Morale of Ships

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LienRag
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Morale of Ships

#1 Post by LienRag »

/Title edited by Oberlus to make clear this thread refers to ships/


I know that there is no Morale mechanism in place right now (except for the somehow similar but not exactly identical Happiness) and I think that implementing a Morale mechanism for combat resolution has been rejected.

Especially now that Species relations to Owner's Empire are coming into play, wouldn't Morale be a way to make that work ?

I don't follow closely the discussions on how Species relation to Empires are going to work, but one way or another it's possible to derive a base "morale" value for all ships piloted by one specie.

On this base Morale value we can add modifiers for geographic position (how far from Homeworld of the specie, how far from nearest drydock, proximity of some specials or buildings, proximity of enemy strongholds, having no way out without enemy forces,...), history (how much damage the ship took in recent turns, how much allied ships he watched be destroyed,...), Fleet composition (alone or with bigger ships, in the same fleet that species with higher Morale, in the same fleet than hated species,...), leaders, internal parts ("Computer-Simulated Bard"), ratio Armor/MaximumEnemyDamage, or whatever¹.

Consequences of Morale levels, from higher Morale to lower could be :

- Speed and/or Damage bonus, or even increasing the number of fighters launched at once
- Fuel bonus (the equipage heartily accepts rationing, which limits consumption of fuel for life-support parts)
- Everything normal
- Small speed reduction outside of Supply
- Heavy speed reduction in enemy territory
- The ship will refuse to go outside supply if it hasn't enough fuel to come back into supply
- Ship will lose morale each turn in enemy territory (yes it could snowball)
- Ship will lose morale each turn out of supply
- Ship will refuse Aggressive stance
- Ship will refuse to move into enemy-occupied territory
- Ship will refuse move orders except in direction to its Homeworld
- Ship will refuse all move orders


We can also have the ultimate loss of morale be mutiny, but because of the snowballing effect of losing morale each turn, it has to be balanced (let's say it can occur only when Base Morale reaches a low limit, not only when Ship morale is zero).

¹ All this can be done in a second iteration of the Morale mechanism, it's possible to only use the Base Morale Value to begin with.

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labgnome
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Re: Morale

#2 Post by labgnome »

I don't know that you will get much support for this, there was previous discussion and people didn't seem to like the idea of tracking "happiness" (IE: morale) for ships, as well as there not being a clear consensus as to weather or not we should even loose ships from lack of upkeep.
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Oberlus
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Re: Morale of Ships

#3 Post by Oberlus »

I think it is unlikely we ever get differentiated morale meters for each ship.
Assuming we ever get such kind of meter for each species (probably here a meter of species-to-own-empire), the value of that meter could be tied to each ship with that species pilots. Alternatively, the ship could be tied to the planet in which it was built and the morale of the ship could be the happiness/stability of that planet.

Then, the effects for ships could be something like these (KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid):
  • High morale: One pilot level bonus.
  • Normal morale: No effects.
  • Low morale: One pilot level malus.
  • Zero morale: Ship becomes rogue or join enemy forces*.
* Join enemy forces only if we keep track of species-empires relations.


Selected related threads:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11309
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11316

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swaq
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Re: Morale of Ships

#4 Post by swaq »

I hate it.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Morale of Ships

#5 Post by Krikkitone »

What I could see
Overall fleet morale...depends on spending influence/fleet ship cost.. this way if ships defect it gets easier to keep existing ones loyal
+
species-empire relation number

gives a morale for all ships of a species in your empire

Then the result of morale would be dependent on circumstances

Fleeing/defecting..depends on morale with increased chance if out of supply or in combat

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LienRag
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Re: Morale of Ships

#6 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 9:36 am I think it is unlikely we ever get differentiated morale meters for each ship.
Assuming we ever get such kind of meter for each species (probably here a meter of species-to-own-empire), the value of that meter could be tied to each ship with that species pilots. Alternatively, the ship could be tied to the planet in which it was built and the morale of the ship could be the happiness/stability of that planet.
As I wrote, having a specific meter for each ship's morale would be a good thing imho, but is not necessary. The Specie-to-own-empire meter is also a possibility.

Note that tying the ship to its planet is storing the same amount of data than keeping track of it's specific morale value.

I do like Krikkitone's proposal too as an intermediate solution :
Krikkitone wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 4:55 pm What I could see
Overall fleet morale...depends on spending influence/fleet ship cost.. this way if ships defect it gets easier to keep existing ones loyal
+
species-empire relation number

gives a morale for all ships of a species in your empire

Then the result of morale would be dependent on circumstances

Fleeing/defecting..depends on morale with increased chance if out of supply or in combat

Oberlus wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 9:36 am Then, the effects for ships could be something like these (KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid):
  • High morale: One pilot level bonus.
  • Normal morale: No effects.
  • Low morale: One pilot level malus.
  • Zero morale: Ship becomes rogue or join enemy forces*.
I really think that having morale effects tied to supply is the way to go even if limiting the effects to four as you propose; it's more immersive (demoralized troops refusing to enter enemy territory) and adds strategic diversity as one would need to combine operations between fleet with different morale levels - and also offer more varied and interesting ways of counter-attacking, and/or combine Influence and military actions: it's much more fun to have an Influence project suddenly demoralizing enemy troops and making half of them refusing to pursue their venture into your territory than to just have some of the ships make less damage.

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Re: Morale of Ships

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

Not enough time. Some superficial thoughts. Some of these were mentioned in the linked discussions, so going in circles.
  • supply aligned morale - out-of-supply combat needs rather a buff than a nerf
  • morale per ship - we probably do not want to micromanage morale of hundreds of ships
  • defecting ships - potentially a devastating effect, do all ships defect at once? is it random? What do i have to do to not loose my most important ships
  • fail to pay influence upkeep causes low morale and small effects of low morale - i rather have my whole empire at full production and suffer the morale effects
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