(Implemented) Crew Loss Toaster

[spike]

It would be good to get a toaster when one or more Crew members decide to settle down with a Rigellian go-go dancer and raise a crop of scaly blue-green children. Specifically it would be good to pop up the number of Crew who have absconded, either from romantic involvement with Entertainers, or other causes. It is kind of a pain to have to go over to Status - Ship after every use of Entertainers. I don't bother and sometimes I get very surprised how low my Crew has dropped. Apart from anything else it would give me a better sense of the level of risk involved in using Entertainers as a morale booster.

From an in-game-world point of view, the desertion of crewmembers would be a big deal and definitely reported to the Captain, surely?

[jamobey]

If this is happening in the spice hall, and the hall still has available recruits, you get an indicator that some of your guys ran off when the "recruit" button highlights (isn't greyed out any more). I used to notice this before I knew they were running off, and I thought I was just becoming a more attractive captain for entertaining so lavishly.

[spike]

Yeah, I know about the Recruit button lighting up, but it doesn't tell if that was 1 crew or 10. I used not worry about it, since the flavour text says 1-2 crew might leave, but actually I think it's often a lot more crew who leave, so I'd like a Toaster so I can keep track of the actual losses more easily.

[oldalchemist]

When crew leave and you recruit new ones, it ought to really jack up the morale as the unhappy ones have left and the not-yet jaded ones have signed on. As it is, the grumpy gusses that stay with you seem to keep morale low for the new crew.

Entertaining seems like one of those things a captain should only do if desperate for morale. Buying rounds is the way to go if you don't want to lose crew members.

[spike]

I wasn't sure about when to use Entertaining, and it's hard to tell without clearer feedback, or some kind of painstaking experiment that I can't be bothered to perform.

It would be better for the game if both options were more balanced, you don't want to have options that never get used. I guess Entertainers are cheaper (very much unlike the modern world!).

Actually my impression was that I had to use a mix of Entertainment and Spice, that just one or the other was less effective than combining both. But that was only an impression I got.

[Cory Trese]

"It would be better for the game if both options were more balanced"

I think the current risk/reward/cost trio balances them well.

You can have it fast, cheap or high quality. Pick 2.

[cynik]

It would be nice to see how many crew members left the ship anyway. When 2 of them leaves nothing happens, but 20 could be a problem.

[spike]

If Entertainers regularly lose you more than than the stated 1-2 Crew then likely they are never going to get used, once people know that. You don't want to have an option that never, or hardly ever, gets used. That's what I mean by making the two options more balanced relative to each other. The price difference is neither here nor there, +100% difference on a small sum that's trivial compared to the risks and costs of low morale.

Anyway, any objections to a Toaster to let you know how many crew deserted?

It's definitely not high priority.

[Cory Trese]

I'm going to add it, it is easy and improve the UX.

Desert is all based on the place you are, the skills you have, the size of the ship, the current morale, and some other factors.

I try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to avoid redundant systems, things that are totally random or things that are "never going to get used."

[HateSolstice]

What is the morale boost for using the entertainers as opposed to buying a few rounds of spice? I haven't noticed much of a difference(perhaps a slight one), but I might be expecting it to work too well.

[Cory Trese]

I don't exactly understand the question "what is the morale boost" in terms of the Spice Hall.

I think the answer is "+1 Morale" but is probably not right.

[absimiliard]

Mar 12, 2011 9:07:22 GMT -5 HateSolstice said:

What is the morale boost for using the entertainers as opposed to buying a few rounds of spice? I haven't noticed much of a difference(perhaps a slight one), but I might be expecting it to work too well.

I don't have access to the code but it seems to me that entertainers are about twice as effective at raising crew morale as spice is. The downside is the lost time, and potentially deserting crew. So, again in my experience, I have found that if it will take four rounds of spice to get a (likely) morale raise of two points it will only take two rounds of entertaining. (and down around five morale two rounds of spice per point of raised morale seems to be statistically likely)