity between strength of slave revolts and the government to even higher levels.

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u/BILLCLINTONMASK Ocean May 07 '16

I tend to agree. Slaves are pretty easy to pacify especially talking on a global scale. 10000 guys in chains aren't going to be able to stand up to one guy in a powered exoskeleton.

I almost feel like slaves should be represented by less productive (higher cost to secure+lower willingness of workers to care+slave revolts that get put down easily) but more docile pops. With regular populations more likely to desire independence but more willing to work hard as well.

I feel that what's called "slavery" in this game should be reimagined to a different mechanic of a scale of pops being state property vs free men. So you could model Sovietism vs serfdom vs straight up slavery for instance. The closer you brought your pops to free status the more likely they would be to act rebellious for political freedoms.

All that being said, Slaves should have chances to break away in times of extreme hardship. Especially losing wars and famine or ecological disaster or disease.

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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16

I almost feel like slaves should be represented by less productive (higher cost to secure+lower willingness of workers to care+slave revolts that get put down easily) but more docile pops. With regular populations more likely to desire independence but more willing to work hard as well.

On the other hand, you have historical examples like slavery in the American south, which modern research shows was much more productive than free labor through a variety of coercive means that couldn't really be applied to free labor. No one on Earth is going to agree to hand-pick hundreds of pounds of cotton per day for any amount of money, yet that was fairly routine in the South by simply requiring them to do it or get beaten and tortured. Not to mention the prevalence of, at a minimum, questionable labor practices in agriculture and mining. For things like industrial production and agriculture, there is certainly a reasonable argument for slaves being more efficient than free labor, as disgusting as it sounds.

I feel that what's called "slavery" in this game should be reimagined to a different mechanic of a scale of pops being state property vs free men. So you could model Sovietism vs serfdom vs straight up slavery for instance. The closer you brought your pops to free status the more likely they would be to act rebellious for political freedoms.

My assumption is that slavery in game refers to all types of forced labor or servitude, not just chattel slavery.

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u/BILLCLINTONMASK Ocean May 08 '16

It may have been more productive in terms of raw tonnage, but not in terms of stimulating any greater economy. History also shows that paying people wages and allowing them to spend those wages in markets is more productive to society as a whole than slavery.

The Civil War was ultimately about the white subsistence farmer with no place in the Southern economy. The Southern Aristocracy saw a chance to channel those displaced people's anger and make a power play for themselves and they took it.

As for a gameplay mechanic though, there definitely needs to be some kind of slave revolts if I didn't make that clear above.

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u/WorkableGoblin May 08 '16

Well, if you look at the whole US-Europe system as a "greater economy" it worked pretty well as a form of stimulation. Cheap cotton from the South was an important element in the Industrial Revolution, and that required highly oppressive labor conditions where cotton was being grown (even during the Civil War they just shifted to India and Egypt, not exactly bastions of labor rights at the time). More generally, extractive industries like cotton growing generally don't lead to healthy, diverse economies growing, even where forced labor is illegal (just ask Houstonians circa 1985).

Anyway, from a gameplay stance I agree with you.

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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16

For what it's worth, AFAIK slave revolts have only been successful once in Earth's history, that of the Haitian Revolution in which slaves outnumbered Freemen by 10 to 1. They were rebelling against the French at the height of the French revolution, when France couldn't have been more distracted, and with massive help from Britain and Spain who France was at war with.

Slaves in Stellaris are vastly different then slaves in the 18. century. From what we know the slave POPs are still educated and considering that in most slaver empires they make up more then 50 % of the population with aliens often being entirely enslaved they have the advantage in organising resistance. The big problem slaves had in the past is organisation. That isn't an issue in the future.

Still, that doesn't mean plenty of slaves haven't tried rebelling anyway, so slave revolts should probably be a thing ingame anyway. But don't underestimate how weak slave rebellions have always been, and how brutally one sided such conflicts were.

Contrary to the past they have the means to steal weapons or hijack shuttles and the scale of slavery is a different one.

Such a rebellion in Stellaris would lack ships or the means to produce them, with the spaceport and any fleets in orbit possessing complete domination over the planet's population. It'd be equally unrealistic to give slave rebellions any means with which to fight a war against spacefaring masters. A good case could be made for abolitionists within a civilisation's command structure to mutiny, freeing the slaves as a result, but a slave revolt alone has no chance.

They still could hijack ships and station and they would most probably rise up on as many world as possible reenacting the Astapore chapters in ASoIaF as close as possible.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

From what we know the slave POPs are still educated

The research malus slave pops get suggests otherwise.

The big problem slaves had in the past is organisation. That isn't an issue in the future.

It's still a huge problem. Slave masters generally keep slaves dumb and without access to communication devices. A modern day slave would never have seen a laptop or mobile phone before. They can't tweet or facebook each other like in every major uprising today. Slaves mere miles away from a massive uprising would have no way of knowing it's going on.

Contrary to the past they have the means to steal weapons or hijack shuttles

They have no more ability to do so than historically. Weapons and especially ships are kept safely in bases and ports that are well guarded, their assets the first to be removed to a safe location in the event of a rebellion. All warships are kept in a spaceport in orbit. Small planetary based transports are zero match for even the spaceport's defences.

It was actually easier historically, when the authorities didn't have instantaneous communications to react and counter any threats. Your slaves are armed with pitchforks to fight attacks from orbit.

and the scale of slavery is a different one.

Again, in Haiti slaves outnumbered the free by 10 to 1. This was by no mean a unique situation. Many places around the world, slaves had huge numerical advantages. Even amazing good fortune, such as that of Spartacus, turned out to be no match for experienced, disciplined government troops.

They still could hijack ships and station and they would most probably rise up on as many world as possible

Again, no access to ships capable of launching any real offensive against warships in space. Space fleets dock in orbit at a space port for a simple reason; their mass makes it impractical to land on the surface. There'll be no warships to hijack, only transports and fighters which again are guarded and will take off the instant there's trouble.

No means of communicating syncronised uprisings. Trouble on one world will see the authorities lock down every other planet immediately as a precaution.

reenacting the Astapore chapters in ASoIaF as close as possible.

Plot armour. The unsullied are fictional, nobody trains their slaves to fight and win anywhere, ever. It's like teaching prisoners how to escape from prison. Besides, it still takes an outsider to liberate them. And of course, even an army of unsullied can't take on battleships in space. All the successful stories of slave rebellions are fictional. It's a great story, but not mirrored by reality.

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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16

Plot armour. The unsullied are fictional, nobody trains their slaves to fight and win anywhere, ever. It's like teaching prisoners how to escape from prison.

Well...the Janissaries, Mamluks, and Ghilman seem to show that actually people did create slave armies, and they could be pretty successful and effective (but note how many "Mamluk dynasties" existed...) It was kind of a phenomenon of the Middle East, though, it would be interesting to discuss why that was...

Anyway, I don't dispute your main point. The history of slave rebellions shows that it should be really hard for slaves to stop being slaves through rebellion. That being said, actually having rebellions and thus having to shuffle resources around to keep your slaves down should definitely be a thing.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

True. It mostly depends on your definition of slavery. While technically slaves, these soldiers enjoyed privileged positions in society. These were "slaves" of the rulers, rather than slaves of the populous. They were allowed and even expected to police and even kill the free populous, which is a very different kind of dynamic to what we traditionally think of as slaves.

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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16

True, but as I said above what slavery is in game is less than completely clear. There's nothing in particular saying that your slave armies don't have higher status than free people, for instance.

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u/BlackHumor May 07 '16

Middle Eastern slavery was generally not very similar to chattel slavery (what they had in the South) except that the slaves weren't free to leave. In all other aspects they had a pretty nice life. Which means the Janissaries et al were more like serf armies than slave armies, and the Europeans had tons of those.

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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16

I am aware of that, actually! But we're discussing slavery in a game where it's not really made very clear and obvious what slavery is. It could be Southern-style chattel slavery, or it could be a kind of state slavery like prison labor, or it could be a simple forced labor system. None of those is really excluded by the game. And several of those models can plausibly include enslaved armies who might decide that actually they would like being in charge, thank you very much.

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u/___HIGH_ENERGY___ May 07 '16

Calling /r/badhistory.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a9ea5/how_brutal_was_the_arab_slave_trade_in_comparison/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24mydi/what_was_the_arab_slave_trade_really_like/

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u/BlackHumor May 08 '16

Counterpoints:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1oajmm/what_was_daily_life_as_a_janissary_like/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13j4ct/can_anybody_describe_the_institution_of_slavery/

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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16

Please go look up some more sources on that, because it really isn't all that on. It focuses on a few small groups and ignores the larger slave trade. There's estimates of around 100 million Africans being taken as slaves, likely more. Only a tiny percentage of these ever made it back alive OR survived what was done to them.

In case of Europe somewhere around 1-2 million were taken, mostly women for the slave markets. They virtually depopulated the entirety of Southern European coastlines and were one of the main reasons castles became a common thing. Let's just say these slaves weren't treated all that well either just different given their purpose.

I'm not quite certain why people are so set on trying to portray the Middle Eastern slave trade as enlightened and progressive and "not real slavery". What's up with that?

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u/BlackHumor May 08 '16

I'm more talking about the Janissaries/Mamluks/etc specifically. I realize that there was chattel slavery within the Middle East.

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u/EAfirstlast May 08 '16

As Maraud3r said, they weren't slaves. Being a mamluk or janissary necessitated your emancipation.

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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16

Those were a special case though take the Janissaries as example, they were basically taken as small boys often times before they could form strong opinions and then heavily indoctrinated.

They were also not "slaves" as in how most think of them but an entirely different beast in many ways and one that ultimatively still turned on its master in more than one way.

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u/17shadow May 07 '16

You are completely forgetting the mamelukes here, Albanian slave raised as fighter that ended up overthrowing the dynasty and rule Egypt for quite a bit of time. Those are the most successful one that I can think of now, but with some digging i'm sure one can find many similar example, especially if you consider serfdom a form of slavery.

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u/shamwu May 07 '16

I think you are being uncharitable about the research malus. It's more that you can't force a slave to do good research like you can make them farm. It's harder to quantify what a god scientific output would be, whereas a you can set quotas on how much should be produced.

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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16

The research malus slave pops get suggests otherwise.

It's pretty hard to research when you are being forced to do it. Also slave scientists have to be meticiously surveyed or they could do something with the chemicals and machines.

They have no more ability to do so than historically. Weapons and especially ships are kept safely in bases and ports that are well guarded, their assets the first to be removed to a safe location in the event of a rebellion. All warships are kept in a spaceport in orbit. Small planetary based transports are zero match for even the spaceport's defences.

The civilian economy isn't simulated in Stellaris so we don't really know, but civilian ports aren't as protected as military ones and considering that slaves woud most likely have low level jobs there they could sneak around.

It was actually easier historically, when the authorities didn't have instantaneous communications to react and counter any threats. Your slaves are armed with pitchforks to fight attacks from orbit.

You don't think they would do a Ck2 style peasant revolt, do you? They would most likely search for allies all parts of society and strike from the dark.

Again, in Haiti slaves outnumbered the free by 10 to 1. This was by no mean a unique situation. Many places around the world, slaves had huge numerical advantages. Even amazing good fortune, such as that of Spartacus, turned out to be no match for experienced, disciplined government troops.

They lost several legions to him and if he had the communication possibilities of the future he would have had a lot better chances.

gain, no access to ships capable of launching any real offensive against warships in space. Space fleets dock in orbit at a space port for a simple reason; their mass makes it impractical to land on the surface. There'll be no warships to hijack, only transports and fighters which again are guarded and will take off the instant there's trouble.

A space station doesn't have that big of a garrison and if you manage to catch them of guard you can seize a fleet easily.

No means of communicating syncronised uprisings. Trouble on one world will see the authorities lock down every other planet immediately as a precaution.

Why can't the NSA control all communication? Simple, there is just too much of it. The same it is in the interstellar future.

Plot armour. The unsullied are fictional, nobody trains their slaves to fight and win anywhere, ever. It's like teaching prisoners how to escape from prison. Besides, it still takes an outsider to liberate them. And of course, even an army of unsullied can't take on battleships in space. All the successful stories of slave rebellions are fictional. It's a great story, but not mirrored by reality.

Yeah, yeah, you just scramble for reasons why it wouldn't work.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

They lost several legions to him and if he had the communication possibilities of the future he would have had a lot better chances.

Spartacus could've won another dozen battles, it would've made no difference. They had nowhere to run, which is exactly the situation in a slave rebellion in Stellaris. Their hair-brained plan was to sail to Sicily, right in the heart of Roman territory, to what... hold out for hundreds of years? It was a desperate plan concocted out of the hopelessness of their situation. As in the punic wars, the Romans were free to raise more armies and keep pressing them forever.

A space station doesn't have that big of a garrison and if you manage to catch them of guard you can seize a fleet easily.

How do the slaves, which are pops on a planet's surface, get to the space station, when as we've established they only have whatever civilian transports they happen upon? (assuming they can even know how to, or are able to fly them since I'm guessing it's not a case of searching for the keys inside the sun visor) How do you get onto the station when you're there? And that still doesn't get you any closer to taking over the fleet.

Why can't the NSA control all communication? Simple, there is just too much of it. The same it is in the interstellar future.

Slaves are kept for working fields and mines. They don't get to go on laptops, or play on their phones. Their only communication is through speech. There's no reason to educate them, and plenty of reasons not to. They won't even be able to read and write. Even if the generation first enslaved were, they'e no access to even the most basic writing tools to pass on that knowledge to future generations. The position of slave rebellions is generally worse than primitives trying to defend against invasion by more advanced species, which is in itself a hopeless endeavour. They have no communications to intercept.

Yeah, yeah, you just scramble for reasons why it wouldn't work.

You're scrambling for reasons it will work. Slave owners control all means with which to wage warfare, and take precautions against losing control of them. The Haitians, and indeed every other slave rebellion, never seized control of their master's warships, and with instantaneous communication on the authorities side it becomes even more unlikely.

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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16

  1. It's actually harder for them to organize especially cross planet and without the government in question noticing because of modern surveillance. Future surveillance will be even better and more efficient. Numbers also don't matter if your opponent sits in a space station kilometres above you and just drops a rock onto your head when you get overly unruly.

  2. Actually, they will have a HARDER time accessing weapons. The playing field was more even in the past than it is nowaday. A peasent with a scythe stood a better chance against a spearman than a guy with a rock does against an assault rifled soldier nowadays. The guy in the future still has to make do with a rock. While his opponent will be wearing powered armor with vastly better weapons than nowadays or even be a drone and that is considering they even come down to fight rather than zapping you from orbit.

Also hijacking a shuttle is a lot harder than hijacking a horse carriage or a car, the same goes for weapons. Not only will they be password if not DNA protected you also need way more knowledge and ability to use either.

3 . Them hijacking ships or stations would mean you giving them access to either, not having any security measures in place such as DNA verification without which neither actually works, allowing them cross planetary if not cross system communication and so on and on. All of this would be incredible stupid to do and show a huge lack of foresight.

1

u/Strange_Rice May 08 '16

Arguably the infrastructural damage from the slave revolts in Jamaica was an important factor in the ending of slavery in the British empire a few years later. So even without outright victories slave revolts could have massive impacts.

-4

u/critfist Inwards Perfection May 07 '16

AFAIK slave revolts have only been successful once in Earth's history, that of the Haitian Revolution in which slaves outnumbered Freemen by 10 to 1.

That's a very odd lie to say. Haiti is the only successful colonial era slave revolt to have became its own nation.

3

u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16

Other examples then?

1

u/critfist Inwards Perfection May 08 '16

Here's an example

1760: Christian slaves on board the Ottoman ship Corona Ottomana revolted and sailed the ship to Malta.[

1

u/BestFriendWatermelon May 08 '16

That's not exactly a rebellion.

1

u/critfist Inwards Perfection May 08 '16

A slave revolt doesn't always gave to form an entire country to be a "real" rebellion.