do other empires just not care I am turning people into livestock or nerve stapled slaves?

[Varren]

Egalitarianism isn't the ethos of "keep your government off my body". The old individualist ethos was, and egalitarianism inherited some of its game features, but as long as nerve staples are applied regardless of class they should have no issue with it. For example, using temporary nerve staples on an entire planet to eliminate a problematic faction should be totally acceptable to them.

Egalitarianism in Stellaris is more than just "everyone gets treated equally." If it were, then Egalitarians would be perfectly fine with Dictatorial authority so long as the dictator was chosen by merit. Egalitarians also get access to "nice" civics and edict like Idealistic Foundation and Encourage Political Thought while being banned from things like Corvee System even though it's possible to claim that everyone is equally oppressed under such systems.

Egalitarianism is more like "everyone has basic rights and dignities that must be respected." If you want to play an alien society where everyone is equally subjugated to a totalitarian apparatus, you have to play Rogue Servitors.

 

[Dementor4]

Egalitarianism in Stellaris is more than just "everyone gets treated equally." If it were, then Egalitarians would be perfectly fine with Dictatorial authority so long as the dictator was chosen by merit. Egalitarians also get access to "nice" civics and edict like Idealistic Foundation and Encourage Political Thought while being banned from things like Corvee System even though it's possible to claim that everyone is equally oppressed under such systems.

Egalitarianism is more like "everyone has basic rights and dignities that must be respected." If you want to play an alien society where everyone is equally subjugated to a totalitarian apparatus, you have to play Rogue Servitors.

Again, part of the problem here is that when the individualist ethos was removed, there were several orphaned game elements adopted by egalitarianism. The fit has never been great.

 

[TrotBot]

I mean, some empires that aren't phobes or slaves, neither philes or egalitarian could use this trait if it serve their intrest.

That's the point though. If you're not a slaver or a xenophobe, then using nerve stapling is akin to an exploit to bypass the ban on slavery. Nerve stapled pops, whether the game treats them as such or not, are slaves. They are not trading work time for leisure time. They cannot have leisure because you labotomized them. All they do is work. This makes you a slaver.

Yes, it would be cool if the game had dynamic ethics which shifted based on your choices. Make slaver and xenophobe choices, piss off your egalitarian and xenophile factions as your government ethics shift more and more to those "evil axes". But the game does NOT have this kind of mechanic rewarding you for leaning into the roleplay of your chosen ethics and punishing you and dropping you from the ethics you broke.

So for now, the game has to give you binary choices: either you're a slaver or xenophobe and you get to commit the atrocity of nerve stapling pops, OR you're not and you don't get to.

 

[zZander56]

The thing is though, you're not just genetically designing a new people. You're converting existing people.

Converting a person into type 2 is still a big 'ol atrocity. There's no way you can square removal of personhood of an entire people as "not genocide".

This is the equivalent of assimilating bio pops into droids.

Well, you could create a template based off of a species, and use this new design to create clones. There's no genocide there, just essentially creating biological robots.

 

[taltamir]

That's the point though. If you're not a slaver or a xenophobe, then using nerve stapling is akin to an exploit to bypass the ban on slavery. Nerve stapled pops, whether the game treats them as such or not, are slaves. They are not trading work time for leisure time. They cannot have leisure because you labotomized them. All they do is work. This makes you a slaver.

Yes, it would be cool if the game had dynamic ethics which shifted based on your choices. Make slaver and xenophobe choices, piss off your egalitarian and xenophile factions as your government ethics shift more and more to those "evil axes". But the game does NOT have this kind of mechanic rewarding you for leaning into the roleplay of your chosen ethics and punishing you and dropping you from the ethics you broke.

So for now, the game has to give you binary choices: either you're a slaver or xenophobe and you get to commit the atrocity of nerve stapling pops, OR you're not and you don't get to.

Mostly agreed, but too complicated. I think nerve stapling should just be treated as a Purge. Anyone who can Purge can nerve staple. Anyone who is salty about purging should be salty about nerve stapling.

Also the nerve stapled people are not slaves, they are braindead. Dumber than the literal zombies.
Keep in mind that a Droid has more intellectual capacity than a nerve stapled person.

Which is another issue. Stellaris hierarchy of sapience goes:
1. organic people and synths (any job)
2. droids (any job except scientist)
3. robots and nerve stapled (workers only = miner / farmer / nuclear reactor operator / servant / special factory (planetary feature))
4. presapients (can not work)

Yet for some reason the nerve stapled are considered still people... they are just "people" who cannot work in any specialist job. just like a simple robot. nerve stapled should at the very least should be droid equivalent and be able to work all non leadership jobs. but ideally they should be able to work all jobs. Heck they should even be better as leaders due to no corruption. Unless it is meant to be a literal lobotomy instead of an incredibly sophisticated feat of genetic engineering that requires a literal bio ascension to unlock and the lore says is just removing unnecessary desires.

 

[Incompetent]

Nerve stapling is just the most obvious weirdness here. Even the most benevolent genemods involve the government forcibly rewriting the DNA of large swaths of the populace, which modern human society would consider abhorrent (to say nothing of how a Fanatical Egalitarian empire would react).

Gattaca is the prototypical example of how essentially capitalist social dynamics could lead to it becoming near-universal to add Erudite, Robust etc traits onto your own kids (or onto yourself; the film didn't really imagine live gene editing of adults, but it would surely have happened eventually in that world). The key difference I think is that it would be much slower and less homogeneous. We get a nod to voluntary genemodding in the self-modified species events, but I wish there was more of a systematic approach to pops being able to spontaneously mod themselves to suit their environment and job.

Then again, I think this is really just an instance of a deep problem in strategy games. The player is given beyond totalitarian, basically Gestalt levels of control over their empire, even with "Egalitarian Democratic" government, because a) it feels good to give the player agency (even if nobody in real life has that level of agency, not even autocrats) and b) it's hard to simulate autonomous decision-making at lower levels in a way that doesn't lead to intense frustration at how stupid the AI is. Even more so, if you make the level of player control itself a player choice (rather than just have the player be inherently limited by how the game works), it's hard to balance the game so that relentless power-grabbing isn't the winning option, i.e. more laissez-faire options have distinctive advantages.

 

[Mastikator]

Well, you could create a template based off of a species, and use this new design to create clones. There's no genocide there, just essentially creating biological robots.

If the pops are clones, what happens to the old pops that weren't nerve stapled?

Any way you slice it nerve stapling is genocide.

 

[zZander56]

If the pops are clones, what happens to the old pops that weren't nerve stapled?

Any way you slice it nerve stapling is genocide.

Nothing really happens to them. There just now happens to be clones based on their genes around. You can simply make a design and select it in biological pop assembly without applying it.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I thought about this as well, but found some issues that have to be worked out.

1. Currently nerve stapled is a 3 point trait, so can you only nerve staple purge species that have at least 3 points left or should the point cost be removed to be in line with other purge types?

The cost should be removed. The negative effects to the pop, and the yet nonexistent political repercussions, should be enough to make it a 0-point trait.

2. There are some traits incompatible with nerve stapled, should pops with these traits be ineligible or should these be removed by the process (what about traits that normally can't be removed like zombie)?

This could vary from case to case. Zombie should not be "nerve stapleable", while the other traits should instead get removed. Perhaps the rule could be that traits that have already removed the capacity for Happiness would also block "nerve stapling", while other types of incompatible traits get removed.

(With this being said, I think it should still be possible to at least create templates and bio-assemble main species pops with the nerve stapled trait. It would be unfortunate if nerve stapling became an "only xenos" option.)

Egalitarianism isn't the ethos of "keep your government off my body". The old individualist ethos was, and egalitarianism inherited some of its game features, but as long as nerve staples are applied regardless of class they should have no issue with it. For example, using temporary nerve staples on an entire planet to eliminate a problematic faction should be totally acceptable to them.

"At random. Dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike. They called me a mad man."

doesn't purging give you a stacking -50 * X per pop purged or something? (edit: it varies from -5 to -25 depending on ethics of AI empire)

It varies from purge type to purge type.

Part of the issue is how crippling it is. it does not turn them into the meat equivalent of shackled AI. it turns them into the meat equivalent of robots (not even droids. because droids are non sapients who can work specialist jobs. But nerve stapled cannot)

Hence why I think it would make sense for Spiritualists to oppose nerve stapling as much as they oppose AI rights, if not more.

Again, part of the problem here is that when the individualist ethos was removed, there were several orphaned game elements adopted by egalitarianism. The fit has never been great.

Recently, I have been thinking that Xenophile is closer than Egalitarian to an individualistic ethic (and that Xenophobe is more collectivistic than Authoritarian). One embraces differences, the other embraces conformity.



Also, it should be possible to treat nerve stapled pops like slaves without having to go all the way and tolerate slavery of actual sapients.

 

[HFY]

Recently, I have been thinking that Xenophile is closer than Egalitarian to an individualistic ethic (and that Xenophobe is more collectivistic than Authoritarian). One embraces differences, the other embraces conformity.

Collectivism isn't the same as conformity though.

Collectivist policies might dictate that all your shops be Blorg-accessible (and accessible to all other citizen species); Conformity would dictate that all your shops have the same products.

Both are infringements on the rights of any individual store owner, but they're different infringements.

Xenophiles are probably Collectivist but anti-Conformist; Xenophobes are probably Conformist.

 

[taltamir]

It varies from purge type to purge type.

I know, the entire point of this thread is that there is a purge type that generates 0 animosity from other empires.
In that post I was referring to the "just kill them" purge type.
this was my fault for not being clear in that post