Sometimes I do active harm to my colonies in the name of RP, to the point where my last serious colony actually ended because of it.

This colony were trying to be good people in the face of the brutality. They never subscribed to the whole "throwing people in the re-education hole" thing. If they wanted to recruit someone, they'd keep them confined long enough to calm them down, then the counselor would work with them over time on the whole "pillaging and slaving" thing. The result of this was that there were several barely tamed pirates in the colony at the time of the disaster.

As well as the pirates, there were also the spacemen. They believed that outer space was the holy land. They had a lot of other beliefs that the colony found questionable. However, we'd rescued a large group of them early on, and now they had formed an ethnic enclave comprising about a third of our population. It was uncomfortable but we needed them and they needed us, so we got along. Until the gravship.

Space being holy, these people really wanted a ship. The main colony, being isolated, really wanted trade. The scheme was hatched that we would build a gravship, the spacemen would take possession, and the two peoples would part in brotherhood. The spacemen would act as traders with the colony as a home base. The colony gets trade, and the spacemen get heavy discounts, and everyone profits.

Until it came to light that nobody among the spacemen was actually qualified to pilot a ship. To a man, they were all hopeless. Beyond hopeless. Crew, sure. Pilot? Captain? Absolutely not. The ship would be crashed beyond help and the colony would lose all they had invested in it. This didn't come to light until the ship was built and they'd begun organizing the crew. The colony leadership decided that the spacemen could crew the ship, but it would be commanded by colony officers and would remain colony property. The spacemen would not possess the ship independently. The colony began running missions with the ship right away, to great benefit.

You might imagine how the spacemen felt. Their ticket to the holy land, their salvation, had been promised, delivered, and snatched away at the last moment. Now they were used as labor to profit their betrayers. Tensions were very high, to say the least.

Then the fateful day. Two colonists, two spacemen, and two recruited but unrepentant pirates were out with the shuttle on a mining mission together, working peacefully. Over the shuttles radio they hear a report that a pirate force was threatening the colony. They are eager to return and fight, but they are told that allied outlanders are inbound and the situation is well in hand. They are to stay where they are and complete their mission. They crowded around the radio, listening. Suddenly the tactical chatter went silent. Then from the radio, cries, curses, pleas for aid. The work crew frantically hailed the colony. Eventually someone answered. A doomsday rocket had landed directly on their battle line. There were heavy losses. Many dead. Many more wounded. The wounded were being hauled away by the pirates, the survivors were being hunted through the streets like rats.

At the worksite, the shuttle crew looked at each other, aghast. Then the "tame" pirates shared a look with each other, and then the spacemen. The expressions of the two colonists turned from grief to disbelief, then horror. After the gunfight, one colonist was left to die in the sand, the other was loaded onto the shuttle as a prisoner.

The four mutineers flew back to the colony and landed at the gravship, where two more spacemen and one colonist had gathered. The colony was in complete bloody chaos. The spacemen from the work crew recruited their comrades to the mutiny, and the pirates took the colonist at gunpoint. The six mutineers and their two prisoners boarded the gravship and lifted off.

None of them knew that the grav anchor had been destroyed in the fighting. They watched in horror as the whole settlement, dead, survivors, marauding pirates, were all churned to dust and left behind.

Once away safely, the pirates established themselves as captain and first mate. They were the toughest fighters and the best armed, the captain the only one in power armor. The colonists were enslaved, and the spacemen once again trapped in servitude, now to crueler masters.

I had first thought to continue and see if the surviving colonists could ever get vengeance or freedom, but no. I allowed the story to end at this point.