what do you prefer of captives or workers

[Qerewen]

Having payed a while and gotten 3 bases set up and the crew is doing just fine but there is one thing that bugs me.

That slaves have half production, sure they only eat half a ration too but they also draw a bit too much target practice to the outposts.
so i am actually considering to just release all my captives from their suffering and tear down the POW plot in favor of instead having normal worker type raiders taking care of them.
they have the benefit of being ''draftable'' when you want to attack by converting them back to warriors not to mention are easily replaced when you need to assign new guards to an outpost/vassal.

am i the only one that feel this way? or am i missing something?
would like to know before i embark on my bloody emancipation.

 

[bullyrook]

instead having normal worker type raiders taking care of them.
they have the benefit of being ''draftable'' when you want to attack by converting them back to warriors not to mention are easily replaced when you need to assign new guards to an outpost/vassal.

Seems solid.

I've got a captive at a vassal working a level 4 3x3 farm still cranking out full production and then another captive at an outpost working a community well that still produces a full 10 water at level 1.

I have to admit I didn't know captives halved Ag plot production in outposts. I've never built any Ag plots at an outpost so I went ahead and built one and assigned a captive to it after I read your post. I learn something new about this game every day!

Is it all Ag plots? Do the 3x3's suffer the same? I only had space to drop an interior Ag.

What's interesting is this brings farm production at outposts in line with production at vassals.
Vassals only send half their farm production (half their surplus???) to feed your outposts. (I wonder if assigning a captive to a vanilla crop at an outpost results in the same halving production?)

And also consider that an Ag plot at an Outpost won't ever produce as much rations as one at a vassal. Vassal have a natural bonus to W/R/E. So it's a double hit: half workshop production and less rations than the same plot in a vassal.

In my case, there's been a benefit to having the captive at the outpost: uninterrupted industrial production at half rations with no wage/equipment cost.

Like you however I'm second guessing my decision to build the lockup so early (I've still got two inside the cell I've never even let out. I'm not really sure what I want to do with them or whether them just being there is costing/wasting rations.

At one point I had two captives at my vassal, but sent one away to reduce control needs.

One thing I found that you can do with captives in the lockup or at any vassal is free them. (This won't work for captives assigned to outposts.) This requires having control of a normal settlement. If they are still in the jail cell, put them to work at a vassal. From the vassal you can send them, via the workshop command, to any other vassal or any regular settlement you control. Once they get to the regular settlement they act just like a regular settler. I took the collars off, re-equipped them, and put them to work. Unfortunately, I couldn't give them a new name so they stay as "captive," but the dude working a glue farm at Starlight has a killer tattoo!

 

[bullyrook]

An interesting bit from the patch notes:

• Worker
• -They gain a bonus to production of Equipment/Rations/Wages when working the corresponding plot type.
• -They will help defend during raids but if all Guard and Warrior types are killed they will surrender.
• -They require only Rations and Wages.

Workers, like warriors, only reside in Outposts. The benefit of assigning "workers" to Commercial, Industrial, or Ag plots in Outposts is that these plots will then produce more W/R/orE than if a warrior was assigned to them.

I wonder how close this worker bonus production comes to the bonus that plots in Vassals get compared to Outposts. It has seemed to me that just having say a Commercial plot at a vassal is still better in terms of production than having the same plot in an outpost even if it's worked by a "worker."

The other benefit of assigning a worker to a plot is that, unlike warriors, workers don't go on raids. So you don't run the risk of who ever is working the plot not coming back again.

The downside, if any, is every warrior converted to a worker is one less warrior.

This is interesting when compared to captives in an Outpost. The benefit of a captive is that they only require half rations: so two captives can do work for the price of just a full Ration and then you bank the Wages and Equipment they don't use.

Two Captives = 0W/-1R/0E
Two Recruits = -2W/-2R/-2E
________________________
Net Savings = 2W/1R/2E​

It looks to me like having 2 captives at work would pay for an additional recruit and would even get you more than half way to another.

​

The downside is halved food production at Ag plots (I'd be interested to know if this halving of food production is something about the captive or something about food production in outposts in general) and increased control needs--but control needs are much easier to offset in an outpost.

Does the worker bonus offset the W/R/E savings a captive provides?

Furthermore, It seems to me that, regardless of my ramblings above, that the ultimate benefit of captives is putting them to work at vassals. Here they cost exactly half as much as Civilians for the same work. This assumes that the extra control needs can be managed and that there isn't a hidden hit to morale.

Every time I put a captive at work in my vassal it seems to cost me a bonus arrow on the morale bar. Removing the captive from the settlement and replacing him with a Civilian seems to bring that bonus arrow back. But I haven't pinned down if this the case or if I'm just imagining it. So here I'm spitballing and not preaching Gospel.

 

[Ritesgaming]

So my 12 captives at my outposts are actually bogging down food production...... Looks like I'm about to make Oh-feel-ya happy