Did 1.4.1 "fix" happiness?

Nicol Bolas

Terrarian
I think I've made it clear in prior posts from months ago that I think the only "fix" for happiness is to remove it from the game. But ignoring that, the question is this: did 1.4.1 reduce the most annoying aspects of happiness?

I don't have the actual numbers in front of me, so I can't know for certain (please post them here or add them to the Wiki if you find out what these numbers are). Here's what I know of the changes:

Town Happiness (Rework)
- The boost from the "So Much Space" factor has been reduced by half
- The boost/penalty for Like/Dislike/Love/Hate factors have been increased by 20%. Everything is worth a little bit more in any direction.
- The number of NPCs before "crowding" starts has been increased from a town of 3 to 4. Furthermore, the size of the penalty starts smaller than before (though it will grow faster with each additional NPC)
- The size of the town detection has been doubled

Note that the following analysis assumes that "The size of the town detection has been doubled" is *specifically* referring to the size used to detect the town biome (which affects Pylon functionality, music, and the like). So it isn't talking about radii related to happiness, like the 25-tile liked/dislike radius and such.

OK, so what do we know. The "so much space" bonus, which I will call the "isolation bonus" has been cut in half. That would mean going from 90% to 95%.

The preference factors of 90%, 95%, 105% and 110% each increased by 20% away from 100%. So that would be 88%, 94%, 106%, and 112% for all of these.

What do these changes mean?

Well, in 1.4.0 the isolation bonus was pretty vital to getting many NPCs to max happiness. Some NPCs flat-out couldn't reach max happiness without it. Now, preferences play a much stronger role.

This matters because the isolation bonus was the main reason not to have more than 4 NPCs in an area. Recall that the isolation bonus triggers on more than 1 NPC with 25 squares or more than 3 within 120 tiles. The latter range is absolutely massive, which makes it virtually impossible to get the isolation bonus if you want more NPCs even remotely close.

But if the isolation bonus is itself worth less and the preference bonuses are worth enough more to compensate, now you can have lots more NPCs near each other as well as keeping them reasonably happy, simply by putting them near people they like and away from people they don't.

Now, the crowding penalty still exists, so high-density housing is still going to be punished severely. But it should be possible to build medium density housing, where 6-12 NPCs are all in an area. It will require careful selection of who goes where, and some will be less happy due to being outside of their preferred biome.

But overall, I think that this should offer more flexibility to builds without sacrificing the bonuses from happiness.
 
I mean, the normal prices for npc's already are higher than the ones with discounts, so there already is a reason to build more bases, the higher prices for npc's seems pretty useless and annoying. Fix 720p
 
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