My take on Morale

04-18-10, 06:59 PM

Instead of whining about what is broke I figured I'd offer up my take on what the ideal Moral system should be.

Just really thinking outloud here, I think what they have implimented in SH5 has some definate benefits, and some drawbacks.

The old SH3 management really wasn't a realistic way to handle crew, moving little icons around on a screen just didn't do it for me, but the moral system worked. I liked the fact my crew got tired and demoralized over time. I would have liked to see a full crew represented by icons (sh3), but with the ability for the captain to build rotations. Instead of having to manually rotate the crew. The captain could assign selected men to each rotation and the crew would change at normal intervals.

The whole SH5 'Uber Meal' abilities I think are unanimously looked down on as something from Super Mario. I liked the SH3 way of adding abilities, but what was missing was training. Your crew should improve and benefit from experience, not some hokey Uber ability.

If anyone remembers Microprose's B-17, its a good example. You could take over stations and improve your crews ability by doing their job... the better you did their job the better they became. Or, you could just leave them to it, and they would still improve.. just at a slower rate. I really think that is an ideal system to impliment, which with multiple abilities opens a host of crew management scenarios for cross training and improving each rotations ability to function.

I didn't like SH3's way of making crewmen disposable with allowing you to swap them out at will on returning to port. But, I'm also not keen on the new immortal crew either. I think a good ballance would have been a mortal crew, but you are assigned a new crewmember at port incase of a fatality. The training/abilities/morale/stamina equation should make your crew valuable, with all the time invested in improving them over the course of multiple patrols, the captain should feel motivated to ensure their wellbeing.

Thats my thoughts for the topic anyways.

Athlonic · 04-19-10, 03:11 AM

I'm with you on this.
Excellent point of view.

Hopefully the 1.2 patch will fix the experience system along the morale bug.
With morale/experience not resetting to zero on each reload it may become interesting on long patrols and through the whole carriere.

Fingers crossed.

Zedi · 04-19-10, 04:02 AM

The irony is that now when I see my crew and I can "talk" with them, I feel completely alone on the ship. There is nothing you can talk with your crew, they keep repeating the same old story about the family, violin that makes all dialogues obsolete. They don't die, suffer, get sick and most of all.. they don't give a s*** that you are the captain.

The special abilities are almost useless, "No, I can't do that right now" is the most annoying thing to hear on the sub. I don't ever bother to ask them to do something because I know that I have to do all the work on sub all alone, this is a one man show. Now all my crew has already all skills maxed out and tons of skill points that I can't use, they are the most useless part of my boat.. I wish I could just shot them all and fire their bodies through the torpedo tubes.. at least I would have some fun by having a crew

Yeah, the old SH3 crew management was superior, there the crew was something useful and in time you got to know them and have the feeling that is a living boat, not an empty can on the water...

jerm138 · 04-19-10, 05:12 AM

I like the concept of the morale aspect, but it doesn't sound like the idea is implemented very well at all (and I'm not talking about the "bug".)

As a skipper, you should never hear the words "No, I can't do that" because of poor morale unless you're really screwing up bigtime.

You shouldn't have to "earn" your crew's willingness to perform their basic jobs by listening to their stories over and over. That's not how it works... the skipper isn't your buddy or psychiatrist, he's your leader and he's got bigger fish to fry.

Morale should be mostly affected by things like CO2 levels, how often you're depth-charged, how many kills you get, how long you've been at sea, how rested the crew is, etc. And the effect shouldn't be too drastic, either... maybe a slight change in performance, for good or bad, is about the only thing the morale should do.

Capt_Sluggo · 04-19-10, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerm138

And the effect shouldn't be too drastic, either... maybe a slight change in performance, for good or bad, is about the only thing the morale should do.

I tend to agree with this.

After a walk through the USS Drum (Mobile, AL), I don't see how a WWII submarine crewman's morale could ever be considered "high" except when he was about to get off the boat. No privacy, no space, no comforts and the constant fear (if not sheer terror) of being trapped in that thing forever. Seems to me that the crew would focus on doing their jobs as best they could, as that was the only way for them to fight against the possibility of the unimaginable becoming real.

Even so, there might be some variability modeled in. The need to rotate a burned-out or injured crew member after a patrol, perhaps. But designing the human element into this sim has got to be extremely difficult, so I'm not at all surprised that the first take was not too well done. I hope that the modding community will take up the challenge on this aspect. A really good crew system would put SHV on a whole new level.

Bilge_Rat · 04-19-10, 03:53 PM

I agree with all your comments. The crew management in sh3/4 reflected the factors you had to take into acount to have a crew at peak efficiency. On the other hand, you had to do too much micro-management of your crew.

I like the approach of SH5 to limit your interaction to officers/senior officers, but the rest of the system needs to be reworked, so that the effect is more similar to sh3/4.

There should never be a situation where your crew refuses an order, although their efficiency could go down if their morale is poor.

They could lose morale if they are tired, too long at battle stations, panicked, etc. They could regain morale if you rest them, sink ships, be awarded decorations (?).

The skills would have to be reworked to be more like the promotions in SH3/4, which made more sense.

In effect, you should have a system where you get the result of sh3/4 crew managemnt, without the micro-management.

jerm138 · 04-19-10, 07:07 PM

Here are some ideas to take it a step or two further...

From my experience on the boat, many people performed at their peak when we sensed danger to our well-being. But some (very few) had an opposite reaction and would lose focus when they were scared. If they really wanted to create a dynamic crew in-game, they could model this. When the depth charges come, some people could operate better, and some people would slip up a little. During the boring times, some people are happy as could be and others get complacent and even mischievous. If this were modeled in the game, then your performance as a skipper would be reflected in the abilities of the crew.

My skipper personally looked over our battle-stations list and hand-picked many of the key players on it. Adding things like this to the game would make sure you're paying attention to your crew without having to listen to the same old stories over and over.

Another way of making it more dynamic would be to have these personality traits change over time as the sailor matures and becomes more (or less) confident in your abilities to run the ship.

You could also have the player make decisions like how often you drill or have training. More training would improve abilities, but too much could drop morale, so you'd have to find that sweet spot where you get the most bang for your buck. And the sweet spot would change according to the personality types of your crew. The key to it would be to keep everything dynamic so it would be different for each player and would change over time too.

They could even give you situations that you have to deal with, almost like the classic game "The Oregon Trail." For instance, you get informed that a crewmember disobeyed an order from one of your officers. Do you: A)Verbally reprimand him. B)Reduce him in rank. C)Tell the Chief to take care of it, etc.
How you respond to this situation would affect the development and morale of that individual sailor, and possibly the rest of the crew... after all, word travels fast on a boat.

Granted, some might see this type of thing as too RPG-like and detract from the main purpose of the game, which is sinking ships. That's why there should also be options with this feature. You could set it to "auto" if you don't want to deal with any of these things. Or you could choose how involved you want to be with these issues using a screen like the "realism settings" screen.

I agree with the OP... the morale system has huge potential. It just has to be implemented correctly.

kylania · 04-20-10, 12:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerm138

You could also have the player make decisions like how often you drill or have training. More training would improve abilities, but too much could drop morale, so you'd have to find that sweet spot where you get the most bang for your buck.

I like the drill idea, ties in nicely with Kptlt_Lynch's ideas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magnum

The irony is that now when I see my crew and I can "talk" with them, I feel completely alone on the ship. ... They don't die, suffer, get sick and most of all.. they don't give a s*** that you are the captain.

The special abilities are almost useless, "No, I can't do that right now" is the most annoying thing to hear on the sub.

The "No, I can't do that right now" is a bug that's being fixed tomorrow, so I don't even consider that a concern at this point. Morale has been totally broken this whole time, which is one of the reasons people dislike it so much I bet. As for the special abilities themselves, I raised most of the passive ones (except the TDC breaking torpedo ones) but none of the active ones. I've never needed any of them.

However, you're 110% right about not caring about the crew at all. In SH3 I worried about them and felt bad when things went wrong and people got injured. In SH5 I hate that they get injured since I *can't* help them and they "won't work". Crew members are the equivalent of a piece of equipment now. They are there and you don't care unless they don't work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kptlt_Lynch

If anyone remembers Microprose's B-17, its a good example. You could take over stations and improve your crews ability by doing their job... the better you did their job the better they became. Or, you could just leave them to it, and they would still improve.. just at a slower rate. I really think that is an ideal system to impliment, which with multiple abilities opens a host of crew management scenarios for cross training and improving each rotations ability to function.

Great idea! Wonder if you could add that kind of system in via python scripting. If we're allowed to write to custom log files I bet it would be possible.

Zedi · 04-20-10, 01:23 AM

How about the captain morale? In my case, the morale system works. After searching for weeks, months for a particular type of ship without success, my morale is completely down and there is nothing I can do about... except log back in the real life and do stuff.

I finished the Western Approaches campaign without being able to find more than 3 Dido's for the Winston's Special mission. And I was searching for them more than 4 months in game time, passing a lot of convoys and traveling huge distances.. from GB down to South Africa and back again. Thank God that this is a game with a TC function, because if this would happen in real life I rather killed myself.

Not sure if we can expect some improvement on the player morale too, but maybe the moders will rewrite these campaigns someday...

04-18-10, 06:59 PM	#1
Kptlt_Lynch Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	My take on Morale Instead of whining about what is broke I figured I'd offer up my take on what the ideal Moral system should be. Just really thinking outloud here, I think what they have implimented in SH5 has some definate benefits, and some drawbacks. The old SH3 management really wasn't a realistic way to handle crew, moving little icons around on a screen just didn't do it for me, but the moral system worked. I liked the fact my crew got tired and demoralized over time. I would have liked to see a full crew represented by icons (sh3), but with the ability for the captain to build rotations. Instead of having to manually rotate the crew. The captain could assign selected men to each rotation and the crew would change at normal intervals. The whole SH5 'Uber Meal' abilities I think are unanimously looked down on as something from Super Mario. I liked the SH3 way of adding abilities, but what was missing was training. Your crew should improve and benefit from experience, not some hokey Uber ability. If anyone remembers Microprose's B-17, its a good example. You could take over stations and improve your crews ability by doing their job... the better you did their job the better they became. Or, you could just leave them to it, and they would still improve.. just at a slower rate. I really think that is an ideal system to impliment, which with multiple abilities opens a host of crew management scenarios for cross training and improving each rotations ability to function. I didn't like SH3's way of making crewmen disposable with allowing you to swap them out at will on returning to port. But, I'm also not keen on the new immortal crew either. I think a good ballance would have been a mortal crew, but you are assigned a new crewmember at port incase of a fatality. The training/abilities/morale/stamina equation should make your crew valuable, with all the time invested in improving them over the course of multiple patrols, the captain should feel motivated to ensure their wellbeing. Thats my thoughts for the topic anyways.

04-19-10, 03:11 AM	#2
Athlonic Chief Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: France Posts: 311 Downloads: 51 Uploads: 2	I'm with you on this. Excellent point of view. Hopefully the 1.2 patch will fix the experience system along the morale bug. With morale/experience not resetting to zero on each reload it may become interesting on long patrols and through the whole carriere. Fingers crossed. __________________ ________________________ Gimme tons of patches ! Athlonic's MCCD "More Crew Commands by Dialog" MOD for Silent Hunter 5 Version 1.04 SH5 1.2.0 Ready Athlonic's TSAF Mod : Torpedo_Speed_Abilitie_Fix_for_TDC

04-19-10, 05:12 AM	#4
jerm138 Watch Officer Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 332 Downloads: 35 Uploads: 0	I like the concept of the morale aspect, but it doesn't sound like the idea is implemented very well at all (and I'm not talking about the "bug".) As a skipper, you should never hear the words "No, I can't do that" because of poor morale unless you're *really* screwing up bigtime. You shouldn't have to "earn" your crew's willingness to perform their basic jobs by listening to their stories over and over. That's not how it works... the skipper isn't your buddy or psychiatrist, he's your leader and he's got bigger fish to fry. Morale should be mostly affected by things like CO2 levels, how often you're depth-charged, how many kills you get, how long you've been at sea, how rested the crew is, etc. And the effect shouldn't be too drastic, either... maybe a slight change in performance, for good or bad, is about the only thing the morale should do. __________________

04-19-10, 03:53 PM	#6
Bilge_Rat Silent Hunter Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: standing watch... Posts: 3,855 Downloads: 344 Uploads: 0	I agree with all your comments. The crew management in sh3/4 reflected the factors you had to take into acount to have a crew at peak efficiency. On the other hand, you had to do too much micro-management of your crew. I like the approach of SH5 to limit your interaction to officers/senior officers, but the rest of the system needs to be reworked, so that the effect is more similar to sh3/4. There should never be a situation where your crew refuses an order, although their efficiency could go down if their morale is poor. They could lose morale if they are tired, too long at battle stations, panicked, etc. They could regain morale if you rest them, sink ships, be awarded decorations (?). The skills would have to be reworked to be more like the promotions in SH3/4, which made more sense. In effect, you should have a system where you get the result of sh3/4 crew managemnt, without the micro-management. __________________

04-19-10, 07:07 PM	#7
jerm138 Watch Officer Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 332 Downloads: 35 Uploads: 0	Here are some ideas to take it a step or two further... From my experience on the boat, many people performed at their peak when we sensed danger to our well-being. But some (very few) had an opposite reaction and would lose focus when they were scared. If they really wanted to create a dynamic crew in-game, they could model this. When the depth charges come, some people could operate better, and some people would slip up a little. During the boring times, some people are happy as could be and others get complacent and even mischievous. If this were modeled in the game, then your performance as a skipper would be reflected in the abilities of the crew. My skipper personally looked over our battle-stations list and hand-picked many of the key players on it. Adding things like this to the game would make sure you're paying attention to your crew without having to listen to the same old stories over and over. Another way of making it more dynamic would be to have these personality traits change over time as the sailor matures and becomes more (or less) confident in your abilities to run the ship. You could also have the player make decisions like how often you drill or have training. More training would improve abilities, but too much could drop morale, so you'd have to find that sweet spot where you get the most bang for your buck. And the sweet spot would change according to the personality types of your crew. The key to it would be to keep everything dynamic so it would be different for each player and would change over time too. They could even give you situations that you have to deal with, almost like the classic game "The Oregon Trail." For instance, you get informed that a crewmember disobeyed an order from one of your officers. Do you: A)Verbally reprimand him. B)Reduce him in rank. C)Tell the Chief to take care of it, etc. How you respond to this situation would affect the development and morale of that individual sailor, and possibly the rest of the crew... after all, word travels fast on a boat. Granted, some might see this type of thing as too RPG-like and detract from the main purpose of the game, which is sinking ships. That's why there should also be options with this feature. You could set it to "auto" if you don't want to deal with any of these things. Or you could choose how involved you want to be with these issues using a screen like the "realism settings" screen. I agree with the OP... the morale system has huge potential. It just has to be implemented correctly. __________________

04-19-10, 04:02 AM	#3
Zedi Sea Lord Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 1,845 Downloads: 184 Uploads: 2	The irony is that now when I see my crew and I can "talk" with them, I feel completely alone on the ship. There is nothing you can talk with your crew, they keep repeating the same old story about the family, violin that makes all dialogues obsolete. They don't die, suffer, get sick and most of all.. they don't give a s*** that you are the captain. The special abilities are almost useless, "No, I can't do that right now" is the most annoying thing to hear on the sub. I don't ever bother to ask them to do something because I know that I have to do all the work on sub all alone, this is a one man show. Now all my crew has already all skills maxed out and tons of skill points that I can't use, they are the most useless part of my boat.. I wish I could just shot them all and fire their bodies through the torpedo tubes.. at least I would have some fun by having a crew Yeah, the old SH3 crew management was superior, there the crew was something useful and in time you got to know them and have the feeling that is a living boat, not an empty can on the water...

04-20-10, 01:23 AM	#9
Zedi Sea Lord Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 1,845 Downloads: 184 Uploads: 2	How about the captain morale? In my case, the morale system works. After searching for weeks, months for a particular type of ship without success, my morale is completely down and there is nothing I can do about... except log back in the real life and do stuff. I finished the Western Approaches campaign without being able to find more than 3 Dido's for the Winston's Special mission. And I was searching for them more than 4 months in game time, passing a lot of convoys and traveling huge distances.. from GB down to South Africa and back again. Thank God that this is a game with a TC function, because if this would happen in real life I rather killed myself. Not sure if we can expect some improvement on the player morale too, but maybe the moders will rewrite these campaigns someday...