Combat Vec Morale Theory

[Sirbomber]

I first noticed this when I was playing multiplayer. Anyways, I sent all my combat vecs out and morale dropped from 99 to 0 very quickly. I brought 32 lynx back and it went back up 99! Curious, I tested this out on Eden Starship. It worked the same, but at a slower rate. Anyways, I could be wrong, but this is what I've come up with:

-Having friendly combat vehicles at your colony boosts morale.
 *Don't know if allied vehicles help. Just making sure you knew I didn't mean ENEMY vehicles.  

-Sending all combat vehicles away, leaving your colony unprotected, drastically hurts morale, mostly based on the distance your vehicles are from your base.

-The effect on morale changes based on the number of enemy combat vehicles.
  *In multiplayer, morale quickly dropped from 99 to 0. I'm guessing this is due to the massive army of laser lynx I had to deal with, whereas in Eden Starship, morale increased/decreased slowly due to the small Plymouth army.

-This only seems to take effect if you have combat vehicles and/or a large quantity of them. Also, it only seems to take effect if your vehicles are a long distance from your colony. (a few miles shouldn't hurt, halfway across the world will). Interestingly, the morale boost only seems to take place if the vehicles are actually IN your colony.

Of course, it could all just be coincidences, or something I missed entirely, but for now, I tell everyone about it. So, you all go and prove me right or wrong I guess. Just like real scientists!

[Highlander]

I think anyone who loves to crush the computer before he leaves New Terra has experienced this.

However, when I have done this and morale has dropped, I never send my vehicles back to my base. I always do some things around the base, and soon morale is back up to the 90's.

In several cases I never have combat vehicles in, or close to my base through-out the game.

So, I would perhaps think that morale drops because the player don't have the window focus on his own base, but rather on the enemy's base. This thesis I would say is valuable because:

1) You have to supervise you army when attacking enemy base (i.e. focusing on enemy's base), and morale suddenly drops.

2) Once you get back to your colony to fix things, morale will rise quite quickly.

This might be a designed effect, in order to make it tougher to beat the computer in singleplayer.



Might just be me who's making things up, early sunday morning after a rough saturday night, but I'll leave it up to you to think about it.

[Hooman]

Well, I don't know about simply moving vehicles away from your base, but if you destroy certain enemy buildings, it will hurt your morale. If you destroy things like agridomes and residences, it's bad for you.

[Freeza-CII]

well it would make sence that if there are no troops at home the people will be sad.  This could only be found out by just tests and people poking through the code to see.  Easy way to solve this is to play with morale steady.

[Betaray]

well when I attack somone in the coloney games, after the extended campain where I didn't micrmanage my coloney, I always come back to see that my residences are overfilled, my food is depleating, and normally one or more buildings are disable for lack of scientists

so I think its just because you stoped building and training

[Tellaris]

Trick to morale, is just about everything affects it.   From combat to simply disabled structures (biggie)
A single disabled structure can bring morale down to 0 all by itself actually.

[Hooman]

Well in case people were curious what I've been up to....

I've taken a look at morale code before, and I've gone back to take another look at it again. I see no code that would support this idea. However the lack of a code sighting doesn't mean these unidentified coded objects (UCOs) don't exist.  :ph34r:

On another note, I've seen code to handle every thing that affects morale that I know about. Most of it is all in one place. Anything relating to the status of your colony is all in one big function. Killing enemy buildings is seperate I believe. If there is code that is based on the location of your units, it would probably also be seperate though.

Anyways, if you have a saved game where this morale effect can be duplicated, I can certainly track down the cause of the change. That's not such a hard task to perform. (But perhaps a bit tedious)
 

[Leviathan]

I would like to know how the morale.txt works and what each value means and does.

If you kill enemy vec facs your morale goes up but if u kill  enemy nurserys it goes down.

[Highlander]

There were a thread about which enemy structures hurt your moral etc.

At least I remember seeing one I believe. Might be useful for you Hooman..
 

[Hooman]

I think I previously posted which building affect morale. I can't seem to find the thread though.

Anyways, the buildings that hurt morale to kill (ENEMY_GOOD_DIES) are as follows:
Nursery
Medical Center
Residence
Advanced Residence
Reinforced Residence

The following buildings have no effect on morale:
Advanced Lab

Everything else will help your morale if you kill it. (ENEMY_BAD_DIES)

If you want to check into this yourself, 0044FD00 is the address of the function that handles this stuff.
 

[Freeza-CII]

I you kill a Adv. Lab and it takes out the building that are bad for you to kill, say 3 residences.  Would that count againist you.

[BlackBox]

I'd imagine so. Since it *is* a unit 'death'. (of good structures)

I'd doubt that sending vehicles away in itself would cause your morale to drop. Like stated before, it's probably because you no longer tend to your base as much, or because you are killing enemy "good" structures.

[Leviathan]

Can we start a wiki page for edited the moreale.txt please.