Happiness System for the new Population Update

[AmeriChris]

I suggest a happiness value that effects the population growth of a station or colony. High happiness would increase growth while low happiness would decrease it. Having negative happiness would even decrease your population or possibly defect your citizens to another faction. Proper planning would make a colony self satisfying so that you don't need to babysit established colonies but new ones would require more attention. You could also call this value "Faction Approval".

I think there are a few ways you could increase the happiness of your population.
1. Missions: Your citizens will want you to help them if you're to rule over them. They might request an amount of a resource or ask you to destroy a nearby pirate station. In addition to a temporary boost in happiness, completing quests will reward you with money and resources. This method would be good for establishing a new colony, or curbing influence from a competing faction.

2. Throwing money at them: The fastest but most expensive way of increasing happiness is just donating a bunch of credits to your citizens. This is a quick and dirty method but it will quickly drain you bank account.

3. Luxuries: Special resources that sustain your colony but also increase happiness. Luxuries are exclusive to the kind of planet that produces them and a variety of luxuries will raise happiness faster than the natural luxuries of their home planet. This will encourage a trade route between the planets in your system which can of course be attacked by pirates, rival factions, etc.

4. Decorations: Statues, Lights, Trees, and more. I don't know how this would be implemented, but some way to entertain your colonists would be nice.

5. Propoganda: Systems with high happiness and population will produce propoganda after filling all living spaces. Propoganda is a resource that can be used to fuel a device that broadcasts influence to nearby colonies. This can be a way to generate hapiness in your own colonies or nonviolently influence the loyalty of a rival faction's colonies.

Of course there would also be ways of losing happiness like starving your population or depriving them of medical services.

What do you all think? Would you like to see a happiness system in Starmade? Is there anything you would do differently? Or do you think this all just overcomplicating a minor part of the game? Please share your thoughts below~!

 

[EricBlank]

Good thoughts, all of them. Can't think of much to add right now, and you're right an approval rating or happiness is almost necessary in any city/colony simulation.

You're right counting decorations would be difficult, as much so as defining living/work spaces in general.

It will totally look like the devs are ripping off Stellaris with both this and mimicing their Galaxy distribution lol

 

[Crimson-Artist]

i would also make base happiness on the size of the designated living areas. The larger the living area per citizen the more unhappiness they will be willing to tolerate.

Hell you could even add a mechanic that increases the passive income based on the quality of the materials that touch the living area blocks. A room made from Advanced Armor should raise the rent far more than a room made of stone or dirt blocks.

 

[Winterhome]

i would also make base happiness on the size of the designated living areas. The larger the living area per citizen the more unhappiness they will be willing to tolerate.

Hell you could even add a mechanic that increases the passive income based on the quality of the materials that touch the living area blocks. A room made from Advanced Armor should raise the rent far more than a room made of stone or dirt blocks.

Perhaps furniture blocks, decorative and colorful blocks, and empty air blocks provide room quality, with room quality starting at a negative and "unpleasant" utilitarian blocks adding negative points?

What qualify as pleasant and unpleasant block types could be configured on a per-faction basis.

 

[Ckeeze]

Not shure if we need this specificly but some sort of mechanic tackling the same issues that will arise will be necessary. All in all with some concideration and minor changes i can see this work.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Great idea! This reminds me of faction points.

I see education is not on your list. This could provide both happiness and sadness, depending on the education they receive. ;-)
Probably a bit out there for a game. I it could be useful in training crew (pilots, cammand, engineers, medical, even teachers/trainers etc)
Or it could be simpler using a metric or scale to indicate the cleverness or usefulness of an NPC.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

I have been playing dragon quest builders 2, and i love a lot about that game. You build certain rooms, and those make the population happier.

I think that this might have been the solution this game needed from the beginning: instead of reactor chambers special rooms with equipment and the crew to operate them.

Now imagine if a happy crew gave defense and damage bonuses to the ship + repairing damage! That would turn the balance overnight and make roleplay ships more dangerous than pvp ships.

Everyone gets a private state room: +2% damage, shields, and armor. Ship has a stocked cafeteria? add another +2% to those states and a 10% repair ever 10 minutes. Ship has a lounge? add another 2% and a 10% speed buff. Lounge has dancing twilek? even more % buffs. Lounge has a twilek AND a Gunian? 50% buffs to everything. Having npcs that move around and do things on the ships will be just fun to watch. I have no idea how much hell that will be on the servers though....

 

[Dr. Whammy]

1. Missions:

Severely needed.

2. Throwing money at them:

Tax rates are a much easier way to pull this off. Higher rates will give you more credits but make your population less happy. Lower rates grant less credits but keep them happy. There should also be a wider use for credits in general; as right now, only NPC shops have a need for them.

3. Luxuries:

This might me a good way to use certain "plant" items (mushrooms, berry bushes, glowtraps, etc.) They may serve as consumer goods or "delicacies"

4. Decorations:

Upgraded armors are a good idea but you can also build with larger amounts of crystals, ingots and other manufactured decorative blocks. To allow for diverse designs, the structure shape shouldn't matter, but rather the number of decorative blocks used. This also looks like a good role for medical blocks.

5. Propoganda:

In the game; Sins of a Solar Empire, it is actually possible to cause enemy planets to revolt and separate from their faction of origin, as a result of continued exposure to your faction's influence (culture). The rebel planets will continuously spawn ships that will attack anyone who enters the vicinity of their planet.

In addition to causing NPCs to eventually abandon their faction of origin, this kind of mechanic also opens the door for things like defection of individual ships or whole planets to a faction with high enough relative influence. You could have a spawned NPC fleet show up in your system and place itself under your faction's control; either as individual ships or via the fleet menu. An entire planet would become editable to your faction and if all planets in the system defect, they system becomes claimable.

Of course there would also be ways of losing happiness like starving your population or depriving them of medical services.

Here's my short list...
- Sustaining physical block damage to a station or planet under your faction's control
- Frequent enemy fleet intrusions or a full blockade
- Trade route disruptions via the destruction or capture of incoming and outgoing trade ships or forcing the ejection of their cargo
- Loss of ships, stations or planets under your faction's control via destruction, boarding, or conquest
- Death of faction NPCs
- Frequent intrusion or attacks by hostile/predatory/pest NPC wildlife
- Killing of non-hostile / non-pest native wildlife
- Death of Player character; synonymous with the killing of high ranking government officials or military officers
- Extended exposure to strong propaganda from rival factions; emanating from nearby planets and stations

What do you all think? Would you like to see a happiness system in Starmade? Is there anything you would do differently? Or do you think this all just overcomplicating a minor part of the game? Please share your thoughts below~!

Overall, I like the proposal. I sincerely hope some of these ideas become an integral part of the game. We need something to do besides shoot at other players out of bordom…

 

[DrTarDIS]

good grief. I really hope schema ignores all these little wishes for annoying extra steps to the mechanic until the actual mechanic is fleshed out and functional. Too many control knobs on a system that isn't even functional = ANOTHER BROKEN SYSTEM .

 

[Dr. Whammy]

good grief. I really hope schema ignores all these little wishes for annoying extra steps to the mechanic until the actual mechanic is fleshed out and functional. Too many control knobs on a system that isn't even functional = ANOTHER BROKEN SYSTEM .

Are you saying you don't want actual game content?

You know; something else to do besides...

- Mine (with broken mining bonuses)
- Build (with quickfire's broken blockspam system)
- Spawn a blueprint (in the middle of nowhere, with no nearby base or shipyard)
- PVP (with broken weapons)
- Repeat (because there is literally nothing else to do in this game)

 

[EricBlank]

I think it's more important in suggestion threads to give schine an all-inclusive picture of what players think would be fun, that way they dont have to do all the brainstorming regarding final content, and can choose features they know they and players both want to be available and make sure the code base is ready for those features.

As someone who regularly tries to work on a modding project, having players be vague or just not discussing what they're interested in seeing leaves me wondering if anybody ever actually uses my content at all, and if so what I did wrong and how the hell can I fix a problem in not aware of. I'd rather have players tell me "I wish you'd also included this feature" or "with the upcoming features, I'd also like to see this." A player asked me for the option to remove certain features, so I made that happen.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Are you saying you don't want actual game content?

You know; something else to do besides...

- Mine (with broken mining bonuses)
- Build (with quickfire's broken blockspam system)
- Spawn a blueprint (in the middle of nowhere, with no nearby base or shipyard)
- PVP (with broken weapons)
- Repeat (because there is literally nothing else to do in this game)

No, I'm saying actual content that's broken from too many unbalanced variables on implementation isn't content.

Is the current crafting system "content" for you? You WANT to go craft stuff? Yes? No? It's a perfect example of TOO MANY KNOBS on a system at rollout screwing over what COULD HAVE BEEN something to do.
Same with chambers. same with all the current weapon effects, same with all the older weapon effects on their first 3 implementations(before they were torn out because reasons)

I REALLY hope dev cat keeps it simple and add sections n stages to avoid that kinda face flop failure. I do not hold my breath though.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

No, I'm saying actual content that's broken from too many unbalanced variables on implementation isn't content.

Is the current crafting system "content" for you? You WANT to go craft stuff? Yes? No? It's a perfect example of TOO MANY KNOBS on a system at rollout screwing over what COULD HAVE BEEN something to do.
Same with chambers. same with all the current weapon effects, same with all the older weapon effects on their first 3 implementations(before they were torn out because reasons)

I REALLY hope dev cat keeps it simple and add sections n stages to avoid that kinda face flop failure. I do not hold my breath though.

While I do agree that there are too many "knobs and buttons" on some features, I must admit that your response suggests that you are only looking at this situation from a competititve/PVP point of view.

Regardless of anyone's preferred playstyle, the fact remains that the "rebalancing" process is consistently made unnecessarily complicated (and thus, ineffective) by both Schine's and QF's limited scope approaches; supposedly for the sake of PVP.

While I applaud all their efforts, I don't have faith in their ability to properly balance systems that will be used competitively since in the +/-8 years that Starmade has been around, no such ability has been demonstrated. It is highly likely that a true balance won't even be reached by the time the universe update comes out.

As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to brainstorm ideas that can be applied to other play-styles and can be optionally applied to PVP without being integral to it.

Why not have something else to do while we wait for better/more fair ways to blow each other to bits?

 

[DrTarDIS]

While I do agree that there are too many "knobs and buttons" on some features, I must admit that your response suggests that you are only looking at this situation from a competititve/PVP point of view.

That's you putting motivations to me from your own mind. What I said is Completely about how there is ZERO non PvP content to begin with, and how what should be the non-pvp content is broken by "too many knobs" at implementation. How you can misread is obviously prejudice.