Just an idea

[geoschmo]

quote:

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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.

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If Experience is being used as morale, we already have an intel project for that.

quote:

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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

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Geoschmo

[chewy027]

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?

[chewy027]

then i guess we only need one for empire wide morale/exp

[mac5732]

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

[chewy027]

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

[mac5732]

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

[chewy027]

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?

[geoschmo]

quote:

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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

[jimbob]

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).]

[mac5732]

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