My take on Morale

[Capt_Sluggo]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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...