[geoschmo]

I do not believe that planetary conditions have any effect on happiness. It is not listed anywhere and in experiments it does not seem to be occuring. You can start several games and the homewolrd conditions will vary, but as Q says the pop always starts out happy. Conditions do effect reproduction rates though.

That being said there are some things going on that are not obvious from the happiness.txt file. Because if the only things affecting happiness were listed in the text file then if you had a defualt race they should start and stay happy forever, unless something happens that is listed in the file. That is not the case. A default race will start happy and go to indiferent on turn 3 every time if you don't build any ships in the first two turns.

You can raise your empires happines characteristic and delay the change to indiferent, and I assume if you raise it high enough you may be able to get your empire to go jubilant without doing anything.

What's wierd is there is supposed to be a natural decrease over time that should make your race happier, it's listed in teh text file, but that doesn't seem to be working.

As far as a base, I guess it would be in the range of happy, cause that's how your race always starts.

Geoschmo