Capturing planets, a question of practicality.

[Slick]

Like I said, there are lots of other things that affect happiness. I believe that the happiness.txt applies to all empires, but is overridden by any race specific AI_XXX.txt files. I should have mentioned that. Yes, some AI's have different defaults depending on their demenor.

One other thing I do is put 5% into happiness when setting up a race. Not sure how effective it is, but I also had one of my first games go rioting all over the place and I didn't know what to do. Been adding 5% ever since and that's pretty cheap. Initially you just want to prevent planets from rioting, but if you develop a system that gets your own planets to jubiliant and keeps your planets with alien population from rioting (or also gets them to jubiliant), you will see tremendous benefits to production and construction rates. The percentages can be seen in settings.txt.

Another thing is that when you ferry population around in transports to the right-breathing planets, the population in the transport has a happiness level. I am not sure if it stays locked in from the point they are loaded into the transport or if they can change happiness when on the transport. I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this?

Slick.

[Phoenix-D]

"Like I said, there are lots of other things that affect happiness. I believe that the happiness.txt applies to all empires, but is overridden by any race specific AI_XXX.txt files. I should have mentioned that. Yes, some AI's have different defaults depending on their demenor."

Two different things. One controls the happyness of the population, the other the opinion the AI has toward other players.

Phoenix-D

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by Slick:
[QB] I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this? [QB]

This does work. If you remove the population from the planet completely, by abandoning the planet (but don't scrap the facilities), and then load them back on (you don't have to wait a turn) it resets the planets happiness. Just remember that there has to be a point where the planet is left with a population of zero.

This is usually a pain for high pop worlds though and so is easier to just drop some troops and wait. However, this is a must use tactic if you are playing with an emotionless race.

Whenever an emotionless race conquers a world it freezes the happiness at its current state permanently. I've wanted that bug fixed for a while now but it can be worked around (though it does put a crimp in the playstyle of races like the Borg).

[ February 09, 2003, 20:24: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

[Grandpa Kim]

I was checking out the facilities.txt and found something surprising. Most facilities that affect happiness do pretty much what you expect. IE UPC 1 gives 1% increase in happiness, UPC 2 gives 2%, UPC 3 gives 3%. The Medical Lab (organic) gives only 1% no matter which level you are at! Unless you are worried about plagues, don't bother with this one, use ANY of the others.

[couslee]

maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent. Things that constantly effect the mood of the planet are building facilities, winning battles, or losing them. new treaties, ect... I have read nothing that the setting have a null effect at indifferent. The race =-20 is not combined with the alien race =20 to counter each other. either one or the other applies, not both. I have not fully investigated all the settings to find out what would make it balance at ANY given level. I tend to just put troops on every planet, and my current game is artisian. my planets stay at jubilant, even if i am getting my arse handed to me by an enemy.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
I was checking out the facilities.txt and found something surprising. Most facilities that affect happiness do pretty much what you expect. IE UPC 1 gives 1% increase in happiness, UPC 2 gives 2%, UPC 3 gives 3%. The Medical Lab (organic) gives only 1% no matter which level you are at! Unless you are worried about plagues, don't bother with this one, use ANY of the others.

Yes, I think that is a "gotcha" too. However if you put a Med Lab and a UPC, you get the highest bonus of each! (And the warning that you already have a system-wide facility that does the same thing, which isn't quite true based on the percentages.) Some mods increase Med Lab 2 & 3 to 2% & 2% respectively to address this.

Slick.

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by couslee:
maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent.

I just finished making myself a sphereworld scenario (where every race starts with a fully loaded sphereworld). 'Why is this important?' you may ask.

Well, tis because I had to spend a lot of time filling those damn worlds and that means that 13 races spent a lot of time doing nothing. About 180 turns of nothing. All of the 13 races happines level stalled out at indifferent. This includes a race with neutral happiness, who should have been jubilant at being left alone but weren't.

I tried this a couple times (same scenario for different mods) and each time it was the same.

Happiness levels, whether positive or negative, will move towards indifferent if left alone.

It doesn't seem to make sense, especially after looking through happines.txt, but that's what seems to be the case.

[Slick]

Originally posted by couslee:
maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent. Things that constantly effect the mood of the planet are building facilities, winning battles, or losing them. new treaties, ect... I have read nothing that the setting have a null effect at indifferent. The race =-20 is not combined with the alien race =20 to counter each other. either one or the other applies, not both. I have not fully investigated all the settings to find out what would make it balance at ANY given level. I tend to just put troops on every planet, and my current game is artisian. my planets stay at jubilant, even if i am getting my arse handed to me by an enemy.

I have to agree based on my experience, not on acutal testing however. I would cautiously say that I think there is the tendancy toward "Indifferent" is not quite right, and I can't find any reference to that in the txt files. Maybe it is hardcoded, however. It seems to me based on all the games I have played that all the modifiers add up on a per-planet basis and the sum is added or subtracted from the anger level to give each planet its happiness level. Since the words "anger" and "happiness" are used separately, it might be confusing, but all the numbers are for the single attribute called "anger". Happiness is just a way of displaying your relative anger state in the planet view and in happiness.txt. Then the sum over your whole empire is combined for your "mood" in the empires window.

Slick.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by QuarianRex:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Slick:
[QB] I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this? [QB]

This does work. If you remove the population from the planet completely, by abandoning the planet (but don't scrap the facilities), and then load them back on (you don't have to wait a turn) it resets the planets happiness. Just remember that there has to be a point where the planet is left with a population of zero.

---

No, this doesn't work. IIRC it used too but was patched

[QuarianRex]

Geo,

Try again. I just double checked on a saved game (in case I was halucinaring) and it works in 1.84. The planet went from -100% happiness modifier to +10% (emotionless race).

It works.