Children Creche effect on morale

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Fellow players,
My apology for the repeatative topic. I saw similar discussions here and there with some pieces of information but I still don't have a complete picture.

• What is the effect of Children Creche on morale? Preferably a complete list with all cases and bugs explained, not just a help description.
  
• Any patch fixes these bugs? I checked Yutzi's but it doesn't mention anything about that.

Here is what I can recall from other discussions.

• A unit built in a base with Children Creche gets +1 morale level. Unclear.
  
  • Is this just a defense bonus or both attack/defense?
  • Is this a permanent bonus or conditional? I.e. if condition changes (CC is destroyed) - unit loses its bonus?
  • Is this is conditional bonus then what base is taken into account: where it was built or where it is supported from?
  • Is this is conditional bonus then does it matter whether CC at this home base is built/destroyed after unit was built there?
• A unit defending base with CC. I recall there is a bug that lower morale unit gets bigger bonus.

This was triggered by this game situation. Green transport cruiser defending in a sea base with CC. It was showing this on battle screen.
Green (-) (++++)
Resulting in +50% for morale level. I didn't save this screenshot but saved few others.

[bvanevery]

I don't know about "lower morale, bigger bonus" bugs, but increases in MORALE in the SE table do give additional defense bonuses.

Unless someone comes along who knows for fact there are bugs, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the bugs, and wants to brain dump them, I think you are stressing about a minor game mechanical element.  People and AIs may or may not have built them, at any given base you run into.  You can keep your "odds verifier" turned on at all times, if you want to get a sense of whether a base is putting up a "remarkable" defense or not.  Of course you'd need to examine the base before you take it over, to know whether a CC elevated some of the stats.  You could do a few controlled tests of "with CC" and "without CC" at some base of yours, to see if it makes any difference on the stats.

Ultimately you cannot simply get rid of the CC from the game, because it is compounded with +2 GROWTH needed for pop booming, defense against mind controlling a base, and reducing loss of energy to Corruption (whatever they're calling it in SMAC).  You'd have to be opposed to all 4 game mechanics to think it's a good idea to remove the CC from the game.  And if you're not going to remove it, there's no reason to stew about it, as you can't otherwise mod it.  Not without binary patching at least.  And if trying to put this as a priority in front of a binary patcher... not seeing it.  It's a minor game element.  Its effect is that eventually, people build these things, and base resistance becomes a little stiffer.  Your weapons also become more powerful over time, so it's a wash.

If your motive is to contemplate game design from scratch, you could definitely skip anything like a CC.  It's chrome.  When they were contemplating Civ II's Granaries and Courthouses, someone probably got a "great" idea to roll it up differently.  So we get Recycling Tanks and Children's Creches.  I think the variety of effects a CC has, shows a clear lack of design focus.

Now, if your real goal is to verify and crush a CC bug, well that's a noble pursuit I suppose.  A rabbit hole that Yitzi presumably went down, to a fault.  Reconstructing his work, and moving pieces of his work to any new effort, i.e. Thinker mod, is quite the curation and maintenance effort.  I take an easier path: I ignore things like this.  They don't bite me in the ass enough to go through heroics trying to fix them.  Triage says, find a bigger fish to fry.

I think Yitzi fried most of these fish as "targets of opportunity".  He was totally geared up on tooling around with the ASM, would notice things, and would squash things.  But then he spent too much time doing that, and not enough on the transfer of work as infrastructure for future projects... which to be fair, is not an easy engineering problem when dealing with only a binary, not source code.  You have to solve political / personnel issues to keep the software lifecycle going long haul.  Not everyone understands or rises to the challenge; ASM dinking is frankly not the core skill set needed.  Something I've learned through bitter pain over the years in open source, spending so much of my so-called career trying to get other people's software to build at all.

[T-hawk]

I think this is comprehensive.  From an old post on Apolyton: https://apolyton.net/forum/miscellaneous/archives/ac-general-help-strategy-archive/72187-children-s-creche-morale-and-efficiency?p=1860225#post1860225


1- Under negative morale conditions any unit homed to a base with a CC enjoys +1 Morale. This bonus is lost when homed to a base with a CC, gained when homed to a base with a CC. This does not show as a +, it will make a commando unit elite and give it +1 movement, unlike a + which will make it fight at +50%, but it will still be called a commando and have 1 movement.

 2- Under the "Morale" SE short description, if it says "-1 Morale" "-2 Morale" etc, that is how many basic +'s the CC gives for units in the base. ie
 -1,-2 SE Morale +
 -3 Morale ++
 -4 Morale +++
 -5 Morale ++++

 3- The CC gives an unconditional + to every unit in the base. This is regardless of Morale.

 4- 2 and 3 apply for being in a base with a CC, 1 for being homed to a base with a CC - note bonus 1 is NOT lost when moving outside of friendly territory.

 5- effect 2 and 3 apply for all unit types (including native), effect 1 only applies to non-native units.

 5- With -2 morale or worse, all facilities which increase morale of new units by 2, only increase morale by 1 - The CC has NO effect on this!!!!!!! It does not even deserve to be mentioned under the effects of the CC except for the fact that many people thing that CC's eliminate this effect. They Dont!

 6- All units have an additional + in the first 15 turns, this is not a CC effect and I have not explored it fully, but mention it due to it's implications on testing the effects of CC's in the scenerio editor (generate 20 turns first to be safe!)


I don't know anything about patches or fixes but I think that fully describes the behavior.  The short version is that the CC can overcompensate for morale penalties by actually adding more pluses than you had minuses.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Yep. I've read plenty CC+morale discussion. Some of them are quality ones but they all are explained in pretty cryptic language. Other than that it is pretty informative. Thank you.

1- Under negative morale conditions

Is it negative MORALE SE rating?

homed to a base with a CC

What is the base in question? The base where unit is now or the base that supports it?

with a CC enjoys +1 Morale.

This bonus is lost when homed to a base with a CC, gained when homed to a base with a CC.

Here is our cryptic part.

This does not show as a +, it will make a commando unit elite

Is this commando unit that was commando before negative MORALE is applied or it became commando after negative MORALE was applied?

2- Under the "Morale" SE short description, if it says "-1 Morale" "-2 Morale" etc, that is how many basic +'s the CC gives for units in the base. ie
 -1,-2 SE Morale +
 -3 Morale ++
 -4 Morale +++
 -5 Morale ++++

Hmm, I was under impression that lowest -4 MORALE SE rating results in -3 unit morale. Where -4 and -5 came from?

[T-hawk]

Is it negative MORALE SE rating?

Yes, that's the only source of negative morale.  The only other negative in the game is the (-) minus if the unit's home base is in drone riots.

homed to a base with a CC

What is the base in question? The base where unit is now or the base that supports it?

The base that supports it, that's what we mean by a home base.

This bonus is lost when homed to a base with a CC, gained when homed to a base with a CC.

Here is our cryptic part.

Yeah, there's a typo there.  Should read "lost when homed to a base withOUT a CC."

This does not show as a +, it will make a commando unit elite

Is this commando unit that was commando before negative MORALE is applied or it became commando after negative MORALE was applied?

It's the same either way you figure it: (other morale + CC) is the same as (CC + other morale).  It's always +1 morale level, it has nothing to do with being commando in particular, that's just given as an example because commando->elite is the most important step that you're likely to care about.

Hmm, I was under impression that lowest -4 MORALE SE rating results in -3 unit morale. Where -4 and -5 came from?

Gaia running Wealth + Eudaimonic can have -5 SE morale.  Or mods.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Hmm, I was under impression that lowest -4 MORALE SE rating results in -3 unit morale. Where -4 and -5 came from?

Gaia running Wealth + Eudaimonic can have -5 SE morale.  Or mods.

That is still not clear. All SE effects are capped at what is described in help. I.e. lowest MORALE rating is -4 which translates to -3 unit morale.

[T-hawk]

All SE effects are capped at what is described in help.

Not always true.  One easy counterexample: the University running Knowledge and Cybernetic has +6 SE Research, which fully functions for 60% extra labs even though the datalinks doesn't say so.

Gaia can have -5 SE Morale rating.  It's quite possible (I haven't personally tested) that -4 vs -5 SE Morale works the same for producing units but differently for the CC's pluses.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Yes, you are right. Some effects do. Taking EFFICIENCY or PLANET for example. That happens because some formulas bypass the effect definition and take just an effect rating as a variable. So, I guess, same may happen with CC to morale calculation. That makes actual morale do not drop below -3. Whereas CC gives (++++) to them. And other mixups.

[bvanevery]

You know from a modding, archiving, maintenance, bug-hunting, and posterity standpoint, this kind of stuff is a nightmare.  All of these sorts of formulas should be encoded in human readable scripts.

[hyperdriveJ]

From http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Conceptsx.txt

A
Children’s Creche (CC) has a two effects on morale. On the one side it
gives a morale bonus to units, built in a base with a CC, of a faction
running a negative SE Morale. This bonus counts on every location. On
the other side a Children’s Creche gives a battle bonus to units on the
base square of a base with a CC. This is (supposed to be) represented in
the form of (+)’s. Unfortunately the (+)’s are in some cases a bad
indication of the actual battle modifiers given.
(Both of these effects are {Bugged})

For any unit built in a base with Children’s Creche, regardless of location:
0 SE Morale or higher: no difference.
-3 to -1 SE Morale: +1 morale level
-4 SE Morale: +2 morale levels

For units on a base square, with the base having a Children’s Creche:
When the unit is defending:

0 SE Morale or higher: +12.5% (+) battle bonus
-1 & -2 SE Morale or higher: +25% (++) battle bonus
-3 SE Morale: +37.5% (+++) battle bonus
-4 SE Morale: +50% (++++) battle bonus

The total defense bonus (the sum of the morale level bonus and the (+) bonuses) is capped off at +50%.

When the unit is attacking:

+4 SE Morale: -37% battle penalty
+3 SE Morale: -25% battle penalty
+2 SE Morale: -12.5% battle penalty
+1 SE Morale: no difference
0 SE Morale: +12.5% battle bonus
-1 SE Morale: +25% battle bonus
-2 SE Morale: +25% battle bonus
-3 SE Morale: +37.5% battle bonus
-4 SE Morale: +50% battle bonus

For attacks from a Children's Creche base there is {no limit at all} for the battle bonus.
This could potentially give a +100% attacking Combat bonus to an elite unit under -4SE Morale