Since it didn't look like anyone was going to do anything about my complaints about how crew morale works, at the end of last round I fired my eager navi and hired a grizzled one so I'd be ready this round.

So today I re-hired him, got shot down a few times, and he was still King Slime Happy. Great. So I went to work, confident everything was fine. Came home and saw that my navi was very unhappy with me. Did I loss some combats? No (a couple flees, but no losses). So I check the crew log and see:

He was unhappy because I ran out of money and couldn't pay his wages. Note that when I saw he was very unhappy was after that first profit split, so he was probably angry at first. Are we now punishing people for running out of money? As I type this, he still isn't completely happy despite the fact I've now paid him twice his wages (1,500g).

I quoted the whole log to point out an old bug: the blank event at 3:17pm was my navi leveling up.

That split booty wasn't from a combat, but from a mission reward. That may not be a bug (and I think I approve of it), I just have never seen it before.

I like them getting upset if you can't pay them... I don't like not having the wage turnover time available... looks like 3:20 pm EST? Anyway, keep them getting upset when you can't pay, but make it clear when you need the money by

Wage turnover time should be publicized better, and should be at a more rational hour. I'll see if I can change that.

As for 'punishing people for not having money,' I do understand your frustration, but part of the behavior of crew is that the better they perform, the more money they take, and you need to keep them paid up to maintain the effect.

Crew are *very* useful for playing the game as efficiently as possible, but ultimately, you can still play the game without them. As such, if you can't pay to maintain them, you won't be as able to reliably reap the benefits. Critiquing morale is certainly a worthwhile discussion, and a game feature to which there is a decent amount of good debate to be had. However, I find the "if you can't pay, crew bonus is going to drop" to be fairly straightforward.

Crew have been taking wages and have been going to unhappy when they can't be paid for as long as the system has existed in the game.

Sounds like LG is asserting this ain't a bug.
Moving this thread over to Suggestions.

I've found running my more dangerous trade route overnight is bad for income, morale and in 2 words.. it sucks. I've got maxed out Combat Infamy and i win probably 90% of the level 60+ combats I get into but overnight, it turns into a stream of flees and losses from autoresolver. The worst part is, im running a trade route in a higher FL area, higher TL level goods and I make as much money as my alt which is running the same route the karmarda is currently using.

My crew goes from this:
2011-03-21 21:20:24
Trader reduced buy tax by 21 %
2011-03-21 21:13:24
Trader reduced sell tax by 21 %
to This:
2011-03-22 15:45:06
Trader reduced buy tax by 4 %
2011-03-22 15:38:06
Trader reduced sell tax by 4 %

which is just... sad. Why should I be penalized for having spent points, trading higher level goods in a higher flight license area and higher combat skills when all it does is reduce my income and make my crew mad overnight?

Autoresolver/Crew morale mechanics need a fix.

The only problem in that is the AR, not crew morale. They're getting angry and losing morale (and doing less for you) because the AR can't win combats for very long. When you lose a combat, your crew gets angry. On risky flights the AR will flee most of the time or lose if your plane isn't that fast. When the Karmada was in Barracudas they lost 80-90% of their combats between Phillipia and Olio, and as such their crews were very unhappy all of the time.