Morale and Difficulty settings

[rgduck]

I've just tried a game on the hardest morale setting, "Frankly Depressing." It seems like this just exactly counteracts the bonus from "High Morale." Is that correct?

[Zarquan]

Frankly depressing is a constant additional +20% stress per cycle, which counteracts high morale.  This means it basically requires that your duplicants don't have continual stressors (like soggy feet, soaking wet, popped eardrums) and requires you to have high morale to prevent stress reactions without massages.

[Yobbo]

Yes you need to maintain high morale on this setting to end up with a net 0% stress. Sleeping, chatting and appreciating each other do however give dupes a slow general stress decrease so it's not really all that bad.

So long as nobody ever... EVER gets wet.

[rgduck]

Thanks to the posters above for confirming this.

Just my opinion, but I'm not crazy about this design choice. It gives the player no incentive to improve morale past +1 more than the requirement. Other than morale, stress reducers are mostly out of the player's control, except as the posters above note, making sure they don't get wet or pop their eardrums. I think it'd be more fun if the stress reduction scaled with how much a dupe's morale exceeds their morale requiment.

[sakura_sk]

2 hours ago, rgduck said:

I think it'd be more fun if the stress reduction scaled with how much a dupe's morale exceeds their morale requiment.

It does do that...

It is -10% stress if morale is 1-9 points above morale required and -20% if it exceeds 10 points

[rgduck]

19 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

It does do that...

It is -10% stress if morale is 1-9 points above morale required and -20% if it exceeds 10 points

Are you sure? I don't think I'm seeing that in my game.

Here are two of my dupes, one with morale +9 and the other +13. Both are getting the same bonus from high morale, and for both it's exactly countered by the penalty from "Frankly Depressing."

[sakura_sk]

Truth is I haven't played much of "highest difficulty". Maybe it is 1-5 points and not 9 or 1-3, that has the 2 different "high morale" depending on how higher than the required value is  the current morale. I don't trust the "today's stress" values. If you have two dupes sharing the same name, these values lie and only show values of one of them (relevant bug)

The 10/20% is shown when hovering over the current stress level and it is "per cycle"

  

  

After you have above 10 point of morale than required, there is also a chance of an "overjoyed" reaction after a dupe wakes up