About morale

[leebash]

1. How about lower the successful rate, or increase the time required for crafting, or both when your character has fairly low morale points?

2. Building/construction should be affected by it too.

3. Anyway, -50 perhaps is not enough to be “too low”. Morale can be as low as -400 without causing suicide or madness, so why can’t your character who has only -50 morale points make a cup of coffee to cheer themselves in a rainy afternoon?

[Coolthulhu]

1+2) Probably will happen someday, but at the moment altering crafting speed would require clunky code and excess work. The current crafting system doesn’t support altered crafting speed well.
3) Anything below -50 would be meaningless, as even -50 is rare.

Also, it’s spelled “morale”, with an ‘e’ at the end. Not “moral”, “morals” or “morels” (those 3 are all different things).

[leebash]

Sorry for the spelling mistakes.

Oh, about 3), perhaps some easy tasks(difficulty level<2) like making coffee or clean water can still be done when you are not feeling too well?

[Alec_White]

Oh, about 3), perhaps some easy tasks(difficulty level<2) like making coffee or clean water can still be done when you are not feeling too well?

Or short time crafting recipes.

That would include things like making coffee, clean water and most comfort food.
I too find it odd that when low morale the player isn’t willing to craft stuff to cheer up.

[deoxy]

3) Anything below -50 would be meaningless, as even -50 is rare.

You must never deal with being wet while having almost any other negative modifier. Also, I suppose you never kill zombie children, their derivatives, or any of the “monsters” that count as human (blank body, for instance)…

Getting below -50 is EASY.

[tarburst98]

he said rare, not never happens. and what are you doing that involves killing a bunch of zombie children in the rain?

[deoxy]

he said rare, not never happens. and what are you doing that involves killing a bunch of zombie children in the rain?

Go by any playground in any city, and there will be more than enough child zombies to hit -50.

Read an advanced book a couple of times, go pick up something from your stash in a drizzle, and bam, can’t craft… -50.

It’s not rare. It’s easy, when doing some activities, requires intentional actions to avoid.

Is it hard to avoid if you have a good set up and know what you’re doing? No… but notice those requirements. -50 is not rare.

Heck, I’ve found myself at nearly -200 before, without even realizing it.

Edit: Admittedly, that last example was with paficist…

[Coolthulhu]

Getting below -50 is EASY.

Also easy to avoid.
Should we assume that player carelessly plows through hordes of children in just underwear and gets wet in the process?

I don’t have much against removing the morale crafting prevention, because it doesn’t really work all that well, but lowering it to the point where it doesn’t matter but still exists is the worst option out of 3 (keep, drop, lower).

[_k1]

Cutting up car frame in a rainy spring day easily drops it under -50. It is not uncommon in early game.

[Szara]

It’s pretty easy to get below -500 with some bad luck. Try being not-psychopath and accidentally roadkilling a friendly NPC because the idiot threw themselves in front of your vehicle at the wrong moment, or wouldn’t get in their damn seat while you were being swarmed. I had one survivor who slaughtered three friendly NPCs almost in a row because they did really stupid shit, and ending them was the only way to escape. That was terrible, I couldn’t craft for over a year it seemed.

Withdrawal from various substances also tanks your moral like mad. The tweaker starts are the worst offenders for this. Barfing alone can also get you -50 moral, and if you have PKs/Cata++ (I forget which one) mods, radiation is so much more common you’ll find yourself barfing on the regular with a bit of poor luck due to radiation poisoning. Or just some unfortunate mutations or maybe you took weak stomach trait. Or were desperate.

I do find it rather annoying that my survivor gets too unhappy to make himself some food when he’s almost starving.

Seriously how hard is it to dump some meat in a pan and place it over a fire? Sheesh.

Though I will note that only -50 isn’t too bad, as some music or a few chapters of a quick easy fun book (always keep a few around at base) can get you happy enough to craft again.

[_k1]

Morale can affect one’s ability to cook meat. Sometimes one can be too depressed to breath.

[deoxy]

[quote=“deoxy, post:5, topic:13975”]Getting below -50 is EASY.

Also easy to avoid.
Should we assume that player carelessly plows through hordes of children in just underwear and gets wet in the process?[/quote]

“Git gud, noob”

It is not uncommon in early game.

Exactly this. If you play primarily end-game characters that only get wet when jump in deep water, have full suits of equipment to match the time of year, collect toastems my the shopping cart-full, and have a small library of comic books, Computer Games, and Through the Lens, well sure, avoiding -50 is pathetically easy.

If you have an early-mid game character, being unencumbered enough to deal with zombies often means serious wet penalties, and if there are a couple of children in the horde, or your only decent equipment is too hot/cold for the time of year much at all, you’re going to be -50 in no time. It doesn’t take being an idiot or playing like a complete noob.

And don’t get me started on very early game characters - insufficient warmth plus rain = no crafting for you, no matter how awesome you are. While that does make SOME sense, the ability to, say, boil water or cook a piece of meat sufficiently to avoid problems isn’t exactly a hard thing.

Perhaps only restrict crafting that has a chance of gaining skill?

[Coolthulhu]

The whole point of having penalty for low morale is that you can get it and it impairs you. So that if you want to shamble in the rain you put on a rain coat and if you want to craft you get dry.
If you had to actually actively try to get it, it would be pure bloat and a shitty gimmick.

As I said it already: removing morale crafting lock may not be a bad idea. If it is annoying and tedious instead of important, the game would be better off without it.
But pushing it back to where it doesn’t matter but still exist is a stupid idea.

[tarburst98]

gonna do some personal experience fallacy here, but i never ran into morale making me unable to do things while early game except when i tried doing tweaker start. like, ever. just get a towel and use it before you craft. child zombie penalty is easy, don’t fight an army of child zombies before making something, such i stocked up on granola and clean water and then just killed a school, never needed to craft while the morale penalty was bad. basically, you can avoid the penalty actually impacting you by some good planning.

[TooDAMNMuch]

one day morale will at least trivially annoy me, not yet, but one day…

i do though literally always have an eye out for stuff to make more non-spoiling cannibal food and eat the good shit only as needed.

[deoxy]

basically, you can avoid the penalty actually impacting you by some good planning.

Yes, now that I largely agree with. It seldom gets in my way, I was just pointing out that it happens quite easily - if you have to plan around it to avoid it, but if you know what you are doing, you CAN plan around it and avoid it the vast majority of the time, that seems like a pretty good mechanic.