Let's Talk About Exploitation

Hu,

So I love this game and each Build gets better and better. One entertaining theme in this game is colonial imperialism. One thing that must not be neglected is putting Johnny Fishman in his place.

It is clear that the Fishmen are savages who need to be Taught a Lesson.

I would like to see structures that make use of Fishperson labour and ... formalise ... the current caviar and fish steak industries. Fishperson labour could be an alternative to steam in some cases.

I am thinking holding pens, a 'push-power' module with chained fish-people made to push a turning post. Gears could then convert this into mechanical power. Finally, there would be an Imperial Fish Steak and caviar production farm for old, troublesome or unproductive Fishies.

Similar devices may be useful for the enlightenment and betterment of REDACTED native creatures.

 

They already said they wouldn't include slavery.

 

It's not slavery because it's fishmen! Simples!

 

Just do what the history writers of the British Empire did to the Irish; they simply called them indentured servants instead of slaves - sounds so much better.
Pauper apprentice also sounds so much more civilised than; property of the factory owner.

 

Ok. Well, there are always mods ...

 

So you aren't even willing to use Fishmen, Shoggoths, Bigfoot, The Tentacled Beasts that Inhabit the Crater, or Diggles or some other thing as a proxy, here?

What about prisoners, and assimilation? Some societies have used assimilation as an alternative to slavery as a way to avoid killing their enemies, including, to my understanding, the British empire.

 

Just call them work education camps. Bring those heathen fish people in to the good church of Cog for salvation and learn them the principles of Blut und Boden.

And the backbones of good colony farming indentured servants. They all are aren't they? no salary as I can see. Let’s pay those lazy colonists by the hour. Perhaps they work the soil instead of chatting.
You don’t work, you don’t eat.
And give the soldiers som grog.

 

Oh absolutely. If you were to enslave/accept as immigrants/capture eldritch creatures, there should be some interesting consequences. I guess it is hard to think of what they should be other than colonists going mad and worshipping these things. It would be a risky endeavour where it's not clear who is actually in control. Some of these may just parallel human societies (like accepting outcasts opens you up to attack from the society that cast them out) but there can certainly be more creative interpretations as to what happens. Like the construction of ominous temples, the advancement of sea levels, humans occassionally going missing in the middle of the night. Either way we'd want to be talking more about shoggoths than humans.

 

There's a kind of a tight rope that you have to walk in order to deal with native populations as a resource, while not also treating them as non-human (because if you can draw a parallel between actual slaves and fish people, it can be in extraordinary bad taste). The fact that CE is supposed to be humorous and fun makes it worse, not better. I'm not saying that it would be impossible, but you'd have to shift the focus of the game quite a bit, and it would still wind up being a balancing act.

I recommend a game like "Expeditions: Conquistador", as it does treat the natives both as real people, and as an exploitable resource. It gives you a choice as to how to treat the natives, and there are consequences, regardless. But it's not intended to be tongue in cheek, and really, it's a significant part of the focus of the game. It's a game ABOUT moral choices and consequences (as opposed to CE, which is intended to be something very different).

 

Slaves aside.

How about having shipwrecks of the coast? It would add extra people and items to the colony. The castaways could give temp extra labour to colony and some can stay other leave on next ship out.

 

I did see an event file that's called immigration_boat (versus the one with none, overseer or 3 of any you got immigration file) so there seems to be planned something along the lines, except they will be normal colonists and not temporary. Haven't really looked at the file, but I'm assuming it means I'll have to build a dock/harbour at some point (that's going to be popular with the fishies, you bet!)

 

I really just want to be friends with the fishpeople and have them come live in my village.

 

That's coming, Ghin. There is already mention of fishman traders and as the game progresses there will not be an automatic fishman invasion as it's now. That's just temporary to give us some opposition while the magicians that make the code fiddle and do their stuff. So I'm sure there will be ways to interact with the fishman other than shooting them. Considering that they aren't "natural" I'm sure there will be benefits and drawbacks...oh the major, major drawbacks... with interacting with them.

 

This is steam punk, if we need extra workers we should just build them. Clanks are so much better than relying on the lazy lower class peasants. Yes yes, I realize there has been some concern over rogue cabbage harvester units mistaking one type of head for another, but that's just one less person to feed, making the farms even more efficient.

More seriously, in the game world as it is right now there is zero motivation to make the fish men work in place of low class workers. Why spend more resources keeping fish men fed and tame when you could just request additional peasants from the Empire?

Even more seriously, I'm sure as the mechanics of the world get more fleshed out there will arise plenty of ways to formalize the exploitation of the fish men via emergent game play stuff rather than having it explicitly part of the game. (For you DF fans, think of the infamous Mermaid farm.)

 

I might be reading into Lovecraft too much but I thought that "powerless in the face of elder gods despite technology" was at least a subconscious theme.

Which is to say that even thought the colonists have mastered steam and bronze and tweed they can never hope to master the unspeakable ageless horrors. More so it is humanity that is enslaved to the Old Ones.

At most there could be a subterranean pit filled with human chattel to be eaten. (Rats in the Walls) But that would be a function of madness not economic exploitation.

But I think the point of the this game is "try as you might you are screwed, by forces you cannot hope to understand."

And if there were attempts to enslave and pen the fish people I think that would anger Dagon. And you don't want to see Dagon angry.

 

I second Ghin's sentiments - rather than subjugate or commodify the fishpeople, I would love to see more fishpeople-related social options arise. Maybe there could be ways to win their favor (gifts? offerings? a healthy level of eldritch reverence?) resulting in the option to hire a wiling and appropriately compensated fishpeople work crew that could do special fishpeople things - harvest coral, farm fish, maybe the occasional mysterious delivery from the dark abyss. Of course this would all result in the fitting level of distress in the more xenophobic of the colonists.

Edit: posted after Viion already address this but oh well

 

oooh... the mermaid farm... now that's somewhat atrocious hehehe. As one poster said:
"It's ideas like this that make me love this God forsaken game. All these people talking about the utter atrocity off trapping migrating merpeople and forcibly breeding them, because damn it all their internal organs are valuable."

Honestly, I'm rereading the thread now and I'm horrified and braying in laughter all at once. The utter, utter callousness with which it's planned, described and the horrible understatement is just.... well... it's horri-funny at an epic level.

"And while I don't have a chasm, I do have an aquifer below sea level, so I may be able to generate some movement in my ocean... but again, I worry that straining might cause premature deaths. Still, it's worth a try if I can get the merpeople back... I may have inadvertently killed my entire current population of merpeople in a small construction mishap..." *speechless*

Aaaanyways... I was going to scream CLAAAAAAAANKS untill I was distracted by the mermaid farms like laser pointers distract a kitten. Yes, Clanks.... must...have....clanks. Big clanks, small clanks, clanks of all lethality...eh.... sizes. I said of all sizes *nods decisively*

And I agree. Emergent game play is king.

 

There are no elder gods, there are no æther, there are no fishpeople. So say the church of the cog ;-)