We also use robots, I just assume glitches are extremely special and can't be manufactured in chain, and that your everyday robot will never perform as good as say, a floran with augmentations. Slavery is cultural and part of our structure of power, is a cheap access to labour force, is probably definitely less expensive than making and maintening robots, creates market and income that's safe from taxing from all those who disagree with slavery. If we start assuming we have robots who perform better as personal assistants, butlers, labour force that isn't doing chain manufacturing, then literally everyone will start explaining their wealth by "I build/ordered 2 robots that built other robots and now I have 10, 000 robots" I personally want to avoid that, will ignore massively produced robots that are more efficient than glitches themselves, and will keep on with the slavery idea, for all the interesting things it brings to the table.
Furthermore, with the idea of sentient AI's and robots (The Glitch) in Starbound, this could open up a whole new can of worms ICly. Which I don't entirely disapprove of. That said, I do concur that this sort of thing seems to be thought of more like indentured servitude than the more popular idea of slavery. Which could actually be really interesting! It's not for everyone, for sure, but there's a lot of people who can really enjoy that. I personally quite like playing a character with all the odds stacked against them, and trying to succeed regardless. This is a great means by which to do so. This is, however, a serious sort of situation. Don't try to get involved in as a slaver OR a slave, unless you're willing to be mature and professional about it. You've still got a code of conduct to follow playing here, and that can get in the way of enslaving folks. Gotta be mature enough to respect that and not force it on people or cause an OOC stink. This could be a really cool think for people who are mature enough to handle it in the right way and have an interest in it. I would seriously hate to see this turn out the way that the Mucklings turned out (although they may be making a turn-around, and that would please me greatly). If we all stay professional about this sort of thing, it could not only be a fun source of IC conflict, but it could result in some really cool characters and character interactions. I'm optimistic! ...That said. Keep the creepy sex stuff off the server. Respect that not everyone wants to see that. You will totally get banned for it, and we will probably not mind, because it means we didn't have to see your aforementioned creepy sex stuff. Regardless of what some people apparently think, "But they're slaves." doesn't count as valid reasoning to do something ban-worthy.
This is a very reasonable assumption, and one that we've generally accepted as fact. Most lore seems to support the idea, and we've adopted it as our own, for the most part. That said, there's nothing stopping the Empire from enslaving Glitch, which could be an interesting dynamic as well. Again, might be cool potential for RP! More importantly, this. I played on a server in another game a while back. Sci-fi thing. People were allowed to purchase robots. The problem was, it had a very bloated economy, much like ours. As a result, people DID have ridiculous numbers of robots, and it was absolutely silly to watch in practice. It was like people arguing OOCly about PvP, only with more waving around their spreadsheets and going "oh my geez my army is the biggestest". Let's please avoid that, it was painful to watch.
Mind you a robot is any automated device. The things that assemble cars are robots. Large masses of robots could be used entirely okly by shipbuilding corporations as a workforce replacement. Also, the efficiency of a robot compared to an organism depends on it's task. A repetitive job would be best assigned to a robot, while a slave would be better used as a more versatile worker.
This was a joke on how someone said 'dont do naughty things to them' as if taking them against their will was totally fine. For the record I don't condone sexual abuse in the form of ERP.
That's why I was talking of manufacturing work. Of course, I assume we got robots, like we already do in present day earth. Automated industries, etc.
I have concerns with how the slave dynamic is playing out. First, a disclaimer: While I do not condone real life slavery or the glorification and trivialisation of the suffering of real world slaves, either by fact or by systemic injustice, I do not disparage Yung's Astral Empire concept as it is intended. However, I am worried about how it is playing out in the game. Our galaxy has always had an element of slavery, whether by group or individual effort, that has, for the most part, remained very low key and in keeping with the paradigm that most of our quadrant, particularly since we also seem to live in a sector with heavy United Systems presence, is against the practice. Open displays of slavery have ended as can be expected, as demonstrated by Stark's response of blacklisting a known slaver. It was within this environment that the Astral Empire appeared to fill a void -- a safe haven for those with slaves. Unfortunately, the Astral Empire's influence has done more than simply create a safe haven in an disapproving galaxy -- it has OOCly generated an influx of slavers who are brazen enough to conduct their business and auctions on the public broadcast. A farmer asks for a farmhand to employ: a slaver responds with an abattoir description and a price tag. An idle soul sounds out with a confession of boredom: a slaver responds with a possible companion whose qualities are listed like statistics... and a price tag. Everyone else responds as though slavery is sundry -- with the only real complaints not about the injustice of it, but the annoyance of people speaking on the public broadcast at all. (Heaven forfend.) This is a problem. Furthermore, slavers are announcing the origin point of their "captures." "A Knight of Taranis," one will advertise, "Come and buy back your comrade." The line between slaver and kidnapper for ransom becomes blurred. Worse, this new state seems to be, ICly, tacitly condoned when our past play and even the concept of the Astral Empire (as a safe haven for slavers) all says it shouldn't be. This is also a problem. I honestly think we need to address this because it isn't just heading into the territory wherein it glorifies and trivialises the plight of real world slaves: if the snuff videos and public, casual executions on StarNet are any indication, it's already there.
Yeah, you're pretty much right, that was incredibly insensitive of me. However, Molren's arch wasn't really meant to express the way a healthy slaver should act. Molren was intended to be immoral, and a sign of the potential issues with a galaxy that accepts slavery. Just as SirFruitcake noted in a certain post, Molren was almost comparing his slaves to mugs, items, belongings, property, and he could hypothetically break them without any risk. Overall, I wanted the major factions to reconsider their stances on slavery. If this hurt the general dynamic, I apologize.
I was going to post in this later, but decided to log into the server first. Because, hey, I like the server, that sounds like a cool idea. Good job Chron' - makin' it work. Literally the very first thing I see logging in is a casual slave auction in Galaxy chat. ...This is, in addition, essentially the only thing anyone on the server is participating in at the moment. So, yeah. I really like the slaver/non-slaver conflict, but it's kind of disappointing when the slavers have no tact or subtlety whatsoever, and nobody else really seems to care. You'd think they would realistically see a little more resistance from people, including NPCs, which is what I assume 60-80% of the slaves are in the first place. (Which is a whole other issue, considering enslaving NPCs, of course, apparently comes with a 100% always forever no-risk success rate.) I do wish- oh. another slave auction started while i was writing this post. okay yeah i'm just gonna okay. see above gif.
Suwedi and Tarl actually hd an IC talk about it and generally agreed that Slavers who fail to meet with AE regulations be punished if practicing such within their realm of imfluence. The incident of the RA arresting an unlicensed slaver and confiscating/releasing the slaves was also meant to put on display the emphasis on regulation. Sadly it went largely unnoticed. At the same time both Factions didn't lift a finger to aid Molren because he was essentially a.common criminal in their eyes. On the criminal element with kidnappings, pirates are bound to try and take advantage of the system. On, the RA actually offers the pirates a privateer deal under the table, so long as they limit their criminal activities to USDC regions.
At the same time The dynamic has made "politics" interesting. Since Stanza, Tarl, Rook, Chron Ogawa and whomever i missed take it seriously. And it presents our only real hurdle in negotiations.
I mainly agree, but there's two things to consider: The Astral Empire brought, as you said, a clearly OOC boost behind the idea of slavery. We -have- rejected actual slaver players because we deemed them insane, as slavery is regulated ICly. By doing so ICly, we've, in a way, pushed them away from the Astral Empire, leaving them with no other choice but to trade however they could. That might have been a mistake on my part. I sometimes do see it being trivialized in insentitive ways, and it's sad, you can't expect the whole server to be mature about it. I welcome any suggestions on how I could ICly and OOCly hand it better on my part to prevent that from happening too much. ICly, though, as long as there isn't intervention from mods/admin, the players shape the world, and it's no surprise that, on a game like starbound, the RP is centered around action and combat for a lot of people. If people make slavery a common, not secretive thing, it does shape the atmosphere of the world, BUT, once again I agree with you. I'm getting to the point where, with places like Tetanus, Haus, Luminaria and Liberty Mills, and factions like The Crimson Corsairs, The Astral Empire and its relationships with the R.A. and the USCM, players are reminded we live in a world of debauchery, crime and decadence, where people have to struggle, where some people are bound to a life of crime, where people are greedy, where people are capitalistic, where people see each other as objects. Now, the part where I mostly agree with you, is that we're not playing a pessimistic dark rp in a post apocalyptic world, and that most players won't be able to approach such universe with the expected tact and maturity. I think it needs to be discussed further, apparently, people do enjoy darker approaches to the world and the RP, with more and more slaver organization, Liberty mills that's basically a mafia struggle for power from what I gathered, the Astral Empire and its total disregard for human sacrifice, the R.A. and its aggressivity towards U.S. I think all in all it creates more depths to the world, you can't expect people to do and talk about slavery -just- in Luminaria, the point was also to create some moral topics people would have to work with. If you keep it isolated from the players, then there won't be a single interesting interaction, it'll be "If I'm outside of the Astral Empire, I don't like and don't care about slavery". Making it more common outside of Luminaria puts people in these moral situations where they have to work with the fact that slaves do exist and that you can't always just gun blaze for their freedom. ICly, it's all in The Astral Empire's favor for slavery to spread on the U.S. obviously. I mainly agree with you as to how the players and how often the players are approaching it, I think people should ease up on the constant casualization of slavery in places where it shouldn't be that common. It would seem proper to open discuss slavery with someone in Tetanus Fields' slum, it wouldn't in Opportunity's restaurant. People definitely need to ease up, if you're referring to yesterday where literally everyone was selling and buying and talking "you're my slave you're not my slave now i just bought you" etc, I definitely agree, I still think it has its place in public, simply for shock value, for everybody to be reminded that it exists and it's a business, and in the capitalistic universe we live in, it's greater than you. Once again, I think I said it way too much in that post but, I agree with all you said Fishdish, I'm just underlining that people should be more subtle about it, while The Astral Empire is a safe haven for slavers, it's not a safe haven for crazed abducters and insane cutthroats, it's a place with law and it embodies perfectly "Lawful Evil". The kind of chaotism that was shown in the chat cannot be contained ICly by The Empire, it goes against its nature to protect these people openly talking about slave abuse and all that. I won't defend these people ICly or shelter them from the other players, that's not what the empire is about. We're the opposite of the supposedly good factions, just like them, we got an elaborated culture, constitution, rules, etc. When it comes to OOC, this is where I agree completely, people should ease up on how much they casualize it. It's still a dreadful thing. The problem with a darker universe always comes with the fact that all the badasses literally do not give a damn about things, wether they're good or bad. Slavery is casual to your lawful good badass, as much as religion is to be casually dismissed and insulted by your chaotic evil badass. It is a problem, but I have absolutely no solution as to how to make people realize that some things should at least have a tiny impact on your character's morals.
