Does the Morale SE affect own natives lifecycle?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I have tried to find an answer to that but failed. All descriptions I saw about natives and Morale are elusive and vague on this particular question.
Specifically: if I built a native and then, at some point, changed Morale SE rating so my all of regular units get some additional morale level - does this change my own natives lifecycle?

[bvanevery]

AFAIK, MORALE has no effect on Native lifecycle at all.  Think about it, whaddya gonna do: instill patriotic fervor into your mindworms?  Make them go through special hazing rituals in boot camp?

"PRIVATE PILE, FRONT AND CENTER!!!"

"glrrmw ggrrmw rrwwwmr llrb"

[Geo]

"PRIVATE PILE, FRONT AND CENTER!!!"

Those 'piles' as you put it are empathically bounded with a 'talent' according to the game's lore.

They even together!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

It doesn't matter how ridiculous it seems. This is a game that has rules. Anybody remembers anything about this particular one?

[bvanevery]

Yes; I've read somewhere that MORALE bonuses have no effect on native life at all.  It's probably in the Datalinks somewhere.  Why do you suppose the game would give MORALE bonuses to all units, and then give additional lifecycle bonuses to native units?  Native life would be leveled up twice compared to everything else.  SMAC may have its design flaws, but for the most part they didn't design a candy shop of a game.

Found it.  The exact legalese you want to know, is under the Datalinks entry "Basic Concepts... Morale".  There is no entry for Lifecycle as far as I can see, they just cover that under Morale.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Why do you suppose the game would give MORALE bonuses to all units, and then give additional lifecycle bonuses to native units?

Found it.  The exact legalese you want to know, is under the Datalinks entry "Basic Concepts... Morale".  There is no entry for Lifecycle as far as I can see, they just cover that under Morale.

Well because I saw some documentation mentions morale in context of "morale or livecycle for your native units". In other words, they just named differently but represent same concept of attack/defense improvement. Yes, facilities affect them separately. There are some granting "+X morale to land units built here" and there are some granting "+X lifecycle to native units built here". However, I didn't see such specific description for Morale SE effect. That is why I assumed it affects (temporarily) all units altogether whether native or not.

From the article you referenced:
"Native life forms have life cycles rather then morale."
That's it. It doesn't say whether Morale rating does or does not affect lifecycle. It could be understood both ways. Like either "lifecycle is not a morale and, therefore, it is not affected by Morale rating" or "lifecycle is a replacement of morale for native units and, therefore, shares all the same bonuses from Morale rating".

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Found it!
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3372.0
"The next is how basic PSI units (defined in alpha/x.txt #UNITS) are handled.  They're excluded from any faction related modifications to morale, negative or positive."

Thank you all for help!

[bvanevery]

TBH you could have figured this out by playing the game and noticing that changes in MORALE due to SE choices do not change anything about your mindworms at all.  Not saying you should have or must think that way, but if you run into something like this in the future, it's a way to test what the docs say against the reality of the game.  Maybe I parse documents differently but I never thought there was any doubt here at all, how they worded it.  Possibly because I know MORALE and PLANET are distinct SE choices, have separate tables in alphax.txt, and wouldn't expect them to redundantly affect life cycle.  Many places in the docs say "this gives a +1 life cycle bonus", never mentioning Morale as relevant at all.

It just seems a bit extreme to refer to a source code decompilation to find "the definitive" answer.  Nobody learned the game that way.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I agree. I would probably do this eventually if not figured it out through internet. It turned out to be faster than to set up a game and live until I can produce worms.

[bvanevery]

You could activate the Scenario Editor to give yourself worms.  You could also start as the Cult of Planet, they get a worm.  With the Scenario Editor you can instantly discover technologies.  You can also use it to make AIs play each other, per another thread I started.  That takes some time waiting for results, but it's definitely faster than playing one's own game.

Finally, if you have any old saved games with mindworms in them, you could start one of those up.  I've actually been using my gigantic Cybernetic Consciousness AAR game as the thing I edit the tech tree with, because it's a game that has the tech tree completed.  I even renamed it so it would be at the top of my file list.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

True! Why didn't I think about this before? Thanks for pointers.