Happiness—some ideas for modifiers

[MatGB]

K, we're beginning to settle on a main use for happiness based around ability do do things like repair, colonise, etc. I know whatever we come up with is still a stopgap until allegiance and species loyalties are worked on, but I'm quite liking what we have so far.

Some thoughts have occurred: we need some stuff that improves things in various ways. I added a bonus to the Gaia special and I like that preferred focus does things, but I think we could do with stuff that can speed up growth of it (or slow it down).

Specific ideas:

• if you liberate a planet from a Concentration Camp and you yourself aren't using any Camps, then there should be a bonus of some kind, possibly even immediately jumping happiness to something like 10 (or max if that's lowed).
• If you're in supply of one or more growth specials active for your species type, then you go up an additional +1 per turn (or we have different specials for this).

Amongst other things we could do with some easy-for-the-AI-to-use effects to counteract things like the xenophobic malus (which I'm really happy with overall).

One other thing: there are a bunch of happiness icons in the art folder, can some of them be assigned to specific values? I'd suggest 0 or below, 1-4, 5-9 and 10+ for the thresholds, if the art's there giving visual queues would be useful.

[AndrewW]

Could also be some building to improve this. Theater or whatever.

[Bromstarzan]

Are there any thoughts of raising happiness via true actions (liberation of concentration camps, theatre buildings etc) vs propaganda machinery? And if propaganda breaks down (lack of local intelligence), you'll have a very unhappy population...

Sounds very complicated, yes. Sorry, just got carried away...

I like your initial thoughts MatGB!

[dbenage-cx]

if you liberate a planet from a Concentration Camp and you yourself aren't using any Camps, then there should be a bonus of some kind, possibly even immediately jumping happiness to something like 10 (or max if that's lowed).

Think they should get an increase regardless if there are other camps in use, but also a smaller bonus for all planets if there are none in the empire. e.g.
* On liberation, +current happiness (maybe also +2 target/max). Never for original building creator though.
* A new tech with prereqs Conc.Camp and another(Gravitic Arch.?). Grants +target happiness when no Conc.Camp exist in empire.

If you're in supply of one or more growth specials active for your species type, then you go up an additional +1 per turn (or we have different specials for this).

Growth specials are pretty powerful as-is imho (though organic could use an offset to robo/lith getting a +prod).
I'd vote for new specials that each apply to multiple metabolisms.

Amongst other things we could do with some easy-for-the-AI-to-use effects to counteract things like the xenophobic malus (which I'm really happy with overall).

Easiest for AI? Maybe just a tech decreasing happiness loss (within the XENOPHOBIC_SELF macro)

Code: Select all

happiness = value - ((...) * tech value)

. Not very elegant and should be superseded down the road.

Could also be some building to improve this. Theater or whatever.

Every time I think up a building proposal to expand on this, it seems too cumbersome on the AI for simple inclusion, or breaks into micromanagement. Though I'd suggest any cultural effects be deferred for allegiance/loyalty work, Volp music might drive the Eaxaw into cannibalism.


Could add a handful of techs branched off of the lonely Empire Intelligence Agency for social conditioning, maybe a preview towards propaganda (no meter, just minor effects).

Perhaps give some popular mid/late game techs a +target happiness and also a malus for rate.
Some of this could be tied to certain events e.g. A happiness malus field that spawns due to starlane bore, nova bomb, etc.
Later techs could further reduce rate increases (-20% per Dark Ray upgrade).

[Vezzra]

If you're in supply of one or more growth specials active for your species type, then you go up an additional +1 per turn (or we have different specials for this).

Hm, I think I too would prefer different specials for this. Aside from that, what do you mean by "additional +1 per turn"? Up to what max, or indefinitely? The latter would be a bit overpowered IMO...?

[Vezzra]

Volp music might drive the Eaxaw into cannibalism.

Yeah for Vogon poetry! Maybe as sophisticated form of WMD?

[MatGB]

I was thinking up to max, basically want some methods on changing rate of change instead of target.

[Geoff the Medio]

There is a variety of empire data tracked that is intended for use in forming species opinions of empires, and which can be used for planet happiness calculation purposes. See

https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... .cpp#L1362
https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... .cpp#L1401

There are some other values with skeletons, but no actual meaningful result returned yet, like

https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... .cpp#L1920

Parsing should be mostly implemented, which might be useful to check for the expected format / parameters...

https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... er.cpp#L21

[Vezzra]

Considering we're talking about some stop-gap solutions I think we should keep it as simple as possible.