Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Camp Morale

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

Your camp's morale is just the general feelings of satisfaction that your camp's people do or do not have regarding their current situation. Obviously, you can't expect too much just after the apocalypse, but you will start with a fair morale. (You guys survived and can build back up, things can't be that bad, right?) Your camp's morale will move up and down over time as their demands change and as you do things to help adjust it.

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Morale Displays:

Your primary morale display can be found on your top bar in the same row as your research and construction displays. Here you will be able to quickly and easily check to see what your camp's morale is and whether it is currently trending up or down. You will be able to get a more detailed graph of your morale by looking in your Peoples page. This graph will show you how close you are to reaching the next morale level. Beneath this graph you will also be able to keep track of your camp's medical and recreation needs and how well you are meeting those demands.

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Modifiers

There are a few basic things that will affect your morale both positively and negatively. Recreation coverage, medical coverage, rations, battle ratio, and staffing are the common things that will constantly affect your camp's morale. Only three things will have a severe negative effect on your camp's morale, lack of salary, over militarization, and waste overflow. Only waste will drop your camp's morale immediately. The others will only cause your morale to trend down more quickly than usual. You will have to adjust whatever you can to restore your morale to a decent level and, preferably, an upward trend. Nothing will cause your morale to instantly jump or increase dramatically. Check the little arrow beside your morale readout to see whether your morale is trending up () or down ().

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Recreation:

Once you have opened recreation facilities, you will want to start building them as soon as you have the available people. Recreation facilities do not cost any power or other resources, and require only a single person to staff. Each building will serve at minimum 200 people, so you won't need many at first.

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Medical Coverage:

Beyond the fact that adequate medical coverage will keep your population from dying as quickly due to radiation and injury, your people will also be happier if you have enough medical facilities to cover their needs. It is a bit cheering to know that if you get sick or hurt, you won't just have to fend for yourself. Each medical facility requires 15 staff, 10 disposables, and 10 power to operate. Hospitals aren't exactly cheap. A single medical facility will cover 1,500 people at minimum, so the costs are well worth it.

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Rations:

You will start the game with rations set at one. At any point during the game, you can go into your Peoples page and set your rations higher, up to four. This means that instead of one meal each day, your population can be allowed up to four. Upping your rations, of course, will help to up your camp's morale or at least help to turn the trend back up. You should remember though that your militia will eat one meal more than the rest of your camp.

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Battle Ratio:

The ratio of your battle wins to losses will have a direct effect on your morale. If you have more wins than losses, your morale will be higher. If you have more losses than wins, you morale will be lower. If you have never battled before, your morale will not be negatively affected and will not really be positively affected. Overall, your people will be boosted if you are successful, while defeat will dishearten them. No battles just means that they will continue about their daily lives as usual.

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Staffing:

Your population is not going to be particularly happy when you have a significant number of buildings constructed but not running. These buildings are going to waste while your population is either out of work and only used for "survival" style tasks. Staffing is not measured by the number of buildings you have, though. It is only measured by the percent of the buildings you have that are active. So if you have 5 buildings that require staff and all of them are staffed, your people will be fine.

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Paying Staff:

After about 1,000 turns, your people are going to want more for their efforts than a place to sleep and food each day. The people that are actually doing more than sitting around your camp with no task are going to want to be paid, this includes people set to explore or recruit. At around day 800, you will receive a warning letting you know that you will have about 200 days to prepare to pay these people. Fortunately, their demands are low. These people will only want .01 CEP apiece every 14 days. This amount will increase after each succeeding thousand turns.

Once you have reached turn 1,000, a new message and form will show up on your main page, allowing you to set the salary for your camp. This salary is one of the few things that will cause your morale to begin decreasing more rapidly, if you do not meet their demands. You might want to consider making extra resources that you can sell or exchange for CEP.

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Waste Buildup:

If your waste buildup ever reaches or exceeds 100%, your morale will instantly drop to terrible. Your camp is not going to enjoy wading through waste and muck that should be stored in landfills or burned in incinerators. The waste will also cause your people to begin dying from disease.

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Over-Militarization:

While you should keep an ample supply of trained military to protect your camp from attack and launch your own, having too much of your population trained as army or special forces will cause the rest of your population to feel oppressed and anxious. Having over 75% of your total population trained as military will turn your camp into a military state, leaving the rest of your population feeling uneasy and your decreasing more rapidly than usual.

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Research Effects:

You can improve the efficiency of your medical facilities and recreation facilities by researching Medical Technology and Time Management, respectively. These topics will increase the number of people each individual building can support, decreasing the total number of buildings that you will need for the same population.

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Morale Effects:

Morale will have a pretty standard effect on most of your camp's activities. Better morale will mean better returns after exploring and recruiting and will give you a slightly higher production rate from your buildings. Lower morale will produce the opposite effect. Morale will also have an effect on your militia, since in the end, you militia are basically normal population with weapons. Battle will be slightly affected by your camp's morale, though army competency will have a much more pronounced effect. Having a low morale has other dangers as well, though.

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Dangers of Low Morale:

If your morale ever drops below fair, your people will absolutely refuse to work on nuclear weapons or gold palettes. They will continue to staff any active buildings and perform the other tasks around camp that you ask them to do, with the decreased results that comes with poor or lower morale, but you will not be able to staff a single person to work on nukes or gold. You will be able to restart production once your camp's morale has reached at least fair again.

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