The key to Good and Evil

[The Templar]

Partway into my second game, I figured something out with respect to good and evil in the game:

Good = deontic/Kantian choices favoring the dignity of the individual

Evil = utilitarian choices that sacrifice the individual good for the collective benefit.

This of course explains why nobody trusts the evil utilitarians: a utilitarian will stab you in the back if it serves to maximize joint benefit. It sounds good, until the knife is in your back. A utilitarian will take your organs to save a cancer researcher as long as no one finds out.

Methinks Brad paid attention in Philosophy 101

[Eric S]

I've only had one case where I didn't agree with the good/neutral/evil choices. I didn't see anything wrong with either what the game presented as good or as neutral.

There's one event where you find a starship in orbit, and the good choice is to leave them alone, the neutral choice is to establish contact, and the evil choice is to take the ship by force. Unless I missed something, there's nothing indicating that the people in the ship aren't interested in outside contact, so to me, the neutral choice was just plain neighborly, and the good choice wasn't inherently more moral, it just suffered from a case of "holier-than-thou."

When I first heard about it, I thought that this was going to be something I didn't like about the game. Well, I can't say that Iove it, but it does make things more interesting.

[Nirvana_CN]

Yea eric, thats the event that can boost Your ships attack, defence and Hitpoints by up to 49% if your lucky. I ALWAYS take the evil option on that one, and the events that can cause my planet to spiral to quality 40++

Im good generally, with a chaotical evil sub concious :P

[yin26]

I always figured that the ship was a gift from the other race. No?

[Nirvana_CN]

Yes Yin

I see you take your galactic management from the same teacher i do..self delusion is good :P

[Gregurabi]

In my experience so far, a lot of the "Neutral" options are the ones that emphasize individual freedom and integrity. In many cases the "Good" options are basically of the form "we must suffer to show our morality". The "Evil" options are of the form "others must suffer so that I may profit".

But for a +37% planet rating, those worms are goin' DOWN!

[Harry Seldon]

Have you ever noticed how one evil choice will turn the Altarians against you til the end of time? I usually choose neutral unless the bonuses are really good. I had an issue once where my neutral choice actually had a better bonus than my evil or good. I wish I had written it down; it was impressive, like the pq bonuses.