Just an idea
 

Morale.

Ship morale I think is a good idea. Someone else might have mentioned this before, but I was playing Caesar2 (which I don't like as a whole), and the armies in that game have a morale rating. You lose and it goes down, win, and it goes up.

If it were really done in such a way as to have a serious impact on the fighting ability of ships, it could be an interesting twist.

On a strategic level, as it stands now, there are a few ways for a smaller empire to strike back upon a large neighbor. One could send in several cloaked star destroyers into vital systems, granting that he could fund such an effort, but all in all, SE4 functions like say Risk, in that once you fall behind in most categories, and as long as the opponent is capable, you don't stand much of a chance.

If ships had a morale and it serious effected their battle capabilities, then a smaller empire, simply in choosing battles it knows it can win, could drain the morale of his opponent.

Just rough math here. Given that your ships are equally matched in tech, if your opponent can produce twice as many ships, but you pick your battles, and say there is a 25% plus or minus limit on morale, if he falls to 75% and you up to 125%, then your fleets are then equal, even if he has twice as many ships.....or is my math wrong here.

Re: Just an idea
 

The ship morale already sorta modelled by ship/fleet experience.

You can get 20% using facilities, but then winning battles can boost that up 30% more.
A 60% advantange (ship+fleet) is not bad.
Perhaps instead of a separate morale rating, an extra bonus could be applied to all ships and fleets in the system when you win a battle, and subtracted when you lose a ship/fleet.

Re: Just an idea
 

didn't bother ti figure out the math but i like the idea. I don't know if it was discussed here before either, but it sounds like a cool factor that could balance the game a little more. Giving ships with high moral attack and defense bonuses might be a good idea.

However, it would have to only work for ships with crews, and to make it work right there should be no moral raising facility. Also, maybe there should be a moral rating for each of an empires opponents. For instance your fighting a winning battle against one empire but a loosing against another. It would probably be to hard to implement that but it would also be more realistic. The fleet would be more eager to fight some battles than others. Also, it should not be a racial trait or something like that. It has to be something that is earned. Well enough ranting. Lets here other peoples ideas.

Re: Just an idea
 

I have done something similar to this with crew Ratings using the ship component. There are 6 levels of crew:
Poor
Green
Regular
Experienced
Crack
Elite

Using the abilities: Combat To Hit Offense Plus, Combat To Hit Defense Plus, Combat To Hit Offense Minus and Combat To Hit Defense Minus I haev tried to simulate the experience and morale of my crews.
Example:
Poor crew
Combat To Hit Offense Minus 10
Combat To Hit Defense Minus 10
Green Crew
Combat To Hit Offense Minus 5
Combat To Hit Defense Minus 5
Regular Crew, no positive or negative
Experienced Crew
Combat To Hit Offense Plus 5
Combat To Hit Defense Plus 5
Crack Crew
Combat To Hit Offense Plus 10
Combat To Hit Defense Plus 10
Elite Crew
Combat To Hit Offense Plus 20
Combat To Hit Defense Plus 20

There is more to this, but you probably get my point.

Make sure that you have to pay for the extra advantages, ie the Elite crew component costs more than the regular crew component.
I am working with the use of tech areas and facilities to tech requirements to create the better crews.

You might also want to experiement with some of the other abilities, like I am trying out the Ship Training ability on a component like a crew. This crew will earn the experience as a crew not as a facility.

------------------
In difficult ground, press-on;
In encircled ground, devise stratagems;
In death ground, fight.
Sun Tzu (circa 400 B.C.)

Re: Just an idea
 

The other obvious advantage to tracking morale is that it could be used to balance the crew insurrction op, which is over-simplified and unbalancing.

If a high-morale crew had a better chance of resisting the op, it would be much less powerful.

Other things to affect morale:
Shore leave: hanging about above friendly planets (own or allied) could increase morale. Perhaps the planet's happiness rating could be taken into account (rioting planets reduce ship morale because the crew don't get shore leave.)

Supplies: Running out of suppplies would reduce morale, because no-one likes emergency rations.

Facilities and components: I think there should be facilities and components for this, but *not* with system- wide affects.

------------------
SE4 Code:
L GdY $ Fr- C- Sd T!+ Sf-- Tcp-- A% M>M+ MpD! RV Pw Fq+ Nd- Rp+ G-
/SE4 Code
Go to my meagre SEIV pages to generate your own code.

Re: Just an idea
 

Just as a flip side to Dogscoff idea about shore leave, staying out in space for too long could lower morale. I see it could be a way in which to discourage the tactic of keeping fleets stationed on WPs for the entire game.

I suppose Exp. and morale could be combined, but I think it best if they were separated, as exp. is different from confidence in one's abilities.

I like the idea of running out of supplies as a feature too. As far as facilities go, I agree with having no system wide facilities. Have something like recreation facilities would be nice. They would be excellent things to fill up those near useless moons, and then we here at SE4 could actually say, "I'm taking shore leave on the pleasure moon Galactus Prime."

The idea of having different morale Ratings for different opponents is interesting, but I wonder how it might alter playing styles. I do think that if computer played empires are given morale, it would make them seriously easier to beat. I mean, how easy is it to pick off their strays.

Re: Just an idea
 

You could also have a Component Called Recreation Lounge for putting into Space stations, a la Deep Space Nine. It would have to be large and pricey so people don't start throwing it into every desroyer they build. This would also allow for Pleasure barges roaming the empire bringing joy to the Enlisted men of the Glorious space navy!

To build on what Menschenfresser said, Having a Rec Facility on a planet could also generate a bonus beyond what you might get at another friendly port.

This is of course assuming someone out there can find a way to implement Morale?

Re: Just an idea
 

All good ideas but I share the opinion of suicide_junkie that this is more or less already in the game with the ship/fleet experience.
The new thing would however be that the experience/moral can decrease under the circumstances you mention and that the success chance of crew conVersion depends on the experience/moral of the target ship.
If you do it based on the existing feature of the ship/fleet experience, it might be not too much work for MM to implement in a future patch, so suggest it to them.

Re: Just an idea
 

This also might make emotionless a worthwhile racial trait. Make it so that emotionless races don't experience morale either as a positive or negative. They never get happy or sad. Beat em into the dirt or get beaten into the dirt and still no feelings one way or the other. As it is I really don't see much use myself in emotionless. Far too pricy and easy enough to keep my people happy.

Re: Just an idea
 

This is a pretty cool discussion, and there are some very neat ideas here. Thus, I can't resist throwing in yet another set of opinions. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

The idea of buying better trained crews is pretty cool, but it has the opposite effect that the original poster wanted - to give a small, way-behind empire a chance. If I'm running the hugely successful empire, I can AFFORD better crews for all of my ships. The guy who's losing can't, which will only make it even harder for him to do well.

It can easily be argued that morale is factored into the experience/traing bonuses. However, if I wanted to impliement a real morale system, I would not do it that way.

I would have factors to do actual morale checks. Things like:

- ship is facing a larger fleet (1.5:1, 2:1, etc.)
- ship is facing larger enemy ships (eg, my destroyer is facing a battlecruiser would be a detrement)
- ship is x% damaged or has lost critical components

Things like that. In SE IV now, once a ship loses it's weapons in battle, it tries to run. I would think that based on a real morale check, the following things could occur:

- Initial "Shaken" results would penalize the ships offensive and defensive bonuses by -10%
- Next level would penalize by -20% and set the ship to fire only at Max weapons range (eg, stay in the fight, but don't go toe to toe with the enemy)
- Next level the ship tries to run and only fires if in range while fleeing. -30% to offense and defense.
- Finaly failure: the ship surrendurs and becomes an enemy ship (though it would not be able to fire or move for the rest of the current battle)

There would, of course, need to be modifiers for things like:

Master Computer. Sorry, MCs should not suffer from morale.

Mechanoid race. I can't see them doing this either.

Religious talisman. I'd give a bonus to morale for this... these guys are fanatics. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

I'm sure there are lots of other things including racial and situational issues which could factor in. This is just a really rough outline.

So, for what it's worth, I think that a real morale system would be cool.

General John
"Napoleon said that morale is to the physical as 3 is to 1. I'll take 3 DNs for each of yours any day. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif"

Re: Just an idea
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cyrien:
This also might make emotionless a worthwhile racial trait. Make it so that emotionless races don't experience morale either as a positive or negative. They never get happy or sad. Beat em into the dirt or get beaten into the dirt and still no feelings one way or the other. As it is I really don't see much use myself in emotionless. Far too pricy and easy enough to keep my people happy.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Another way to make emotionless worthwhile would be to have it confer other advantages. Maybe planets of emotionless races should be immune to PPP and their ships immune to crew insurrection? I'd almost say you could justify immunity to the Psychic allegiance converter, too, but that might be too much.

Also, as a general morale thing, how about a bonus when defending homeworlds? Ships over a homeworld could have bonuses to hit and militia/troops on a homeworld could have a bonus for 'ferocity'... hmm, would it be logical to remove these bonuses from 'emotionless' races? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 03 October 2001).]

Re: Just an idea
 

Baron i agree with that for adding more depth to the emotionless trait. As it is it is pretty much worthless.

As for morale, as i said before, i think that there shouldn't be a facility and especially not a component to raise it. Granted a shore leave or something would raise morale but if your still loosing battles it shouldn't be that effective. Therefore i think that morale should be based off the ships performance in battle or perhaps discovery of new systems or anything that has to be earned by the ship. Tie it in with experience somehow that would be fine. But the flip side has to remain true to. Morale must have the possibility of lowering. And i agree comletely that ships with high morale and/or high experience levels should be far less susceptible to insurection and conVersion. Enough rambling from me.

Re: Just an idea
 

Thinking about this a little further, and it might clear up the discussion between having it as part of the exp or separate.

I think it is impossible to have a ship by ship morale rating unless as I read in another thread, a retreat option is added to the tactical battle. The reason being is that if you lose, the ship is destroyed. Very few ships would actually suffer from bad morale. You are either alive or dead. It is probably impossible to even have a fleet morale rating. Well, I mean you can have one, but it would be worthless...never being negative.

Maybe "morale" isn't the right word...in that it implies the actual attitude of a given soldier, ship, unit, etc. It would have to function on a larger level, and be called something like "status of the armed forces," or even "mutiny rate." Something that is directly effected by an empire's win/loss ratio. As I said before, it could very well be segmented, in that any given empire has a separate rating when facing each different opponent.

A neat feature of this could be a "heroic acts" ability. I don't know how hard it would be to make the engine recognize battles won that should have been lost, etc. I don't know. Still running with the idea, even if I have no idea if it is possible to implement. I don't see much of a way to do it without, like some have suggested, an expansion pack or massive change in future patches.

Re: Just an idea
 

mo·rale (m-rl)
n.
The state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks.

With this in mind there is no reason not to label what is going as morale as opposed to some other label. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Experience should play a roll in morale. I liked the idea of comparisons for fleet sizes especially. Perhaps the more "elite" a force is in experience the lower a morale penalty they would get and the slower morale in general would go down, and the faster it might go up.

Also morale should be empire wide and perhaps divided up by empires. Example being for the Star Trek Universe there would normally be pretty darn low moral when facing the Borg but when facing more common enemies and threats, especially ones that have been beaten in the past morale would be higher.

With this I would say there should be both an individual ship morale and an empire wide morale that is used more as a modifier when dealing with or battling with another empire. For the ship by ship it should work something similiar to planet happiness which is already a modifier of morale on a planet level.

For the system wide it should have one for each foreign empire which would act to reduce or increase morale for individual ships when they engage in battle with that specific empire.

Example:

You have 2 BC's and the enemy has 2 DN's.

Your BC's are well trained and have had several recent victories so their individual morale is high.

The DN's are much larger than your own BC's so your individual morale is abit lower, though not as low as it would be for a green crew.

However, your empire has had a long line of recent crushing defeats against this empire and so this reduces all morale by x amount for this battle.

Or, your empire has had a long line of recent crushing victories against this empire so this increases all morale by x amount for this battle.

The results of the battle come in and you compare it and determine how the individual ships involved where affected morale wise, and then how this affects your empire level morale against that empire.

Seems this would be a fun and varied system to implement as it could also lead to new technologies that could be used. Morale increasing for fanatacism with religious (especially if some holy symbol was built into the ship) no morale for emotionless, perhaps morale affecting weapons for psychic races and even a propaganda intel op which seeks to lower an empires general morale against your own or raise it against an enemies etc...

Morale could be used to help the AI come to decisions as well. Low morale = more likely to agree to peace etc and high morale less likely.

And as for ship by ship not being possible without a retreat option... I disagree. I have had many battles where one side was not totally wiped out, but one side clearly came out ahead. All that is needed is to base it on damage recieved. Even if you win but are badly damaged your morale is affected not as good as it happens. Perhaps make it so that based on simply surviving combat you get a morale bonus and then have it be modified with bonuses for kills made and negatives for allies killed and more negatives for damage done to you with some positives for damage dealt to enemy (Actual damage not shields damage). Store that for a single battle then analyze it at the end or even during combat (take damage moral goes down, deal damage moral goes up, enemy destroyed by my guys goes up, mine destroyed goes down).

[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 03 October 2001).]

Re: Just an idea
 

Ok. ignore this one... double post. SO I will just save you the spam by deleting the text. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 03 October 2001).]

Re: Just an idea
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I think it is impossible to have a ship by ship morale rating unless as I read in another thread, a retreat option is added to the tactical battle. The reason being is that if you lose, the ship is destroyed. Very few ships would actually suffer from bad morale. You are either alive or dead. It is probably impossible to even have a fleet morale rating. Well, I mean you can have one, but it would be worthless...never being negative.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>That's why the decrease in morale has to be something like: -5% for ships in the same system as a lost battle, and -2% for ships in the entire empire.
Losing individual ships could say, reduce morale in the sector by 1%. If the ship was Elite, its loss could reduce morale 2% in the sector, and 1% system wide, and if the ship was legendary, morale would drop 3% in the sector, 2% system wide, and 1% empire wide.

That way, fighting a grinding war with heavy losses on both sides would destroy everybody's morale, and your legendary Flagship would have some strategic importance.
For example, destroying two Legendary ships while they are being retrofitted (even if you lose the battle) will still get you a big morale advantage, which you could use to win an evenly matched fleet action.
Racial happiness should probably affect morale, just like it works on planetary happiness.

Re: Just an idea
 

that sounds like a pretty equal way of doing it SJ along with a few other modifiers added in.

Re: Just an idea
 

Excellent, SJ. That sounds like a perfect solution, and incorporating exp. into the mix is brilliant.

The whole key here is to make morale seriously hurt or help an empire. If it just provides a slight advantage or disadvantage it won't have much impact. And of course, the option to turn it off should be there.

Re: Just an idea
 

I also agree with what Menschenfreser said earlier about AI opponets and morale & experience. A human would take advantage of these but there would have to be some changes to get the AI to do the same in these areas as a human would, These ideas are great but we have to watch that a balance is struck between human & AI opponets. If the human player uses it and the AI is so so in these areas we could have a major imbalance of play. Also what about those races that have warrior, berserker, etc traits, I would think that due to their style they would start at a higher morale and experience level because of their trait. Also when they win, levels go up higher, but when they lose maybe an above average drop. On the same hand those that are peaceful or pacifist in nature would have lower levels in these areas as well.

just some ideas mac

Re: Just an idea
 

mac i don't think that a pcifist or peaceful empire should necessarily have a lower morale. They should be slower to loose morale but also slower to gain. Having a lower morale doesn't really make sense to me. On the flip side, the warriors and berserkers. They should be quicker to gain and quicker to loose.

As for the AI maybe they could gain a large increase in morale when winning a battle against a human as opposed to another AI

Re: Just an idea
 

That would probably fall under the AI bonus multiplier (none/low/medium/high).

All you've gotta do is decide on what a reasonable bonus factor is for each level.

Re: Just an idea
 

Chewy, I agree on the lower morale and higher for peaceful & pacifists type races, They would have more of tendancy to lose or gain morale when going to war or losing a battle, especially the pacifist. I would think peaceful would start low but gain faster then pacifist types. I forgot neutrals, hmm have to think on them. In regards to warriors, berserkers, etc, my opinion only, they should start at 1-2 levels higher in beginning due to their racial trait. I'm just concerned that in human vs AI play and with AI not being all to brite sometimes, that an imbalance could happen. I think the ideas are excellent and I'm all for them. If you could discern the difference between AI & human this might help offset any advantage a human would have over AI. We might have to set up some type of system that breaks the traits into seperate areas and assign different morale & experience modifiers for each type. Like
1 peaceful, 2 warrior, berserker, etc, 3 neutrals, 4 pacifists, etc. I'm not a modder so I don't know if this could be done without hard code changes. Like I said, I think the ideas would be excellant additions to the game.

just some ideas mac

Re: Just an idea
 

If I remember correctly in Caesar 2, the AI armies had morale as well, but I am pretty sure it was reset with every new battle that took place, which was not so for the player. That's not a realistic way to go about it in SE4, but what about a natural decay rate or rather increase rate in bad morale for the AI. Something along the lines of the natural anger decrease that is in the game already. That way it would be modable. This certainly should not be the case with Human empires though.

Either that or as mentioned, the bonus. Maybe both. And the reverse should be true that the human empire's morale drops dramatically when the computer destory's its ships.

Another thing, and this pertains mostly to the math that would support all this. I really like the idea that SJ mentioned earlier, where a long war between two empires would grind down morale. In order for this to happen, the plus/minus ratio would have to be on the side of the minus. I guess what I am getting at, is say if you destroy one of your opponent's ships and he destroy's one of yours, both of equal value and without a computer bonus, will your morale go down, or even out?

Just more blah...

Re: Just an idea
 

What a great thread!
Morale is such an important strategic component of real politics & war, and yet almost no strategic games include it!

If any or all of the ideas mentioned so far could be included, that would be great. I especially like the idea that destroying ships with legendary status would affect morale more... destroying key enemy ships (like the Bismark, WWII?) should definitely affect morale. This would greatly increase the importance of precision strikes and sneak attacks through cloaking, etc.

A morale rating should definitely affect the likelyhood of ship mutiny. Whether each ship gets it's own rating (taking into consideration things like shore leave and supply levels) or there is an empire-wide rating doesn't even matter, if the morale is high, why would they mutiny?

The only thing I would really add to the discussion is the concept of "civilian" morale. If a tiny planet/low population planet is captured by an enemy, there should be some degree of change in the empire-wide morale (presumably a negative effect). If a heavily populated planet is captured, there should be a much more significant morale change.

If on the otherhand a planet or system is glassed by an opponent, there should be a very significant change in morale! If 2 billion of your citizens are utterly vaporized in combat, I think that would result in a change in moral. Perhaps this type of genocide would act to increase the morale of the defenders' empire! (incensed by the atrocity?)

Just some thoughts.



------------------
-Jimbob

Re: Just an idea
 

as for glassing planets affecting morale, i think that it should raise morlae. Only because when one planet is glassed it usually means a few others are going to follow bc new systems are usually not as well defended. This should raise morale in the fact that it would give the troops a rally cry or something like that. However, if a homeworld is glassed then morale should be lowered a lot. And if capital facilities are ever put in for system capitals then their glassing should lower morale as well. But that wouldn't happen any time soon.

Re: Just an idea
 

You have a point Chewy on raising morale on planet bashing, but I would like to see where this would or could affect other AI players as far as attitude towards anyone who wipes out a planet, but especially towards one who uses a star destroyer wiping out a system. The exception would be those races who are xenophobic, berserkers, psychotics, and warriors. This would increase their attitude towards you. The more planets/systems you wipe the worse they feel towards you up to the point of declaring war on you Therefore your morale would go up for winning but it would have certain consequences attached forcing you to make decisions such as capture or wipe clean.

Another aspect of this, would be those races including yours that are peaceful or pacifist, that when you glass a planet or how you do it ie; plague, would cause your race morale to drop even if your ship morale goes up, this in turn could escalate tht the more its done, the chances of revolt on your planets go up, more so on any planets that you have captured from the same race as those you made into parking lots. Something on these changes would have to go to hard coding I would think, so unless a lot of the players like the ideas, I don't see it happening....

just some ideas mac


just some ideas mac

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 05 October 2001).]

Re: Just an idea
 

I too think that a morale rating for ships would be a wonderful idea. Morale for planets is already sort of in there as happiness. It goes up or down based on different things that happen. Though an enemy glassing someone else's planet isn't one of those. Losing your own planets will affect happiness in the rest your empire though.

Morale for ships though sounds like it would be a lot of work to implement. What if we could get the experience to act as a variable to defend against crew insurrection or the ability of boarding crews. This wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it might be a lot easier to do, and thus might be more likely to happen. What do you think?

Geoschmo

Re: Just an idea
 

geoshmo, If it can be done that way, i'm for it, SJ earlier in thread had a good idea tying the experience & morale with percentages. The hard part would be to come up with a workable variable so as not to imbalance the game in human vs AI game. The AI, no offense, is so-so at times in using what it is given to use. So a balance would have to be looked at carefully and tested. It sounds good to me,

just some ideas mac

Re: Just an idea
 

i think it would be fine if it were linked to experience. After all the more experienced someone is the more confidence they will have hence a higher morale or at least will be less likely to be affected by things since they've "seen it all" and yeah if exp could affect ship insurection i guess that would be acceptable. But if they can do that, then happiness for planets should effect the PPP success or other intel projects like that too.

Re: Just an idea
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by geoschmo:
I too think that a morale rating for ships would be a wonderful idea. Morale for planets is already sort of in there as happiness. It goes up or down based on different things that happen. Though an enemy glassing someone else's planet isn't one of those. Losing your own planets will affect happiness in the rest your empire though.

Morale for ships though sounds like it would be a lot of work to implement. What if we could get the experience to act as a variable to defend against crew insurrection or the ability of boarding crews. This wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it might be a lot easier to do, and thus might be more likely to happen. What do you think?

Geoschmo<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree completely with you geoschmo. The second important new thing would be that the experience (= morale) can be reduced by events such as lack of supplies, loss of battles in the system, damaged components of the ship.

Re: Just an idea
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by chewy027:
Second, adjustment comes in the intel department. Need to add two intel ops, one for lowering morale of ship and one for lowering morale/exp of the empire as a whole. The empire wide op should be prone to failure however.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
If Experience is being used as morale, we already have an intel project for that. <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Name := Crew Rotation
Description := Through faked Messages, an experienced crew is broken up and reassigned.
Group := Ship Sabotage
Cost := 5000
Type := Ship - Experience Change
Effect Amount := -50<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Geoschmo

Re: Just an idea
 

So lets say we do equivocate experience with morale and it has the ability to decrease as well. Two things that i think need to be adjusted then. One, and in my mind the bigger of the two, would be that since there are already facilities for exp of ships and fleets there needs to be a balancing factor. Either make the facilities less of a exp/morale booster or take the experience rating up to 100% from the 50% it's at now (i think) and redistribute the bonuses gained from the percentages or make it just as easy to loose morale ie many empire wide factors as it is to gain exp/morale from idle facilities. Now as for making this fair between human and computers. Depending on the bonus shosen in the beginning of the game for the AI and the difficulty level there can be a minimum set percentage that the AI empires can drop to say at high bonus and on hard the minimum is 40% That should balance it out a little better.

Second, adjustment comes in the intel department. Need to add two intel ops, one for lowering morale of ship and one for lowering morale/exp of the empire as a whole. The empire wide op should be prone to failure however.

What do you think?

Re: Just an idea
 

then i guess we only need one for empire wide morale/exp http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Just an idea
 

To get morale started, would it be easier to go system morale instead of empire morale? Just looking to see which would be easier to incorporate in a patch. Also what affects are we looking at besides just lowering morale? Are we going to get into say planet rebellions, etc, if morale gets to low, or are we just looking at ships and fleets? Also if a ship is put into a fleet and has a higher morale would this affect the fleet as to raising or in some case lowering in the case of a ship with lower morale or for that matter a number of ships joining a fleet with different morales?

Geo, which would be possible or easier to incorporate morale, ships & fleets or system/empire. Would both be possible or should we just stick with fleets and ships?

just some ideas mac

Re: Just an idea
 

personally i think morale would be limited to just ships and fleets. Since morale would just basically be the exp rating with some modifications that have been proposed in this thread. Happiness would be fine for planets with a few modifications for intel purposes and maybe ground combat.

When i say empire wide i guess i mean every ship being affected in the empire not the planets as well. Since the exp/morale of ships would be different from the happiness of planets. Although i guess the two could be seen as related. But thats why this topic is being discussed, to iron out the bugs http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Just an idea
 

sorry chewy, I thought you meant empire wide type morale for planets. Let me try and clarify this. What your saying is that events would affect all ships within your empire in regard to morale/experience by either a plus or minus depending on what transpires. But what about as I stated before, when you have ships with different morale/experience join a fleet, would this raise or lower the fleet morale?? example only, 5 ships, join fleet, ships total say 10 morale (average), fleet of 3 ships has morale/experience of 5, would this raise the total fleet morale/experience? or would the fleet total be the one used?

just some ideas mac

Re: Just an idea
 

mac i guess the fleet exp/morale would be the average of the ships or however it works already. Since the morale would simply be the exp that is already in place with some modification then i guess however the exp is sorted out now will have to do. However, since there will be more factors affecting it maybe fleet should act as an indicator of the average of the ships in the feet and have no real baring on the performance of the ships. Of course that would make fleet training centers useless. Whatever, i'm just throwing out ideas here. Anyone else have an opinion?

Re: Just an idea
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mac5732:
Geo, which would be possible or easier to incorporate morale, ships & fleets or system/empire. Would both be possible or should we just stick with fleets and ships?
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I don't really know what the differance is as far as what would be harder or easier to implement. It may be to much of a change of for any of this to be done. I am not a programmer.

But I plan on sending Aaron a request about it at some point after we've kicked around the various suggestions some, cause I do think it's a good idea. Don't know if any of it will get done. Don't know what the priorities are at this point for Malfador.

Geo

Re: Just an idea
 

Hmmm...

I agree, planets should just stick with the happiness rating. The change I'd like to see is an effect on intel projects (ie planetary rebellion). Intel success should depend in some way on the happiness rating of the planet. This makes minor attacks like "anarchy Groups" important - you have to soften up the target a little to drive happiness down. Right now it's just a little too easy to get planets to rebel. Does anyone use "anarchy Groups"?

Now, I don't know anything about programming, so maybe I'm asking to have my cake and eat it too, but here are my (not humble enough) opinions on Morale...

- I think morale should be ship based, each ship with it's own morale rating.
- I don't think fleet effects are important. Besides, would your morale improve if you were assigned to the *one* ship that didn't get shore leave? Now if we had leaders, admirals, legendary captains, I'd expect a fleet effect of some sort.
- morale should be a separate value from experience, simply because morale and experience are two different creatures. My fear would be that uninformed players will wonder "why are my ships losing training?!" but never really figure out why they're getting the snot kicked out of their fleets.
- there should definitely be facilities that affect morale. Shore leave has been mentioned... how about giant casino's or resort facilities? Maybe a component like holodeck (also mentioned previously) or lounge. Could shore leave be like mothballing a ship... the crew is away so it sits dead in space during combat?
- perhaps racial attributes like 'happiness' or 'environmental resistance' could act as modifiers to morale. Would it be difficult to introduce a new racial attribute 'morale'?
Emotionless could definitely use some... usefulness. I hope it will be modified to affect morale significantly.
- the things that affect planetary happiness, like planet losses or plague should affect the morale of all ships equally. Likewise wars and battles lost.

Those are the things I'd like introduced. The most important to me is the potential effect on intel projects. There is nothing more anoying than losing a ship with 40% experience (in a very happy empire) to mutiny. What could posses the crew to mutiny when everything is going so well for them?

Just my thoughts

Jimbob

[This message has been edited by jimbob (edited 10 October 2001).]

Re: Just an idea
 

In looking at morale, which I feel is a good idea, we have to be sure that the current fleet and training facilities are still effective or they become excess baggage. There has to be a way like Geo mentioned to use the experience/morale combo without doing away with the facilities. Ideas, the facilities still work as they currently do but in addition, other factors, winning/losing battles, destroying planets, etc should also come into play. SJ's ideas sound good, but the question becomes what do the facilities then become good for. It takes some time to train at the facilities, but you would gain faster in battles etc. making them useless. unless you were at peace, maybe that's it..am i making any sense, its late, i'm half asleep so if think i'm just babbling i apoligize...zzzzzz had rough day

just some ideas mac