So, it's time for another episdoe of "Who's robotic slave is it anyway?"

[Secret Master]

I'm not entirely sure why this is happening, or even if this is WAD, but here goes.

I have the slaving guild civic, and I'm using robots (they are droids, not synths). The robots are not sentient. But what's weird is that some, but not all, droids are enslaved.

Same planet, same model of droid, same job. One is enslaved (has the icon and chattel slavery modifier) and the other droid is not enslaved (no icon, tooltip has no chattel modifier). Both are identical, otherwise.

Is this even WAD? I'm guessing that my civic is classifying some of the droid POPs as slaves per how it works with organics. But... huh?

And if I upgrade to synths and enslave my synths by denying them citizen rights, will they count for the 40% towards the civic?

 

[Bankipriel]

I agree with your guess: this looks like a bug, where the 40% slavery from slaver guilds is being applied to your robots that are under "servitude," (i.e. they are all slaves, because your empire policy is servitude). Chattel Slavery is a bonus that should only be appearing on organic pops. So, it looks like you are just getting bonus food and minerals from some robots due to a bug. I don't know how it will pan out with synths, because ... why would I ever give my robots free will or rights? *pssh* crazy talk.

 

[Secret Master]

I guess I will kerpnplaying until I hit synths and see how it pans out.

I do find it amusing to think that droids are put to the lash. It’s like that scene in Return of the Jedi when a droid is having his feet burned by another droid.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

File a bug report.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

I'm not sure if this is related, but I've just discovered that when you meet a Machine Empire, your robots get the option to become citizens, and in at least some cases (possibly depending on your ethics) they will automatically switch to being citizens. Perhaps what's happening is that because you have slaver guilds, these citizen robots get reclassified as slaves (but not as robotic servants, just normal slaves). Assuming that this is what happened to you, try switching them back to robotic servants in the policy screen and see if that fixes the issue.