Race neutral happiness type
 

So I took over an abandoned spot in a PBW game. The empire appeared to be in decent shape, but I think I figured out why the guy quit. I am in the processes of cleaning out some pesky AI colonies in my territory, and I get the message that my colonies happiness is decreasing because of my recent battle victories. So I am pretty sure this means the guy picked the neutral happiness type at game start. Being stubborn and not wanting to quit, I thought I keep at it. Anybody have any experience with this? Will troops work to keep the planets happy as normal, or will that make the people even mroe unhappy? How about lots of ships in orbit? Is everything the opposite of normal, or only the battle thing?

Geoschmo

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

All stock happiness types respond the same to troops. Ships in orbit will not have an effect, and only none or non-intercourse treaties increase happiness.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

The happiness hit for *winning* is so nice, and so nonsensical. For this matter, you will also suffer from lower happiness when colonising planets or building ships (if memory serves). And you cannot even capture enemy colonies to boost your happiness; the penalty for doing so is the same as for losing one of *your* planets.

Troops, the UPC and natural decrease still work as usual, with natural decrease being much "better" than usual (which means your planets will go back to Indifferent faster. A good thing if you have Angry planets, though it will not help your rioting planets). Otherwise, you could try playing with treaties; enacting non-interference treaties give you a boost to happiness, and you can break those without any penalty (*any* other treaty has a harsh happiness hit associated with it).

On the brighter side of things, you will suffer much less from losing planets (losing your homeworld is the same as losing any other colony, and the penalty is a mere 2%, against 5% for peaceful), so a riot run would do less damage. But your own Empire can create riots on its own just fine.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Ok, so start cranking out troops on any world that turns unhappy or angry. Is there anything that can be done for planets that do start rioting? Normally I'd park a fleet over the planet until they calmed down and then start cranking out troops. But you say that won't help for a neutral race?

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Ships in sector/system do very little for neutral Empires (enemy ships slightly reduce your happiness (0.1%), and friendly ships do nothing at all). Fun eh?

If you are growing quite annoyed with the whole neutral happiness type, the best thing you can do is starting breaking some treaties (it will give you a nice happiness boost) and/or enacting some non-interference treaties. Otherwise, troops, troops and troops are all your rioting worlds need. The UPC should as well to bring these worlds away from rioting, though it will be too weak to improve your happiness beyond Indifferent.

A small edit about UPC and Neutral happiness: the UPC III can be enough to bring a world to Happy for a little while, but will not result in a stable increase in happiness, and would probably not work with a negative happiness characteristic. I believe the natural happiness reduction (going back to Indifferent) happens before UPC (and possibly other events) kick in, which allows to stay on Happy for a turn or two.

So with 100% happiness, and an UPC III, you should expect to stay on the Happy level for 75% of the time, assuming no other event. The problem is, there *will* be other events if you are actually playing, such as winning battles, enacting good treaties, building ships or colonising planets, so you should throw a party whenever one of your planets is Happy without needing troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

I can't figure out what Malfador was thinking when they set this up this way. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Thanks for the tips. Pretty much what I was doing, but I know not to waste time parking my fleets now.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

I can see Malfador doing something like this but I believe the name of the selection is misleading. It could have been named better, I think, so its connotation would indicate a race that just likes to do, well, NOTHING. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Maybe it should have been called isolationist or some such. I could see where a newer player might get it confused with the emotionless trait.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

it´s only use is to have a challenging game against the AI...

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Al, are you sure that non-interference treaties don't affect happiness for neutrals? I am playing a neutral in the proportions #2 game, and I would like to have such treaties with everyone, but a past experience seemed to indicate that even those treaties come with a happiness decrease...

Thanks,

Alarik

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

I haven't taken hard data, but I think fighters in orbit (not in cargo) count as a ship in the sector. I have tried it and riots stopped in a coupla turns. Maybe this was from other factors though. It is an easier way to get "ships" in orbit.

Slick.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Also, are the attributes associated with the happiness type mod-able?

For instance, could someone make the Neutral happiness type equal to the Peaceful type?

thanks,

Alarik

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Yes.
In GritEcon I made the happiness types more balanced, plus have a new happiness type called "Masochistic"

Enemy troops on the planet are the fastest way to make those guys jubilant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Look in happiness.txt

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

So, you actually came up with a happiness type that is *worse* than standard neutral type? Impressive!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Thanks for the info

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Enemy troops on the planet? Do you mean during an invasion? So I assume you've also modded the ground combat so that it takes longer then the stock 1 turn to finish?

EDIT: Ooooo, if that's the case you could really have ground combat that went on for years. Since the planet isn't rioting they could keep pumping out more troops, and you could keep dropping reinforcments from space. Although, does that only work in turn-based? Will your troop ships drop troops on a planet that is in the middle of an invasion in simultaneous-mode?

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

If you don't own the planet, your troops invade the regular way during combat.
If you currently own the planet, you can drop cargo.


BTW, that's not the reason combat goes on for years in gritecon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
The main reason is the 1 round of combat per month, and the 1 attack/50 hp infantry.
Because of that ratio, it takes a while for your tanks to mop up militia and get the planet under control, but in the meantime you can be happy its not producing resources for the enemy.

PS:
Bombardment from space may be slower than a ground assault in this mod, since a planet full of infantry will have hundreds of thousands of hitpoints http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.
Ships will run out of supplies pretty fast during a bombardment, while tanks just keep rolling and stomping.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

I always figured they were meant to be the default happiness type for Neutral Races. It almost suits their attitude -- never leave their sector, allow no one else in, etc.

Problem is, that's a hopeless tactic in SE4. Anyone who's tried the neutral challange knows that to survive, you have to pick your friends carefully, not give everyone the cold shoulder.

If neutral happiness remains in SE5, maybe Malfador will tweek it a bit. Say maybe bases add happiness while ships outside the system deplete happiness, defending your planets adds happiness, destroying enemy planets decreases happiness etc.

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

Fighters should not count as being ships; that is the theory however, which can be annoyingly quite different from the Truth. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (I will test it out later)

Alarikf, I think I stated in a first post that Non-intercourse treaties had no happiness effect, which was wrong. I think I wrote in a later post that they do give a happiness boost (+10% if you are interested by the numbers, equivalent to colonising ten planets with a peaceful race), but I cannot exactly recall what I posted.

So the clearer explanation is: Non-Intercourse and None treaties (breaking treaties in other words) give happiness boost for neutrals, like having friendly troops and an UPC. Time also puts them back on Indifferent faster than the other happiness types, though it does not work if your people are busy rioting. Everything else does nothing at best, or makes your people unhappy (including winning battles, colonising and capturing enemy planets).

Re: Race neutral happiness type
 

I've noticed the penalty for beating up on the AI only seems to apply in the system where the combat is occuring. At least it does to a greater degree there. The planets in the systems where no fighting is occuring don't seem to be so upset. Also the troops seem to be doing the trick, and that faster move back to indifferent is helping as well I'm sure. Most of the unhappy planets that I built troops on are already back to indiferent and the angry ones are just unhappy now. I did have one that got away from me and went to rioting. I should have a UPC Online in a few turns. If that doesn't calm them I'll just abandon it. It's only one little tiny planet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif