Hello all,
before I start, I'll have to say that I didn't really put any effort in searching for similar ideas, so, pardon me if someone else already proposed this.
If nobody did, then it's good. Here's what I thought about.
I personally find slavery entertaining, capturing bootleggers or families near Klamath is awesome, even more using them to mine resources (Or piss players off in guarded mines), sell them or simply use them as cannon fodder against your foes.
However, I believe that the slavery could use a small expansion, just to add a bit of change and entertainment to the thing.
Basically, like there are professions for crafting, add professions for slavery; some perks too. Something that you can easily buy from Metzger at Den, Vortis at NCR, Ashdown at raiders or the man who owns the serf allocation center in Vault City. My idea was to add more items to craft, things like armors, slave collars, better ropes, slave pens and much much more.
Something like this:
Profession: slaver [1]Add items that can be crafted, such as:
-Chain/metal rope (allows the enslavement of more powerful critters, instead of the "scarce" amount available with the normal rope)
-Police baton (a simple melee weapon that you can use to knock your targets down, doesn't do too much damage)
-Cattle prod (instead of using Energy Expert [1], Slaver [1] could be a replacement)
-
Fenced area for your base/safe house, an upgrade where you can "store" your slaves, letting your character own more than just two slaves. (Of course, the limit of slaves you can drag around will still be two).
And this fenced area could recieve upgrades to raise your slaves loyalty or simply lower the % lost everytime. (Things as beds, a tent, chairs, etc..)
-Fitted armours. It'll allow you to create armors for your slaves, making them change appearance and add some points to their DR/DT, maybe some others small enanchements to the slave.
Example:
A normal redhead slave, with just some clothes on:
can be upgraded with fitted leather clothes and estetically become this:
and with the second perk of Slavery you can create a fitted metal armor and have a more powerful slave:
while keeping her levels, HP and everything you already gave her, so you don't have to go around Klamath and capture trappers, instead you can simply upgrade the ones you already have.
To not forget, the ability to feed your slaves to gain a bit of loyalty, instead of using expensive Jet.
Profession: slaver [2]-Slave collar, add metal, explosive collars to enslave even more powerful critters. Could be craftable with the second perk of demolition expert.
-Super Cattle prod (again, instead of Energy Expert this could be used).
-Generator, an upgrade for the upgrade, it'll add an elecrical generator to the fenced area and basically make a simple elecrical fence. It will require metal, energy cells and science skill, but it'll allow your character to store more slaves.
-Mesmetron, a small, expensive pistol that will make everything even easier. I know, it's a stupid idea and I'm throwing it in just because maybe I'm lucky and people will like it. Of course, I don't think that there's a need to explain what it does.
-Even more fitted armors , metal armors and things like that, to upgrade your slaves and make them take more punishment that they usually do.
Of course, the crafting list can be easily expanded anytime. I'm just writing what I thought about.
The perksSupport perks that can be bought like professions, or learned, from the most important slaver figures in the Core Region.
-Stockholm Syndrome. Your slaves love you! With this perk their loyalty will decrease half the rate/never go under a certain percentage.
-Master slaver. You can drag around one more slave without companions or mercenaries assisting you.
-Healthy slaves. Your slaves gain +20 HP under your control.
-Food is better than drugs! If not included in the "Profession: slavery" there could be a separate perk that allows you to feed your slaves with food instead of drugs, thus increasing a small percentage of their loyalty.
Training.To increase their effectiveness in combat and make slaves even more useful, there could be the possiblity to pay one of the slavers leaders (or trained NPCs like doctors, merchants, small guns experts, big guns experts, etc..) caps to increase your slave's skills of a small percentage. Same thing could be done with books, or by yourself, if your skills are high enough.
To make things more complicated, you could teach profession to your slaves. It'd be helpful to have a slave doctor in your pen, or someone who can help barter, or a skilled outdoorsman that makes your character avoid bad encounters.
In the end, more quests, jobs or other things could be added to these ideas. This is what I thought about while playing the bad slaver in FOOnline, and I'd really like to hear comments or criticism about it.
There may be users disliking this because it'd make slaves too OP, I know, the basic idea of this whole suggestion thread is to make them more useful in battles and other fields instead of the simple "Dig resources/Sell them for caps/Use them as bullets sponge". There's nothing that can be done, really, often things become too OP just because that player makes them too OP. I don't know if I explained myself, but I'm going off the rail.
I'll probably edit the thread with more suggestions, incase something else comes up in my mind.