does morale affect terraformers or sorium harvesters?

[joeclark77 (OP)]

I understand from the tutorials that morale affects geo and grav survey ships, so I always build those ships with a long "intended deployment time" even when they're civilian designs.  Should I do the same for terraforming ships and sorium harvesters?  Or is it okay to ignore the crew's morale?  (And, should I check "conscript" for these ship classes?)

[Varee]

Morale dont affect those ship just like how feighter are not affected. You can read more on the morale page
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4835.msg49116.html#msg49116. As for conscript crew, it your choice but i guess it soesnt really matter except if you are low on crew?

[Erik L]

Conscript crews are untrained. They do no come from academies. So if you are running low on available manpower, you can specify certain designs to use conscripts.

[Starfyre]

Morale only matters for combat checks, ie, beam tohits (offensive and PD), missile salvos, and I think (but don't quote me on this) that low morale lengthens the time a fleet is acknowledging orders/takes to open coordinated fire if you have fleet training option turned on.  Note, this to hit penalty also applies to civvie ships firing with cwis, so if you've got a troop transport or front-line tanker that relies on cwis turrets to thin the inevitable missile salvo that comes its way, don't use conscript crews if you can avoid it.

Personally, I think conscript is less conscript and more ships staffed by merchant marine types, which any decently sized empire is swimming in compared to the number of highly trained combat fleet personelle your academies turn out.  I mean, it *is* a starship, even if you're going on the cheap you're not going to slap a couple hundred yahoos into it when you have potentially billions of compotent civvies to choose from.  They're just not the ones that know how to properly react in a death or glory combat situation.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Morale only matters for combat checks...

So am I correct to conclude that basically every civilian ship in my fleet should be set to a 3 month deployment?  Even sorium bases that could be orbiting Neptune for a decade?

[Nightstar]

Every commercial ship except geosurvey, yeah.

EDIT: If you use commercial tankers/jumpships/whatever with your fleet, those may need the same deployment time as the rest of the fleet. Low morale can affect response time. It's generally irrelevant outside of close combat, but there IS another exception.

[Starfyre]

Every commercial ship except geosurvey, yeah.

EDIT: If you use commercial tankers/jumpships/whatever with your fleet, those may need the same deployment time as the rest of the fleet. Low morale can affect response time. It's generally irrelevant outside of close combat, but there IS another exception.

It affects geosurvey too?  Hunh.  The more you know!