[dogscoff]

Lifepods would be particularly cool if SE took a crew's morale into consideration.In fact morale would be an excellent addition:

Each ship could have a morale rating, much like a planet's happiness rating. When a ship is built, it's initial morale would be based on the happiness of the planet/ spaceyard which built it.

A ship with good morale would benefit from small combat bonuses and a slight reduction in maintenence & supply usage (since a happy crew is more efficient).

Poor morale would increase the chances of a crew insurrection suceeding and even make spontaneous mutiny possible. Maintenance, supply usage and performance would all get worse.

Things to improve a ship's morale:
-Battle victories
-shore leave (parking in orbit around a friendly planet for >1 turn.)
-certain empire events (treaties etc)
-training facilities and special "morale boosting" facilities.
-having escape pods on the ship (unless you are playing a warrior race, who might see escape pods as cowardly)
-joining a high-morale fleet

Things to reduce a ship's morale:
-Too long in space without shore leave. (although special components should be available to counter this.)
-Low on supplies
-Committing genocide / destroying unarmed ships/ destroying escape pods. (except for genocidal/ emotionless races)
-Special "anti-morale" intel ops and psychic weapons.
-taking damage in battle (espcially crew quarters, bridge or life support)
-Seeing friendly ships destroyed in battle.
-empire events
-joining a low-morale fleet

Do you think it's worth suggesting this to MM? Maybe it could be added to SE4 one day.

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"