More on Morale bugs (or features Ha-Ha!)

from Stardock Forums
Another BUG (or feature Ha-Ha!) or maybe a brilliant design decision, dunno which, so I post it here:

Real Game example:

Solar system. Three planets in it. Two are class 20 and 24. Third one is class 18. The first two have morale of 100%. The third one has morale of 12%. I am out of money, I watch morale continue to drop. I am building, say Entertainment Net there, I have 100% of planet income set to propaganda. Not enough. THEN THE WHOLE STAR SYSTEM (including the two planets with 100% morale) defects to I-League! WTF is this Sh#$& ??
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I think that your tax rate is set too high.. Lower it.. and it will increase the moral..

its not a bug..

The more ppl that are on the planet the lower the moral will be unless you have things built to compensate ..

Hope this helps you. :)
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I know about tax rate, fixing morale on a planet is NOT impossible. The problem is that if one, usually the lowest class planet is uhappy the whole star system defects even if the rest of the planets in that system are very, very happy. This makes no sense whatsoever. Either low morale on one planet should negatively affect morale on others in the same star system and it should be reflected or vice versa the good morale on other planets should contribute to the improvement of morale on the unhappy one. Otherwise this stuff makes no sense.
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Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yuo are forgetting two aspects, cultural influence from the other allien race and what kind of level are you in, I mean like are you civilization evil, good, neutral, etc. The I-league tends to increase their cultural influence rather quickly and overcomes many of your planets.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
If my understanding is correct, the morale/influence mechanics work something like this:

I-League - high influence. OK.
My empire - much lower influence. OK.

Scenario 1:
My star system happy (100%) - it stays put, does not defect to I-League.

Scenario 2:
My star system very unhappy (average morale on all planets in the system is lower than, say 20%). OK - very good chance that the star system will defect to I-League.

BUT, the problem I am describing is that my the average morale in the star system is 100+100+12/3=73%. Still the system defects to I-League. Makes no sense.
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Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I completely agree that this is counterintuitive, but the game mechanics sort of demand it. There is no provision for splitting ownership of a solar system (and probably shouldn't be -- it would complicate things a lot!) So it would appear that the most logical thing to do would be to "average" morale in some fashion. But there are too many ways to crank out the cheese and abuse any kind of averaging system.

For example, if all the game does is look at each planet's morale and take the mean, then you can get away with horrendous morale on an overpopulated PQ 23 planet with no morale improvements if you have a happy PQ 15 planet in the same system with 1 million people on it -- a much cheaper long term morale booster than developing the PQ 15 planet fully and buying morale improvements for both.

On the other hand, you could take a weighted average based on population. But let's say you had the same two planets, at PQ 23 and PQ 15. Let's also say that you've got a more normal population distribution -- maybe 14 billion on the big one and less than a billion on the smaller. You could get away with virtually ignoring any kind of morale improvements for the smaller planet, because its population is so much smaller.

(Actually, the above leads me to ask whether anyone knows how your approval rating is calculated. Is it just a mean of the morale on each planet regardless of population?)

Working with the existing mechanics, you could require that systems with multiple planets received "extra" chances for their influence checks. So a system with two planets might have to fail three checks instead of two before flipping. However, this would only give the player a little bit more time to address the underlying morale/influence problem, without which flipping would still be inevitable in the situation originally described. (:(
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
This works both ways, though. I can flip the A.I. systems to my empire even if they have 100% moral. It's just a matter of having enough influence in the sector.

This may be a point of confusion. I'm not sure if moral plays all that big of a part in a star system flipping.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
From my limited experience, I'd say that influence has nothing to do with I-League rebelions, which are what happens when any star system is left for too long with an unhappy face next to it (indicating it is in a state of rebelion).

A star system falling under influence of a rival empire shows a different symbol. (A skull and cross bones I think...)

I think it may well be weighted by population, so if the unhappy planet has a higher pop than the two okay planets (usually the case anyway, since the higher the pop, the more likely to be unhappy, given equal social improvements.)

My latest game was on a huge map, and population got quite big towards the end. Found myself lowering taxes progressively in the last part of the game, although in the end a spate of galactic wonders meant I had an average empire moral of 99% by the end of the game!