What sort of amoral behavior does this game encourage?

[PM]

Inspired by the "All reactors should be non-military" thread, what kind of amoral or downright evil things does the game encourage the player to do? Off the top of my head, here is a list:

Friendly Fire
Since getting the black market ID is not guaranteed from the hotel encounter, the only other way I can get it is to attack T31 ships, and most of them are friendly. Due to how profitable business with the black market can be, getting busted at the hotel is effectively a game ender (for me) because it cuts off a very valuable resource; unless I am lucky enough to loot an ID from a T31 wreck. Aside from the black market ID, T31 ships yield other useful loot occasionally.

Salvagers steal loot (and use it if they can), and the only way to get it back is to kill them. Salvagers seem to be nice, peaceful people; but that means nothing if I cannot stash loot when I need to. I suppose they are the gelatinous cubes in space. At least gelantinous cubes are enemies that try to kill you in other Roguelikes.

If you want to sell ore to Ringers for rin, you will likely need to kill Ferians either to steal their loot, or make the area safe for mining. Even if you want to leave Ferians alone, there is simply no way you can avoid hitting one out of a huge swarm of bugs floating over rocks you want to shoot. If you hit the bugs enough times, the warriors will rush over to melt your ship down.

Black Market
They pay top dollar for military equipment, and they are the only stations with unlimited credits. This is glaring if I just bought all of the surplus military hardware from Commonwealth Fortresses at 55% cost, then sell it to the black markets at 95% cost.

You are encouraged to smuggle and sell drugs to Commonwealth stations like some lowlife dope dealer. I avoid selling them unless it is the only illegal I have for the hotel encounter.

Slaves
You offer slaves to the Sisters and they remain slaves. The right thing to do is free them but Domina Powers are so useful and overpowered you are a fool not to offer slaves. The only other items that are suitable replacement offerings are Halo gems, and even they have useful effects the player ought not give up.

Other than Sisters of Domina, if the player loves abusing the fabricator (I do) but needs more food in a pinch and already has all powers from Domina, offering a slave is as good as Ringer Ambrosia; and there are no negative consequences for doing so, unlike selling them!

Battle Arena
Kill other Commonwealth citizens much like yourself for money and to make friends with plot-sensitive NPCs (i.e., Kate). I doubt most of the warriors have insurance.

[Aury]

I blow up teratons because they have good loot, are not really worth selling stuff to since they have terrible price margins & buy so little anyways, and are really easy to kill (howitzers or ion lancer does the trick nicely for little poweruse)
Otherwise, I try to avoid killing non-salvager friendlies.
Salvagers /do/ steal your loot technically, so... yeah.

[sdw195]

Salvagers /do/ steal your loot technically, so... yeah.

they steal your loot so they must loot your loot and steal what you stole

[Song]

Ugly places breed ugly people. We're not talking about a balanced society....we have multiple heated and multi-generational conflicts (and those are ALWAYS illogical, heated, and often VERY barbaric..see Urak/Abbasid, Hauri/Sung, CW/Ares, and many, many others, some of which we never see/hear about).....where factions conduct grotesque "experiments" on subjects, not all of which will be volunteers (Teraton), and where any "questionable" ship flying near any installation is immediately fired upon (all factions, except Ferians).

The definition of morality changes a lot in such times and places...thus many actions that we would consider 'barbaric' or 'amoral' (or even genocidal) are perfectly acceptable, or even encouraged (EG. CW Settlement missions or mining colony misions are basically paying you 200-300cr to murder probably several score of people. Estimate, say, 25 people in a centauri station, and 5 guards, and that's 10 credits for a persons life.).

[Androgeos]

Attack the Ferians and steal all their rin? I've not done it, but I've seen some people suggesting this as a quick way to purchase powerful items from the Ringers, Taikon and Teratons.

[PM]

Ferians are loaded with ores the Ringers will buy.

Another thing about the Battle Arena. If no Korolov stations spawn prior to Charon (or you botch their missions badly enough to get blacklisted), the only way the player will be allowed to fly his first militia mission and get a military ID is to become a skilled gladiator.

[PM]

Another example: The Huari.

They drop loot nearly as well as the Ventari, and they do not damage your items. On the other hand, you may want to befriend them. Why not do both? Befriend the Huari, finish all of their quests, then betray them and destroy every last one of them for their loot. The only punishment is they become enemies again, but that will not matter once they are all dead. If you want to farm them, save one fortress so it can call more Huari ships.

[Racoon.sf]

I think the game does acctually not encpurage amoral behavious.

1.) Black market, slave selling and similar stuff is profitable. So what? It is more work to mine a whole system then to sell slaves but isn't that the point in crimnal activities? They are more profitable bu tamoral. Gererally the more profitable the more amoral. And society beeing bad does not release from moral behavior. I think the game does a good job in showing this.

2.) I think it is completely possible to win the game without the listed activities. So the game does not force you.

3.) No one prevents you from reducing your play to pure self-defense. The enemies are aggressive enough not to take out the challenge of the game by doing so.
[Even though, does this make the hero any better than attacking?]

4.) I also think that destroying stations is basically a very cruel act if you think about it. But it also depends on how you view the game. If you think of the stations and ships as completely automated there is few dilemma. And on top, again, no one forces you to make your character destroy stations.

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[Aury]

Oh, yeah, he is right so much in that it's not [trying] to encourage amoral behavior, but rather leaving it open as an option (if you want to risk it). Because some things are broken, I had to add in the [trying], as the balance of the game ends up pushing you towards doing those things anyways.

It becomes a rather "you shoot me, I shoot you" sort of mentality out there; even freighter pilots get blood on their hands from the pirates they and their escorts kill. They have to as part of their living. (Ironically, of everyone to have a weapon, it's the mauraders who end up using the most 'humane' weapon - an EMP cannon. Then again, it's rather arguable how 'humane' it really is, leaving you vulnerable and open to attack)

Perhapse even as reduced to as; *glance at LRS* I'm red, you're red. Let's shoot each other. See who wins (and gets the other's loot).

By this point, nearly every conflict (aside from the guys pre-st's, the sapiens, the sung, the pteravores, the luminous, the mauraders), can be reduced to escalating self-defense - "They shot me first, so I'm just shooting back." sort of mentality to both sides in the conflic. (The pteravores simply see food)

They player, by today's standards would either be seen as a warhero or a mass murdering monster (I mean by their own side, obviously by the other side...)... or both; but there... likely just a war hero, given that everyone has been at each other's necks for so long that killing thousands of people isn't necessarily unheard of, for CSC's and dreadnoughts anyways, and simply because most other people get killed before they kill more.

[PM]

Part of the problem of some of the criminal activities the player can do, is it is all profit and no risk of game ending retribution such as imprisonment. As such, if you do not engage in some of them, the player is gimping himself for no good reason. Unless the player blew up Commonwealth, Corporate, or Ringers; the character in the game will not go to prison or burn in hell for some of the profitable atrocities he can commit.

[Aury]

You can for slave trade.

[Racoon.sf]

You got the point here.

I did not say that I would morally justify the "excessive self-defense" path. There is just no "need" to actively exploit every chance to violence as statet in the post above.


And seeking "self-defense" situations is of course not better than just shooting first.
No reaonable person would even go out into these systems, seeing that he will be attacked sooner or later and get his hands bloody.

[Aury]

With device damage being reduced to device disruption (temporary damage), the ventari will nolonger be the "Biggest Spacejerks"; said title will likely be up for grabs between the player and the luminous, who have terrible loot atm (for us wolfen players who can't use the CPU anyways) and are generally more work to kill than they are worth.

[PM]

Selling slaves directly is bad because it is a game ender (and 2500 or so credits is peanuts compared to what else you can get from them). You will get arrested eventually. Actually, criminal activities like this should be risky, but most are not. My favorite way of selling slaves is simply donating them to Domina. Not only you get powers, but they also increase Sisters' attitude, which can be redeemed for "free" services.

[Aury]

Donationg them to domina technically doesn't count as slave-trade, but the rewards for freeing them suck; why can't they give you a longzhu or something at the very least? A longzhu, despite being little more than twice as valuable as the caligraphy scroll, are so annoyingly rare and important/powerful.