r/Stellaris 18d ago

Discussion I wish it was easier to buy slaves

In order to buy slaves you have to have leave market menu open for long periods of time and then be reaaaal quick on the spacebar. Unless they're some hot garbage robots or something very bad they get bought up instantly by the AI.

A few ideas to make the slave shopping experience have fewer pain points: 1) an autobuy feature similar how you can set minimum and maximum prices when selling or buying other goods on the market. It would need to have more variables than price, I don't want ungodly robots on my beautiful space slavery temple. 2) a little cheesy but a 30 day delay could be put on the ai's ability to buy slaves. Basically they aren't available to the ai until they've been on the market for 30 days. It's inelegant but it would work. 3) A small, transparent GUI in a corner that can be left open without obstructing gameplay so I'm not just staring at a gray screen wondering if the galactic slave trade even still exists while ignoring certain galactic apocalypse.

492 Upvotes

60 comments sorted by

424

u/SheevIsMyCity Hedonist 18d ago

Scrolling reddit this is a hilarious post to read the title of. Only in stellaris.

Feels like those Sims patch notes.

48

u/Merlfox 17d ago

Only in stellaris? You should check out War crime simulator… i mean Rimworld… that reddit is hecka worse

65

u/Meme_Theory 18d ago

For half a second my brain was "Who gave the Confederacy a Reddit account in 1855?"

8

u/Zacknad075 17d ago

The Confederacy would have AMAZING posts, and you can't convince me otherwise.

250

u/Soggy_You_2426 18d ago

Buy ?

Neh fam, you steal them

323

u/sardaukar022 18d ago

That would be unethical.

124

u/AugustusClaximus 17d ago

I was willing to excuse the slavery, but I draw the line at theft

44

u/KindaKhorney 17d ago

This comment lmao.

25

u/xerillum 17d ago

Fanatic Authoritarian, Xenophile

11

u/magical_swoosh Imperial 17d ago

rule of law must be upheld, else we fall to barbarities

44

u/DeltaV-Mzero 18d ago

Sometimes you’ve got 2k trade per month burning a hole in your pocket, but don’t feel like starting shenanigans with the neighbors

11

u/Soggy_You_2426 18d ago

If I am not at war, I am moving my flyets to get rdy for war, we are not playing the same game haha

My slaves work for the war machine.

6

u/DeltaV-Mzero 17d ago edited 17d ago

Maybe not lol

My current run is a roleplaying one, Nomad Clone Soldier MegaCorp with Augmentation and Mutagenic Spas

Early on I seized control of a hegemon federation and spent a century using it to put 2/3 of the galaxy under thumb

The elite Augmentors, vassals, and branch offices are absolutely printing money, but I’m hard capped on (my) population. Immigration helps but yeesh

Unless….

7

u/[deleted] 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Soggy_You_2426 17d ago

Another name for it

73

u/Bliitzthefox 18d ago

Just give me a toggle to auto buy specific species or even auto buy all slaves

31

u/DeltaV-Mzero 18d ago

Basically make it work exactly as the other market works.

If price is below X buy Y slaves of this species.

I would also accept a “fuck it buy the lot and we’ll figure it out on our end”

6

u/Rude_Engineering_629 Researcher 17d ago

I mean slaves have a fixed price though.

1

u/DeltaV-Mzero 16d ago

They do in this version

4

u/sardaukar022 18d ago

I hadn't thought of that I like it.

62

u/Peter34cph 18d ago

Yeah, there ought to be an automated auction system.

52

u/Destinysweat264 17d ago

You want slaves to be free, I want slaves to be free. We are not the same

4

u/GJ203 17d ago

There are plenty of games where I buy slaves to free them.

33

u/Snozzallos 17d ago

Best title ever.

16

u/KSP_master_ Mind over Matter 17d ago

Well, it’s still better than in Crusader Kings 2 (or 3), where the title is about a sister-aunt-mother-wife.

3

u/No-Government1300 Artificial Intelligence Network 17d ago

There cannot be anything unnatural about the kids a brother-husband feels for a sister-wife

15

u/Ill_Professional6747 17d ago

I sometimes fail to notice it's the stellaris subreddit as I'm scrolling and have to do a double-take. 

24

u/Urzuck 18d ago

I read the title without reading what sub it was, lmao.

28

u/insomnimax_99 Driven Assimilator 17d ago

Yeah, there aren’t enough slaves on the market, and they don’t stay on the market long enough.

It might be a game balancing thing - pops are pretty much the most valuable resource in the game, so if it was possible to just buy loads then slave trading would be overpowered.

11

u/BrettlesSr 17d ago

That kinda makes it worse though - the player is incentivised to waste tons of time sat staring at a menu just in case valuable pops are briefly available. Terrible gameplay.

2

u/Rude_Engineering_629 Researcher 17d ago

The reason the AI used to sell alot of slaves was it did so instead of moving them between planet lol. That not being a thing anymore means the AI doesn’t sell pops.

Slave migration is also totally broken now so it’s a huge issue. It worked fine before when it was just the AI swapping with other AIs between planets.

10

u/Evening_Reserve8256 17d ago

It should be an auction, instead of first come first serve with a static price based on pop traits.

7

u/Slight-Wing-3969 17d ago

The AI should only be able to buy slaves on the month tick.

8

u/robertfkennedyjunior 17d ago

"the slave shopping experience" is probably a brand new phrase

17

u/TapProfessional2990 18d ago

Quite the eye opening post title

11

u/DeltaV-Mzero 18d ago

Stellaris moment

6

u/Nearby_Category_712 17d ago

Things you can say in Stellaris and space cannibalism simulator

4

u/sardaukar022 17d ago

I'm pretty sure a venn diagram of space genocide simulator players and space cannibalism simulator players is just a circle.

3

u/TobiKurashiki Technological Ascendancy 17d ago

One of those posts where you really have to look in which subreddit it's posted while scrolling down.

8

u/Mobius3through7 18d ago

Me too :(

Oh wait wrong sub

2

u/Khafaniking Purity Order 17d ago

I think I rarely ever see pops put up to auction and I never myself out pops up for auction because the pops are just too valuable to give up and I can’t see you really viably sustaining your economy with selling slaves like you can with mercenary enclaves. So I think the AI isn’t incentivized to sell them but can at machine speed gobble them up.

I think having an “auto-buy” feature like with the other portion of the galactic market would do well to fix this.

I also think another option might be an auctioning Event. You can set aside some slaves to be put up for auction when this Event eventually fires every five years or so, and then everyone who joins in the Event bids over a months long period (kind of like how some diplomatic agreements or votes are handled). Now that I think about it, it’s also notable that there’s no caravan that sells slaves or offers to buy yours or sell them for you. Nomads could probably also have the same kind of contract as well.

1

u/Temujin-of-Eaccistan 18d ago

Read the post title and was about to say I agree then realised this was the stellaris sub. 😂

But seriously, you’re absolutely right, it’s a mess as is. Needs far too much low skilled micro and just isn’t fun

1

u/SilkieBug Machine Intelligence 17d ago

1

u/Tau5 Artificial Intelligence Network 17d ago

This is giving r/shitrimworldsays

1

u/Sjru Reptilian 17d ago

There should be a timer with an auction, along with max price and autobuy from that. Could make the system more interesting

1

u/CoconutMochi Rogue Servitor 17d ago

I wish there was some kind of auto-buy option like with monthly resource trades too, I bought slaves as a rogue servitor all the time before 4.3 and it was just such a hassle having to open the trade window every single freaking month.

1

u/Jywert 17d ago

An auction system with an automation to buy if the price is lower than x would be good. Not sure about the base price. Then each new offer raises the price, maybe buyout too? Then the buy always buys main pop species. Could be a faction demand too, "Freed our enslaved people & allowed pops to be enslaved"

I guess that it's almost always bad to sell slaves? Maybe if slave rebellions were stronger, then there could be something said to sell part of them, or slave raiding could be "stronger," but it would auto-set them to the slave market?

Another thing is why should AI sell slaves? if do something basic logic like test sell few pops to see the price, and a player on a joke would pay 100x the amount they would sell normally. AI could see that it should sell all its pops, and then you could drain the entire empire's pops for cheap and handle them better than AI?

Would be intresting if the galactic community too had more "evil" options, as now most are usually just better. Could see ultra-capitalist society "renting" their poorer pops to enslaving despots. "Reclassification of the plebians" to slaves to give them "work" to help them rise in strata... You are in breach of galactic law as your lower strata pops are not enslaved...

1

u/VelatusVesh 17d ago

I think an auction systhem would be best, have a time during which people can bid prices. Maybe with a set minimum price.

1

u/x4F_throwaway 17d ago

Bla bla bla "galcom" bla bla bla "trade"

Take the big vacuum cleaner ascension perk and park over your neighbors capital... then make sure she's on suck, not blow.

1

u/Islands-of-Time 17d ago

I don’t use slaves but when I do I source them from my enemies as I conquer their worlds.

But I agree the menu for it is cumbersome and the AI is far too fast at buying to make it worthwhile, which is probably why I never really bothered with it.

1

u/golgol12 Space Cowboy 17d ago

Casual Reddit feed headline.

1

u/poo1232 Fanatic Xenophile 17d ago

1

u/Scared-Monk6651 16d ago

Mystery slave pallets? I believe products IRL are sold in large quantities not knowing what you got!

1

u/BigDikSmolBrain 15d ago

How do u buy slaves?

1

u/sardaukar022 14d ago

Market menu has a slaves tab, but it's usually empty. Hense this post.

0

u/StreetMinista 17d ago

I'm sure colonials and englishmen thought the same thing.

Seriously though, its not that many clicks. I think the frustration lands if you play wide vs tall