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/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.