If the player had an option of, for example, being able to test some of these slaves for possible crew positions (gunners or 'diplomatic' advisors) that 'might' be an interesting concept.
For another example, a canny Imperial 'advisor' would possibly be a bonus when dealing with, for instance, a tricky negotiation with some Imperial police force or some trading 'difficulty' at certain ports.
I'm thinking along the lines of the majority of slaves would be 'trade goods', but an exception of say for instance 1 in 25 or 50 would (prove) to be more useful with discovered quality's as above. That would also depend I suppose on what kind of facilities your ship needs to carry slaves in the first place.
Then again maybe this is all too complicated, especially to program, I'm already thinking this would be so, but it might be another way of trading slaves with a valuable twist to the feature.
Example..."Your slave "....." has now gained sufficient experience and loyalty to claim freedom. Do you want to proceed?
You can click "No"...with whatever consequences that entails....
If you click "Yes"...Then you have the option to negotiate a fee to pay the 'X' slave to work on your ship in the skill he/she is most adept at.
If the fee is acceptable by both parties then the slave becomes a free person and works on your ship for an allotted time, after which it's back to a standard hire crew situation, but the player would be given a discount to the normal pricing of hiring that particular (semi-permanent) crew member with the skill set of that particular NPC.....if that makes any sense?
I was just thinking about expanding the trade concept of slaves in general here, while I'm thinking about it. Tomorrow, because of my age
I'll have probably forgotten all about it!
edit..see!...I nearly forgot again....I voted for 2 btw.
Jack
