Okay it's late and I'm posting topics with odd titles, but what I'm talking about here is Morale. Morale is one of the game mechanics that I keep exploiting. As to why I do it the answer is simple, it's just way too powerful. TL;DR Argument - Morale bonuses or effectiveness should be reduced and/or morale should be capped at 100%. A cap doesn't reduce its effectiveness, but it does limit the amount it can be exploited. Morale is so powerful because: a) it increases your total production by a % after all other modifiers are accounted for. b) there are so many ways to increase in faction-wide. If you've never seen the effects of morale on an established colony, here's an idea based on turn 175 of my recent play-through. This is with nothing being built, so no modifiers from specific infrastructures are applied. See that +1285.2 from morale? That's a 120% increase over my base production of 1071. Note I ditched the robotic factory because even on a rich world a flat 25 production added to the total of 2356.2 is nothing. I'm also playing Draguul so I suffer -20% to morale and still have 120%. Why is my morale so high? There are a number of ways to achieve high morale both on individual colonies and faction-wide. The most prominent ones are: Apply faction-wide (biggest offenders) Neutron Rejuvenation tech: +5% morale & +10% growth per neutronium factionwide. Multiply * 2 if medbay there "Frontier Spirit" culture: +3% morale per parsec from homeworld "Planetary Consciousness" culture: +100% Eco bonus (+10% to +30% morale and growth & +1 to +3 infrastructure based on eco) Apply to single colony Empathic Leaders: +10% morale to colony Spiritual Leaders: +5% to +15% morale to colony In the case above I used: +60% from Neutron Rejuvenation (6 sources), +20% from leader, +40% from Eco 2 (20%) w/ "Planetary Consciousness" (doubled so another 20%), +25% from medbay, -25% from race = 120% morale So the question is, should people be able to be more than 100% happy? Should this cause them to be able to do more than double the work they normally would? Does morale need a complete rework or just a cap? The other question is, are morale boosts, especially faction wide ones, too powerful? Note in my example I didn't take it to the extremes of including anti-matter power plants to boost base production before the morale multiplier, so things can really accelerate beyond what I'm showing here.
Another stout post aRM, I'm jumping in on this one early. First, have you ever seen what actual morale can do in some situations? If you have, you're aware that just as in game, it impacts productivity, power, efficiency, etc. Believe me I personally make sure that it is the first issue addressed when ever I have been sent to a place where my job is to basically reverse a failing situation. So yes Impact in game should be substantial...but there are qualifiers. I play ISG naturally, the way any player would that doesn't tinker as much as you do . As a result I have very seldom been in a situation to enjoy the type of growth and morale that you have shown. So while I agree that the numbers need adjusting, it should not be done in a way that it penalizes bottom feeder empires, (economically speaking) Mmm I think, your numbers need to come down, the average numbers, or rather lower-end numbers don't, they need to stay the same. Anyhow, this is just my first impression, the details on what you post and what needs adjustment? I deffer there to you, as long as the over all issue is addressed in a fair way, I'm cool Edit. By saying I play naturally above, I mean that I don't really "feel" like I'm testing, just reporting on a game that I'm playing for fun.
"Water finds a crack" is the expression the great lead designer, Soren Johnson, and the Civilization team used to describe my concerns. Here is the article I am referencing: https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369 I highly encourage anyone interested in understanding where I am coming from give it a quick read. I actually am one of the people who, once I discover an exploit, "will never be able to play the game again without using it – the knowledge cannot be ignored or forgotten, even if the player wishes otherwise." This is not entirely true, I can actively ignore a abusable mechanism, but then I go looking for the next one. This only stops when all vastly overpowered/abusable mechanisms are toned down to make other approaches more viable. If there are enough strategy gamers that feel this way, and we have to believe there are if Soren and his team addressed it, then we must do everything we can to combat it in ISG. We want players to explore all the games' mechanisms and not get stuck in a loop.
How many no-brainers does this make? For me it is less of an issue if players eventually settle into a loop as long as that loop is not gamey. So someone can come long and experiment to their taste, try different approaches and not be able to find one that has a clear advantage. I already have a situation in ISG that If I see at start, I wont play because I can exploit it every time. I also experimented before settling into a loop. Conflict comes early In ISG. I played with my designs and know the benefits of customizing my ships, everything from using a lower class of shield than available, to weapons etc. When I would find the ship I had already in mind I settled in, every now and then of course there would be an upgraded design or a new class, available or new weapons, so I found other designs where I settled in. But none of them are anything gamey. But to get to the point I don't like exploits either, no matter where they are in ISG, nothing wrong if someone gets into a loop though
I think we are on the same page. I too am fine with people having a set build order or ship design they like to use. While I do make some early tech and culture choices based on the initial lay of the land on the galaxy map, I do tend towards choosing the same ones. Later in the game the decisions get less and less set in stone and instead more adapted to the situation at hand which is perfect. I am referring to the more gamey/exploit loops where the player feels like "If I don't do make choice A and do thing B, I am playing significantly sub-optimally". Right now if I don't focus on morale, I know I am putting myself at a deliberate disadvantage. This can be fun on occasion for roleplaying, but it means there is an imbalance. I am hoping to see morale taken down a notch and other methods of building up your economy/production made more effective instead. The sister thread to this one is the one on leaders and mining. Those effect only a single planet or system and require more investment in time and resources for way less benefit. This is opposite of how they should work and makes them a poor choice to invest in. Things that require more time, investment, upkeep, and defense, in addition to affecting a single location rather than an entire empire should provide more benefits than a faction-wide morale boost that is easy to acquire in comparison. Essentially that is what I am lobbying for.
I see your point more clearly, I tinkered some on this last night. Even with a meh colony, producing about 500 base production, a modest single source of Anti-matter gave me close to a 40% boost. The numbers though, it's going to be tough. Going from 500 to 700 may be o.k., once you start going into the 1000s though it gets out of hand. Edit I focused on this as well, taking advantage of strategic resources where I could. The boost is pace breaking. It should be about a third of the current levels, I would like to see what impact that would have
Thanks a lot for opening this topic for debate, as Morale is really a key concept with a big impact on the game, so we need to get it right. I'm also glad to see that we're finally entering more in the "numbers debate". This is expected and welcome as we'll need to keep adjusting the game's numbers till release so we can achieve a game experience that feels "just right" at the end. I think that probably the worse offender to morale may be the Neutron Rejuvenation (+5% morale per source or +10% if med-bay present), as you mentioned at the top of the list. The other source of imbalance is not directly related with the morale but is intimately related nonetheless in an indirect way, and this is Fusion Power Plants (+1 prod p/POP per source) and Antimatter Powers Plants (+2 prod p/POP per source). Basically, the strategic resource boosts to morale and production. The number of strategic resources can be toned down. Right now it won't be difficult to find sites with +6 or more sources, where these numbers should be more like +1 to +3 perhaps. You should be looking for more sites to exploit these resources, and they should be key. This will be easy to fix. As for the other sources of morale boosts you mention, the space culture perk ones (Frontier Spirit +3% morale per parsec from homeworld, an early perk - toned down from +5 in this last version) and the Planetary Consciousness (relatively late perk), we'll keep assessing those to see how much do they really contribute to the overall inballance. Personaly, I think the culture perks should be quite powerful so that picking one should really make a difference, almost like playing the game in a different way. So, if a perk is considered too strong perhaps it doesn't mean that it needs to be toned down but rather the sister perk that needs to be buffed. As for leaders, we've toned down the Emphatic trait and the Spiritual Leader secondary skill in the past and we may need to revisit that. So, I propose we attack the morale issue step by step. For the time being we could start by reducing the number of available strategic resources per site. Then, we'll assess again and see what else may need to be adjusted. What do you think?
You motivated me to examine the impact of strategic resources much closer than I had before aRM, I want to share my thoughts with you. I agree that strategic resources can lead to run-away growth quickly. The quickest way to adjust this would be to reduce the morale and productivity boosts but there are other factors at play as well. Currently it seems that the morale boosting applications of strategic resources are implemented whereas the more weaponized choices are not implemented yet. Once all options are available the player will need to consider that as well so there may be an overall impact here as a result of this. But why not also use the preexisting game mechanics to increase the cost of these exploits? I don’t mean that from a numbers perspective, but rather maintenance through freighters. Currently only asteroid mines require freighters. Adam reasoned that an asteroid mine would require freighters for the transport of bulk cargo but strategic resources (ie. Antimatter) could be transported in suitcase sized shipments and therefore would not need freighters. OK but… How do you know that suitcase of antimatter doesn’t need to be stored in a containment field the size of a warehouse? What about the fact that outposts are not colonies and would require a steady supply chain of material, goods and people to operate? Why not then simplify and streamline the freighter mechanic so that all outposts require freighters to operate? This would have the added benefit of actually giving as a running cost for these resources (the SSP consumed by the freighter) and reduce somewhat the motivation to spam outposts and create gamey situations. We could even explore treating the Strategic resources as an exploit, meaning that the morale boost could be dedicated to single planet rather than a galaxy wide benefit. Basically I agree with aRM and believe a reduction in the morale benefit of strategic resources is a must, however, it is not the only option available in order to achieve a better balance here. I think that is the correct approach, start there and we can assess the impact first before any other action is considered
Good point. That needs to be taken into account, as well. I'll give this a thought when the exploitation mechanics are revisited. Agreed.
I agree this is the correct approach. I used to joke around when a game tried to hit too many variable at once and they end up overcompensating, thus nerfimg something to the ground or buffing it into space. I called it Blizzard Balance as it seems to be Blizzard's MO. Causing wide swinging levels of balance and slowly getting to the middle they were looking for. Addressing balance point by point (and thus variable by variable) is the wise course of action, sometimes these things can have a rapidly compounding effect or trickle down to other systems that are not immediately apparent.
I'm all for subtle changes. I don't know exactly what the game's intended feel/pacing is, which is why I was reluctant to offer a lot of specific solutions. Instead I hoped to point out some issues and create a discussion around it. It looks like that worked. In most cases I found strategic resources easy to come by, and it is true that a lot of my powerhouse production engines have been driven by them. Anti-matter was most powerful, than probably Neutronium (using morale), then Helium-3 (which is less powerful, but easyish to find 10+ of around). Limiting the numbers of these available in the galaxy will be a good starting point. I also think Chris' suggestion for freighters, in addition to some nerfs, is not a bad idea at all. Another suggestion I had in the past was for anti-matter power plants to be built on planets rather than a global automatic boost, and for these to potentially take 2 building slots. Perhaps if more of these high power abilities like this required building slots per colony there would be more of a decision to be made. Remember these stack with infrastructure bonuses like the +100% production for ship construction. So once morale benefits are applies to your total, you then multiply that by these bonuses. This is how titans can be built in a couple turns currently.
This is certainly an idea worth exploring and I can see where this could be handy to increase the choice spectrum and make decisions more interesting, especially on underdeveloped colonies. And we could even put those building slots to good use with fusion power plants taking 1 BS and Antimatter ones taking 2, for example. Of course, every decision has an impact on everything else, so I suggest we proceed cautiously. Of course, nothing stops us from trying, which is probably the only way to find out, and we can always revert at any time The reason the power plants (fusion and antimatter) work the way they do now, at empire level rather than local, has to do with our action plan to reduce colony management micro, which is one of the, let's say, least acomplished characteristics of MoO2, to put it mildly I was not too sure back then and I'm not too sure now if allowing players to build power plants locally (fusion and antimatter ones) where they want, may or not contribute to too much micro, or at least starting moving the scale in that direction. Having certain buildings take more than 1 BS is also an important move to think carefully (as of now every building takes 1 slot), as you have to account for the possibility of having people scrapping buildings in turn so they may build that antimatter plant everywhere they wish (or to accomodate that new special building requiring 2 or 3 BS). So, all things considered I thought putting the plants at the empire-level, and keeping all buildings taking 1 BS was perhaps the best call. However, the current indication by your reports is that micro seems to be currently at bay. So, maybe we can get away with it. But, we always have to be on the lookout.
Thanks for explaining the reasoning behind the decision to make those empire-wide. I understand now that the main desire was to limit micromanagement and I agree that they do accomplish that goal as currently designed. The simplest solution is clearly to try reducing their numbers and see how it feels. Now, to elaborate in case you are interested in my line of thought or in potential changes to how those work: My basis for considering making them buildings was that they were in the same vein as the robotic factory and deep core mine. The number of available buildings are currently so limited that nearly every planet will have both of these. In some cases I later scrap the robotic factory because in colonies with 2000+ production as shown in my screenshot, the flat bonus from a robotic factory becomes so trivial it isn't worth the building slot. A med-bay or cloning center is generally way more useful and the deep-core mine remains viable throughout. One alternate approach might be to allow a player to upgrade an existing robotic factory to a helium-3 or anti-matter plant. Players would be forced to keep their robotic factory and upgrade it a better version. A planet would be allowed 1 robotic factory upgraded to either helium-3 or anti-matter. This would prevent exploiting both on a planet. It would also prevent the benefits from being felt everywhere the instant you research the tech. Upgrading would take some time to retrofit the factory. Just knowing how to do something doesn't mean your people have put the effort in to build it. The planet's production would be offline temporarily with the benefit of having a huge production boost once completed. You could also associate a maintenance cost with it. Higher for anti-matter of course, perhaps because safety procedures require more delicate handling of it so the colony doesn't get blown up. With some stipulations like these, the current benefits might be able to survive unchanged or with only slight toning down. EDIT: Neutronium Rejuvenation could be made into a building that upgrades the med-bay or cloning center in a similar manner. Upgrading to it causes you to lose the bonus of one of the other in this case though. Which is a bigger loss than the robotic factory. Hmm, I'm sure this could be figured out. As I said, just an idea of another approach, but if it's too radical departure from your envisioned design I understand completely. I just felt like sharing.
