Happiness...driving me to dispair

[Q]

Well I am far from completely understanding all about the happiness in SE IV, but I believe the starting point for a new colony is "happy" and I have never seen an influence of the planet condition.
Also I am very uncertain which events are acting only on one planet, which on a system and which on the entire empire. E.g. I believe the loss of population decreases the happiness of all colonies in the system where it happened.

[Gandalph]

On PBW, losing colonies has an empire wide effect on happiness and I beleive that's the way it should be. If an alien race starts killing off millions of people, the general population is not going to be to thrilled with their leaders lack of protection.

[tbontob]

Hmmmmmm.....
I don't think I am making myself very clear.

This is what I think is happening in the game...
1) The computer assigns a base "happiness" depending upon certain factors (which is what I want to know). I believe climate to be one of them.
2) The computer modifies this base to reflect the players actions. So, if population is being killed off, then the planets happiness will be affect by 1 point per million killed. Empire-wide happiness and-system wide happiness are not affected in this case.

Now, let us say we start a new game...

Our home planet is given a starting "happiness" by the computer.

This starting happiness (1 above) is modified by the game depending upon what the players do (2 above). The factors that determine what modifies the happiness in later turns (2 above) is shown in my spreadsheet which was obtained from "Happiness.txt" on the SE4 Gold CD.

So, what I would like to know...is how is the base determined (1 above). Everything else follows once that is determined (2 above)

[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

[gravey101]

I always thought the natural decrease was a tendancy to become unhappy over time. Isn't this what drives the planet to indifferent on turn 3 with no other events ?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by gravey101:
I always thought the natural decrease was a tendancy to become unhappy over time. Isn't this what drives the planet to indifferent on turn 3 with no other events ?

Not if the values in the text file are consistant. Negative numbers make your population happy, and positive ones make your population unhappy. The natural decrease is a negative number, hence it should make you happy. It's almost like there is another hard code number that is atually a gradual increase that is being factored by the natural decrease. Because as I said you can raise your races happiness characteristic and cause the indifferent stage to be delayed. Noramlly it takes three turns, but when I raised happiness to 5% it takes 7 or 8 turns to turn indifferent.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

BING! Lightbulb moment!

The natural decrease is exactly that, a decrease. It is subtracted from your current happiness level, instead of being added like all the other happiness factors. So a negative number for natural decrease makes populations unhappy(because subtacting a negative is adding), while a negative number for everything else makes your populations happy (because adding a negative is subtracting). Kind of a goofy way to do it. But it reminds me of the combat to hit defense values that were so confusing to me before too.

Thanks for triggering taht little thought process Gravey.

Geoschmo

[ August 12, 2002, 18:59: Message edited by: geoschmo ]