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[TheMrJACKman]

I have written one other, poorly written, suggestion on the topic of slavery and what it can do to the immersion of the overall game-play. I'm going to get straight to the point.
-Slavery In Dwarf Fortress.

Heres how I think it would work

Throughout time slavery has been an inevitable part of history. During of which slaves would be acquired. War, Trade, and Prejudice. Which brings me to my first point of slave acquiring

War.
Slaves of war. This is how slaves are acquired without paying for them. to get a slave you would first need to declare war on another nation (Lets say elves) once that happens and they siege you, you can obviously attack, or wait. When you attack you select a option to "Maime" the elves without killing them. This would lead to a sudden need of doctors. With your new captured elves you will have to fix them up and heal them before they are put to work!

Trade.
Trading of slaves. This is the easier, more honest way to purchase, or sell slaves. This can lead to profit, and prices should vary depending on race, age, strength, ect. The slavers would come to your fortress every couple of months. (The more slaves you purchase per trade, the more often they come) Similar in trading, you should be able to order certain slaves by priority. Set priority by race, age, or strength.

Keeping.
Keeping slaves in line, and away from freedom, is not an easy task. To keep your slaves you would need the following items. Chains, copper bracelet, and a neck bracelet. PER SLAVE. You would also need a primitive sort of housing to keep them in. The best method would mass store them in a big room with a cot for each slave and guards at the door. You also need to feed and water them constantly, (More than dwarves from their hard labor and suffering) making it difficult to own and  upkeep slaves.

Moral.
Even slaves have it. Many factors contribute to moral, which manages how efficiently they work and their likely hood to revolt. The first factor would be food and water, those two simple things can make a huge difference. The second is housing, believe it or not, slaves don't like being kept pact in like sardines. (even though its more efficient) The last is labor, if you keep them working to long or have them weighed down with too many chains, they will become bitter. [Suggestion; don't pack too many chains, and keep work hours to acceptable level]

Labor.
Slaves are dumb. They cant do skilled labor. They would be restricted as laborers for moving stone, mining, cooking, stone grinding, and farming

Revolution.
Viva Le revolution! Yes, slaves don't like being slaves. So if moral gets low enough they may want a "Change in ownership" for that too happen you need several factors. A; TERRIBLE moral. It has to be serious. I mean 24 hours of work with minimum food or water in full chains. B; Weak defense. Slaves can sense a weak military. If you guard the quarters with minimum guards (1-2) they may try to overpower them and steal their weapons, and release their friends and start a riot, in an attempt to destroy your fortress and everyone it and run it themselves. The final factor is C; The killing of their pals. If you go around killing slaves you don't like, that's a no-no. They will be inspired by their martyred brothers and attempt to avenge them.

Extra Facts;
-These Revolutionaries will have clear leaders (1-2) Once they are killed the moral of the other revolutionaries will drop and can be squashed more easily.
-Once they are freed, the prisoners should have their moral skyrocket to an all time high (Until their brothers are killed)
-If you have a skilled diplomat, you can use war slaves to possibly barter for supplies from your enemies
-Slaves can be given to impotent people within the fortress as servants, bodyguards

This suggestion has been submitted by TheMrJACKman12
Thanks for your time and I appreciate feedback
I am also aware that slavery is occasionally a delicate subject, that's why I warn we approach this idea with non stereotypical ideas and try and keep it appropriate, but still capture the ideas to enhance game-play dramatically

[GreatWyrmGold]

As always, slavery is unthinkable to dwarves. Until the ability to play non-dwarven races is added, this will--and should--wait until Toady has nothing better to do.

I'm glad to see that this isn't just "i wanna captur elfs and make them cut down tres just to pis them off mor" or something to that effect. It's actually a well-thought-out suggestion, even if the topic has been discussed to death.

[peskyninja]

Slaves in DF do not need to be dumb, everyone go to war in DF.

[GreatWyrmGold]

On my first read-through, I thought he meant second- and later-generation slaves, who would certainly be uneducated, if not stupid per se. (Not that I'd want a clever slave working in the forges, or even working with chisels for masonry.)

Also, reading again: Morals are ideas of what's good or evil. Morale is how happy people are.

[Splint]

Sorry to be nit picky, but I think the word you wanted was Morale (The best way I could word it is one's will to fight or work well) not moral (slavery and killing plants for example)....

And, while thought out, it'd be better if various races had handicaps on skill rates rather than sheer ineptitude. The result is a poorly skilled elf would for a much longer period make inferior quality wood items since they had that whole taboo about using wood in such a manner, or a goblin would be a terrible farmer since they usually have abductees for that, humans would be less suited to mining cause of thier hieght, kobolds having a deficet in most areas because of thier own lack of know-how on much of anything, though maybe a tiny buff on mechanics since they know how to pick dwarven locks.

And @ GreatWyrmGold: We're talking about DF players. No matter what people will make the dwarves have no problem with it (or at least make it allowable, if a little annoying to nobility and whatnot.) Because I'll say it, I'd rather have slaves taking care of meaningless jobs rather than dwarves. I need more dwarves for my military and trade industries, and having a maybe a small group of 5-6 slaves would allow for those dwarves to do more usful things instead of fish cleaning, wood burning, stuff like that. things where it won't matter how skilled the laborer is. And besides, it can be inferred that thier parents teach them what they need to know, or thier handelers do. Afterall, you need to know what numbers are to know how many you were told to make of something.

And besides, with the player base the way it is, I'm sure Toady One would do something to make it grudgingly accepted or something, since players have been trying to figure something out for god knows how long.

And a variable ethic would be nice, so it could be unacceptable in one fort while another accepts it, and different one still really has no strong opinion about it at all. That'd allow for the player to choose if they want to participate in the slave trade or not, with the slavers trying to get them onboard while (elves don't like slavery right?) elves would up the tree chopping limit because you don't keep slaves or take very good care of them, and humans offering to buy slaves off you if you have an excess. Hell, you could also buy the freedom of slaves instead if you're feeling generous, and it'd do a sort of coin toss to determin if they leave or stay out of gratitude and become a happy productive worker (though with thier own needs.)

Of course, repeated deaths of slaver negotiators could also lead to some incidents of them deciding your dwarves would make good stock....

EDIT: Ninja'd on the moral/morale thing.

[Masked_Hunter1825]

I just want to be able to sell goblin prisoners in cages.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Splint: Dwarves don't butcher elves, goblins, or even trolls or animalmen, no matter how often you burrow dwarves in a burrow with only their corpses and an adjacent butcher's shop. Why should Toady waste his time to make it possible for dwarves to do a different thing that dwarves consider to be so heinous that they could not imagine doing it? It might be fine by you for elves to be whipped by dwarves into cutting down trees or what-have-you, but it isn't for dwarves. And it's not like slavery would be easy to implement.

Masked_Hunter: Who would want to buy a goblin?

[Masked_Hunter1825]

Elves. For their cannibalistic rituals.

[dizzyelk]

I think you shouldn't need the chains and shackles for slaves. They'd help for moving the work party to where you want them to work, but if you set up a work area next to a sleeping area, and place guards over them, that should work. Although, should the slave revolt occur, they'll move easier without the shackles.

The slaves' morale should be tracked based on personality and surroundings. Tropico 2 had captives your pirates would get from ships, they had a fear stat, that went up by seeing scary stuff and guards. Something similar could be used, as well as a modifier based on stuff like the slaves' courage levels, and the guards' strength. So a slave with high courage wouldn't be as affected, less so if the squad guarding them is puny. However, a coward watching massive guards will be pissing its loincloth.

Likewise, the morale level as mentioned in OP. I do see the morale as high when slaves think they have a chance to revolt, and low when they're beaten down and resigned to servitude.

Once one slave is ready to revolt, they could use their leadership trait to try and convince other slaves to revolt (and changing their fear level if the leader is tough/has fighting skills or their morale level if the leader is cunning/has good social skills). Once enough slaves are ready to revolt, the rebellion occurs. Each guard killed would lower fear levels and boost morale. Opposite for each slave killed. Once levels get high/low enough, the slaves will start surrendering. The main goal of the slaves should of course be freedom by running off the map.

[TheMrJACKman]

Haha yes I do apologize for that I did mine "Morale" instead of "Moral"

[TheMrJACKman]

*Mean

Derp.

[GreatWyrmGold]

If slaves, indeed, are implemented, I think that they should have separate "happiness" and "servitude" scores, rather than one "morale" score. Lower happiness would be caused by the same things as for dwarves, plus being under heavy guard or otherwise restrained. Servitude would be affected by happiness, but also by various factors allowing the probability of a slave revolt. Servitude could never drop below happiness, but it could be raised far above it--say, horribly mistreated slaves constantly chained together and under heavy guard, never getting anything like a weapon or decent food, would have a low happiness but probably high servitude. Finding weapons would lower servitude, again with a lower limit imposed by happiness, but beatings of armed/rebellious slaves would increase it. On that note, minor slave rebellions--e.g. refusing to work, or at least working slower--would be more common and caused by moderately low servitudes. Obviously, failed slave revolts would increase servitude among the survivors, but successful ones would cause a drop in servitude among all slaves, probably leading to more slave revolts--a "revolt spiral," if you will, of more slaves rebelling and killing more military/guards, leaving you with a bigger problem and less ability to fix it.

[Splint]

I meant in terms of, in the unliky event this happens, ethics being completly random, or in a certain area for a given race.

Players often screw with the ethics anyway to help with battle clean up (those dead goblins are more useful as food/crafts than as volcano fodder) so I would imagine it'd be messed with regardless of what the base game says. Although it'd open up the oprotunnity to facea wider variety of enemy troops since goblins strike me as the kind to use fighting slaves in thier armies.

Say during world gen, civ 1 rolls complete hate of slavery. That fort won't be able tot take slaves you you'll be punished with no caravans from hom until you free them. Conversly, you can also make the fort seem more attractive to your civ by buying the freedom of the slaves slavers bring. This also can help get rid of mountains of crap you produced that the seasonal trade groups didn't take. ALternativly, they may have a "Kill slavers on sight" deal to be inline with your civ.

Civ 2 rolls indifference. They don't care what the other forts do, since it's not thier business. One fortress may have slaves, another may simply buy slaves' freedom or ignor the slavers who come, while a 3rd may have none at all. This one would leave it up to the player what to do.

Civ 3 rolls it's fine with it. May even be a major part of the slave trade itself.

And a revolt spiral sounds quite fun indeed. And if nothing else, maybe just including slavers who buy your  prisoners would at least get rid of them for you. I would imagine even dwarves hate the idea of keeping slaves, they themselves won't give two buckets of piss what other races do with prisoners. If anything, slavers could provide a service of prisoner removal, giving supplies in exchange (by that I mean raw materials.)

I know that last bit is poorly thought out, but I hate constantly rerigging cages to give my soldiers beating practice. So it'd at least get rid of the damn goblins and trolls you capture and don't wanna deal with yourself.

Bah, I'll shut up now. I'm not in a sound state of mind.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Splint, I was going off on a completely different tangent. I do agree; to a certain extent, certain morals should vary between civs of the same entity (which morals tend to change like this should be defined on a per-entity basis in the raws). On a related topic, they should change more in worldgen, too--for instance, a civ which suffers famine might be a bit less leery about cannibalism (after long enough--a generation or two?--maybe even abolishing burial enirely and replacing it with ritual feasts in the deceased's honor), or an elven civ which is saved by dwarves might be convinced to adopt the dwarves' customs and religion.

[helmacon]

For all the upkeep to keep slaves, they would take as much or more than dawrfs. Dont you do this with your dawrfs anyways, give them as little as posible while getting the most work from them as you can?