Currently, the morale and focus mechanic is built in such a way, that adding new things to it(like negative morale from seeing different types of monsters) would destroy the balance and lead to annoyance. It also doesn’t make much sense sometimes - increased morale increases focus, but if you have increased morale from drinking alcohol you wouldn’t really be able to focus, right? You would just be a bit more happy/less caring about the grim dark world.
Thus, i propose a new system where focus and morale are separated.
Morale would work like in other games - it grants combat oriented bonuses: to-hit chance, increased stats, increased dice for damage, etc.
Focus would be skill oriented - it grants bonuses to crafting chance, repair chance, increases rate of gaining skill experience, increases rate of learning, chance for installing bionics, etc. Low focus would NOT prevent you from crafting and learning, but might give you some penalties for more difficult tasks.
Gaining morale: Most things that grant morale right now would still do it in the new system - just some of them would also drain focus(like certain drugs). High morale wouldn’t affect your focus - morale means happines, in real life too much happines would actually drain focus… but it would be too annoying in the game.
Gaining focus: Automatic. It simply recovers in time when you don’t perform focus oriented actions. Some drugs will give you boosts to focus(amphetamines, cocaine). Some actions might increase the rate at which it recovers(waiting/sleeping).
Losing morale: most things that cause you to lose morale right now, would still be in the new system. The new effects of morale would give more room for expansion though.
Losing focus: Automatic. Slowly drains when performing tasks that require focus.
I know it’s a heavy programming task and that it won’t happen in the near future - but is there any interest among devs and players in such a system? Does anyone have some other ideas to improve the current system? Thanks in advance for replying.
